Journal: Grace Journal
Volume: GJ 05:1 (Winter 1964)
Article: The Spirit of Compromise
Author: Henry M. Morris

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GJ 5:1 (Wtr 64) p. 3

The Spirit of Compromise

Henry M. Morris

Head of the Department of Civil Engineering
Virginia Polytechnic Institute

[This paper was presented at the joint meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation and the Evangelical Theological Society at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, on June 20, 1963. It has been slightly revised for Grace Journal.]

“How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kings 18:21).

The spirit of compromise that prevailed among the people of God in Elijah’s time also manifested itself in the mid-nineteenth century, as Christians labored to accept both God and evolution, both the Bible and the ages of geology. This was not surprising, for in every age there has been conflict between God and the Devil and a corresponding tension between the world-system and the community of the saints, and always there have been those among the latter who seek to ease the tension by yielding up some of the distinctives of the Bible-founded separatism to which they were called. Neither is it surprising then that the same spirit of compromise is moving strongly today among erstwhile Bible-centered Christians.

This age-long conflict has always been basically the same, although it assumes many forms. On one side there is the omnipotent God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe. On the other stands a finite creature, who presumes to deny the primacy and sovereignty of God, sometimes explicitly and more often implicitly. The conflict sometimes centers around the doctrine of salvation, whether by grace or works, sometimes over the question of authority, whether the Word of God or the wisdom of men, sometimes over the goal of history, whether the kingdom of God or a humanistic utopia. It is always a question of priority: is the universe God-centered or man-centered? Is our approach to the study of any question to be based on the sovereignty of God and the authority of His revelation, or is it based on the autonomy of the human will and wisdom?

The idea of evolution did not, of course, originate with Darwin or with his predecessors of the Enlightenment. The revelation of fiat creation ex nihilo is essentially unique to the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures. Other traditions or philosophies of origins all visualize development of the world and its inhabitants out of pre-existent materials of some kind. Basically, all such cosmologies are evolutionary, always in opposition to the concept that the

GJ 5:1 (Wtr 64) p. 4

eternally self-existent Creator in the beginning brought all things into instantaneous existence out of nothing.

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