DR . HOMRIGHAUSEN is Professor-elect of Christian Education at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is to begin his work at that institution in the second semester of this year. It is therefore of interest to all Presbyterians to know what the beliefs of Dr. Homrighausen are.
Broadly speaking, we may say that Homrighausen is a Barthian. He resembles Barth in his vigorous attack on the Bible as the completed revelation of God to man. One quotation may suffice to prove this point:
“I am not a Fundamentalist. I realize that there are abiding truths in that camp. But we have outgrown it. We cannot accept its literalism, its alliance with antiquated science. It is too static. It seeks to define too much, forgetting that all human definitions are only relative and tentative. It makes God too fixed a Being. It Inclines to arrogance and pride. It also tends to dry scholasticism. It is the ghost of the past trying to live in another day (p. 13). "
This passage, besides giving us an insight into the author's conception of Scripture, tells us what he thinks of several other matters. Moreover, it is typical of the teaching of the book as a whole.
It is apparent from the passage quoted that Homrighausen does not merely withdraw from the position of holding to the plenary inspiration of the Bible to the position of believing in its general trustworthiness. He says Fundamentalism holds to an “antiquated science.” Elsewhere he says that the Bible does not offer us a “theory of the world's origin” (p. 55). Or again: “The message of the gospel does not teach men something they do not know in the realm of agriculture, physics, or history” (p. 77).
All this is plain enough. Homrighausen does not feel bound to accept as a true record of history what the Bible teaches in the first chapters of Genesis about the origin and the fall of man. He feels free to accept some other view, for instance, the evolutionary theory of the origin of the universe and man. In this way the author insists on the independence of the mind of man with respect to the Bible. The mind of man is not to be made captive to the obedience of God's will as expressed in the Scriptures.
We would call special attention to this point. There are those who defend the policy of the reorganized seminary at Princeton. They reason that the appointment of Barthian theologians at Princeton need not be a matter of great concern. These Barthian theologians, we are told, have usually come from the modernist camp. They are on the way to the orthodox position. If only they keep on going they will sooner or later accept the orthodox doctrine of Scripture. It is too much to expect that “at the end of the day” they should be ready to accept the Bible as infallible.
Revelation
On the contrary we believe there is no basis in fact for such an optimistic view of the tendency of Barthian theologians. There is, for instance, no reason to hold that the Barthian conception of revelation is more sound than the Barthian conception of inspiration. Together with Modernists the Barthians have to a large extent been influenced by Immanuel Kant's activistic conception of the human mind. Accordingly the Barthians, together with the Modernists, hold to an activistic conception of revelation.
The activism of Homrighausen’s conception of revelation comes to expression in such phraseology as we find in the quotation given above to the effect that Fundamentalism “seeks to define too much, forgetting that all human definitions are only relative and tentative.” This means that the author is opposed to the notion that a creed can be an essentially correct statement of the system of truth found in the Bible. He tells us that: “Denominational thinking is our curse, and our insufficiency. It is too provincial.It lacks wholeness” (p. 25).
It is in this way that Barthianism prepares the way for church-unionism. If the various denominations could only break the chains by which they are now held down to the rock they could together soar to heights as yet unknown. Homrighausen has great expectations for good from the movement for church-union that gave vent to itself in the recent Oxford meetings (see The Review of Religion, Jan., 1938). It must be a source of great satisfaction to Dr. J. Ross Stevenson, retired president of Princeton Seminary and a leading exponent of church-unionism, that his successor, Dr. Mackay, is walking in his ways. Dr. Mackay, as his writings show, is himself Barthian in spirit. He invites one Barthian theologian after another to teach at Princeton. And Barthianism, by teaching that no church can rightfully hold to a creed, prepares the way for church-union.
Relativism
But we cannot stop here. The relative and tentative character of all human definitions applies, according to Homrighausen, to the Bible as well as to the Confessions. We could give several quotations, besides the one given above, to prove this point. We call attention to the following: "Surely, there are many things about the Bible and Christian history that we cannot hold today. Surely, the clothing in which the gospel was dressed needs to be replaced with modern thought-forms” (p. 49). We have grown familiar with this type of argument from the writings of Barth. The contention is that God's Word, simply because it expresses itself in human thought forms and in human language, becomes for that very reason tainted with incompleteness and falsehood.
Could anything be more definitely opposed to the Biblical idea of revelation? That idea of revelation contemplates the mind of man as made in the image of God and as therefore a fit medium for the expression of the will of God. To be sure, the mind of man has been vitiated by sin through the fall of man. Even so the Holy Spirit can guide the mind of sinful man and use it as the medium for the infallible expression of His will. By the use of a simple illustration we can perhaps indicate something of the difference between the Barthian and the Biblical view of the human mind. The Biblical view says that the mind of sinful man is like a knife that has dropped into the mire. The Holy Spirit washes the knife and then uses it to cut the bread of life. The Barthian view says that even if the Holy Spirit washes the knife it is still unfit as a tool with which to cut the bread of life.
The result is that the bread of life really cannot be cut. The human mind which is thus seemingly reduced to a very humble station is nevertheless given such power as to be able to keep God from revealing Himself clearly anywhere. All the human minds have banded together and are engaged in a sit-down strike on the property of God. They have spread the tear-gas of relativity everywhere.
We see, then, that there seems to be no justification for optimism in regard to Princeton Seminary. Princeton Seminary is supposed to be a Reformed institution. But now President Mackay virtually identifies Barthianism with the Reformed Faith, as the following quotation shows: “It is the Reformed theologians like Barth and Brunner who have smashed the presuppositions of the theology of modernism and rekindled faith in the Scripture and historic Christianity” (Bulletin of Princeton Theological Seminary, November, 1937). But we have seen in this review of the book of Homrighausen, and in previous articles on Barth in THE PRESBYTERIAN GUARDIAN, that Barthian theology is destructive of the Bible and of historic Christianity. Ministers and elders of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ought to realize that if they allow Barthianism to reign in their chief citadel of theological learning they may be asked to scrap the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Bible as the infallible Word of God and even historic Christianity. Dr. Mackay apparently hopes to make Barth the rallying point for believers in historic Christianity. But Barth, the destroyer of historic Christianity, can never be made the rallying-point for the defenders of historic Christianity.