Published in God Transcendent , 1949.
The first prerequisite, then, for any advance in Christian doctrine is that those who would engage in it should believe in the full truthfulness of the Bible and should endeavor to make their doctrine simply a presentation of what the Bible teaches.
There are other principles also that must be observed if there is to be real doctrinal advance. For one thing, all real doctrinal advance proceeds in the direction of greater precision and fullness of doctrinal statement. Just run over in your minds again the history of the great creeds of the church. How meager was the so-called Apostles’ Creed, first formulated in the second century! How far more precise and full were the creeds of the great early councils, beginning with the Nicene creed in A.D. 325! How much more precise and how vastly richer still were the Reformation creeds and especially our Westminster Confession of Faith!
This increasing precision and this increasing richness of doctrinal statement were arrived at particularly by way of refutation of errors as they successively arose. At first the church’s convictions about some point of doctrine were implicit rather than explicit. They were not carefully defined. They were assumed rather than expressly stated. Then some new teaching arose. The church reflected on the matter, comparing the new teaching with the Bible. It found the new teaching to be contrary to the Bible. As over against the new teaching, it set forth precisely what the true Biblical teaching on the point is. So a great doctrine was clearly stated in some great Christian creed.
That method of doctrinal advance is, of course, in accord with the fundamental laws of the mind. You cannot set forth clearly what a thing is without placing it in contrast with what it is not. All definition proceeds by way of exclusion. How utterly shallow, then, is the notion that the church ought to make its teaching positive and not negative – the notion that controversy should be avoided and truth should be maintained without attack upon error! The simple fact is that truth cannot possibly be maintained in any such way. Truth can be maintained only when it is sharply differentiated from error. It is not wonder, then, that the great creeds of the church, as also the great revivals of religion in the church, were born in theological controversy. The increasing richness and increasing precision of Christian doctrine were brought about very largely by the necessity of excluding one alien element after another from the teaching of the church.
In recent years the church has often entered upon an exactly opposite course of procedure. It has constructed what purport to be doctrinal statements, but these supposed doctrinal statements are constructed for a purpose which is just the opposite of the purpose that governed the formation of the great historic creeds.
Twice during the past week of so we have been entertained by amusing and instructive spectacles in the field of moral endeavor. First a small but impudent band of professional wowsers here in Baltimore, doing business under the name of the Lord’s Day Alliance, spent three solid days in court trying to prevent the people of the town from deciding what sort of Sunday laws they want. And then a larger and even more impudent band of professional wowsers in Washington, doing business under the name of the Anti-Saloon League, put up a furious battle in Congress to prevent the people of the United States from deciding whether we shall go on with the Prohibition obscenity or return to common sense and common decency.
Last Sunday afternoon, in the first of our talks of this winter, I spoke to you in a summary sort of way about the progress od Christian doctrine in the church. I showed how the church advanced from the very meagre statement which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, on through the great early ecumenical creeds, setting forth the doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, and through Augustine, with his presentation of the doctrine of sin and divine grace, to the Reformation and to Calvin. I showed how that type of doctrine which follows on the path in which Calvin moved is called the Reformed Faith.
One of my favorite movies is Good Will Hunting. In one of the pivotal scenes in the movie Matt Damon’s character is repeatedly reminded by Robin Williams’ character that the abuse he suffered from his foster parent is not his fault. I have not included the clip because the language is very graphic. It is available on YouTube if you are interested.
The voice of the Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, as reflected by the people of the United States and their self-imposed laws and regulations, severally by municipalities and states (including Kansas) or collectively by the union:
The Modernist return to mediaevalism in the interpretation of Galatians is no isolated thing, but is only one aspect of a misinterpretation of the whole Bible; in particular it is closely akin to a misinterpretation of a great sentence in one of the other Epistles of Paul. The sentence to which we refer is found in II Corinthians iii. 6: “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”
Covenant Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles has started a 
The argument by design, once the bulwark of Christian apologetics, is so full of holes that it is no wonder that it has been abandoned. The more, indeed, the theologian seeks to prove the acumen and omnipotence of God by His works, the more he is dashed by evidences of divine incompetence and irresolution. The world is not actually well run; it is very badly run, and no Huxley was needed to point out the obvious fact. The human body, magnificently designed in some details, is a frightful botch in other details; every first-year student of anatomy sees a hundred ways to improve it. How are we to reconcile this mixture of infinite finesse and clumsy blundering with the concept of a single omnipotent Designer, to whom all problems are equally easy? If He could contrive so efficient and durable a machine as the human hand, then how did He come to make such dreadful botches as the tonsils, the ball-bladder, the uterus and the prostate gland? If He could perfect the hip joint and the ear, then why did He boggle the teeth?
