-By Don Boys, Ph.D.
A person is not a Christian because he professes to be or because he belongs to a “Christian” Church or because he was baptized. One becomes a Christian when he or she repents, believes in the death and resurrection of Christ. King, according to his own words was not a believer!
We can know much about a person if we study what he has written, and I have spend days reading King. His seminary papers are very revealing as to what he believed and what his motives were. The following papers by King are courtesy of the King family and prove that he was not only not a Christian but far from being a scholar!
In a paper by King written at Crozer on the “Light on the Old Testament from the Ancient Near East,” I discovered eight spelling, punctuation, and composition mistakes in nine consecutive lines! Moreover, the theological error that Scripture was subpoenaed to “appear before the judgement [sic] seat of reason.” He continued: “They realized that if they wanted to get an objective standard of reference they would they would [sic] have to go beyond the pages of the old [sic] testament [sic] into the path that lead [sic] to that locked door.” King was favoring the position that the Old Testament is not a reliable historical record. He also decided that the Genesis accounts of man’s creation and the Flood were not original. King concluded that the writer (or writers!) of Genesis took (plagiarized?) information from the Gilgamesh Epic. King was like all unbelievers who jump at the opportunity to denounce, deny, and denigrate the Word of God and praise pagans.
King concludes his paper dealing with archeology and the Old Testament: “If we accept the Old Testament as being ‘true’ we will find it full of errors, contradictions, and obvious impossibilities–as that the Pentateuch was written by Moses.” No, the “contradictions” were in King’s life, not in the Scripture.
In plowing through King’s writings, I found that he was very careless. He often started a sentence with the first two letters in caps, he repeated words, and he left the suffix or “s” off words. Misspellings are numerous! He evidently did not know the difference in “led” and “lead” since he made that mistake many times. He also did not know that there is no such word as “undermind” confusing it with undermine. The work is not the quality of a seminary student but maybe an average high school graduate!
In a later paper titled “What Experiences of Christians Living in the Early Christian Century Led to the Christian Doctrines of the Divine Sonship of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the Bodily Resurrection,” He let the kitty out of the sack as to his heresy. Note the title alone is incriminating. The doctrines of Christ did not come about because of “experiences” of the early Christians! They came about because the Holy Spirit moved upon men to write about eternal truths.
King declared, “But if we delve into the deeper meaning of these doctrines, [Christ’s deity, virgin birth, and physical resurrection] and somehow strip them of their literal interpretation, we will find that they are based on a profound foundation. Although we may be able to argue with all degrees of logic that these doctrines are historically and philolophically [sic] untenable.” “Untenable” means something that cannot be defended or maintained. He added, “Saint Paul and the early church followers could have never come to the conclusion that Jesus was divine if there had not been some uniqueness in the personality of the historical Jesus.” So the early Christians had no other reason to believe He was deity? What about His miraculous birth? What about walking on water? What about raising the dead? What about giving sight to the blind? What about rising from the dead? What about Christ’s declaration: “I and my Father are one.” No, no reason at all!
In another paper King wrote, “the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ is in my mind quite readily denied.”
He clearly asserted that the book of Jeremiah was not infallible. He also espoused the heretical view that the non-canonical books were as good as or better than the Old Testament books! “To my mind, many of the works of this period were infinitely more valuable than those that received canonicity. The materials to justify such statements are found mainly in the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha. These works, although presented pseudonymously, are of lasting significance to the Biblical student.”
Regarding the virgin birth King wrote, “It seems downright improbable and even impossible for anyone to be born without a human father.” Of course, it is improbable but improbable does not mean impossible, especially with God! King wrote: “First we must admit that the evidence for the tenability of this doctrine is to [sic] shallow to convince any objective thinker….To begin with, the earliest written documents in the New Testament make no mention of the virgin birth.” Well, we could go back to Isaiah 7:14 where Isaiah promised, “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and [you] shall call his name Immanuel.” Yes, the translation could be “maid, damsel, or virgin” but Matthew 1:23 settled the matter when he wrote, “Behold, a virgin shall be with child…and they shall call his name Immanuel…” The clear truth in Matthew confirms the translation in Isaiah! So that settles that!
However, not for King. He makes much of Mark’s Gospel not dealing with the virgin birth but a seminarian surely understands that the argument from silence is a very weak argument. No one says that all four gospels deal with the very same incidents or deals with them from the same perspective.
King takes a scalpel and seeks to excise the core doctrine of His resurrection from the Bible and from history: “From a literary, historical, and philosophical point of view this doctrine raises many questions. In fact the external evidence for the authenticity of this doctrine is found wanting.” No, it is King who is found wanting after being weighed in the balances. Of course, King was aware that all four Gospels clearly teach the physical resurrection of Christ as do many of the epistles, but that is not good enough for King: the resurrection of our Savior is “found wanting.” In a paper at Crozer titled “The Humanity and Divinity of Jesus,” his professor rebuked him suggesting that it would be good if he proofread his papers before turning them in! He was given a B+ by his professor. In this paper he misspelled “Samaria,” “learned,” “agonizing,” “omniscient,” “omniscience,” “reliance,” “orbit,” “warmest,” “intimacy,” “inadequate,” and others. I would have given him an F or maybe a D if he rewrote the paper.
Returning to the divinity of Christ, King concluded: “So that the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ is in my mind quite readily denied. The true significance of the divinity of Christ lies in the fact that his achievement is prophetic and promissory for every other true son of man who is willing to submit his will to the will and spirit og [sic] God. Christ was to be only the prototype of one among many brothers.” So all men have the potential of being divine! King was not a believer!
In a paper titled “The Sources of Fundamentalism and Liberalism Considered Historically and Psychologically” King wrote: “The fundamentalist is quite aware of the fact that scholars regard the garden [sic] of Eden and the serpent Satan and the hell of fire as myths analogous to those found in other oriental religions. He knows also that his beliefs are the center of redicule [sic] by many.” He closes his paper with: “Others [sic] doctrines such as a supernatural plan of salvation, the Trinity, the substitutionary theory of the atonement, and the second coming of Christ are all quite prominant [sic] in fundamentalist thinking. Such are the views of the fundamentalist and they reveal that he is oppose [sic] to theological adaptation to social and cultural change. He sees a progressive scientific age as a retrogressive spiritual age. Amid change all around he is willing to preserve certain ancient ideas even though they are contrary to science.” King is saying, “You are a dummy if you believe the Bible to be the very Word of God.”
As to the atonement of Christ, he wrote, “First we may say that any doctrine which finds the meaning of atonement in the truimph [sic] of Christ over such cosmic powers as sin, death, and Satan is inadequate.” He added that to transfer guilt and punishment to another is “bizarre.” He goes on: “Moreover, no person can morally be punished in place of another. Such ideas as ethical and penal substitution become immoral….In the next place, if Christ by his life and death paid the full penalty of sin, there is no valid ground for repentance or moral obedience as a condition of forgiveness. The debt is paid; the penalty is exacted, and there is, consequently, nothing to forgive.”
As to the Second Coming of Christ, Day of Judgment and resurrection of the body King wrote that these teachings taken literally “are quite absurd….It is obvious that most twentieth century Christians must frankly and flatly reject any view of a physical return of Christ.”
Throughout his writings, King scorns Bible-believing Christians and praises unbelieving liberals, but that is not surprising since he did that all his life.
A Black preacher encapsulated King’s theology and philosophy better than anyone did: “It is as though Socrates, Thoreau, Hegel, and Jesus were all dumped together into one philosophical bowl like tossed salad.” Then I suppose Gandhi was tossed in for flavor! When King received the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest man to receive it, he said: “I am a minister of the Gospel.” He was an ordained minister but not of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! He preached “another gospel.” Moreover, I cringe to hear him called, a “Baptist.”
———-
Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives, author of 13 books, frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years His most recent book is ISLAM: America’s Trojan Horse! His websites are www.cstnews.com and www.Muslimfact.com.)
Boys’ columns are copyrighted and may be republished, reposted, or emailed providing the person or organization doing so does not charge for subscriptions or advertising and the column is copied intact and the tag at the end in parentheses is included intact.
Fair Use: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research, educational, or satirical purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site/blog for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.