Extremist in Love

Re: Extremist in Love

I was disappointed to read Andrew Faiz’s column about reading some of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘theological papers’ online. Dr King was a gifted orator and a determined leader in the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. All right-thinking people admire his hard-won achievement. That does not, however, mean that he had ‘a strong Christ-centric theology.’

Dr King seems to have been an old-fashioned liberal in theology. He preached the universal Fatherhood of God and the ‘brotherhood of mankind.’ He stressed the moral example of Jesus and his ethical teachings rather than his saving work on the Cross. His sermons are mainly about social justice rather than redemption from sin. He may use traditional orthodox terminology such as ‘salvation’, but it would appear that he used such words in a sense far removed from, say, their meaning in St Paul.

It is hard to know what to say in response to the statement that one can be ‘scientific’ in ‘proving’ that ‘Jesus was not born of a virgin, or that Jesus never met John the Baptist.’ Only a distinct minority of Biblical scholars today would ever question that our Lord was baptized by John in the Jordan (maybe the consensus was different in 1948). And as for the virginal conception, it is impossible for anyone to ‘prove’ that it did not occur. There have been many objections to it, but they can all be answered. I have always thought that if you can accept the ‘greater miracle’ (the Incarnation) then it is relatively easy to accept the ‘lesser’ one (the Virgin Birth). As Barth has said, the Virgin Birth is really a sign pointing to the greater fact of the Incarnation. If we can accept the Incarnation, how much more should we be able to accept the Virgin Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is disturbing that our national Presbyterian magazine can hold up such views as examples of ‘healthy’ skepticism rather than as sad examples of outdated rationalism. The Presbyterian Church in Canada is a confessional church committed to its subordinate standards—the Westminster Confession of Faith and Living Faith. Both of these documents affirm the Virgin Birth of Christ. It is clear that a number of our leaders, including those in charge of the Record, are committed to a doctrinal indifferentism that is doing a grave disservice to the Church at time when our witness to the evangelical message ought to be anything but muted. Let us be truly Christocentric!

Yours truly,