Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 133:529 (Jan 1976)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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BSac 133:529 (Jan 76) p. 57

Periodical Reviews

“Brother, Are You Saved? or How to Handle the Religious Census Taker,” Troy Organ, The Christian Century, October 15, 1975, pp. 897-900.

Mr. Organ, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Ohio University, does not identify the group that his two religious census takers represented. Perhaps they did not state their affiliation. Whether or not they were formally related to Campus Crusade for Christ, they were using the evangelistic technique of the religious census developed and popularized by that organization. This report of Organ’s reflections on his encounter with two religious census takers at his door is illuminating in several areas.

First, the incident is a graphic illustration of “the offence of the cross” (Gal 5:11) and the fact that “the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness” (1 Cor 1:18: cf. v. 23). No indication is given that the young men were other than friendly and courteous in their interview. Yet by his own report Organ was flippant, satirical, and hostile in response to them.

Second, the balance of the article reveals the tenuous, even specious arguments the liberals use to deny the accuracy of the Bible. He refers to 1 Kings 7:23 to show that the Bible presents the circumference of a circle as three times the diameter instead of 3.14159. He could have added 265 to the numbers after the decimal point as Webster’s Third New International Dictionary does. The Bible obviously is not a textbook in plane geometry. But it is scientifically true in general terms and use.

Third, the balance of the article shows the caricature of the orthodox doctrine of the Bible that many liberals mistakenly hold. Orthodox Christians do not believe that God wrote the Bible with his own hand on pages of gold leaf and sent it to men by an angelic courier. They recoanize the human element in both the writing and the transmission

BSac 133:529 (Jan 76) p. 58

of the Bible. As a result, all of Organ’s discussion on the determination of the canon of Scripture and the textual problems in the manuscripts, important as these issues are, is beside the point of the basic question, Is the Bible God’s infallible message to men?

Organ makes much of the misuse of the Bible by people who quote it “without regard for context,” which is sometimes called prooftexting. Yet, interestingly, he is guilty of the same sin. He cites a brief statement from a sermon of Dean Burgon which he obviously quoted “without regard for context,” ...

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