We have been discussing the decline and fall of Christianity in the West. We have argued that the seeds of the the ignoble crop were sown during the Enlightenment. The Church, to curry the favour of Unbelief, began to speak more about Reason, about progress, about society, and about Man. The Church tried to find a common neutral ground to discuss these matters with Unbelief--and that ground was autonomous human reason, which would judge, measure, and assess all things and determine truth for itself.
The Church entered a Faustian pact: it agreed that if God were true and if the Bible were to be believed both had to be grounded upon and authenticated by human reason. It therefore sought to "prove" the reasonableness of God before the bar of fallen man and his sinful ratiocinations.
It was a faithless enterprise from the beginning. Seeking the respect and approbation of Man, the churches dishonoured God. Lusting after the wisdom of this world, the nineteenth and twentieth century fathers despised and were embarrassed by the "foolishness" of God--as Paul ironically describes it (I Corinthians 1: 18ff).
The overthrow of Christendom in the West occurred very, very quickly--although it had been building gradually for decades. Like the frog in the pot, the influence of unbelief had been gradually rising, until suddenly it killed the faith--at least its hold over the wider culture. What was left was an empty shell. Into that vacuum rushed a militant atheistic rationalism. The belief in the Mind of Man being the measure of all things, including God, had won the battle (although, as it would subsequently turn out, not the war.)
Throughout most of the nineteenth century, the United States, for example, saw itself as a Christian country. It believed it was going to lead all of mankind into a world-wide Christian triumph. It was common to hold that the United States as a nation was in the vanguard of global Christendom. But by the 1920's the veneer of a false Christianity had been stripped away, and the nation was rapidly and overtly turning from God. In 1924, H. L. Mencken would remark: "Christendom may be defined briefly as that part of the world in which, if any man stands up in public and solemnly swears that he is a Christian, all his auditors will laugh." Walter Lippmann, also in the 1920's, would write: "irreligion of the modern world [is] radical to a degree for which there is, I think, no counterpart." (Marsden, p.3)
How did the fathers of the Church in the West respond to the wars and the deaths and the growing apostasy from the Christian faith in the twentieth century? Did they repent? Yes and no. The twentieth century witnessed a strange development in the Church in the West. There arose a “school” of theologians termed the Neo-orthodox. In particular, the two Argonath who sought to hold back the tides of Unbelief were Swiss: Karl Barth and Emil Brunner.
These two and their followers sought to reassert the transcendence of God. They tried to rescue Him from the morass of war and degradation. Their response to the culture wars was to attempt a grand Dunkirk-like manoeuvre and withdraw God right off the planet, banishing Him to Mars. Since God was so great, so “other”, so transcendent He was beyond our understanding and comprehension and must not be thought in any way relevant or related to Belsen's ovens.
But Barth and Brunner and their followers still clung to one idol above all others. They continued to believe that the ultimate ground of truth was human Reason: in the end, God and His revelation had to be judged by Man. What was true was that which was reasonable to men, whether Believers or Unbelievers. No matter how much Brunner railed against “autonomous reason” he could not help but demonstrate over and over that pagan rationalism was alive and well in his own heart.
Nowhere is this more evident than in his discussion of Adam as the first man. He begins by agreeing that the rationalists and Unbelievers were right.
This whole historic picture of 'the first man' has been finally and absolutely destroyed for us to-day. The conflict between the teaching of history, natural science, palaeontology, on the origins of the human race, and at of the ecclesiastical doctrine, waged on both sides with the passion of a fanatical concern for truth, has led, all along the line, to the victory of the scientific view, and to the gradual but inevitable decline of the ecclesiastical view. Upon the plane of empirical research, whether that of history or of natural science . . . no facts have been left which could support the Augustinian ecclesiastical view of the historical “first man”, or which could prove that the empirical origin of the human race was to be sought on a specially elevated plane of spiritual existence.
Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt, [London: Lutterworth Press,1939], pp. 85,86 (Emphasis, ours)
Autonomous reason still lived, and Brunner bowed down before it. Adam and Eve did not exist—the Bible was engaged in mythical reconstruction—because empirical research said so. Alas, there were “no facts” which supported the biblical account. Imagine that. No facts! What Brunner has not realised, whilst clutching his idols of rationalism and empiricism to his bosom, is that once you grant autonomy and objective rationality to Unbelief at just one point, it will rapidly assert its claim over every point. There is a driving, relentless logic in this. If one particle of the creation is beyond the direct control of God, in principle all of the creation is beyond His control. This logic becomes turbocharged when the Mind of man is considered to be independent and objective, able to test whether God exists or not. For if we can actually determine for ourselves whether God exists or not, then all reality lies at our feet. Man is the master of all things, subject to none. Either God is true and every Man a liar, or Man determines what is true which means that the God revealed in the Bible cannot possibly exist. There is no other alternative.
Brunner shows that all along he is in the same camp of the nineteenth century fathers who had conceded that human reason was a reliable and infallible authority, untouched by sin, and that Man had, therefore, a right to put God in His place—or more accurately, in the place Men would prefer Him to have.
Brunner goes on, even more revealingly:
The pitiable comedy which is produced when theology claims that a 'higher, more perfect' human existence of the first generated existed in a sphere not accessible to research, as it retires before the relentless onward march of scientific research, should be abandoned, once for all, since it has for long provoked nothing but scorn and mockery, and has exposed the message of the Church to the just reproach of 'living in the back of beyond.' . . . . The ecclesiastical doctrine of Adam and Eve cannot compete with the impressive power of this scientific knowledge.Well, we can't have scorn and mockery. They mocked the Christ, but doggone it, they are not going to mock us. If Unbelievers are upset at the teaching of God's Holy Word about creation, we had better jettison the Bible. If the “relentless onward march of scientific research” has “proved” that Adam and Eve could not have existed, then that's it then. Naturalistic, autonomous scientific knowledge is “impressive.” The Bible cannot compete with it. Clearly the Bible is wrong, Unbelief is right, and autonomous reason is the ultimate judge of truth and of the gods.
Brunner, pp.86,87
This rubbishy defalcation was hailed by many Church authorities and fathers in the previous century as Christian! No culture wars here. Only wolves in sheep's clothing. And the wolves were feeding, gnawing the ossified bones of a bankrupted false faith. Now we know why Christianity has declined in the West. Now we can undestand why the Lord has given us over to the dominion of the idols our fathers nursed and not-so-secretly worshipped. Does not the Lord warn that this is exactly what He will do to an idolatrous and unbelieving people.
What, then, did our wonderful new "orthodox" theologians do with the Biblical doctrines of Adam and Eve, Paradise, and the Fall? Ah, well, you had to realise that underneath all those myths and primitive notions there was a kernel of timeless truth. There was “real content” underneath all those childish and naive formulations. And what is this “timeless truth”? Well, says, Brunner. Actually Genesis teaches us “idealistic evolutionism” and that man is opposed to his divine origin. (p.87,88).
Whew. Thank goodness for that. At least there is something that can be salvaged from the wreck of primitive childishness in the Bible. Idealistic evolutionism--whatever that is. And a revolt against our divine origin. By mid-century, these were the broken reeds which the Church in the West was desperately leaning upon to try to survive and win some respect back from Unbelief.
Oh, but hold on. What does the “relentless onward march of scientific research” say about the idea of "idealistic evolutionism" as an "explanation" of man's divine origin? Oh. Empirical science has gone on to explode idealistic evolutionism as yet another myth. There are apparently no facts to support it either. (A cursory review of evolutionist literature shows that it reserves its most scornful disdain for those who propound theistic evolution--as Brunner does. In seeking to stop the laughter and the mocking of Unbelief, Brunner adopts a false position which makes it all the more raucous.)
And what about God Himself? Sorry. Relentless empirical scientific research provides not one fact for God either. So there we have it, Dr Brunner. If you grant credence to autonomous rationalism at one point, it will go on to assert the non-existence of the Living God at every point. But, since you have already conceded that Unbelief is authoritative, you cannot protest its conclusions at any point along the line. A false and vain prophet you have proved to be.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the West was already substantially post-Christian. The Church fathers of that era were aiding and abetting this development with all their strength. But despite the judgements of two World Wars and many other horrors in the century that followed, the Church continued to bow down to the idol of human reason and insist that God be subject to Man's infallible dictums. The Church meanwhile, according to these false prophets in the West, must mince and step, and seek some place, some room, which it could claim for its own. The Church in the West long ago gave up the true Culture Wars and ran the white flag of cowardly surrender up the pole.
The Faith was banished from creation and nature; then from society and the public square; then from children and the schools, now increasingly it is being banished from family life. Now it is even being proscribed from speech, thought, intents, motivations. Unbelief is relentless. It will leave nothing to those in the West who have decided that God and His Word are not to be trusted as infallibly authoritative in all things.
This is where the post-Christian West has stayed ever since the nineteenth century. It is like being in a time warp, while the Living God passes it by. We cannot resist jumping right into our present day to illustrate how the Christian West continues to bow down at the feet of rationalistic humanism. At his recent speech at Notre Dame, President Obama, a professing Christian no less, answering his critics over his strong support of abortion, said this:
For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It’s no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule — the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. The call to serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth.Ultimately, all religions boil down to one. They are really all the same. Underneath, implies Obama, all religions actually serve and worship Man. It is Man who is the ultimate reality. This is is the “law” that binds all people both Believers and Unbelievers together. All religions are worthy and tolerable insofar as they genuflect to Man. This is the great apostasy of our fathers—and it is alive and well in the West today.
President Obama, as a professing Christian, truly walks in the paths of the Western Church fathers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is a true son of the post-Christian idolatry of the West. He is in the train of the false prophets. He follows in their footsteps. He, like they, long ago decided to fraternize with Unbelief. He, like they, long ago looked into the face of Unbelief, and found his own reflection. And he, like they, secretly called that reflection, god.
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