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(3) The Pietistic System.
The great principle that actuates this system is known as the "inner light". A
misapplication of I John 2: 20, 27 "But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye
know all things" sets the votary of this system free from the encumbrance of grammar
and accepted meanings, and gives reign to the wildest imaginings and contradictory
teachings. Like the two systems already renewed, it has a substratum of truth, namely,
that without the Spirit of Christ within and the illumination of the Sacred Page by the
Lord no amount of scholarship can avail. The early pietists were undoubted men of God,
but their system degenerated into fanaticism.
(4) The Accommodation System.
The man whose name is closely associated with the Accommodation System is
Semler, the father of the destructive school of criticism. Modernism is its logical result.
There is an accommodation that is right and true. The condescension of the Lord that
uses the common language of man, the illustration by means of parable and type, the
giving of "milk" to babes, and "meat" to full grown, these are examples of formal
accommodation that graciously "speak after the manner of men". The system which is
before us is not this kind at all. It supposes that our Lord and His apostles
"accommodated" their doctrines to the prejudice and ignorance of the Jews to whom they
spoke. Because the Jews believed that a man named Moses wrote the Pentateuch our
Lord is supposed to have endorsed the popular error! The system is so derogatory to the
Son of God and to the God of the Bible that those who have any love for truth will need
no further description of this system, which stands self-condemned.
(5) The Moral System.
"This system owes its origin to the celebrated Immanuel Kant." Kant's philosophy
had rejected the objective and maintained that there was no certainty in anything but
practical reason. This led to extracting from the Scriptures only such ideas as conformed
to the principles of practical morality that were implanted in the human breast, and
rejecting all else. The only value and purpose of the Bible was to teach and confirm the
religion of reason. Kant wrote:
"The historical part of the Scriptures, which contributes nothing to make men better, is
purely indifferent, and may be disposed of as we please."
"We do not assert that the sense given by us to the holy books was intended by the
authors, but . . . . . assume only the possibility of the authors so intending."
The reader will, we trust, have no room for a system that disregards the "sense
intended", and in its place "assumes only the possibility" of such intention!
(6) The Naturalistic System.
This system is the one associated with Paulus, a German Theologian of 1828A.D., of
which the following specimens will be sufficient. His exposition of John 6: 19 is: