Volume 3 Issues 2-3
Page 1

April 1998

THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL . . .

A Reply to Dr. Bryan Chapell's "President's Goals and Report"

By Jack B. Scott, Ph.D.

I eagerly sat in the class room at the theological seminary, ready to learn the art of preaching from our new professor of Homiletics. What I heard sent chills up my spine. His first words to the class were "No Bible scholar any longer believes that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are history." I knew such views were taught in some schools, but at Columbia Theological Seminary, the most conservative seminary in our denomination?

And who am I? If you were to go to Alamance Presbyterian Church, just south of Greensboro, North Carolina-once a country church but now surrounded by bustling neighborhoods-you would find in the cemetery behind the present building, row after row of tombstones, many with the name "Scott" on them. They are my ancestors who moved down to North Carolina from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the 1700's. Some of them fought in the War for Independence and others in the War Between the States. Many served as Presbyterian elders in that very church. My father grew up in that church and gained his early Christian education there, though not in the present building.

Who am I? I was a young man in the Presbyterian Church, in Greensboro, brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord by believing parents. They taught me my first respect for and love of God's written Word, the Bible. By the time I was a teenager, I was rising early, in order to have a time in the day to study, seriously, God's Word. It was a practice I have never abandoned.

One day, I found myself in a class room, in my freshman year at N.C. State College, as it was called in those days, in Raleigh, North Carolina. The class was in English and the professor had assigned us a paper to be titled, "The Best Book I Ever read." I did not hesitate to write about the Bible.

In class, the day after we had submitted our papers, I had to sit and listen to the professor take the entire class hour to ridicule my paper. He ridiculed my qualifications to write the paper, suggesting that I had probably never even read through the Bible. He ridiculed the fact that there were so many versions of the Bible that one could hardly say he had read "the Bible." And, he ridiculed the Bible, itself.

He had not identified me to the class, only my paper and its subject. When he was through, I had a strong desire to remain anonymous. But I could not. I stood and rebutted his remarks, affirming that I had indeed read through the entire Bible more than three times, studying it as I went. I affirmed that I had been speaking of the King James Bible, the one I cut my spiritual teeth on, and would not apologize for that. I was not ashamed of my topic or of what I had said. When I was through and the class over, many classmates came to me to say they were glad I spoke up. It was the first time I had ever publicly defended the Word of God before an unbeliever.

So when I sat in that seminary classroom, it was, as they say, déjà vu, all over again. Only this time it was not in a state college but in my denomination's theological seminary. Again, I was not able to remain silent. With others, I protested such teaching in a school founded to prepare us to be teachers and preachers of God's Word.

Near the end of my senior year at seminary, when things had not gotten better and when meetings with the president and various professors had accomplished little, I wrote to the then extant Presbyterian Journal. I expressed my concerns that in three years of study as a ministerial student at Davidson College, a Presbyterian college, and three years at Columbia Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian seminary, I had been taught very little content of the Bible and much that was negative toward Scripture. How could they expect us to be prepared to preach and teach with such training?

When that Letter fell into the hands of the faculty of the seminary, I was nearly stopped from going to Korea as an evangelistic missionary, in 1952. But the lord was with me and by the help of Dr. L. Nelson Bell, at that time on the Board of World Missions, I was finally approved to go.

When I returned to America, some years later, with my family, my first pastorate was in Kentucky, no hotbed of conservatism in the church at that time. While there, the issue of Divorce and Remarriage came up, in the latter 1950's. When the matter was discussed to be voted on in our Presbytery, Transylvania, I was the only person there who spoke against the changes the church wished to make on this matter, in our standards. I spoke on the subject five times, based on what the Bible taught, while numerous others took the floor to oppose what I had said.

Yet, when the matter came to a vote, in that liberal presbytery, the vote was split down the middle. Only the moderator's vote put our presbytery on record for the changes. If only one other had stood and spoken against the changes, at least our presbytery, if not the whole church, may have gone on record opposed to the changes. I learned that day, again, the importance of standing up and speaking out, when it comes to the integrity of God's Word.

Later, in the next decade, came another issue: the matter of women being ordained as officers in the church. Here, again, at General Assembly, I was compelled to speak to the issue which was so clearly taught in Scripture against women elders in the church. As I brought before the assembly Scripture to back up what I was saying, I could hear the ripples of laughter throughout that vast auditorium at Montreat. My heart was grieved when God's Word was trampled under foot by my own church.

Who am I? I was one of many who met in Birmingham in December of 1973, and signed, on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, the declaration that brought into existence the Presbyterian Church in America (then called the National Presbyterian Church). We had become convinced that we could no longer serve the Lord in the old church, the church of our fathers. So its history of standing on God's Word would have to be continued in a new church, which was not new in doctrine but rather, as we supposed, a return to the foundations of our Presbyterian heritage in the Word of God.

I have been blessed to serve this church in various capacities over the past years and have recently retired from the active ministry in the church. So why am I writing this now?

I see things, once again, that are disturbing, in particular, the issue over the "days" of Genesis 1. There are those in our denomination who will tell you that to insist on understanding those days as meaning 24 hour days, such as we experience, today, is to "go beyond Scripture." Don't you believe it! That is precisely what Scripture does say. Clearly, God intended that we understand it that way by repeating, at the end of each day of creation, "there was evening and there was morning" day one and on, through the six days of creation. To understand it any other way would be to add to or to take from God's Word.

Certainly, the Hebrew word for "day" has more usage than simply the 24 hour day, In Genesis 1:5, it is applied to the daylight period of the 24 hour day, as is our own custom, today. Probably, in Genesis 2:4, "day" refers to the whole period of creation, not just one twenty-four hour period. That is not the question. The question is what kind of day was the Lord referring to, in the creation account of the days of creation? What were those six days?

To conclude even the possibility of any other kind of day than that which the Lord makes very clear in the context, days made up of evening and morning, as we know them today, is to err. The truth that is sufficient is this. This is no new "standard of holiness" as some suggest, but standing for what God's Word says.

When I was a student at Columbia Theological Seminary, in the late forties and early fifties, the argument, then, was that we must allow for differences in Bible interpretation. That sounds reasonable until you realize that we are not talking about "interpretation" but about what the Bible actually says. As Paul said on another subject, this is not a matter of another way of presenting the same gospel but a very different gospel. The gospel rests on the integrity of God's Word and when we question that integrity by suggesting that what is plainly taught can have another meaning, then we are endangering the foundation of all authority in the church.

The question is not about the meaning of "day," as found in Genesis one, but about whether we are going to accept or reject what God has said about the creation days. As at Columbia, then, we hear, today, in the church, the proposition that since we grant you the privilege of holding to six solar days, as we know them, you should also grant to us another legitimate opinion. That is the very nature of compromise. One who compromises is ready to grant others their opinions.

But how can we compromise Scripture? God gave it, as he gave it, and we cannot yield on that. If the Lord did not intend that we understand it as six normal days, as we experience them in everyday life, then why would he give to each day an evening and a morning? And why would he repeat this teaching, later, in the giving of the Law to Moses?

Twice, in Exodus, in reference to our keeping the Sabbath Day, He bases that commandment on the fact that God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh (Exodus 20:11; 31:17). He could have created all with one word, but He chose not to. He could have created all over a period of a year or a prolonged period of time, but He chose not to. God, here, reiterates that he created heaven and earth and all in them in six days, clearly, with the intention that we learn from that how we also ought to live out our time on earth. Affirm or even suggest that he created heaven and earth in any other period of time and you have undermined the whole basis for the work-week which God ordained and the day of rest, which he also ordained. He taught that we should work six days and rest one, because he did. If he didn't, then what does that say about the authority of any part of God's Word?

Some argue that the writers of our Confession of Faith were "cautious" when they repeated what the Bible had to say: "in the space of six days." To have implied anything other than that would have been faithless.

The president of Covenant Seminary, in defending, as possible, another interpretation of days than the literal 24 hour day, insists that Covenant Seminary has not changed. But I do not find that assuring, at all. Did they begin with that position? Then they began wrong.

To compare this issue with the different millennial views in the church is not valid. The millennial views Come from a Book of the Bible which is intentionally symbolic in its use of terms. Jesus makes that clear in the first chapter of Revelation. But to take that approach with any teaching in Scripture that we might wish to interpret as symbolic is erroneous interpretation. To call the issue merely one of timing, is ludicrous. At issue is the matter of integrity, the integrity of the entire Word of God as the authority for what we are to believe and teach.

Simply because the General Assembly has not yet seen fit to make the 24-hour day the official doctrine of our church does not mean that any other interpretation is proper or acceptable. God's Word and not the actions of any church court is the sole standard for what we are to believe.

Do not be deceived by those who say that because they know Hebrew so well, they cannot be definitive on this issue. Either they do not know Hebrew as well as they suppose or else they are deceived about what the Hebrew says. The Hebrew Bible in no way justifies any other interpretation than the literal 24-hour day. Don't believe anyone who says that it does.

The president of Covenant Theological Seminary says that his concern is to be as true to the Biblical text as is humanly possible. My concern is that the church accept the Bible as God has given it, whether it seems humanly reasonable or not! The issue is not whether our church be large and influential, by broadening its teaching to include those who question what the Bible has clearly taught, but whether we remain faithful to God's Word. Paul was viewed as having less than success, by some of the Corinthian church members. His response was that his desire was not to please the multitudes but to be a sweet savor of Christ unto God. "We are not as the many, corrupting the word of God, but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ" (2 Cor. 2:14-17). We should desire every teacher of the Word in our denomination to have just that same commitment.

Scripture teaches us that in order to be saved, we need simply to confess with our mouth that Jesus is the Lord (God) and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead (Rom. 10:9). Nothing should be added to that requirement in order for one to be a member of the PCA. But to be a teacher in the PCA, more must be required. Teachers of the Word of God, in our church, whether Ruling or Teaching Elders, must be held to a higher standard, namely, to accept and teach God's Word as God has given it, and in no other way. If we, the teachers, equivocate and waffle on what is plainly taught in Scripture, such as the meaning of the six days of creation, then we are not faithful under-shepherds of God's flock. "Historic Presbyterianism" is not the standard of the church. God's written Word is the court of final appeal.

Who am I? I am a watchman expected by God to give warning. I would be derelict in my duty as a teacher in the Presbyterian Church in America if I did not give warning in these days of a great danger to our church. I do not wish to see this church go down the path that other Presbyterian denominations have gone down, earlier in this century. God did not bring this church into existence in order that it should so soon take the path that leads away from the authority of God's Word, in its teaching.

"Has God said?" was the question initially put to our first parents, Adam and Eve. Satan, in various guises and ways, has been putting that same question to every church established to do God's will. What will our answer be?

Dr. Jack B. Scott received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Davidson College, a Master of Divinity degree from Columbia Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. in Hebrew and Semitic Languages from Dropsie University. He served as a foreign missionary to Korea and pastored churches in Springfield, Kentucky and Clinton, Mississippi. From 1966 until 1977 he was Professor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He is the author of a Commentary on the book of Hosea, and while on the Christian Education and Publications Staff of the PCA he wrote the Adult Biblical Education Series. Dr. Scott is an honorably retired teaching elder in the PCA. He and his wife, Eleanor, live in Jackson, Mississippi, where he continues to write a widely read and popular Sunday School lesson for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.