To concede or not to concede

The world is very confident of its own conclusions, and it is very sure of the infallibility of its own methods of research. It does not call its tenets “opinions,” “views,” “conjectures.” It dignifies them in the mass by the abstract names of “philosophy,” “science,” “learning,” “scholarship.”

It does not offer them to the Christian for testing and trial; it thrusts them upon him as the perfect expression of final knowledge. He is not requested to subject them to his touchstone, the Word of God, or sift from them the good and reject the bad. He is required to substitute them for the teachings of the Word of God as the only really solid basis of all his thinking.

For another thing, the Christian teacher is very anxious to conciliate the world. His primary interest is in the souls of men. May he not smooth the passage of many to the ark of safety by clothing himself in the garments of their thought? And, after all, why should he distrust either their methods or their conclusions? Would it not be better to take up a position shoulder to shoulder with them, stand on their platform, and concede to their demand everything which can be conceded while yet the central citadel be held? Has not the minimum of assertion after all its own strength? and is it not better to claim no more than we must?

In any event, what is the use of flinging into the face of an unbelieving world as truth that which the consensus of scholarship or of scientific investigation proclaims impossible? Let Tertullian, if he will, “believe because it is impossible,” and such paradoxists as Sir Thomas Browne train their faith by posing it with incredible things. We cannot expect men of common sense to look upon such procedure with allowance. Nay, as men of common sense ourselves, we cannot profess to nourish a faith strong enough to believe to be true what all science or all philosophy or all criticism pronounces unbelievable.

For still another thing--let us confess it with what shame we may--the Christian man is often painfully aware that he himself, that the Christian community, is no match for the world in varied knowledge, in power of dialectic, in diligence of literary production; and so feels too weak to hold his position in the face of the world’s assaults.

Had not an apostle foretold to us that not many wise would be called, and warned us that the wisdom of men would be arrayed against the truth of the gospel, we might indeed be often dismayed, if not beaten down, by the superior vigor, brightness, acumen, force of the world’s thinking.

As it is, we are often puzzled; and good men have sometimes thought it necessary, as they account for the unapproachable majesty and calm security of the apostolic writings by the inspiration of God, so to call in an evil inspiration to account for the brilliancy of the world’s attack on the religion of Christ. Thus good John Newton suggests that evil men must be credited with what he calls a “black inspiration.”

“After making the best allowance I can,” he writes, “both for the extent of human genius and the deplorable evil of the human heart, I cannot suppose that one-half of the wicked wit, of which some persons are so proud, is properly their own. Perhaps such a one as Voltaire would neither have written, or have been read or admired so much, if he had not been the amanuensis of another hand in his own way.”

"Heresy and Concession" in The Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol. 2, pp 675-76