Modern liberal
critics leave behind them a world of jumbled confusion. They tell us that God has revealed Himself
but refuse to pin themselves down as to exactly what that revelation is. In fact, upon occasion, we find them
glorifying the uncertainty of their preaching, because this offers them an
opportunity for the exercise of 'the leap of faith.' The basic thesis of their dialectical
theology is that the acts of God in history cannot be detected apart from 'a
leap of faith' and the revealed Words of God can never be identified with any
words. The avow that divine acts are
beyond history and divine words are beyond language. There is a segment of neoorthodoxy that
distinguishes between God's Word and the human expression of that word. The so-called word of God can be recognized
only in the area of experience. This
would mean that not even the words of Jesus are a valid external
authority. Only those words of Jesus are
valid which one feels to be appropriate to Jesus according to the judgment of
one' sown mind, which seems to mean that one's own mind becomes one's own
Jesus…….Thus, the entire Bible becomes a Book from which one may pick and
choose what appeals to one's mind.
Experience becomes the supreme authority. Bible teaching becomes secondary….Religious
experience thus becomes an object of one's own interpretation fo truth and as such it can prove anything….Cutting theology off
from the control of the biblical text cannot do aught but lead to its death.
-
W. A. Criswell
