What is Christian Rationalism?

Philosophy is one great bane of Christianity now as in these early days. The whole scheme of God's truth and ways is blotted out or has no room left for it in the teaching of philosophy. They overlook creation and the fall. They defy conscience, which man acquired by the fall. They ignore sin and God's judgment of sin. So also God's grace is unknown and the atonement its fruit. Rationalists would reduce divine truth to a mere set of inferences that people draw. But truth is never a conclusion. The moment I draw a conclusion, I am on the ground of science. Thus logic is a natural science, the handmaid, one may say of all others, which submits facts to it; but what has this to do with submitting to the truth of God? Revelation may pronounce on things as they are in man, as it also gives us things as they are from God; it does not merely show us that such or such a thing must be, which is the province of human reasoning; the truth reveals to us that a thing is. A poor soul might be perplexed to understand what must be; but no one that hears the testimony can avoid receiving or rejecting, if God declares that a given thing or person is. Hence the vast importance of faith.

But we must draw to a close, and would merely add, in conclusion, that there is a third hostile influence against which the lover of the Bible will have to watch, and that is rationalism — or the supremacy of man's reason. The faithful disciple of the Word of God will have to withstand this audacious intruder, with the most unflinching decision. It presumes to sit in judgement upon the Word of God — to decide upon what is and what is not worthy of God — to prescribe boundaries to inspiration. Instead of humbly bowing to the authority of Scripture, which continually soars into a region where poor blind reason can never follow, it proudly seeks to drag Scripture down to its own level. If the Bible puts forth aught which, in the smallest degree, clashes with the conclusions of rationalism, then there must be some flaw. God is shut out of His own book if He says anything which poor blind, perverted reason cannot reconcile with her own conclusions — which conclusions, be it observed, are not infrequently the grossest absurdities.

For the Lord did strikingly seal the truth of the law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms, not only in the days of His flesh but in His risen state (Luke 24:44). Even His own when raised shall be superior to the prejudice of time and sense and shall know as they are known. Both He and His inspired servants alike bear the testimony of divine authority to all, and particularly to Moses, David, Isaiah, and Daniel, the most assailed by vain and empty sciolists, the last men in the world to trust for origin, date, literary structure, character, or meaning of scripture, because their system does its worst to unsettle for themselves and the faithless world godly heed, and find pleasure in doubt. As a Christian student, I may be allowed to say that I have been tolerably familiar with the arguments of the new school long before these Professors of Oxford and Cambridge; and I fail to recall a single service of value any one of them has rendered to revealed truth. How could it be otherwise? Since it is the essence of rationalism to deny God's authority and mind in scripture as a whole, not one of them can rightly estimate any of its parts. Is anything more "settled," as the first article of their unbelief, than that there is not nor can be for most of them true miracle or prophecy? Yet every Christian knows that scripture itself is both miraculous and prophetic, to say nothing of the many miracles and prophecies it attests.

The latter have such an overweening sense of man’s importance and powers of mind and intelligence, that they practically deify human reason and place it on a plane above revelation, if they do not deny revelation itself.

It may then be helpful, especially to young believers, to consider briefly what the Scriptures have to say concerning rationalism. In Colossians 2 Paul warns us against three enemies of Christianity - rationalism, ritualism, and superstition, and it may be observed that he puts the first into the front rank. These are his words: "Beware lest any man spoil you [lead you away as a prey] through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." What then is meant by philosophy and vain deceit? It is the application of the human mind, human powers of reasoning, to the Scriptures and to divine things; and it is thus the expression of man's competency to sit in judgment upon the Word of God and what that Word reveals. This is done, and the right to do it is claimed on all sides, and the effect upon souls is that they do not know what to believe, and accordingly they lapse very much into the state of Pilate as embodied in the question he addressed to the Lord, "What is truth?" What other result can be produced when it is maintained, for instance, by one of the most popular preachers and writers of the day, whose "orthodoxy" it was not even permitted to question, that neither Paul nor John understood the nature of the death of Christ? It may, indeed, be doubted whether eight out of every ten professing Christians met with would not hesitate to affirm the plenary inspiration of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The evil is spread far and wide, and, like some infection in the air, it is spreading ever more widely; it has penetrated unnoticed into many a godly family circle, and it has filled the minds of many of the young with doubts and questionings, if not with infidelity.

Next you pass to Jephthah. The next enemy is Ammon. You know Ammon was the brother of Moab, and represents profession as we have seen in Moab, only now it is not the sensuous side of profession, the worldly side, but, as you might say, the intellectual side, closely connected with Jabin. He suggests the spirit of rationalism which comes into the Church and settles down, putting its icy hand upon its life. The children of Ammon claim their title to the inheritance which Israel has long occupied. What I have said as to Jabin would apply here. You take the matter of the word of God. If people are going to treat it in a mere intellectual way, as the rationalists do, as that which can be criticised and sifted, full of mistakes, and a little bit left that you can accept perhaps; if that spirit is allowed, you have the very opposite of the spirit of Christ. He magnified the word of God. He always quoted Scripture as settling every question. It was the end of the matter when He quoted Scripture. What a lesson! The Son of God ended every discussion by simply quoting the word of God. Rationalism would rob us of that element in the character of Christ, loyalty to the word of God. The children of Ammon would tell us that we can be Christians in name, we can be professors, and yet deny the word of God, which is our title to Christianity. Oh how much of the Ammonite rule we see about us today, where human intellect traffics in the word of God, and man, instead of being judged by Scripture, sits in judgment upon the Scriptures.

Next you pass to Jephthah. The next enemy is Ammon. You know Ammon was the brother of Moab, and represents profession as we have seen in Moab, only now it is not the sensuous side of profession, the worldly side, but, as you might say, the intellectual side, closely connected with Jabin. He suggests the spirit of rationalism which comes into the Church and settles down, putting its icy hand upon its life. The children of Ammon claim their title to the inheritance which Israel has long occupied. What I have said as to Jabin would apply here. You take the matter of the word of God. If people are going to treat it in a mere intellectual way, as the rationalists do, as that which can be criticised and sifted, full of mistakes, and a little bit left that you can accept perhaps; if that spirit is allowed, you have the very opposite of the spirit of Christ. He magnified the word of God. He always quoted Scripture as settling every question. It was the end of the matter when He quoted Scripture. What a lesson! The Son of God ended every discussion by simply quoting the word of God. Rationalism would rob us of that element in the character of Christ, loyalty to the word of God. The children of Ammon would tell us that we can be Christians in name, we can be professors, and yet deny the word of God, which is our title to Christianity. Oh how much of the Ammonite rule we see about us today, where human intellect traffics in the word of God, and man, instead of being judged by Scripture, sits in judgment upon the Scriptures.

Hence the truth becomes of the deepest interest and the deepest importance. It rallies the soul to God, to Christ, the only true stay and centre. Faith recognizes that there is such a thing as truth, and a divine record of it; that there is a divine teaching, that we may know the truth, and that we may reckon upon it. Hence the importance of holding fast foundation truth, and having it as clearly as possible, that the enemy may have no advantage and souls not be scattered by human admixture. Rome, Puseyites, and Papists would have authority; the Evangelical churchman, the formularies of the Reformation, which have already failed in uniting godly people; the rationalist would make his own judgment the measure of enquiry, and deny the inspiration and authority of scripture, or speak of Shakespeare's and Milton's, by which all divine authority in the word is openly denied. In the midst of this, let faith hold the truth, and enquire with the certain standard of the word of God, what the full truth of God is. No new truth can unsettle an old one. None can unsettle the absolute authority on which alone all truth is founded — the word of God. Let the saints do this with patience and grace, and it will be a resting-place, through divine mercy, for many an anxious soul — a haven in the storm.

In the face of a preparation so dark and ominous, which scripture announces as certain (2 Thess. 2:3), there are children of God all over the earth, who acknowledge with grateful thanksgiving His faithfulness in turning the attacks of Satan and his dupes to their confirmation in the faith, and the more profound enjoyment both of scripture and of Christ therein revealed by the Holy Spirit. May the reader by grace be helped to share a privilege which bespeaks itself divine, the best antidote to that unbelief which enfeebles where it does not quite destroy the divine energy of every revealed truth. To human tradition I give no real weight, less if possible to the speculations of men on grounds which they deem probable. As the traditional school is one form of rationalism, so is neo-criticism another, the one adding to God's word, the other taking from it, to His dishonour. Legitimate criticism is the servant of faith in seeking to eliminate errors of transcription; but it receives without question every word that was originally written. What is called "scientific inquiry" rises up in its empty pride against the divine authority of Christ, who has ruled what it dares to deny."

In the face of a preparation so dark and ominous, which scripture announces as certain (2 Thess. 2:3), there are children of God all over the earth, who acknowledge with grateful thanksgiving His faithfulness in turning the attacks of Satan and his dupes to their confirmation in the faith, and the more profound enjoyment both of scripture and of Christ therein revealed by the Holy Spirit. May the reader by grace be helped to share a privilege which bespeaks itself divine, the best antidote to that unbelief which enfeebles where it does not quite destroy the divine energy of every revealed truth. To human tradition I give no real weight, less if possible to the speculations of men on grounds which they deem probable. As the traditional school is one form of rationalism, so is neo-criticism another, the one adding to God's word, the other taking from it, to His dishonour. Legitimate criticism is the servant of faith in seeking to eliminate errors of transcription; but it receives without question every word that was originally written. What is called "scientific inquiry" rises up in its empty pride against the divine authority of Christ, who has ruled what it dares to deny.