As members of the church, we must always be on guard for false teaching. Yet not all false teaching is equally easy to spot. In reacting to the mainline Presbyterian church’s revisions to the Westminster Standards in 1967, Cornelius Van Til reminds us that even though something may be packaged with the appearance of orthodoxy, something much different may be contained therein.
Dr. Hendry’s book, The Westminster Confession for Today, seeks to give a “contemporary interpretation” of the Westminster Confession. His “contemporary interpretation” however is, in effect, a reinterpretation in terms of dimensional philosophy. In other words, Hendry’s “contemporary interpretation” amounts to a substitution of a man-centered theology for a God and Christ-centered one.
To give “interpretations” of this sort is now the vogue. The Germans speak of it as Umdeutung. Liberals were not very good at this sort of thing. When they didn’t like the doctrine of Christ’s virgin birth or of his substitutionary atonement, they would reject these teachings. This rejection excited the fundamentalists and they reacted noisily.
Neo-orthodoxy knows better than, in this manner, to offend the fundamentalists openly. Don’t just throw the milk out of the bottle and put polluted water in it. Give your polluted water the color of milk. Hang up the portair of Warfield on your wall and tell the church that, together with him, you revere the standars of the church. Having done this the fundamentalists will not likely notice the fact that, in your contemporary interpretation, you have, in effect, substituted a modern man-centered theology for the historic Christian faith.
Cornelius Van Til, The Confession of 1967: Its Theological Background and Ecumenical Significance, pp. 15-16.
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