Edwin Yamauchi On Defending the Faith (1972)

Edwin Yamauchi, The Stones and the Scriptures

(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company; 1972), pp. 11, 12.

ʻAcross the centuries the Christian church has faced two perennial challenges: the maintenance of a pure testimony, and the application of revealed truth to the total life of man.

Though these two tasks interlock (since application of the truth is impossible if the truth is lost, and truth without application stands self-condemned), theology has generally devoted itself now to the one, now to the other, and the cause of Christ has suffered from the imbalance. “These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone” stands as a perpetual judgment over the church's history.

ʻToday's theology and church life display such deleterious polarization in an especially gross manner.

At the liberal end of the theological spectrum, efforts to become “relevant” have succeeded so well that the church has become indistinguishable from the ideological and societal evils she is supposed to combat.

Among the fundamentalists, in contrast, God's revealed truth often serves as a wall to block the church off from the live issues and compelling challenges of a world in crisis.

Relevance without truth, or truth without relevance: these dual schizophrenias go far in explaining why contemporary man finds it easy to ignore the Christian message.

ʻ. . . Our age faces staggering challenges which can hardly be met by the repetition of formulas certainly not by the negativistic codes of a fundamentalism which tilts against windmills that have long since fallen into decay. The race problem, social revolution, political change, new sexual freedom, the revival of the occult, the advent of the space age: these are areas of modern life that demand fresh analysis on the basis of the eternal verities set forth in the Word of One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.ʼ

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