Dr. Gordon H. Clark: The Secular Humanist and Neo-Orthodox Attack on Christian Faith

What is more unfortunate is that the skepticism of Neo-orthodoxy is especially insidious. Men who adopt the position of Kierkegaard and Brunner not only make use of terms such as God and revelation, but they also talk of sin and justification. Some of them might even preach a tolerably good sermon on imputed righteousness. This deceives simple-minded believers. When people hear the familiar words, they naturally assume that the familiar ideas are meant. They fail to see that the Neo-orthodox consider neither the words nor even the intellectual content to be the truth. Although the sermon may be on Adam and the Fall, the Neo-orthodox minister understands the words in a mythological sense. Adam is the myth by which we are stimulated to an infinite passion. --

Dr. Gordon H. Clark

Although the title to this article is originally, "The Reformed Faith and the Westminster Confession," Dr. Gordon H. Clark's address delivered in 1955 deals with the underlying causes of the declining influence of Evangelical Christianity in the United States of America.  The article is also included as an appendix in his book, What Do Presbyterians Believe? (Unicoi, Trinity Foundation, 2001).  The book is also offered for free online listening at:  Trinity Lectures.

Dr. Clark correctly links together the secular humanist domination of our nation's public schools and universities and the undermining of Christian morality and the Christian worldview.  But even more insidiously, certain so-called Evangelicals have infiltrated the Presbyterian and Evangelical denominations with an underhanded and hidden version of neo-orthodoxy.  The neo-orthodox view rejects absolute truth and instead postulates that truth is two-fold.  God alone knows the truth absolutely and we here on earth only know a reflection of the truth, not the truth itself.  The neo-orthodox view makes truth relative and situational.  This is why so many so-called Evangelical churches are caving in and compromising with the world on homosexuality, pre-marital sex, and a whole host of other issues, including abortion.

The Westminster Divines nailed down the truth as absolute.  That's because their axiom was Scripture.  The Bible alone determines truth and morality.  It is God's final word on all matters of political expedience, morality, ethics, and doctrine (Psalm 119:89).  The Westminster Confession of Faith is the best summary of the Bible's propositional system of logical revelation and doctrine ever written.  It's not just a brief summary of loosely fitted aggregations.  On the contrary, the Scriptures are a systematic revelation of truth that God gives to mankind in logical form.  Since God is Logic and man is created in God's image, man can intellectually understand the Bible through logical deduction and good and necessary consequence.  Homosexuality is wrong because God says it is wrong.  (Leviticus 18:22; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Romans 1:18-27).  Murder is wrong because God says so (Exodus 20:13).

Therefore, it is very easy to spot a false prophet or a lying United States of America President by simply reading the Bible.  If Barack Obama says that homosexuality is a blessing of God and all men are created equal and the Bible says otherwise, who will you believe?  Obama or God?  If Jeb Bush throws in the towel and says that we lost and we have to respect the right of perverts to be perverts, who will you believe?  Jeb Bush or God?  Truth is not relative to what national leaders say or what the Supreme Court says.  There is a higher moral law than any progressive immoral state can make.  That moral law is revealed in plain written language in the Bible.  Sin and evil is not existential.  Sin and evil are defined by God's Word.  Therefore anyone who agrees with abortion and murder--including Barack Obama, Jeb Bush, and Hillary Clinton--is an evil person who has no knowledge of the truth.  They are ever learning and never come to a knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:6-10).

I highly recommend Dr. Gordon H. Clark's article from which the following quote comes:

....The Westminster Confession is no abbreviated creed written by men of abbreviated faith. On the contrary it is the nearest approach men have yet made to a full statement of the whole counsel of God, which Paul did not fail to declare. The Westminster divines were the best Biblical scholars of their time and as a group have not been surpassed since. For a full five years or more they labored unremittingly to formulate their summary of what the Bible teaches. And so successful were they that their document is justly the basis of many denominations. The factual existence of the Westminster Confession testifies to several of these convictions of our spiritual forebears, and three of these convictions may serve as a conclusion to this talk.

First, our forefathers were convinced, the Westminster Confession asserts, and the Bible teaches that God has given us a written revelation. This revelation is the truth. As Christ himself said, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17). It is not a myth, it is not an allegory, it is no mere pointer to the truth, it is not an analogy of the truth; but it is literally and absolutely true.

Second, our forefathers were convinced and the Reformed Faith asserts that this truth can be known. God has created us in his image with the intellectual and logical powers of understanding. He has addressed to men an intelligible revelation; and he expects us to read it, to grasp its meaning, and to believe it. God is not Totally Other, nor is logic a human invention that distorts God’s statements. If this were so, as the Neo-orthodox say, then it would follow, as the Neo-orthodox admit, that falsity would be as useful as truth in producing a passionate emotion. But the Bible expects us to appropriate a definite message.

Third, the Reformers believed that God’s revelation can be formulated accurately. They were not enamored of ambiguity; they did not identify piety with a confused mind. They wanted to proclaim the truth with the greatest possible clarity. And so ought we.

- See more at: The Reformed Faith and the Westminster Confession