J. E. Conant

“ Mathews charges is the one thing true Christian education does not do.
When did the Church ever try to force a man, educated or ignorant, to give up what he knows to be facts in order to become a Christian? When was a man ever asked by Christian schools to choose between the assured results and methods of scientific investigation and loyalty to Christ? When has that institution which, above all others, has fought ignorance and fostered true scientific investigation used a method that put a premium on ignorance as a prerequisite for faith? ”

“ The science of twenty or thirty years ago was in high glee at the thought of having almost proved the theory of biological evolution. Today, for every careful, candid inquirer, these hopes are crushed; and with weary, reluctant sadness does modern biology now confess that the Church has probably been right all the time.
If these men have borne faithful testimony to the situation as it now exists in the biological realm, the only conclusion possible is that the borrowed portion of Darwin’s theory has also utterly collapsed. ”

“ By no one’s interpretation except the Holy Spirit’s! He alone can interpret the Bible, for He alone knows what He meant by what He wrote. And even the Holy Spirit is able to interpret the Bible to no one but the believer. For the rationalist, the unbeliever, rejects faith, and thereby completely closes “the eyes of the heart” to the illumination of the Spirit; while the faith of the believer is the very thing that opens the heart to an understanding of the Word. Spiritual apprehension begins only at the point where faith begins. ”

“ Rationalism is both irreverent and destructive when it seeks to do anything with the Word of God. For that Book is to be handled as no other book is. Behind the historical, and the literary, and the textual, and the philosophical criticism must be a spiritual discernment, born of faith alone, which both dominates [p 61] and regulates all the rest. For just as a blind man may turn the eyes of his head to the sun and see no physical light, so the rationalist may turn the eyes of his mind to the Bible and see no spiritual truth. ”

“ We are all aware of the fact that there are various kinds, shapes, and colors of evolution, from theistic to atheistic; but the fact still remains that every theory is still evolution, and that any theory of evolution whatsoever, if it means anything at all, means steady progress from lower to higher. Progress is certainly the one thought that is vital to any definition of evolution, and progress downward is excluded by the very meaning of the word, and so evolution under any theory can mean nothing but progress upward. ”

“ They cannot carry their apparatus over into the spiritual realm and weigh and measure, estimate and judge, illumine and interpret spiritual truth for us. When we stand here we are on that holy ground where we must lay off our sandals of scientific paraphernalia and stand before God with open heart ready to hear what He has to say. The moment we get to this realm, the whole apparatus by which truth is received changes from reason to faith. ”

“ Among students of animals and plants there is no longer any question as to the truth of evolution. That the animals of the present are the altered animals of the past, that the plants of today are the modified plants of yesterday, that civilized man of today is the savage of yesterday and the tree dweller of the day before, is no longer debatable to the mass of biologists. ”

“ This doctrine also puts a high premium on the whole beastly, selfish, lustful, murderous history of the race, for it makes sin a ladder up which man is climbing to his high destiny.
Punishment for sin is therefore absolutely out of the question. For if man is not responsible for his sin, and if God punishes him for it, as the Bible says He will, even by the law of cause and effect, that would make God an infinite tyrant and an unspeakable fiend. And so if God is not a monster, and if evolution is true, there is no punishment for sin, and the Bible lies. ”

“ It is quite possible for a man to hold the “scientific” or “historical” attitude toward the Bible, which makes it a human book marred by many errors, and believe in evolution at the same time; but the man who holds that attitude toward the Bible does not believe it at all! No one can accept the theory of evolution and the doctrine of an inerrant Bible at the same time.
And yet the attempt is being very skilfully made by many leaders in the Schools today to camouflage this impossibility. ”

“ The Church is also hurling the challenge of Christ’s formula at every other form of aggressive unbelief. No unbeliever, from destructive Higher Critic to agnostic and infidel, has the shadow of a right to make contrary pronouncement on the inerrancy and infallible authority of the Bible, for he has refused to put Christ’s word to the test,—his unbelief proves it,—and he is therefore utterly incapacitated for passing any judgment whatever on that Book which unfolds its meaning to faith alone. ”

“ To be a believer in the Word puts rationalism out of business, for no one can reason himself into the acceptance of truth he already believes. And on the other hand, to be a rationalist regarding the Word puts faith out of business, for faith is the acceptance of the bare Word of God without further evidence, and the rationalizer is compelled to reject that attitude toward the Word so that he may have the way left open to reason his way to what he is willing to accept as evidence. ”

“ For when an evolutionist is immersed, he is either perpetrating a meaningless travesty on immersion, or else he is denying the whole doctrine of evolution. For immersion certainly does not picture a step in the progress of the living, but rather the burial of the totally dead. ”

“ Conflict between these two realms of truth is, therefore, eternally impossible. Men talk of a conflict between science and the Bible, but no such conflict exists. If there is any contradiction, it is not between the statements of Scripture and the facts of science, but between the false interpretations of Scripture and the immature conclusions of science. Herbert Spencer was right when he said: It is incredible that there should be two orders of truth in absolute and everlasting opposition. ”

“ E. D. Burton, being willing to admit that the Bible is not infallible in history or in matters of science, has also concluded that it is not wholly consistent and therefore not ultimately and as a whole inerrant in the field of morals and religion.
What reason more can the Church want to justify her for intolerance of a theory that will do this to a man’s faith? Is it not correct reasoning to conclude that if one man suffers such a collapse of faith after accepting evolution, others are likely to suffer the same thing? ”

“ Either be scientific enough, cry believers to the evolutionists, to accept the challenge of Christ’s formula with all its implications, or be honest enough to cease destroying the faith in an inerrant Bible you have sworn to defend but refuse to accept! ”

“ Shailer Mathews follows the evolutionary philosophy to its logical and necessary end when he says: But for men who think of God as dynamically imminent in an infinite universe, who think of man's relation to Him as determined not by statutory but by cosmic law, who regard sin and righteousness alike as the working out of the fundamental forces of life itself, the conception of God as King and of man as condemned or acquitted subject is but a figure of speech.
Such a doctrine as this absolutely and forever destroys man’s responsibility for sin. ”

“ We have now reached the point where we can sum up all the requirements which the really scientific man will meet in order that he may be able to proceed with scientific accuracy in his researches in the realms of truth. He will separate the natural and the spiritual realms of truth from each other. He will investigate natural truth with the intellect and spiritual truth with faith. He will distinguish truth that can be demonstrated to the experience from that which must be accepted on testimony alone. And he will accord primacy to the spiritual realm over the natural. ”

“ For repentance is a coming into that attitude of heart toward God in which the whole life is laid bare before Him exactly as it is, thereby opening the way for faith; and believing the Gospel is an entering upon that faith which accepts the Gospel—the Good News—of Christ’s finished work of atonement for sin through His shed blood on the cross, and reckons pardon for sin and new life in Christ to be now ours according to the Word of God. For faith, you remember, is both an attitude and an act ”

“ If the Church and the Schools are ever to come into harmony, it cannot be because the Church gives up an infallible Book and accepts a discredited theory in its place, and so it must be because the Schools give up this unscientific, because unproven, theory and get back to faith in the inerrant Word of God. ”

“ And this irreconcilable attitude is not without reason, but for the perfectly valid reason that the one who accepts evolution as a fact is utterly unscientific. For in the first place he accepts unproven assumptions and rationalistic speculations as demonstrated facts. And, in the next place, he thereby forces human interpretations of scientific facts to contradict the divinely verified doctrines of the Bible, thus thrusting confusion and contradiction between realms of truth which are in perfect harmony. ”

“ For the believer is walking by God's estimate of him, while the rationalist is walking by his estimate of God, and these paths go in opposite directions.
If you sit in judgment on some portion of God's Word and determine that it is reasonable, and that since it commends itself to your judgment it is therefore acceptable and you will believe it, that is not faith in the Word but in your own reason. You have surrendered your intellect to your own conclusions but your heart is far from God. Faith in the Word is surrender to it without passing judgment on it. ”

“ It is not facts that the Church either fears or refuses to accept, but such an interpretation of them by evolutionists and rationalists as to deny the scientific accuracy and therefore the inerrancy of the Word of God. It is altogether beside the truth to intimate that the Church is fostering an education that has to withhold assured scientific facts for fear their knowledge would ruin faith in any theological beliefs whatever “for which the schools stand.” ”