Bob Edmiston and Deep Thoughts

This is a "process" blog. I am thinking out loud having just come out of a class on the history of Presbyterianism.

I wish all could have been here tonight to sit under the teaching of Rev. Bob Edmiston who is one of the elder statesmen in the PCA. He is humble and knowledgeable. Bob took us all the way from Calvin's Institutes through the Adopting Act, Great Awakening, New Side/Old Side, Northern and Southern split, fundamentalism and modernism to 1973. It was amazing. From revelationary Christian worldview to rationalistic Christian worldview.

Just a peek of some of the stuff he said in almost four hours:

"In 1861 the Civil War split the Presbyterian Church. The Northern church became more liberal and the Southern remained conservative. After the Civil War the theory of evolution developed to its first zenith. Then came World War I and the Scopes trial. It was a given that Scopes would be found guilty, but in the process Clarence Darrow made William Jennings Bryan take the stand. He was not well prepared. Darrow overwhelmed him. Bryan was broken emotionally, physically and spiritually. He died five days after the trial. More importantly, fundamentalism became a defensive movement as opposed to forward thinking movement. It was a watershed event.

As Darwinism grew along with scientists gaining an upper hand in questioning the validity of Christianity, Christian scholars withdrew from educational institutions because they could not effectively grapple with intellectuals. We found ourselves on the defensive. Until this day, we lag behind in the academic world. We have become a sub-culture instead of culture shapers. We are not at the table with the "big boys," we are in a huddle that from time to time lobs a "Jesus Saves" to the world.

Weighty stuff. Complex and difficult. My brain hurts. I am thinking tonight. I think that is good, for us to look back and think about the movement of the gospel. A hundred years from now people will look back on this period and reflect on why and what happened I am sure.

One question I thought of as we learned is that Christians may have to learn to be healthy capitalists. In order to impact we have to think about what it means to be in the capitalist world and not be only capitalists. We also need to learn how to be scholars who can rest on revelation over reason. That will come down to taking a faith pulse. Blessings