- not be fully understood by the intellect, acting alone,” since “the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God.” Our doctrine is life and unavoidably has an intellectual component. Which is to say that the human intellect is fundamentally moral. stand in relation to Christ merely by asking them what they believe. That would be to give ourselves over to rationalism and this can easily take place in the church out of an overreaction to the relativism and subjectivism of Western culture. We, who have rightly fought against theological liberal- ism by heralding the inerrancy of Scripture need to understand that there is much more to evaluating other ministers and our members than merely asking them if they believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. We must go further do? What function do the Scriptures have in their life? How do they use Scrip- ture? What are they expecting the Scriptures to accomplish in them and others? What role does preaching have in their ministry? - lowing theological liberalism or the broader culture as a whole to set our agenda. We have a tendency to sometimes overreact against the direction that the broader culture is going. Many in reformed and evangelical circles, I am afraid, have done this in response to Darwinian evolutionary theory. - termining that they were 24 hours in length. But based on the Hebrew not - ing those days. It is not their duration that is the main point but the distinc- tion between the days, that there was a Day One and then a Day Two, and Three. There are profound theological and metaphysical points expressed here. The entire homosexual and transgender agendas are represented in obliterating the distinction and true union between created realities. God created two distinct sexes. We can identify these two sexes. The very truth that we can distinguish any reality from another reality is expressed in the truth that Day One was a distinct day in itself and then there was a Day Two. But because Darwinian evolutionary theory has as one of its distin- guishing features a belief in an extremely old universe some have reacted against this and gotten caught up in deciding the age of creation. The result has been wedding the biblical doctrine of creation to a particular view on the duration of those creation days. Those days very well may have been 24 hours, but that is simply not the primary point of Genesis 1 regarding those days. Instead, it is the distinction between the days. There is a sequence in which God accomplished creating, and at the very heart of God’s work of creation there was progress, and that sequencing and progress gives expres- sion to the Christian doctrine of eschatology. The sequence in which things - nal emphases can get skewed when we allow the attacks against Christian- ity to set our doctrinal agenda. I am afraid some of us have done this in our emphasis on the doctrine of inerrancy.
Theological liberals having pulled the pendulum too far in the subjec-
tive direction has perhaps led some of us to pull it too far in the objective direction and led us to lose sight of the personal and subjective nature of truth. Have we failed to allow the truth that Jesus is the Truth—that truth is ultimately a person—to condition our thinking and practices? There is a personal, subjective experience that the true disciple of the
the person; it profoundly affects who they are, and who they are becoming; it affects what they do; it affects how they treat others. Rather than merely
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asking men doctrinal questions re- garding what they claim to believe, in order to meet ministerial quali- how they live, how they treat those closest to them, and those outside their family. This is not to merely take everything others say at face value, but it is to say that ministe- must have a moral component. Je- sus said of false prophets that “By their fruits you shall know them.” The Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments are inerrant, and they are because they are the very living and life-giving words from the living Triune God. Our doctrine lives. Our doctrine is an organism put it, “Special revelation is a his- toric process, an organic system, a continuous divine activity direct- ed to destroying the power of sin, to the building up of the kingdom of God, to the restoration of the cosmos, to the summing up of all things in Christ.” This special rev- elation that is expressed in the doc- trines we are to believe, preach, and teach is far beyond our comprehen- sion or control. We have received it and are to continue to receive it, and in so doing it controls us and all who do receive it. We cannot and should not even try to har- ness it for our agendas. He has his agenda. This is why Paul said that it is Christ in you that is the hope of Glory. We are to equate Christian doctrine with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He is the source of all our strength to toil and to struggle. He is the One who is powerfully at work in all his people to spread the knowl- edge of himself across the earth like the waters cover the sea. Our doctrine is not merely what we be- lieve, it is Who possesses us and all God’s people.
Rev. David Smith is the pastor of Covenant Fellowship ARP Church in Greensboro, NC.
The Associate Reformed Presbyterian
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