What is the Church of God on earth? According to The Larger Catechism “the visible church is a society made up of all such as in all ages and places of the world profess the true religion, and of their children”. And surely no more accurate description can be given than that.
Today, however, one looks around the professedly Christian Church and one sees all manner of degrees of loyalty — and disloyalty — to the true religion. It has been thus for many, many years now and, sadly, one gets all too used to this peculiar state of affairs, though it has been so disastrous for the spiritual well-being of the world. Still, it rather takes one’s breath away to read a Church of Scotland minister proclaiming his sadness at how few of his colleagues are prepared to profess doubts about the existence of God. Rev. Johnston R. McKay was referring to a newspaper survey of members of the 1991 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in which over 97% claimed that they had no such doubts, a frightening statistic, he calls it. (Mr McKay’s comments formed part of an essay in the collection. ST ANDREWS ROCK The State of the Church in Scotland, edited by Stewart Lamont, (London, 1992).)
To anyone with the least degree of respect for the revelation which God has given of Himself in Scripture it should be a cause of dismay that even 2% or 3% of the members of the Assembly should, to any degree whatever, question the existence of God. This is, after all, the supreme court of a body which presumably continues in existence only to bring men, women and children to know God. And, in the words of Christ Himself, “this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (Jn 17: 3). It is such certainties that Mr McKay so much despises.
Why does Mr McKay come to this conclusion? Why does he find it so frightening that more ministers and elders do not doubt the existence of God? “Those who themselves have no doubts,” he explains, “are unlikely to respond sympathetically to those who do.” That, however, is only an assumption, and an assumption which does not stand up to inspection. It is surely much nearer the truth to say that most of those who have a real confidence in the absolute truth of genuine, Biblical Christianity will relate sympathetically to unbelievers in trying to show them the truth. But I rather think that the sympathy which is being called for is one which is intended to leave unbelievers — inside the Church and out — feeling secure in their unbelief. It is one thing to deal kindly with unbelievers; it is another thing altogether to strengthen them in assuming that unbelief is a valid option. The fact is that God has spoken, and it is sin to question the truth of the revelation which God has given.
It is doubtless true, to quote McKay again, that “for many, I would want to argue most, church members today, faith is something they are searching for, unsure about, questioning all the time and certainly hesitant about conveying to anyone else”. Sad that this should be true, so degenerate has the professing Church become. But there is absolutely no justification for him to go on to declare, “In this I believe church members are being true to the nature of faith, which is always tentative, open to doubt and unlikely to be expressed in the sort of dogmatic propositions beloved of conservative evangelicals.”
But what is faith? It is certainly not a vague religious attitude. Nor is it merely the acceptance, even the unswerving acceptance, of a set of religious truths. True faith is faith in a person — Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. There is nothing tentative or doubtful about it. There certainly was not in Thessalonica when Paul went there preaching the gospel. His testimony was, “Our gospel came unto you not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance” (1 Thess 1: 5). Yes, the Thessalonian believers followed Paul in a sincere and unswerving acceptance of the truths he proclaimed; they followed him in accepting without hesitation the fact of the existence of God; they understood Him to have all the attributes ascribed to Him in the revelation of Scripture; they understood Jesus Christ to be the eternal Son of God in human nature, “that Holy Thing” who entered the world by a virgin birth — and they cast their immortal souls on this glorious Person who had come to lay down His life as the sinner’s substitute and who had risen from the dead on the third day.
Those Thessalonian believers would have found it extremely difficult to recognise as part of the Christian Church a body where a leading teacher of students for the ministry has so little comprehension of what it means to profess the true religion as to say, “There will always be those who, in an age of increasing perplexity, seek refuge in voices in church or in society who demand a total commitment which refuses to leave any space for questioning or doubt. But there ought to be a place within the church for those who bring their questions with them into commitment and seek within the community of faith to pursue their search for meaning, and equally a place for those who are not sure that they know what commitment means.” These are the words of Professor Robert Davidson, who teaches Hebrew in the University of Glasgow, and a recent moderator of the Church of Scotland.
“Wise words”, Mr McKay calls them, and then goes on to claim that “the ministry of the Church of Scotland is increasingly unwilling to recognise that if it does not address precisely the people whom Professor Davidson describes, the Church of Scotland will die. And it will deserve to do so.” In a sense — but only in a very limited sense — we agree. But the question remains. What is the place of such people within the Church of God? Their place is, quite simply, in the pew, with an open ear to the Word of God. Yet we must make a further proviso, for there is no point in sitting in the pew of a church, where the occupant of the pulpit does not accept the authority of the Word of God, for it is still as true as ever: “If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Is 8: 20). “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness?” (Mt 6: 23).
When there is this degree of willingness to tolerate complete unbelief among its office-bearers, it is not surprising that the last General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was not willing to accept a motion affirming the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Saviour — a motion which, if accepted, would have meant the Assembly bearing witness to the fact that there is no salvation to be found in any form of false religion. It was a sad testimony to the fact that the King of kings receives no honour in a large part of His own house. Even the First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”, is being thrown overboard by a large part of the professing Christian Church.
Organised religion in this country is weak. On that point all are agreed. Church attendance has tumbled dramatically, as has the number of church members, within the Church of Scotland, even since it was set up in its present form in 1929, and especially since the fifties. But more serious still is the unwillingness of too many of those who remain, those in particular who are teachers of others — from the pulpit or from the divinity chair — to give due acknowledgement to the uniqueness and authority of the great Prophet of the Church.
But if Christ is not accepted as the Son of God who was born of the Virgin Mary, He is not essentially different from the rest of mankind and He lacks that uniqueness and authority. Further, He could not escape original sin, and it could not therefore have been possible for Him to have been fit for the office of redeemer. If that were so, the faith of the whole Christian Church would without a doubt be vain, and the whole human race would still be in their sins. Obviously then the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is a vital part of Christian doctrine. And, what is more, it is clearly revealed in the Bible.
It was no surprise to find Bishop Jenkins of Durham airing, at the end of last year, his disbelief of the Virgin Birth of the Saviour. Not that he is much more radical in his unbelief than many other ministers; he is just more provocative, and more willing to court publicity for his scepticism. Disbelief of many doctrines, even central doctrines, of the Christian faith is widespread, though it is very much rarer to find ministers trumpeting their unbelief to all and sundry. The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has, however, trumpeted his unbelief by backing Bishop Jenkins in a sermon in, of all places, St Giles’ Church, Edinburgh, once the church of John Knox, a preacher whose trumpet blew no uncertain sound.
Thankfully there has been a reaction to the Moderator’s description of the Virgin Birth as only a symbol of the incarnation. Professor T. F. Torrance, whose own theology is less than perfectly orthodox (he is a Barthian), has called it “theologically misleading and linguistically inept”. And among the many letters which appeared in the press was one signed by 111 ministers at an evangelical Church of Scotland gathering in Crieff, making plain their unreserved belief in the historicity of the Virgin Birth, which they “regard as integral to our faith in the incarnate Christ”. Then they express their regret that the Moderator has used “the press to voice his personal scepticism rather than to promote the Church’s unity and faith”. Which raises a question, How can there be unity in a Church where there is so much divergence of opinion on such fundamental matters of the faith? Surely the personal scepticism of leading churchmen is dangerous whether it is expressed openly or kept as a matter of private belief.
And the fact that at least one of the signatories to the letter is a woman minister raises a further doubt about the commitment to the absolute authority of Scripture on the part of the evangelical wing of the Church of Scotland, for it is the clear testimony of Scripture that women are not to hold office in the Church. Yes, we are thankful for every testimony to the truth but, O, for trumpets which would blow a less uncertain sound!
Where does the Church go from here? One thing is sure: any branch of the Christian Church which does not find a place for Christ as the divine, sinless Saviour — in fact, an exclusive place — will eventually die. And it will deserve to do so. The Christian Church, however, will never die; indeed the prospects for the Church are excellent. But natural religion will get her nowhere; it cannot prevent her from sliding farther on towards extinction — especially where it is a religion without absolutes, a religion that is not based firmly and totally on a revelation from heaven. Today’s religion lacks these essentials; it lacks even any conception of truth. For today’s world, truth is what works for me — or for you — but this generation has no conception of truth as truth for all of us. That conception of truth is, sadly, thoroughly out-dated.
Without a doubt the Church needs a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit will not come without restoring to the Church, and to contemporary society, the concept of truth — absolute, unchangeable truth. Not truth worked out by man’s fallible mind, but truth revealed by the God of heaven. For, when the Holy Spirit will return in power, it will be to apply the eternal truths of the Bible, beginning with the existence of the eternal God, the inflexibly holy God who hates sin but has provided salvation for sinners in His Son, Jesus Christ. Then there will be a revolution in the Church, a reformation comparable to that of the sixteenth century, resulting in a Church in and by which God will be glorified on earth. May the Lord hasten it in His time!