The Church, the Schools and Evolution

by J. E. Conant

But the believer, utterly yielded to God and therefore seeing Him through anointed eyes in both the written and the living Word, thus seeing the infinite perfections of His character, is led by the normal [p 65] functioning of the same reason to accept and act on the bare Word of God without further evidence, because the evidence he sees is all the evidence he needs. It is perfectly reasonable, therefore, for Him to accept all that such an One says in His Word, waiting for the partial and apparently contradictory knowledge in the natural realm to be corrected into harmony with the Bible. And his reasoning powers are simply functioning normally when he accepts the Bible as infallible and inerrant, for this attitude is based on what he sees. The entire difference between the rationalist and the believer is a matter of vision. The reasoning powers of each simply act in view of what each sees.

This is why reasoning is never out of harmony with faith, while rationalizing always is. For true reasoning in spiritual things is based on an attitude of faith, while rationalizing rejects that attitude as an essential preliminary to correct conclusions, and therefore reasons either entirely apart from or in order to faith. Such an attitude as opens the vision does not precede the action of reason, and the conclusions cannot help being destructive of faith, for they are pronouncements on things utterly unseen and unknown, and which the Bible says are “foolishness” to the man who sees only through his natural vision. But the attitude of willingness toward the will of God so opens the vision to the whole spiritual realm that the real foolishness is seen to be even the least attempt to pronounce upon or repudiate that which is utterly unseen and unknown.

This is the fundamental reason why there is such divergence, even to the point of mutual exclusion, [p 66] between the different “interpretations” of Scripture given forth by the believer and the rationalist. The rationalist, with heart and vision closed to spiritual truth, can give no interpretation except that which seems reasonable in view of what he sees; while the believer, in the attitude of faith toward God, sees the interpretation of Scripture through the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

The interpretation of the Word is the very work for which the Holy Spirit has come into the world. That is not all of His work, but a very essential part of it. He is God’s official Interpreter of His truth to the believer. Not to the rationalizer, but to the believer. And His work is so divinely perfect and absolutely final that all human attempts at interpretation, which are devoid of faith, are an insult to Him. He is the One who wrote the Word, and so He knows the meaning, not only of what He said, but even of what He left unsaid, and therefore none but He can interpret either the words or the silences of Scripture.

For example, when Melchizedek flashes, meteor-like, across the page of Old Testament history, and then disappears without a word as to beginning of life or end of days, who but the Holy Spirit could interpret those silences into spiritual meanings of unfathomable richness? Who but He who was responsible for those omissions could interpret them into some of the richest revelations of all Scripture concerning the eternal Priesthood of the slain and risen Son of God? And if the Holy Spirit can thus seize upon the very silences of Scripture in showing us the things of Christ, who will deny Him the power to interpret to those who will receive it what He [p 67] meant by what He wrote? And who but the rationalist and the unbeliever can ever refuse to let Him reveal the perfect harmony between the facts of nature and the scientific references of Scripture?

It is the divine prerogative to cause us to understand the Book. When the risen Christ appeared suddenly among the disciples, first frightened and then scarcely believing for joy, He first convinced them that it was really He to whom they had already given their hearts, thus quickening their faith into renewed activity, “Then opened He their mind that they might understand the Scriptures.” First faith and then knowledge of the truth; this is the scientific order.

Luther saw this when he wrote to Spalatin: Above all things it is quite true that one cannot search into the Holy Scriptures by means of study, nor by means of the intellect. Therefore begin with prayer that the Lord grant unto you the true understanding of His Word.

Even Spencer had a glimpse of this scientific principle toward the end of his life. In his essay on “Feeling Versus Intellect” he showed that he had lost faith in his former estimate of the place of the intellect in the moral realm when he said: Everywhere the cry is educate—educate—educate! Everywhere the belief is that by such culture as schools furnish, children, and therefore adults, can be molded into the desired shapes. It is assumed that when men are taught what is right, they will do what is right—that a proposition intellectually accepted becomes morally operative. And this conviction, contradicted by [p 68] everyday experience, is at variance with an everyday axiom—the axiom that each faculty is strengthened by the exercise of it—intellectual power by intellectual action, and moral power by moral action.

What can this mean but that Spencer saw, at least dimly, the radical difference between the intellectual and the spiritual faculties?

The logic of all these facts and principles makes only one conclusion possible. When the man of scientific spirit approaches the Book which can reveal its truths to faith alone, he will not be unscientific enough to refuse faith to its statements and use his intellect alone. For he will see that the one who refuses the attitude of faith toward the Scriptures will be “ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth,” while the one who accepts the Word in humble dependence on the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of its meaning is on the one solitary highway by which a knowledge of the truth can be reached. When the Church and the Schools, therefore, agree on using this method of approach to the Word of God, they will at least have started toward the same goal.