The Temptation of Relativism

Every one at some time in his life encounters the problem of relativism. It is said that our own time is characteristically relativistic, that we do not dare to speak of absolutes. This has its good side. We recall the absolutism of certain totalitarian states, which also reminds us that not everything is relativized in our century. We live in a time when some things are illegitimately absolutized. But still the relativizing of life is a profound matter, playing a role in the reflections and the viewpoints of the Christian faith.

The Leveling Of Christianity

Not everyone is sensitive enough to be greatly bothered by it, but some are almost overwhelmed when they first meet the suggestive and intoxicating idea that the Christian faith is a subjective conviction which is on the same plane with other no less earnest convictions. This is not merely a contemporary phenomenon. It elbowed its way into the environment of the Christian Church centuries ago. It was the syncretism of an early age; later it was the problem of “the absoluteness of Christianity” raised by the History of Religion school in the nineteenth century. In the latter instance, the problem arose through extensive research into other religions, which uncovered a depth and wealth of thought and conceptions of deity in pagan religions. The sharp line between Christianity and other religions was erased, even though there was still talk of the superiority of Christianity. The religions—including Christianity—were compared on the same basis. The conclusion was drawn that Christianity was not the one true religion, but an example of the many religious currents, a special form of the general essence of universal religion.

This so-called essence of religion had, through innumerable circumstances, taken various forms, including Christianity. It may have been acknowledged that Christianity was a very special form, but still only one of the many forms which arose out of the essentially religious structure of the human heart. A religious a priori was conceived, to be added to the theoretical, ethical, and aesthetic a prioris of the human mind. In the varying circumstances of life this religious a priori was actualized and specialized into this or that particular form of religion. There was no cleavage between Christianity and the other religions. Scholars pointed to the strong convictions that existed in every religion, to common forms of religious practices, such as a defined way of religious communal life, prayers, sacrifices, worship, notions of immortality, and so on. It was said that we could not conclude that a religion is unique and special because of the existence of a specially strong conviction, since strong convictions prevailed in many religions, notably in Islam. Thus, a general relativism began to prevail through the comparison of religions.

The Loss Of Absoluteness

A clear example of this is seen in the so-called parliament of religions which was held in Chicago in 1893. There representatives of all religions joined together in the Lord’s Prayer. All religions were joined; none was absolute. From this resulted a sharp criticism of any religion which pretended to possess a unique character. Such a pretension was considered impossible in the light of research into both the various religions and the human spirit. Religion had been discovered to be a disposition so close to the essence of the human spirit that we needed no longer to be surprised at the universality of religion.

It is evident that in this conclusion we encounter what may well be the most profound question that has faced Christian faith. It could hardly be otherwise than that many would be deeply impressed once the results of the study of comparative religions were popularized. People would say: Yes, there is a Bible, but there is also a Koran and many other holy books. There is a Redeemer, but other religions also concentrate their ideas of redemption around a specific redeemer. Does not all this come forth from a single law of the human spirit? And, hence, is the Christian faith, is the Bible, actually unique? Such questions collided head-on with the confession of the Church. The Church was consequently criticized for trying to hold to her pretensions of absoluteness, a lost cause. The Church was not challenged to give up her religion, but to sacrifice her pretensions of the absoluteness of her religion.

The Lowering Of Missions

The proclamation of the Church was directly involved. The message with which she had gone into the world was not an appeal to the special value of the thoughts of church men, but a trumpet sound, an invitation, a calling to the one way of salvation. Now, the witness of the Church in her missions to the heathen was up for question. This facet of the problem came quickly to the attention of the advocates of comparative religion. Troeltsch wrote, in 1906, that the common conception of missions had to undergo a radical change. It would, he claimed, be thereafter impossible to understand missions as a deed of sympathetic Chrisianity going into a dark world where salvation was unknown, to free the people from corruption and doom by conversion to the living God. Troeltsch supported the idea of missions, but suspected that much missionary effort stemmed from an overestimate of the worth of Western culture, a culture which other peoples could well claim to be unnecessary for them; they could find their own ways to salvation without the unwelcome assistance of the Christian message and culture.

One may ask, then, why a Christian, church should be established in the East. Why not just as well a mosque in Paris?

The acceptance of the relativity of the Christian faith naturally produced a crisis in the missionary consciousness of the Church. Perhaps more accurately said, it brought a crippling of such consciousness. It may be possible to maintain missions on a cultural basis for a while, but in time the elan will die. This is the more evident as the cultural development of the non-Christian peoples proceeds, making it less and less possible to establish missions on the basis of one’s own cultural aristocracy.

The Lessening Of Man

This process of relativizing does not involve only the theology of the philosophy of religion. It involves man, who sees no way to avoid the vacuum of relativity. He begins to make comparisons of his own. An attitude like that of Pharaoh’s magicians begins to prevail in his heart. We recall how Jehovah said to Moses and Aaron: “When Pharaoh asks for a sign, take your staff and throw it on the ground before Pharaoh. It shall become a snake.” But when the sign was given, Pharaoh was not convinced. He called his wise men and magicians, but “the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents.” And Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. He did not see in the signs a unique evidence of Israel’s God. They were relativized by what Egypt’s prophets could also do. The special character of a sign was removed from what Moses and Aaron did. The sign was not absolute, but relative. The same relativizing occurs later when Moses and Aaron threw a staff over the Nile and the Egyptians did the same. But finally the imitation of the Egyptians failed to work. Then Pharaoh’s magicians said to Pharoah: “This is the finger of God.”

This throws light on the process of relativizing. The absoluteness of God’s revelatory action for Israel in Egypt became irrefutably clear. Subsequently God led Israel out of the house of bondage by His mighty acts. Israel was under the impression of this; they were not long under the impression of the temporary parallel between Moses and Aaron and the magicians. But this is explained by the fact that the parallel was suddenly and demonstrably broken. Perhaps there are those who say that it would be convincing if, in the midst of the relativizing of Christianity, there were suddenly a special revelation that the Christian faith is after all something unique and absolute. But as long as this absoluteness is not clearly demonstrated, they will remain impressed with the certainties, convictions, intimations of immortality, and reverence within other religions, which make them parallel with Christianity. Thus they are tempted to go along with the current of relativity, a current which erases all exclamation marks and replaces them with question marks. This is hard; for it is frightful to live while questioning the ultimate.

The question marks are not taken away with a new voluntary decision to attribute absoluteness to Christianity. It would be a stout-hearted decision to regain a sure foundation in this world. But it does not work this way with the Christian faith; Christ will not thus be served. We do not find our way out by desperately writing exclamation marks over the question marks. The New Testament is clear that faith in the absoluteness of Christianity is not a decision of flesh and blood, not even when it is a stout-hearted decision. It also tells us that the apostles went forth into a syncretistic world possessed of many gods, without question marks after their witness to the one Redeemer. But their exclamation marks were pure gifts. They knew that they did not have them because they could prove precisely and convincingly for themselves the absoluteness of their faith. Neither were they the results of raw courage, but of human decision. Nor did they go with a kind of conviction that Jesus Christ was a superior Redeemer, but one among the many redeemers who were preached in the world. It did not work that way. It cannot work that way today.

The Light Of Light

It is, as it was for Paul, a struggle against flesh and blood, a struggle that only Jesus Christ can win for us through the Holy Spirit. There will be temptations to object to the idea that our faith in Christ does not arise from flesh and blood. It is not self-evident that we should seek our certainty in him alone, in the most exclusive way. Yet, it is in that way alone that we can overcome the temptation to relativize our faith. It is profoundly remarkable that a man may know and maintain this as a treasure, that Jesus Christ is not preached by us as one way, but as the way, and that we can find in him everything needful. Yet, this is the way that he walked among his own people. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He said this after Thomas complained that he did not know the way. Thomas looked for a humanly possible way. But Jesus turned his eyes suddenly in another direction: I am the Way.

The disciples had enough difficulty along that Way, and they soon had no more reserves within themselves to draw from. They left it all to him. But when the Spirit of Christ was poured out, everything was changed. “Now must everything, everything change.” And it was changed. There was a trumpet sounded over the world. And the hearing of the sound was saturated with blessing. From our human sentiments, we would rather first be convinced with rational certainty. We would rather first make certain that the sound of the trumpet is clear, and whether there may not also be other compelling trumpet sounds in the world. We would rather be certain of ourselves. But the amazing thing is that the further we go along this way, the further away the mystery of Christ fades from sight.

No one ever came to faith this way. The closer he may seem to have come in his search for proof, the further away he actually walked. He may hear the message of Christ, but he wishes first to examine it. He hears that Christ first asks his question, but he demands that his own questions be answered first. But as he puts his questions to the fore, Christ’s question is tabled. Christ’s Word and Christ’s question are not enough. He hesitates uncertainly, as did Phillip, who heard Jesus and was impressed, but still reserved a feeling of unrest and uncertainty: “Show us the Father and it is enough.” Christ answered: “Have I been so long with you and have you not known me? He who hath seen me hath seen the Father.”

Only presumption would lead us to say that we understand fully what Christ meant. There are many thick volumes about it; the Church has stuttered when it has spoken about the Son and the Father. It has spoken of “Light of Light.” And he who can comprehend it, let him comprehend it. But if we cannot comprehend it with our rational understanding, the absolute answer of Christ to Phillip still stands. “You have seen the Father,” Jesus said. The answer sets everything in a wonderful light. When John the Baptist, imprisoned, had doubts, he did not ask questions of the Pharisees and Sadducees. He sent his disciples to Jesus. And he received his answer: “Blessed is the man who is not offended in me.” A new benediction! Who seeks more than this, seeks something less. It is on this way alone that the problem of the way on which men need never wander is solved.

G. C. Berkouwer is Professor of Systematic Theology at Free University of Amsterdam. He is author of many books, most notably, Studies in Dogmatics, five volumes of which have been translated into English, with thirteen in preparation. His most recent work is The Triumph of Grace in The Theology of Karl Barth.

The Iron Gate

God—

From whose peaceful heaven We have wandered

Into our own creation of disquietude

Let us see again that gate of iron

Through which by purging

We may yet regain the nobleness of peace. Contain us

That our tears may flow for others

And the flowing not release our pain

Until we love them unto God again.

LOREN K. DAVIDSON

- More from G. C. Berkouwer

Cover Story

I Believe: The Deity of Christ

Andrew W. Blackwood

For sixty years I have believed in the Deity of Christ. I was reared in an extremely conservative Covenanter-seceder home, where mother read her growing boys long sermons by Ralph Erskine, John Owen and other men of might. After college, with no liberal contacts, I went to Harvard. There I saw Unitarianism at its best, in Francis G. Peabody and other followers of William E. Channing (d. 1842). Out of meager resources I bought the Works of Channing. I wondered at his well-known sermon, “The Character of Christ,” but I did not accept his theory of our Lord’s person.

At Princeton Seminary the next year I learned the other side. By special permission I took Benjamin B. Warfield’s elective course on the Deity of Christ, and Geerhardus Vos, on the Epistle to the Hebrews. I look on them as intellectually the equals of my ablest professors of English at Harvard, and as two of the few real scholars whom I have come to know intimately. To them, and to Francis L. Patton, I owe much of my basic thinking about the Deity of Christ.

At Xenia Seminary I sat under a saint, William G. Moorehead. Later I came to know Theron H. Rice of Union Seminary, Richmond. From these two I learned that a seminary professor can do untold good without being a scholar. With them I approached the Deity of Christ through “the theology of the heart.” Not every scholar can be a saint, such as Charles Hodge, but I wish that every seminary had at least one professor who would show by radiance of life the practical meaning of Christ’s Deity.

As a parish minister I held to the “faith of my fathers,” but not without wavering about the resurrection of the body. In those days not every believer in Christ’s Deity held to certain other doctrines. One of the ablest pulpit masters in America, Charles E. Jefferson, put out a volume of doctrinal sermons, Things Fundamental (1903). In two able discourses he pleaded for belief in “The Deity of Jesus.” In two other chapters he presented “the new conception of the Scriptures.” In a generation when liberal ideas seemed likely to prevail, I gradually came out on the sunny side of faith in all the truths that accord with acceptance of Christ’s Deity.

A Test Of Beliefs

In 1929 my beliefs met a searching test. At the Grove City Bible Conference I spoke daily with two brilliant New Testament scholars, Archibald T. Robertson and J. Gresham Machen, each of whom held firmly to the Deity of Christ, and treated me kindly as a believer. One day while there I received a visit from two trustees of Princeton Seminary. The President, Dr. William McEwan, acted as spokesman. The other is still living, and no doubt can verify my recollections of the interview. To my amazement and delight it went much as follows:

“The Board of Trustees wishes you to become the professor of homiletics. Before you say anything, let me state the one condition. The board wishes your assurance that you adhere to the historic position of the seminary, doctrinally.” I answered that I did so adhere. I also explained that I thought the seminary ought to change its ways, practically, so as to train graduates for service as pastors and missionaries. On this basis I was elected, and from this position I have never consciously swerved. I refer especially to acceptance of Christ’s Deity.

At Princeton I met a good deal of suspicion on the part of nearby observers. So did my friends, Samuel M. Zwemer and John E. Kuizenga, who came about the same time, and on the same terms, doctrinally. Gradually those suspicions faded away, except for an occasional reminder that I was neither inspired nor infallible. Looking back, I wish that all of us who held to the Deity of Christ could have loved and trusted each other.

Let me now turn directly to my subject. Since “no man can bear witness to Christ and himself at the same time” (James Denney), I shall resort to plural pronouns. We evangelicals hold to the Deity of Christ for three reasons. First, and most important, we accept the teachings of Holy Scripture. Our Presbyterian Confession of Faith (VIII.2) witnesses to Christ as “the Son of God, the Second Person in the Trinity being very and eternal God, of one substance, and equal with the Father.” Despite the phraseology, abstract and mysterious, we believe this to be the testimony of Holy Scripture, in every part that deals with the person of our Lord. We also believe in his humanity.

Denying The Lord

Not every minister in high place now accepts this teaching. At Yale in 1955 a distinguished bishop of a major evangelical denomination delivered the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching. In the midst of much sound material about God’s Good News came a paragraph that seems to have escaped public attention. The brilliant lecturer voiced dissent from a recent statement by the World Council about “Jesus as God.” That statement may have originated on the Continent, where the majority of leading theologians believe in Christ’s Deity. Not so the bishop.

The statement does not please me, and it seems far from satisfactory. I would much prefer to have it say that God was in Christ, for I believe that the testimony of the New Testament taken as a whole is against the doctrine of the deity of Christ, although I think it bears overwhelming witness to the divinity of Jesus (p. 125).

If this were the teaching of many New Testament scholars today, and if I had to follow them, I should exclaim: “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him!” Fortunately, we still have from other days such volumes as The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour (1903), by H. P. Liddon; The Lord of Glory (1907, 1950) and The Person and Work of Christ (1950), both by B. B. Warfield; The Self-Disclosure of Jesus (1926, 1954), by Geerhardus Vos; The Divinity of Christ in the Gospel of John (1916), by A. T. Robertson; and The Person and Work of Christ (1908), by Nathan R. Wood.

More recent authors include Loraine Boettner, The Person of Christ (1943); Samuel G. Craig, Jesus of Yesterday and Today (1956); Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (1955); and William C. Robinson, Our Lord (1937, 1949). The list might also include well-known works by men not so strongly conservative. One of them, John M. Shaw, has a work on Christine Doctrine (1953). Among many other good things, a paragraph stresses Christ’s claims for himself:

In this claim of Jesus … we are confronted with nothing less than a moral problem of the gravest kind, a problem whose issue we can not evade with intellectual sincerity.… “Either Jesus was God, or He was not even a good man” (aut deus aut non bonus homo.) So the old Fathers formulated the alternative. And there is no escape from this inexorable dilemma.… “Either Jesus was a Deceiver, and was Himself deceived,” or “He was divine, God the Son incarnate” (p. 161).

Ground Of Belief

First of all, then, we believe in Christ’s Deity because we accept the teachings of Holy Scripture. Again, we believe because we find many confirmations in church history. Anyone familiar with the facts can make an experiment at home. Using as a guide Larourette, Schaff, or any other capable historian, make a chronological list of church leaders who have strongly believed in the Deity of Christ. Then compile another list of other leaders who have not bowed down to him as “very God of very God.” The first list we may call evangelical. The second we need not label, lest we seem to be casting stones.

A glance over the two lists will show that a vast array of saints and heroes have held to the Deity of Christ. Much the same conclusion will follow if one makes a list of first-class hymns that sound forth the glories of Christ as One whom we worship, as we worship no one save God. In another list put songs full of beauty, such as fill the pages of a typical hymnal among Unitarians. Neither of these experiments can prove the fact of Christ’s Deity. Belief in that high doctrine must rest on the revelation in Holy Scripture, and on the witness of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s soul. Still it is good to know that we who engage in the worship of Christ as God stand in the succession of the mightiest leaders of the Church and the noblest authors of hymns that the Church will never let die.

A third reason for accepting Christ’s Deity has to do with Christian experience. Fortunately, the doctrine does not depend on our acceptance. On the other hand, the value of the truth to any person or group does depend on the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, and on daily fellowship with the Christ of God. So if anyone ever begins to waver, let him come close to Christ in the written Word and hold fellowship with him in prayer. In his own time and way the Lord of Glory will make himself known as he did to doubting Thomas of old, so that the young Hebrew disciple exclaimed: “My Lord and my God!”

A Word To The Ministry

Now for a word to the young minister. At least once a year preach a sermon directly about the Deity of Christ. Do not argue, defend, or attack. Simply, clearly, and kindly set forth what some part of Holy Writ teaches about the person of our Lord. Make clear also what difference the truth ought to make in the life of the hearer. Because he believes in Christ’s Deity, the layman ought to trust the Redeemer for salvation from sin; follow him as Lord and Master; learn from him as Teacher and Guide; look to him as Divine Friend and Helper, and make ready to stand before him as Final Judge.

All this the layman will see clearly if he learns about Christ as One whom believers worship. As intelligent beings, created in the Father’s image, we worship no one but God. Why then do we adore Jesus Christ? To him we pray, as Stephen did when dying, because he believed in Christ’s Deity. With his last breath he uttered two prayers which he addressed to the Lord Jesus (Acts 7:59, 60). To Christ we now can pray, and worship him in holy song.

We know why Pliny the Younger (died c. 113 A.D.), not a believer, wrote about early Christians as gathering before daybreak to “sing in turn a hymn of praise to God.” In many of our noblest songs we too exult in the glories of our Redeemer. At Christmas with Charles Wesley we sing about the “new-born King”; “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail the incarnate Deity!” In May we adore “Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature.” At the Lord’s Supper we “behold the wondrous Cross, on which the Prince of Glory died”.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast

Save in the death of Christ my God;

All the vain things that charm me most,

I sacrifice them to His blood.

Andrew W. Blackwood has a well-earned reputation as preacher, teacher, and author of books for preachers. He pastored Presbyterian churches for 17 years. In 1925 he began teaching. After five years as Professor of English Bible at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, he became Professor of Homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1930 to 1950. Since 1950 he has been Professor of Preaching at Temple University School of Theology. This article is the first of a series by Protestant leaders on the theme, “I Believe.”

- More from Andrew W. Blackwood

Books

Book Briefs: September 30, 1957

G. Aiken Taylor

Tragic Return

The Pulpit Rediscovers Theology, by Theodore O. Wedel, Westminster, Philadelphia. $3.50.

This is an exceedingly important book: important for its thesis that the Church must return to a vital theology if it is to be a true fellowship of reconciliation offering salvation to truly lost men; and important for the way it manages to evade classical Christianity when it paints its picture of a return to “true Biblical Theology.” The author believes passionately that the quest for the historical Jesus was a mistake—the pulpit, to be effective, must preach a dogmatic gospel about a divine Christ. But he does not mean the Christ of orthodoxy. Yet he sounds the most refreshing, stimulating, evangelical note that I have yet heard rung out by the new theology of our day. For this contrast, the book is a must for every person concerned about modern trends in theology.

The closer neo-orthodoxy comes to historic Christianity and the more nearly it discovers how it can comfortably speak the historic language of the Church, the more potentially dangerous it is. Niebuhr, in a sense, sowed the wind with his new anthropology, appropriating such historic terms as original sin, guilt, creation, the fall, but assigning symbolic meanings to them which robbed the human predicament of its reality. Niebuhr, acknowledging his own limitations, indicated that another must take up the crusade and add a soteriology to his new anthropology.

The present book reaps the whirlwind of Niebuhr’s sowing, with a soteriology which all but diehard liberals will view with reverent awe and many evangelicals will embrace with delight because of its apparent apostolic fervor.

Dr. Wedel’s theme is mouth-watering. In the Incarnation, faith does not see just a great example or master teacher, but Deity itself coming to enter into a new relationship with sinful man. The pulpit which truly preaches the Good News cannot limit itself to an ideal or a code of ethics, but must proclaim a vital theology which has power to save from sin and then sanctify unto eternal life.

Remarkable quotations appear within the book: “(Our people) look to us not for inexpert advice as to how to vote in an election, but for light from another world on this world.” “We have sentimentalized the law and called it an ideal. We have reduced Christ from God to human prophet and moral hero. We have preached discipleship and the imitation of Jesus, not realizing that this, too, when isolated from the Good News of the Cross and the Resurrection, is burden, and not Good News.” And, “Christ must be met as living Lord, as the power of the Holy Spirit, or there can be no death of the sinner and no resurrection.”

Good? Indeed it sounds thrilling. What then can be wrong with it? Here we face the one great question of our day: Are the great affirmations of biblical theology references to literal reality or are they mere symbols of truth essentially philosophical and existential—and what difference does it make? No one denies that the Bible contains symbols in profusion. But are the historic doctrines of the Christian faith merely symbolic of “truth” or do they truly affirm reality? And if they represent literal truth, can the denial of their literalness truly save?

The author frankly confesses that his theology is “new” but he declares that it follows no single modern school. He is rather sympathetic toward the entire “diverse movement” in theology. He “cannot go back to the fundamentalist biblical literalism.” He “cannot possibly” take literally the miraculous in the Bible. Critical historians, he declares, have freed us from the slavery of a literalist Bible.

Original sin is a state of self-centeredness which separates man from God and which includes guilt only as a “feeling.” Grace is the word used to describe the various biblical references which have reunion as their theme. Grace means reunion and its perfect opposite is disgrace (wearing the wrong dress at a party). There is no hint that grace may denote a supernatural power or initiative on the part of a personal Being. Christ is exalted and the Holy Spirit frequently mentioned, but the Christ of God was incognito in the historical Jesus and today being “in Christ” is a matter of being in the organized fellowship of the redeemed, to which Christ has “returned” as its Holy Spirit.

Perhaps the place where Dr. Weber makes his position most clear is at the point of his eschatology. For him, the Church’s theology respecting last things is frankly symbolic. Following C. H. Dodd, he declares that the doctrine of last things confronts the Church with the fact of death and with the fact that the decision we make for or against God is fateful for eternity as well as time. Contemporary theology, he affirms, can no longer accept the orthodox structure of doctrine concerning life after death. With Aulen he affirms that juridical categories can no longer be applied to eschatology. And then he says, “We cannot conceive that God will limit the offer of His love to that fraction of the human race which has had the good fortune to hear the story of the Cross.”

To me there is tragedy in the enthusiastic “return” of modern theology to the “gospel.” It is not without significance that little evidence of guilt, or anguish of spirit, appears in the glib confessions of those who report that for years they followed a blind alley but now know more perfectly the Way. Where is the heartache for the multitudes who followed them up their blind alley and perished in the dead end?

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Devotional Values

Indebted to Christ’s Resurrection, by C. W. Gault, Pageant, New York. 1956. $3.00

The author’s interest in studies of the Life of Christ, developed in seminary days, has increased in years that followed, and a sample of the fruit from his study in one area, the resurrection of our Lord, is incorporated in this volume. In its conception, the book follows the plan of an anthology. Each chapter begins with a verse or more of Scripture text, then the comments of various authors follow. Occasionally Mr. Gault adds something of his own, principally to provide smooth connections.

Although the author has kept abreast of modern writings on the resurrection, he has a distinct preference for the old masters, quoting most largely from H. Latham, H. M. Paynter, W. G. Schauffler, H. B. Swete and T. V. Moore. For the most part, the emphasis falls on the devotional values of the resurrection accounts, but the critical is not ignored. The reader comes away with a sense of firmer grounding in this cardinal truth of our faith and feels his soul refreshed in the multifarious values of the resurrection for Christian life.

Many are the volumes which touch the resurrection in some fashion. This one is steeped in it. Every verse of the gospels dealing with the subject comes in for consideration, and the material is woven into a pattern which moves from the empty tomb right on to the ascension.

EVERETT F. HARRISON

- More from G. Aiken Taylor

The WCC Searches for Visible Unity

Carl F. H. Henry

WORLD NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

A perceptible shift of emphasis from faith and order to mission as the center of Christian unity marked the World Council of Churches’ North American study conference Sept. 3–10 at Oberlin College, where the great evangelist Charles G. Finney was president during Civil War days.

Still ununified over “the nature of the unity we seek,” the conference nonetheless issued an 800-word message calling upon “every local church and congregation to examine the way in which it makes visible the nature of the Church of Christ” and looked for “continuing advance in the practical unity of united action by churches and congregations.” It spoke of a unity already achieved, and of a unity still to be gained.

Greek Orthodox bodies (the Great Archdiocese of North and South America, the Rumanian Orthodox Episcopate of America, the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of North America, the Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America) dissociated themselves from the conference statement. Their spokesman, the Rev. Georges Florovsky, professor at Harvard Divinity School, complained that the draft was open to various interpretations: “We are embarrassed to accept phrases which if not ambiguous are elastic. Is there any sense in using glorious phrases that can be accepted with mental reservation by everyone, but which secure no real agreement?” While other delegates thought the statement wordy and weak, some considered it an exciting symbol of positive achievements.

A beehive of activity, Oberlin revolved for the week around section and division meetings leading up to plenary sessions. Representing five Canadian and 34 U. S. denominations or churches, 279 delegates discussed and debated the nature of unity with 92 consultants, and 39 observers from non-member denominations. Although gathered on the first coeducational campus in the nation, women delegates (only two in the Methodist contingent of 40) were somewhat of an oddity. It was the first major ecumenical conference without organized protest by the American Council of Churches. Earlier ecumenical dispositions to dismiss non-participating groups as disruptive salients in the main movement of the Church’s life, moreover, gave way to respectful deference to those whose consciences disallow official participation (Roman Catholics, Protestant evangelicals, including Southern Baptists, Missouri Lutherans and denominations represented by National Association of Evangelicals and American Council of Churches), and appreciation of the unofficial presence of consultants and observers. The message to the churches stated: “We are saddened by the absence of members of other Churches whom we recognize as fellow-Christians, and we ask forgiveness for any failure of charity or understanding in us which may have kept them apart from our fellowship.”

More was at stake in the quest for unity, however, than charity and understanding. While plenary sessions were circumspect, reflecting a level of minimal agreement, conference vitality existed mainly in section meetings in which discussion might more easily become debate, and dissension disruption. Differences of faith and order shadowed the gathering more than division reports (commended to the churches for study) reflect in their emphasis on an overarching unity. The high hopes of some delegates were disappointed, that Oberlin might create a stirring confession of belief relevant to the contemporary cultural crisis. Recurring emphasis of President John Mackay of Princeton Theological Seminary that ecumenical concerns be framed in terms of obedience rather than doctrine and structure, voiced in committees, sessions, divisions, and plenary meetings, did not gain sharp expression in the message to the churches, although it shaped a growing mood among the formative leadership at Oberlin, and is mirrored in the division reports (cf. the editorial “Unity and Mission” elsewhere in this issue): Significantly, however, the main Oberlin directive spoke to rather than for the churches.

Nonetheless, Oberlin had high hours. The passionate hope of surmounting Protestant disunity marked all sessions. Some of the best minds in many Protestant confessions came out of isolation into ecclesiastical encounter to wrestle with faith and order problems. Main divisions covering faith, order and cultural pressures subdivided into twelve sections; of these, that on “Doctrinal Consensus and Conflict” was strategic. With President Edgar M. Carlson of Gustavus Adolphus College (Augustana Evangelical Lutheran) as chairman, the 30 delegates included President Mackav of Princeton (Presbyterian Church U.S.A.), Dr. Walter M. Horton (Congregational Christian) of Oberlin, Dr. T. A. Kantonen of Hamma (United Lutheran), and Dr. Robert L. Calhoun (Congregational Christian) of Yale among the consultants in this section. In all sessions, the old liberalism was but a defensive minority view, although sullen survivors murmured off the record that “these neo-orthodox fellows have now reacted against liberalism more radically than we did against fundamentalism a half century ago.” Theological emphasis had moved far beyond the old scorn for central Christian doctrines to a devout appropriation of many biblical themes.

Evening public meetings left profound impressions on the delegates. Addresses by the Rt. Rev. Angus Dun, Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Washington, D. C., Professor Calhoun of Yale, Dr. Albert C. Outler of Southern Methodist University, Dr. Joseph Sittler of University of Chicago, and Dr. Walter T. Muelder of Boston University, represented the movement at a high and sometimes stirring level. Beyond the horizontal level of agreements and differences reflective of the WCC’s first decade, conscious effort was being made to shift discussion to the vertical level of divine confrontation and bequest. Professor Calhoun’s address included as a dramatic turn a cautious reassertion of Christian trinitarianism in the tradition of the Protestant Reformers, reflecting views of a WCC committee (with representatives from Yale, Union and Hamma) in contrast with narrower Christological formulations.

Oberlin included, moreover, provision for refreshing and positive Bible exposition by Dean Walter J. Harrelson of University of Chicago Divinity School. Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, WCC general secretary, told Sunday morning worshippers that “in the great encounter with other religions which have found new vitality, in the conflict with totalitarianism, in the struggle against cheap caricatures of the Christian Gospel, our cause lacks convincing power as long as we do not prove that we live under the authority of the same Word of God.”

But the question of an objective index to Oberlin remains a difficult one. In the high public addresses, spokesmen were not formulating official positions binding upon WCC constituents. This was clarified by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, vice president of the Oberlin conference and stated clerk of Presbyterian Church U.S.A., in his comment on complaints over German Bishop Johannes Lilje’s remark that “we reject the notion that the Church needs that sort of historic guarantee of her continuity which is supposed to be given in the apostolic succession of bishops.” Prodded by private protests of Protestant Episcopal and Polish National Catholic delegates, Dr. Blake stressed that the speaker had full right to voice his convictions, yet did not commit the conference. Orthodox Bishop Athenagoras, who pronounced the benediction after Bishop Lilje’s sermon the previous night, publicly told the plenary session: “A few more sermons like this … and the ecumenical consciousness is gone.” Public addresses, therefore, were not definitive.

Some delegates considered “the Church at worship” the heart of the ecumenical enterprise, but this too had flutters. Variegated programs of worship and prayer, reflecting Greek Orthodox as well as more familiar Protestant traditions, are now an ecumenical commonplace. But initial announcements of a communion service were clarified to stress optional participation, because the WCC in accord with policy sponsors no such service. Greek Orthodox delegates chose not to exercise their option. Unprotested by participating groups, however, was the Greek Orthodox devotional service including prayers for the dead. Devotional life at Oberlin was no sure index.

Conference leaders spoke, in fact, of a prevalent ecumenical temper more than of the ecumenical mind. It was really an open question whether Oberlin signaled victory for the Great Dane (Kierkegaard) as fully as for the Great Tradition. In the emphasis on the priority of obedience over faith and order, in the phrasing of doctrinal concerns, and in the general formulation of positions, the neo-orthodox approach—although with many shadings—held initiative. Yet leaders were eager to preserve both evangelical and modernist participation in the dialectic. A theory of religious knowledge reflective of modern speculation was frequently evident in the dialectical relating of revelation to reason, in the disregard of coherence as a criterion in religious commitment, in the capitulation of intellectual considerations to a more voluntaristic view of faith, and in invocation of the Bible as relative authority only.

This approach was blessed, in turn, by the tendency of the earlier Lund and Edinburgh conferences to relate study of the nature of the Church directly to the study of the nature of Christ, rather than to an adjustment at doctrinal borders. Taken as doctrine, the declarations on Christology were diverse and often inadequate, and the trinitarian emphasis did not survive in official reports. Prevailing views were criticized for doing more justice to the humanity than to the deity of Christ, in view of a semi-Arian tendency that affirmed that Jesus is the Christ while refusing to speak of the full deity of the person. While Oberlin bristled, moreover, with appeals to the Word of God, and the emergence of biblical theology was identified as “one of the exciting developments of our time,” the conference deleted from its statement to the churches an insistence that this development “does not constitute a return to … uncritical bibliolatry” because of possible effect upon the laity.

The major lack was Oberlin’s failure to exhibit an unambiguous Protestant principle of authority. The hope for unity, some leaders stressed, lies in the ecumenical movement “studying the Scriptures together,” but the controlling suppositions of such study remained diverse. In Oberlin the weather blew both hot and cold, both wet and dry. Religious journalists, some fresh from the Madison Square Garden phenomenon, found no revival atmosphere. The notion of a growing unity was more of a feeling than of anything logically demonstrable. This was no unique kairos, no time of decisive change, in the minds and lives of the delegates that could be refracted at the local level. Ecumenical leaders who looked for a breakthrough into the midrange of American life were disappointed. There was a feeling that Oberlin’s conclusions were too much hastened and dictated by the time factor, by the necessity of reflecting sectional and divisional unity for the sake of plenary unanimities. In the one fellowship of Oberlin remained lonely souls—there to bear witness, professing to love the same Lord, yet unconvinced that the message to the churches faithfully reflected their differences.

Greek Orthodox delegates criticized the discussions both at the outset and conclusion as framed from an inadmissible viewpoint that the unity of the Church has been lost and needs recovery, instead of permanently characterizing the body of Christ. They publicly pointed to the Eastern Orthodox Church as its visible and historical expression: “Since Pentecost she has possessed the true unity intended by Christ … She has been unassociated with the events related to the breakdown of religious unity in the West.” Insisting that the Orthodox Church has kept the integrity both “of the apostolic faith and of the apostolic order,” her delegates lamented the deletion from the program of “the most vital problem of ministry and that of the Apostolic Succession, without which … there is neither unity nor church.” Before the week ended, German Lutheran Bishop Johannes Lilje remarked in a sermon that “Protestantism which is so frequently blamed for having sown the seed of disunity within Christendom, was neither the first nor the greatest schism which Rome had to suffer; the great schism of 1054 (900 years before Evanston) separated … the Eastern church from its Latin lord.”

Orthodox delegates justified WCC membership under the category of “witness.” [Roman Catholic spokesmen, off the record, say that the Greek Orthodox Church has no business in the WCC, but are nonetheless glad she is in, because Orthodox leaders “say many things we would say.”] Although officially distributed, the Orthodox statement was largely ignored until a Jesuit observer asked the section on doctrine why there was no comment on it. The Greek Orthodox delegate promptly gave answer: his church’s claim to be the Una Sancta is avoided as an unpleasantry in the Protestant search for unity (which supposes that none of its members has given adequate expression to all the truth), yet for having invited the Eastern Orthodox Church into the WCC, Protestantism must pay the price of hearing that claim. “Sometimes we Orthodox feel much out of place, and even wonder whether we speak the same language,” he added, “but we value the Protestant search for unity, and bear witness in it; if we were to withdraw, the WCC would become simply a pan-Protestant endeavor.”

In his opening address Bishop Dun took note of misgivings produced by the conference title. But it did not necessarily exclude, he said, a given spiritual unity among believers, nor imply such division that the one Church must search for and restore its unity, but reflected rather that the Church’s presence is to be acknowledged in other churches, and that others stand outside the unity that is given.

Later named chairman of the plenary sessions, Bishop Dun voiced “the ecumenical sorrow”: “For at least 35 years I have been engaged in such conversations.… If you are like me, you will find, as you meet your brothers and sisters coming out of their own particular households of faith, that you cannot think lightly or contemptuously of what has nurtured them, even though you should not be at home where they are at home. And you will experience afresh the sorrow of realizing that they go back and you go back into households or structures of faith and prayer and allegiance that in many ways separate you from them and fail grievously to make manifest our unity in Christ. This sorrow can turn you into a patient seeker for the household in which we could all be at home.”

Nature Of Ministry

The ministry of Jesus Christ continues in the world today as the Church participates in his ministry. The bourgeois, middle-class churches of America are very imperfect, but nevertheless the true Church is in them. The Church must continually struggle to get its message and forms from the New Testament rather than from the secular culture. The special ministries of the clergy are instrumental and come from the primary unit of the congregation in Christ dwells.

These were some of the emphases of four notable addresses delivered at the Fourth National Triennial Conference of the Inter-Seminary Movement at Oberlin, Ohio (Aug. 27–Sept. 1), at which 500 theological students and professors from 64 seminaries of 23 denominations met to consider “The Nature of the Ministry We Seek.”

Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, in his keynote address, “Slaves and Spokesmen,” referred to the renewed search for authority in the world today, pointing out that there is no Christianity without accepting the final authority of Jesus Christ, concerning whom the Church must declare, “Thou are the Son of God.” The ministry must be above all else the ministry of the word, the living Word, known only through the Scriptures; “If there is ever to be a theological renaissance in America it will involve the rediscovery of the Greek New Testament.” “Preaching has to do with events, facts, the great reality”; consequently, there is only one kind of valid preaching, expository preaching.

Dr. James I. McCord, Dean, of Austin (Texas) Presbyterian Seminary, speaking on “Flunkies and Soothsayers,” charged that the ministry as we know it in American churches is a luxury the rest of the world cannot afford. He contrasted the typical American ministerial student and minister with a simple-hearted lay-minister who works as a hod carrier all week and ministers evenings and Sundays in poor communities of Latin America. Although not arguing against a trained ministry, he believes the congregation is in the ministry, and deplored the term “layman” which too often implies an incompetent and unskilled person. “It is not the minister who should organize the congregation; it is the congregation which should organize its ministry of preaching, of oversight, and of mercy.” The Church needs to focus less attention on ministerial “orders” and give greater heed “to God’s ordering us within the body of Christ.”

Dr. Paul Lehman of Harvard Divinity School spoke on “Society’s Elite and Christ’s Elect.” In the Old Testament the people who were called as God’s elect assumed this made them society’s elite; they confused their theological terms with sociological ideas. Under the new covenant the Church is constantly in tension between being society’s elite and Christ’s elect. The elite count their blessings, but the elect are troubled by them. The elite want to be seen, but the elect sit with publicans and sinners. The elite are respectable and conforming, but the elect must be non-conforming and challenging to the world order. He showed that the goal of the Christian life is maturity, possible only within the fulness of the Christian community. The congregation “must be the vital center and not the dead center of the church.”

The American theological student today is living “the distracted life,” said Dr. Daniel Day Williams of Union Theological Seminary, New York. Theological education is being blocked, he said, by “too many courses, too many subjects, too many lectures, too many papers, too many selections to be read from too many books, instead of rereading and digesting those that can be mastered only through prolonged attention.” Dr. Williams said the greatest lack in American seminaries is in the field of Christian ethics, dealing with questions of what to do in contemporary situations, on Christian ground. Practical studies in the seminary are important to help the minister continually bring to bear on the life of the Church valid criteria upon which to judge its work; “the theological school is the Church in its most intense and concentrated activities.”

C.A.H.

Oberlin Comments

Non-member observers of Oberlin sessions divided in their appraisals solicited by CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Father Gustave Weigel, noted Jesuit theologian of Woodstock College, gave Roman Catholic reaction: “… Today the language and spirit are contemptuous of the Liberal Theology … (and) also far removed from the concerns and approach of those Evangelicals called Fundamentalists. The present terminology could be called ‘Catholicizing,’ though more evangelical than genuinely Catholic in its dynamism … From the Catholic point of view … the primary issues were never faced … There was no accepted test for any theological statement. Rather, creedal tests were deprecated … In consequence, it was impossible to come to a common understanding of what the Church is; to tell what revelation is or how it can be decisively ascertained. In spite of this fundamental incapacity, all took it for granted that all belonged to the Church and that they were speaking for her … The Conference belief was activist, vague and its expression emotionally warm but intellectually baffling. Nor can the accepted formulas reveal the wide and contradicting varieties of the understanding of the terms. The Bible was always recognized as a normative expression of Christian doctrine. Yet there was no common understanding of what the Bible is or how its authority can be exercised … The Catholic doctrine of Tradition was timidly approximated in the term ‘the historical experience of the Churches.’ … The unity of the churches in the Conference is more emotional and verbal than substantial … There is a strong tendency to make doctrinal statement a matter of less than primatial significance, if not of indifference. There is indeed some doctrinal unity in the conference, but on nothing decisive and crucial.”

Dr. John W. V. Smith, Church of God: “Two aspects … seemed to stand out. The first was the abundance of strong affirmations of basic truth about the unity of the Church … The second was the very apparent difficulty in really apprehending these truths … Discussions often revealed many deep-seated prejudices and an unwillingness to look beyond particular traditions. At times presuppositions contrary to Biblical truth were evident.…”

The Rev. F. Burton Nelson, Mission Covenant Church: “… Reports from the various sections indicate a marked sensitivity to contemporary currents in Christian theology … There appears to be a fresh appreciation of what the Bible has to say … The majority of churchmen at Oberlin have seen that divisions in the Church are deeply rooted, and … not likely to be alleviated by sentimental approaches.…”

National Day Of Prayer

Wednesday, October 2, has been proclaimed by President Eisenhower as a national day of prayer, according to annual custom initiated by joint resolution of Congress in 1952. The President urged that “each according to his own faith unite in prayer and meditation on that day” and “in constant dependence upon our Creator for the spiritual gifts required in the conduct of our affairs as individuals and as a nation … ask for wisdom and strength” in seeking the “welfare of all people through a just and lasting peace.…”

Cathedral’S Fiftieth

Washington Cathedral marked the fiftieth anniversary of the laying of its foundation stone September 28–29. Observance events included special services at the cathedral and a dinner addressed by Presiding Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Bishop of Coventry, Dr. Cuthbert Bardsley, preached the anniversary sermon.

New York, Baptist Target

Dr. Paul S. James, Pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, for the last 16 years, has been appointed by the Home Mission Board, as director of Southern Baptist work in the greater New York area. He will also become pastor of the Southern Baptist Chapel group in New York, which presently meets at the 23rd Street YMCA in downtown Manhattan and will soon be organized as the first Southern Baptist church in New York City.

In a statement to his church, Dr. James said: “This is a call to lead Southern Baptists in the establishment of churches in one of America’s greatest mission fields. It comes in the wake of the Graham Crusade when the time seems ripe for constituting churches and missions according to the pattern being followed by Southern Baptists.”

- More from Carl F. H. Henry

Theology

The Second Coming Is News

L. Nelson Bell

Should there be a sudden rending of the sky, a lightning-like flash, the sound of trumpets such as our ears have never heard—if Christ should suddenly appear in the sky with his holy angels—what would our reaction be?

And it will happen!

One of the most frequently mentioned truths of all Scripture is that Jesus Christ is coming again. In theological circles his return is spoken of as the doctrine of last things, or eschatology. Strange to say, it is probably the most abused and also the most neglected truth in all the Bible. While some simply ignore it entirely, others distort its teachings.

When Christ will come has been the subject of much foolish speculation. There are also some who become so interested in the details of events of that future time that they fall into wrangling among themselves. In so doing they have tended to becloud the transcendent fact that Christ is coming again.

Generally speaking, there are four schools of thought. There are some who flatly deny that Christ will return in person. We will not deal with this group here because many of them even question his uniqueness as the eternal Son of God and their position hardly comes within the purview of Christian consideration.

The chief differences of opinion, however, center around when he will come. There are the post-millennialists who believe in the gradual improvement of world conditions until the millennium comes, after which Christ will appear.

There is a second and larger group, the amillennialists, who believe in his return but also believe that the millennium described in Revelation 20 is figurative, not literal.

Finally, there are the premillennialists who believe in the imminent return of the Lord to set up his reign on the earth for a thousand years, after which Satan will be released for a short time finally to be destroyed by Christ and the armies of heaven.

Because of the strong convictions held by many on these matters, few will be pleased by this article, but we feel constrained to write because so many good people are beclouding a transcendent and glorious truth by arguing over details which are of secondary importance. The truth of paramount concern is the inescapable fact that Christ is coming back to this earth.

As he ascended up to heaven after his resurrection, and while his disciples were gazing upward in amazement and awe, two men clothed in white suddenly stood by their side and said: “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go up into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

“This same Jesus … shall so come … in like manner … as ye have seen him go into heaven.” These words are as clear and specific as words can be.

If this were an isolated statement at variance with the general teaching of Scripture, we might be led to look for some other meaning. But it fits in perfectly with what our Lord said on a number of occasions and the writers of the epistles and of Revelation reiterated again and again.

What a stupendous thought! What a portentous event! In the twentieth century we think of Christ as living two millenniums ago and, while we accept the fact of his resurrection, it is easy to give him, so far as his bodily presence is concerned, a place in past history. But we fail to realize that our own physical eyes may see him at any moment!

It is here that the tragedy of controversy over the second coming becomes most poignant. It is at this point that the tragic silence of many becomes all the more distressing.

The doctrine of the second coming of Christ centers in the fact that he will return. On many occasions he affirmed this truth. Speaking to his confused and sorrowing disciples, he said: “Let not your heart be troubled.… I will come again.” Again: “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” Repeatedly, he spoke to his disciples along these lines.

The Holy Spirit, speaking through the apostles, affirmed the same truth. In 1 Thessalonians 4:16 we read: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.…” In Revelation 1:7 we are told: “Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him.”

Christ speaks of it as being a sudden event: “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.…” He compares his return to the sudden destruction that came on Noah’s generation; to the unexpected entrance of a thief at midnight.

The imminent return of the Lord has been the comfort and hope of saints since his ascension. That he has delayed so long only emphasizes the fact that with him a thousand years are but a day. He is not slack in keeping his promise but rather he is longsuffering to sinful men, anxious that they might repent while yet there is time.

In enthusiasm for the truth of the second coming some confuse time and space as we know them with the infinitudes of God and eternity. Einstein with his theory of relativity, the splitting of the atom and probably yet undiscovered facts of the universe can well open up to us new vistas having to do with what Christ will do and how he will do it. There is a tendency to think this world and the universe of which it is a part will continue to be governed by laws as we now know them. Paul may have given a hint in 1 Corinthians 1:27–29; the God of creation can so easily use “things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.”

But even more reprehensible than setting up the details and schedules of events having to do with the coming of the Lord are the strange phenomena of silence and indifference. European theologians, far less certain of a man-made Utopia than some of their American confreres, urged the World Council meeting at Evanston two years ago to face squarely the doctrine of last things and in the subsequent discussions were far more inclined to follow a biblical approach than some in this country.

Why the resounding silence in so many American pulpits today? Why ignore a truth which is as clearly taught as any doctrine to be found in Holy Writ? Why deny to men today the thrilling fact that Christ is coming back and that he is the hope of the world? The inescapable fact is that Christ is coming back to this earth and there is no truth more calculated to galvanize attention, to promote right living and to generate witnessing zeal.

The early Church found the hope of his coming a constant source of comfort and a spur to righteous living. It can do the same for the Church today.

- More from L. Nelson Bell

Eutychus and His Kin: September 30, 1957

THE SOUND BARRIER

Pastor Peterson dropped by last night after an evening of calls in the new Cloverleaf Vista subdivision. He wants a TV distance tuner that will fit in his coat pocket and operate so as to shut off any television set. To produce “snow” he said wouldn’t be enough. Sight and sound must both go, too, or the calling pastor hasn’t a chance.

We discussed other possibilities. The cord of the set is usually too inaccessible to trip over. The pastor has tried lowering his voice, and there are sensitive souls who will turn down the volume. Even these keep on looking. Standing in front of the set is sometimes an effective hint, he admitted, but usually he is firmly ushered to a chair in a corner. He has been forced to develop a two-minute talk which he can insert during a commercial. This is the one time, he reports, when TV viewers become conscious of a guest in the room.

At this point I urged him again to come in and sit down, but he declined, and left. As I returned to my favorite TV chair it occurred to me that perhaps this technique of the doorstep conversation was his latest solution.

Some of my “kin” may have sugtions for Pastor Peterson. Remember that he is an old-fashioned evangelical who insists on doing door-to-door evangelistic calling. It won’t do to tell him to go home and watch television. I should add that he has had some success on late afternoon calls by taking four of his children along. Since the Petersons have no TV set, the youngsters need little encouragement to find a thoroughly juvenile program and block the screen completely. This method, however, has not been found ideal for a first contact call.

Can you help Pastor Peterson?

EUTYCHUS

REFORMED EPISCOPAL BISHOPS

Your issue of June 24 states that the Reformed Episcopal Church elected its first new bishop since 1920 at the recent meeting of its General Council in Chicago. May I point out that this statement is obviously erroneous. Since 1920 the following have been consecrated as bishops in the Reformed Episcopal Church:

Robert Westly Peach, Joseph Edgar Kearney, Frank V. C. Cloak, Howard David Higgins, William Culbertson, the last two having been consecrated in 1937.

FRANK E. GAEBELEIN

The Stony Brook School

Stony Brook, Long Island

GOD’s IMAGE IN MAN

Kindly permit me to direct your attention to a review by G. Aiken Taylor (July 22 issue) of my book on The Basic Ideas of Calvinism.…

The reviewer writes of “an altogether negative approach to man’s constructive behavior which results from Meeter’s understanding of the doctrine of total depravity, an understanding which fails to take into account Calvin’s pointed references to the image of God as marred but not wholly destroyed in man. Meeter’s view (that the imago dei is wholly destroyed) necessarily colors his writing.” Emphatically, the author does not subscribe to any idea that the image of God is wholly destroyed in man. Rather he would wholeheartedly maintain with Calvin, as can be gathered from the quotes from references to Calvin’s writings in the book (The Basic Ideas of Calvinism, pp. 70–75), that the reason the image of God is not wholly destroyed in man lies precisely in the common grace of God. For if God had not restrained sin in the natural man, according to Calvin natural man would become worse than a furious beast or a violent overflowing river (p. 71). God’s common grace makes possible many laudable and excellent deeds by sinful man as explained in the quotes from Calvin (pp. 70–72). God’s common grace is therefore to Calvin the source of much “constructive behavior” even in pagans. The alternative, namely that man’s constructive behavior is due to native qualities left in man, would have laid the author open to the charge that it was not the Calvinistic view of total depravity he was advocating but rather partial depravity of the Arminian stamp. According to Calvin man after sin did not retain the image of God in the narrower sense of true knowledge, righteousness and holiness. In the broader sense of the term, that of being a spiritual being, rational, moral and immortal, man still has the image of God. Without these qualities he would cease to be human. I trust that the above will absolve the book from any charge that in it is maintained the view that the image of God is destroyed in man and of an altogether negative approach to man’s constructive behavior. God’s grace makes for constructive behavior.

H. HENRY MEETER

Grand Rapids, Mich.

SHORT OF THE GOAL

Since somebody sends me CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I occasionally glance over a copy—invariably my reaction is that my unknown benefactor is wasting his money, and I am wasting my time. I have never seen a periodical which strains so hard to achieve scholarly eminence and which falls so short of its goal.

Aside from the promotion of Billy Graham, CHRISTIANITY TODAY seems to be published primarily to compliment, propitiate, and flatter the liberals and infidels while ridiculing, insulting and denouncing those who stand for the Inspiration of Scripture and contend for the Faith.

It was my impression that at least all of the editorial staff (though perhaps not all of your correspondents) claim to believe in the Divine Inspiration and Infallibility of the Word of God but one would never know this was true from the average issue of the magazine.

BOB JONES, JR.

Bob Jones University,

Greenville, S. C.

Your contribution towards making a Messiah out of “Billy” Graham is particularly obnoxious. In due time we shall find that he will do Protestantism in general more harm than good.…

FREDERICK A. STERNER

Trinity Evangelical and Reformed Church, Reading, Pa.

We in Canada have been subjected long enough to the imperialism, religious and otherwise of the U.S.A. One of your least savoury influences has been the promotion in this country of religious vaudeville by the unlimited number of evangelical fundamentalist and Pseudo-Christian cults and sects.… I would suggest that you provide a school in the department of emigration for training emigrees in the fine art of gentlemanly and civilized mannerisms.… You would score a bigger hit in Canada if you through the medium of your newspaper dissuaded these aforementioned groups from interfering in the national religious life of Canada.…

PAUL E. GLOVER

All Saints’ Anglican Church

Calgary, Alberta

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is one of the most valuable magazines I receive. In variety and general excellence of material—spiritual and intellectual—it is tops with me.…

I. L. LLEWELLYN

Fields Methodist Church

Shenandoah, Va.

It is a great joy to see the beginning of such a needed organ of such high calibre.…

H. J. BENNETT JR.

The Methodist Church

Hemingway, S. C.

… Destined to take a leading position in evangelical literature. The warm, uniting and positive message may well help forge the bonds of a stronger evangelical Christianity tomorrow.

WILBERT D. GOUGH

Gilbert Meml. First Baptist Church

Mount Clemens, Mich.

It is extremely helpful to have such current theological thought coming to my desk in the form you present it.

G. F. GREENFIELD

First Baptist Church

Breckenridge, Tex.

… An intellectual approach that is appealing.…

JOHN WEBORG

Pendor, Neb.

I have found CHRISTIANITY TODAY a peerless theological publication. It allies clear utterance, deep scholarship, wonderful variety of subjects, rare equilibrium and moderation, to a sound theological position.

LIBRARIAN

Seminario Presbiteriana Do Brasil

Campinas, Brazil, S. A.

How thankful I am to receive your evangelical paper … I am 82 years of age … I had the joy of working with the late Dr. John R. Mott and Dr. Sherwood Eddy in India as a Secretary of the Y.M.C.A., Calcutta, and in … evangelism among the students … I was once a Hindu and now dying as a disciple of Christ …

P. A. N. SEN

Ranchi, Bihar, India

Especially do I appreciate the forthright stand you take relative to the problem of liquor advertising.

Editor FRANCIS A. SOPER

Listen

Washington, D. C.

Re the editorial “Dung and Scum” (July 8 issue), vilis means “cheap” (“vile” is turpis).

“Let an experiment be made on a cheap body” ran the conversation. “Cheap, do you call a body for which Christ did not scorn to die?”

A fine article all the same, and an outstanding issue.

E. M. BLAIKLOCK

Auckland University College

Auckland, New Zealand

Too long have we waited for such a voice as this in our wilderness world.

A. F. BALLBACH JR.

First Baptist Church

Oneonta, N. Y.

INFANT BAPTISM

I read with great interest the very worthwhile articles in the August 19 issue concerning “The Body Christ Heads.” A very pertinent question was raised by W. Boyd Hunt. It is a question which has divided the Christian Church on a very basic and essential doctrine—the doctrine of infant baptism. I am grateful to God that about 95% of the “Body Christ Heads” has continued to teach and to follow this revealed practice of the first century church.

Mr. Hunt asks, “Where in the New Testament is infant baptism?” (p. 8). Has he never read Acts 10:47–48 or Acts 16:15 or Acts 16:33? There are others, but these are enough references from the established practice of Peter, Paul and others to answer his question. For example, what else but baptism of the whole family can be meant by the statement of Acts 16:33? Very plainly Scripture states, “And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.” “His” certainly does not refer to his material possessions nor to the pets in the household. Any person ready to interpret Scripture with an open mind will have to interpret that statement to mean “his family,” i.e., “his wife and children.” Some would even include the family servants in this service of baptism. But “family” is sufficient to answer Mr. Hunt’s question. I suggest that Mr. Hunt read the booklet by Dr. Albertus Pieters entitled, Why We Baptize Infants.

KENNETH H. HESSELINK

Laketon Bethel Reformed Church

Muskegon, Michigan

Ideas

Oberlin: Unity and Mission

The Editors

In a world tottering before powers contrived to divide, one Power alone qualifies to unite men for time and eternity. Transcending all differences of race, of nationality and of social status is the oneness men may find in Jesus Christ.

Yet we languish in a divided Christendom. The religious disunity of the West, the crumbling of visible unity of Christian faith and order, are only too apparent. In fact, today’s Christian community often lacks a vibrant sense of common Christian heritage, of historical continuity bridging from New Testament times to the present.

During the last 100 years Christian churches, through their missionary effort, for the first time became a world-wide phenomenon. Yet confrontation by hostile world powers, especially of totalitarianism and secularism, sharpened the awareness of a very real Christian disunity. After 2000 years, Christian leaders were driven to ask: Is there hope that the visible churches can surmount their divisions? May it not be that some ecclesiastical conflicts stem from human perversity, that some divisions reflect secondary concerns?

And so the great drive for unity has gained momentum, storming the arguments in favor of diversity. May not diversity stem from human finiteness as well as from sinful rebellion? May not a democratic element in church life best guard a universal Church from usurping Christ’s lordship? (See Luther on the papacy for comments still relevant to a monolithic church.) Such questions became unpopular in the desperate concentration upon unity. For a generation Christian disunity has been diagnosed as evidence of institutional pride and sin, and of deficiency in nourishing ecclesiastical life with the unifying dynamic of the Holy Spirit. While emphasis has fallen, as well it may, on the dangers of a divided Church, the fact that churches can be united in quite bizarre patterns and by quite unworthy motives has been minimized.

The World Council of Churches has weighted the contemporary Christian balances with its uneasiness over disunity, thereby providing a powerful new incentive for unity. While three decades of prayer and effort, of study and organization, have shaped its convictions, yet agreement is still lacking on the meaning of ecumenical unity as it concerns the churches. Previously, the nature of church unity had not been a main theme for the World Council nor even an explicit subsidiary theme of an ecumenical session. This month in Oberlin, however, the North American Conference on Faith and Order addressed itself specifically to this dilemma.

Two controlling definitions of ecumenics have emerged from ecumenical discussion and debate. The one is structural: herein ecumenics is a basic unity of faith and/or order, involving the churches in a search for a common faith or a common framework for ecumenical effort. This endeavor for agreement in faith and order has proved increasingly frustrating and exasperating. Insisting that unity of the churches involves some tangible demonstration in their role as churches, leaders asked: What sort of visible unity does God will for his Church? Among the various formulas for the “organized body of Christ,” the following have been suggested, sometimes as successive stages: (1) mutual recognition (in which cooperation replaces competition between churches); (2) cooperative action through councils of churches on local and national levels; (3) church mergers in view of a sense of unity at the level of faith and order on the part of ministry and members; (4) organic or corporate unity in one communion or church that functions as a body with a single life and history in space and time. Would this last stage result in recombining existing churches with a high measure of visible centralized control and government? As opponents often say of ecumenical insistence that unity requires organization visibly manifested at the local level, would it carry outlines of a monolithic organized super-church? At Oberlin, Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft dismissed the notion of a monolithic super-church as the only alternative to disunity. But neither Dr. Visser ’t Hooft nor anyone else at the conference produced any alternative that actually delineates the WCC’s normative concept of unity between monolithic uniformity and competitive pluralism.

Since discussions of unity frequently had reduced to a running apologia for the doctrines of member groups, or for hospitable schemes of church union and organization, and had achieved no clear agreement on the lineaments of ecumenical unity, the North American Conference longed for a promising alternative of motivation. Instead of a structural definition, therefore, it ventured a second definition of ecumenics, namely the dynamic: herein unity comes through the Church’s mission, rather than from a common faith or a common order or structure. Thus ecumenics is the Church universal expressing the saviourhood and lordship of Christ by its missionary concern. Proponents of this approach ask: For what purpose is the One Great Church fashioned? One observer, fearful of a super-church as the end-all of ecumenical activity, asked: “What shall it profit the Church if she gain the whole oikumene and lose her witness?”

This shift of emphasis to purpose or mission as the basis of unity by the North American Conference gave a new and strategic direction to faith and order study. Leaders had observed that world conferences often generalize issues; that a special obligation to elaborate unity rests upon the United States and Canada, since their churches speak much the same language, members freely intermingle and intermarry, and congregational life reflects the special influence of democratic forces. Other leaders noted the absence of an ecumenical temper on the local level; the emergence of a powerful evangelistic dynamism from outside the organized ecumenical movement; the frustrated effort to find ecumenical unanimity on the level of faith and order. The new sense of dynamic purpose encourages the WCC merger with the International Missionary Council as the next great organization goal (cf. “The Drive for IMC-WCC Merger” in this issue, p. 9), thus underscoring the missionary spirit to shape the ecumenical outreach, and overruling the organizational foundations to remove dilemmas resulting from differences of doctrine and order.

A united Christianity engaged with full heart in the fulfillment of the Church’s mission would, of course, afford a strategic counter-blow to totalitarian and secular forces today. Christians everywhere will view with gratitude the new concern for mission. But, despite its enthusiasm for mission as the basis of unity, Oberlin left this very mission of the Church undefined. In reality, the constituent members of the WCC are as divided on the nature of the Church’s mission almost as much as on questions of faith and order. The term “mission” itself is given both a narrow interpretation, in terms of evangelism and missions, and a broader meaning, with reference to the whole task of the Church. Some churches identify the work and life of the Church exclusively with social action and cultural concerns, defining ecumenical cooperation simply in terms of “whatever we can do together.” It is not strange, therefore, that the missionary philosophy characterizing much contemporary ecumenical effort is itself under fire. Some critics detect a tendency to substitute ecumenism for evangelism; inter-church aid for missions; fellowship among Christians for outreach toward the unevangelized; fraternal workers for missionaries; consolidation for pioneering. (In Japan the unity of the Kyodan, organized mainly on a pragmatic basis, is already threatened.) What will happen when and where the mission of the Church is interpreted mainly as the promotion of organizational oneness? Some observers regard the Oberlin sessions on the nature of unity as but a prelude to a conference on church union, an ecumenism more concerned for propagation of the gospel of Church unity than for the Church’s evangelistic task. The question arises: Before mission can be a sufficient basis for ecumenical unity, must there not be consensus on the content of that mission?

Can the mission of the Church actually be defined without adequate reference to faith and order? The shift from faith and order to the alternative of mission as the basis of unity does not deal realistically with the viewpoint of large groups both inside and outside the WCC who contend that the mission of the Church is not isolated from but includes a specific content of faith, or of faith and order. Moreover, evangelicals question a unity in mission, for example, that enlists the Orthodox Church whose past history in Greece has been one of hostility to evangelical Protestant effort. The notion that mission can supersede theology in building the ecumenical movement seems to place the Church’s mission in a non-theological setting. Is such a mission a sufficient criterion of unity? Can mission in fact be detached from concerns of doctrine? Of order? Is not the new WCC emphasis vulnerable to the constant threat of basic dichotomies? Dare we interpret Ephesians 4:5 in this Revised Ecumenical mood: “One Lord … (one mission) … one faith?… one baptism?” Is this an adequate reflection of New Testament unity? Did the early Church understand its unity in terms of action rather than of being, of purpose rather than of nature? Is the WCC engaged in recovering the past unity of the apostolic Church, or is it shaping its own novel and experimental unity?

Moreover, if the deepest criterion of genuine ecumenity is expressed by obedience to the Great Commission, should not the ecumenical movement recognize mission-active denominations and movements of Protestant church life unaffiliated with the WCC as genuinely ecumenical expressions though they dissociate themselves from the WCC because of their insistence upon a more specific statement of Christian doctrine? In relation to non-member constituencies, the ecumenical movement today finds itself in an awkward dilemma. Many leaders consider the absence of large groups such as National Association of Evangelicals, Southern Baptists, Missouri Lutherans, as in some sense a judgment upon the ecumenical movement. On the other hand, whenever unofficial overtures are made to non-member groups, the question naturally arises whether the invitation to “come into the WCC” ungenerously implies the non-validity of these competitive ecumenical expressions.

Christology And Confession

Ecumenical leaders doubtless will contend that the twin concerns of faith and mission have been merged into each other, rather than submerged one to the other, and that they do not expect the problem of unity to be resolved wholly on an exra-doctrinal plane. The relationship, they aver, is never serial but organic. To ask upon what mission we can engage before doctrinal agreement, or what doctrinal agreement is needed for a common mission, is for them too static an approach. They stress that the New Testament Church was united in its mission despite the absence of theological agreement at the level of the later ecumenical creeds. And in evidence of theological earnestness they point to WCC discussion on the basis of “Jesus Christ is God and Saviour” by which Amsterdam upgraded the formula “Lord and Saviour.” (Some constituents, however, do not subscribe to the formula confessionally. Seventh Day Baptist leaders were unofficially reported at Oberlin as in the WCC not because they subscribe without reservation to the affirmation that Jesus Christ is God and Saviour, but because they regard the WCC mission as more important than doctrine—a statement that passed unchallenged in the section on doctrinal consensus and conflict.)

Doubtless the evangelical criticism of ecumenical theology too often fails to grasp the importance of this central Christological affirmation. Whatever its limitations, the confession bristles with relevance in a totalitarian age. Profession of Christ’s lordship liberates the human conscience from the claims of state absolutism. Wherever a single believer recognizes Christ as God and Lord, there the existence of the totalitarian state is nullified. Communist awareness of this fact explains the persecution that Chinese Red leaders directed especially against the Christians who constituted only two per cent of the population. Moreover, the ecumenical confession emphasizes that the way to Christian unity lies through Christology, and aims to give to all discussion—including ecclesiology—a Christocentric character.

Yet the WCC confession of Christ as God and Saviour is not to be understood as a dogmatically defined statement. Even as a confession, the statement is capable of divergent theological expositions. Leaders in the WCC are far from agreement on Christology; their generalities (does the emphasis on the personal as against the doctrinal here really substitute an abstraction for the reality?) avoid a division over differences. The ready concentration on a simple Christological formula, moreover, is viewed as a symbol of theological indifference as much as a symbol of unity. Will the latitude permitted beyond this initial requirement threaten the doctrinal purity of the Church? (Note Oberlin’s unprotested offering of prayers for the dead, and the pulpit reading of The Pastor of Hermas alongside the Pauline epistles.) Does the disposition to tolerate, if not to recognize the validity of each other’s confessions and practices require a pragmatic and expedient concession at the expense of the doctrinal?

The WCC confession is far too skeletal as a basis for virile Christianity. That Jesus Christ is God and Saviour is true but hardly the whole of vital New Testament teaching; actually, this statement includes less than the elements of confession necessary to salvation, namely, that Christ died for our sins and is risen (cf. Rom. 10:9–10, 1 Cor. 15:1–4). The accepted WCC formula is inadequate, therefore, to define the Gospel of Christ. Has not the Saviour and Lord already formulated the Christian organism and mission in more adequate terms? Foundational to the unity of the early Christians stood a biblical content at least as full as that of the Apostles’ Creed.

Because the WCC confession is theologically barren, it is widely regarded as the foreboding antecedent of divisions that might have been avoided through doctrinal specificity. Especially evangelical Protestants protest the WCC’s wholesale abridgment of the doctrinal basis of Christian unity. To them such reduction is a liability rather than an asset to Christian faith and witness. Some observers aver that unless the WCC arrives at a stronger confessional basis, it ultimately faces repudiation of the movement by some of its own member churches, or through indifference to revealed theology will succumb to intellectual deterioration of ecumenical Christianity.

This approach to the WCC confession, however, does not probe the deeper issues at stake.

For one thing, the WCC is increasingly disposed to issuing additional confessional statements. Such neoconfessionalism has emerged in many major communions that avoid absolutizing their own denominational convictions (cf. recent world confessions by Presbyterians and Lutherans), but issue wide pronouncements concerning the bearing of Christian belief upon threatening cultural trends of the time. These confessions, in turn, are given ecumenical interest and status alongside the early creeds.

The ecumenical movement as such has no apparent desire, however, to reintroduce doctrine as a test, but only as a testimony. That is, no disposition is evident to recognize the existence of divinely-revealed doctrines. The influential leadership of the movement distinguishes between faith and belief; doctrines are evaluated more in terms of interpretation than of revelation. Assertedly, faith concerns the Word (not concepts and words); belief, whereby the Church articulates its faith, issues confessions only as a witness to the world, not in conformity to an authoritatively revealed declaration of what men must believe to be recognized as Christians.

The non-confessional groups, maintaining that all creeds are responsible to Scripture, decry and fear the growing confessional tendency in the WCC. The confessional groups, on the other hand, fear the WCC’s possible power over the churches through the issuance of influential definitions of the faith. Both miss the major considerations. The real issues are: What is the basis of Christian authority? What is the relation of divine revelation to reason? What is the status of Scripture as a bearer of revealed truths or doctrines? These are the crucial factors. The old liberalism, now a waning influence in ecumenical meetings, struck its deepest blow at the historic Christian faith by dissolving the authoritative note in Protestantism, by sketching divine revelation in terms either of rationalism, voluntarism or emotionalism, and by rejecting Scripture as the authoritative rule of faith and practice. Has the formative leadership of the ecumenical movement provided an adequate alternative?

Evangelicals will continue to assess contemporary ecumenity’s statement of unity and mission as given at the Oberlin sessions on doctrinal consensus and conflict by the following criteria: (1) The basis of Protestant authority. Is the Bible qualified by divine revelation and inspiration as the final and trustworthy authority in matters of faith and doctrine? (2) The importance of truth. Granting the danger of rationalizing revelation in speculative terms, and that doctrine has a view to Christian obedience, is it acknowledged that truth also has a legitimate existence for its own sake? Does divine revelation take the form both of deed and truth? Granted that religious commitment involves the whole self in relation to God, is it acknowledged that truth is essential to both faith and belief? (3) The person and work of Christ. Is it affirmed both that “Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ” and that “in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”? Many current formulations distinguish Jesus from “the Christ in Jesus,” and prefer also to speak of “God in Jesus Christ” rather than of the personal deity of the God-man. Is it affirmed not only that men as sinners are justified by faith without personal merit, but also that they are supernaturally regenerated on the occasion of faith in the imputation of Christ’s atonement as the ground of man’s salvation?

Evangelicals are saddened by any unity in mission that relegates such verities of revelation to an optional, secondary status.

Race Relations And Christian Duty

America is in the throes of great sociological change. Never has there been more need for Christian love and restraint. That the race issue has become political is to be deeply regretted. That the spiritual problem is ignored by some and stressed to the exclusion of sociological factors by others is equally regrettable.

In recent weeks incidents have arisen that should move every Christian with righteous indignation. The deliberate mutilation of a Negro in one city is one example; justice demands the severest penalty for those found guilty. Abuse accorded the few Negro boys and girls assigned to previously all-white schools by some young people in these schools has been a disgrace.

The unfortunate situation in Little Rock is eloquently appraised by a group of white and Negro ministers in that city expressing the Christian position in these words: “There is need for all to exercise constant and diligent prayer and a love which respects the dignity of all children of God and seeks equal justice for them. Because we have not walked in the way of the Lord we now find ourselves confused, disturbed and distressed. As Christian ministers we confess our own share in the corporate sin and guilt of our state and our own subjugation to the holy judgment of God. Our one hope in this hour of crisis lies not in our own ability to change ourselves, our people, or the social structure of which we are a part, but in the power and grace of God to bring order out of confusion, good out of evil and redemption beyond judgment.”

In such situations (and they are not confined to the South) there is need for Christian love, sympathy and common sense. That the church should lead in Christian relations goes without saying. There are those who feel that she has been woefully slow in assuming her role of leadership in breaking down racial discrimination and injustice. In some instances the church has lacked courage in vindicating justice for all. But some leadership has shown more enthusiasm than good judgment, more zeal than understanding. Christian courtesy, love, humility and consideration form the only basis on which right race relations can be developed. There are vocal integrationists who themselves refuse to have social contacts with another race. There are segregationists whose personal dealings with those of another race put to shame some most ardently active on the other side. Each needs to learn from the other.

The Christian church should work for the elimination of every restriction, discrimination and humiliation aimed at people of any race. She should preach and exemplify love and compassion and consideration at all times. She should also refrain from confusing legal, spiritual, and sociological problems—for in so doing she is being neither Christian nor realistic.

END

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Theology

Bible Book of the Month: The Psalms

J. Kenneth Grider

In times like these we need to turn ourselves frequently to the Psalms. In them there is an intoxication with “the world above the world,” an acknowledgment of God at every step, a quest of the soul for the living God. In this questing, too, there is always the element of wonder; stretched out and yearning, the souls of the psalmists never fully comprehend Yahweh’s genius in creation nor his loving kindness toward men who sink in “deep mire, where there is no standing” (Psalm 69:2).

Moreover, there are in the Psalter taproots for growing tall, beauteous souls—souls that, unlike cut flowers, will bloom steadily and lustily through this life into the next. And if our newest weapons give us the jitters, the Psalms will give us balm and poise.

Kings and peasants, sages and saints, the tormented and the confident—they all speak out in these diaries of the heart. In their cries in the night and their hallelujahs at noonday they speak with peculiar relevance to believers in our time.

Piety Of The Psalms

Not a system of reasoned ideas; not what the Greeks would have given us. “The pearls here all lie loose and unstrung …” says John Paterson (The Praises of Israel, p. 24). Paterson also suggests: “Joy here is too abounding and sorrow is too passionate to be compressed within the moulds of a logical system” (ibid. p. 153).

What we have in the Psalter is a distilled piety. “In it beats the very heart of the Old Testament and of all spiritual religion” (W. T. Davidson, The Praises of Israel, p. 1). “What the heart is in man, that the Psalter is in the Bible” (Joh. Arnd; see Delitzsch’s Biblical Commentary on the Psalms, 1894, I, p. xvii). To use Paterson again, he says: “The Psalter finds us in the deepest parts of our being, and those songs speak a universal language to the heart of all mankind” (op. cit. p. 4).

Harold A. Bosley suggests something similar. Of this heart history he writes, “It is composed of the deepest, truest, most luminous insights we have into the universal and permanently important experiences of the human spirit” (Sermons on the Psalms, p. 10). He also speaks of the Psalter as “… one of our longest, steadiest, deepest looks into the depths of life” (ibid., p. 1). That is what John Calvin was referring to when he called these bits of glory written out “An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul” (Commentary on the Psalms, I, Preface, p. xxxvii).

Doubts, fears, penitence, confidence, thanks, praise—these all figure in this heart literature. And our souls run together with the souls of the writers of the Psalms. Their joys are ours, and their distresses; their confidence, and their moans of contrition. Pens dipped in divine inspiration point right at us. We go forward for prayer in Psalm 51, water our couches with tears in Psalm 6, recount our blessings in Psalm 103, pant after God as does a thirsty hart after the water brooks in Psalm 42, pillow our heads in Psalm 23.

Origin Of The Psalter

Many of us would agree with W. E. Barnes that “for the Psalms questions of date and historical occasion are relatively unimportant (The Psalms, I, p. viii). The date and occasion of Daniel, for example, are far more important than they are for a given Psalm or series of Psalms. Yet it is of consequence who wrote the Psalms, when, and why.

Some men such as Duhm have tried to tell us that most of them originated in the Maccabean age. Most scholars, such as Gunkel, Oesterley, Paterson, and Snaith date them, in general, considerably earlier. The tendency during the last three decades or so is toward earlier dating. It is probably not without bearing that in all printed editions of the Hebrew Bible the Psalms are the first book among the “Writings,” for there seems to have been an attempt to arrange the books chronologically within each of the three divisions of the Jewish canon. Moreover, in the Hebrew manuscripts it never appears later than second among the Writings.

In the Hebrew the inscription le-David appears above 73 of the Psalms. It is rendered “A Psalm of David” in the AV and RV. (In the Septuagint, besides these 73 instances of the Davidic title, there are 15 others.) Most scholars would agree that the Hebrew could be rendered “A Psalm to (or for) David,” or even “after the manner of David” (Barnes, op. cit., p. xxiii). Paterson suggests “after the style of David” (op cit. p. 19).

This much is certain: (1) that the Hebrew scribes quite early understood the le-David as referring to actual authorship, since they frequently added to those psalm headings references to incidents in David’s life which occasioned the songs; and (2) that the le-David headings are quite early since they appear in the oldest extant texts of the Septuagint.

Some critics say that David of the Psalm inscriptions is not the king David of the historical books (see excellent response to this in Barnes, op. cit., pp. xxv ff). Yet many suggest that the Psalms reflect David’s life as given in those books (cf. Alexander Maclaren, The Life of David as Reflected in His Psalms, reprinted 1955).

Quite certainly the Septuagint is incorrect in ascribing 88 Psalms to David. Take, for example, Psalm 137, one of its 15 extra Davidic Psalms. That Psalm is surely the song of a subjected Hebrew in exile. Moreover, most would question a number of the 73 Davidic titles in the Hebrew, understanding that the later “title-makers” were not inspired, as were the psalm writers themselves. Alexander Maclaren suggests that 45 Psalms are quite certainly from David (ibid., p. 11).

Whether a given Psalm originated within the soul of David, Moses, Solomon or someone else, Christians and Jews alike agree that “the words of the Psalter are alive with the awareness of an Other” (E. Leslie, The Psalms, p. 18).

Structure Of The Psalms

We English readers often expect rhyme and meter in our poetry. But not all peoples have this feature in their poetic literature. The Anglo-Saxons, for example, looked for alliterated line beginnings instead of rhymed endings; this is another form of regularity, and regularity is what most distinguishes poetry from prose. Hebrew poetry often has a regularity of ideas in what we call its parallelisms—synonymous as in Psalms 15:1 and 67:3, antithetical as in Psalm 1:6, and in its stair-step arrangement as in Psalms 29:1–2 and 24:7–10.

Also, frequent use is made of repetition; in Psalm 136 each of its 26 verses contains the refrain, “for his mercy endureth forever.” More important, there are those passionate, luminous words and expressions found in all poetic literature. Most scholars would agree with W. E. Barnes that the Hebrews had “… a genius for religious poetry” (op. cit., I, p. vii). While some consider the threshold Psalm to be a prose introduction to the Psalter, the Hebrew genius is at work at least from Psalm 2, through those paeans of praise in Psalm 150 with its ten-fold “hallelujah” (praise ye the Lord) with which the Psalter is closed and which constitutes a fitting doxology to the whole. All of these Psalms together are called “Praises” in the Hebrew Bible. They were called “Psalms” in the Septuagint, and we have been influenced by that early Greek version here as on many other points.

In his Old Testament Essays (1927) pp. 118–142, Hermann Gunkel suggested that there are four main classes of Psalms: National hymns of praise, private hymns of thanksgiving, national hymns of sorrow and private hymns of sorrow. Some were thought of as mixed types. Bosley (op. cit., p. 10) gives a four-type summary also, but of a different sort. To him the types are penitence, hate, adoration and simple faith.

Regarding the Psalms of “hate,” we may surely understand that the enemies in some of them are nations, and that when they are individuals they are the psalmists’ enemies because they are God’s. Robert F. Pheiffer supposes that the “righteous” are often the Pharisees, and the “sinners” the Sadducees (Introduction to the Old Testament, 1948, p. 620). In any case, the psalmists lived in times when many thought it right to hate their enemies. Jesus showed that when he said, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy” (Matthew 5:43). Not until Jesus came was that principle radically repudiated.

According to the Midrash on the Psalms, an ancient Jewish commentary, Moses gave the Israelites the five books of the Law, and to correspond to them David gave them the Psalms in five books. Although no one would now believe that David compiled the five books of the 150 psalms now in our Psalter, some believe there is a correspondence between the Law and the Psalms. Harry A. Ironside (Psalms, p. 406) believed that the dominant subject of each of the five books of the Pentateuch is duplicated in each of the five books in the Psalter. Norman Snaith argues more convincingly for a correspondence between them (Hymns of the Temple, pp. 18 ff). It might well be that just as a portion of the Law was read each Sabbath, with something from the Prophets, so a Psalm was read. The reading of Psalm One, in which the blessed man meditates on the Law day and night, would be most fitting on the day, each three years, when a new beginning was made in the public reading of the Law. It is intriguing that, with the way the Jews distributed portions of the Law over two-month periods, Psalms 1, 42, 73, and 90, the first psalms in each of the first four books of the Psalter, would be read as each of the first four books of the Law was begun. There is even plausible reason, too intricate for mention here, for the lack of correspondence in the case of the beginning of the last book of Psalms, which starts with Psalm 107.

Useful Psalm Studies

Useful material on the Psalms, somewhat in order of priority for the minister:

A work midway between the very technical and the too popular is John Paterson’s The Praises of Israel (Scribner’s, 1950). It would whet one’s appetite for more thorough works such as W. E. Barnes’ two-volume The Psalms, (Dutton, n.d.); W. Graham Scroggie’s three-volume Psalms (Pickering & Inglis, rev., 1949); and Elmer A. Leslie’s The Psalms (Cokesbury, 1949). One of the very thorough studies, which would be still more adequate for detailed information on a given psalm, is the three-volume Commentary on the Psalms by Prof. Delitzsch (Hodder & Stoughton, 1894). A quite careful study is Joseph Alexander’s The Psalms, (Zondervan, repr. 1864 ed.). Spurgeon’s The Treasury of David has a continuing relevancy (Zondervan, repr. 1881 ed.).

A very commendable specialized work on six psalms, with a general introduction, is Norman Snaith’s Hymns of the Temple (SCM, 1951). Somewhere, one ought to have a look at T. H. Robinson’s The Poetry of the Old Testament (Duckworth, 1947). Pertinent applications are found in Harold Bosley’s Sermons on the Psalms, (Harper, 1956). Specially rich in devotional thoughts is F. B. Meyer on the Psalms (Zondervan, repr. n.d.).

Within commentary sets, of course, there are indispensable studies. Calvin’s commentaries, urged even by James Arminius for all his students, include five volumes on the Psalter (Eerdmans, repr., 1949). An excellent study is in Charles Simeon’s Expository Outlines on the Whole Bible, Vols. 5 & 6 (Zondervan repr., 1956). Most important is the up-to-date treatment in The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 4 (Abingdon, 1955).

Three of the scheduled 55 volumes of Luther’s Works are now published, two of which (Vols. 12 & 13) are on the Psalms—and against the papists: (Concordia, 1955–56).

J. KENNETH GRIDER

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Theology

Lost River of Paradise

J. Marcellus Kik

The second chapter of Genesis presents a mystery that has puzzled many through the ages—the mystery of a lost river. Scholars have endeavored to trace the river that flowed out of Paradise but so far only several of its branches have been identified. Seemingly the River of Eden has completely disappeared. The account as given in Genesis 2:10–14:

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bedellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

Scholars have conjectured that the four branches of the lost river are: the Indus, the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates. These four great rivers give us some idea of the extent of the lost River of Paradise. The magnificent trees, the fragrant plants, the beautiful flowers of the Garden of Eden were watered by this river. The division into four branches indicated that the world surrounding Eden was to be watered as the numeral four is often used as a symbol for the earth. Thus we know that God intended the blessings of Paradise to prevail throughout the world. The entire earth, under the providence and blessing of God, was to be like the garden of Eden.

If the Indus, the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates were branches of the River of Paradise, then they pose a difficult problem of relating them to a common source, as a glance at a map will show that they are somewhat disjointed. This very disjointure, however, points graphically to the sad fact that Paradise itself is lost.

Another River

Paradise and its river were lost through the fall of man. The Indus, the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates are like four huge signposts that have been turned and confused by the sin of man. Reading these signposts, one can only become convinced that the former source, the River of Paradise, has been lost.

Turning away from these confused signposts, we turn for direction to a guidebook which so often discloses that which has been lost. The Bible is that guidebook; within its pages we hear the rippling sound of a quiet, soft-flowing river. Its sound comes to our ears in Psalm 46:

There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.

Within the boundary of the Psalm the river appears so small. Yet the river is set in contrast to the roar and restlessness of the mighty sea. The sea symbolizes the unbelieving world. The Bible informs us that “the wicked are like the troubled sea.” The wicked multitude is kept in constant motion by pride, ambition, greed and lust. Like the restless sea they are never at rest with themselves or with others. The sea ever rages and seeks to destroy. In opposition to this roaring, restless, raging sea is set the quiet, soft-flowing river with its peaceful streams. Strange as it may seem this river conquers the mighty, restless sea. Surely this river with its streams must be the lost River of Paradise.

A Healing Stream

The nature of this river and its healing streams is revealed in chapter 47 of the prophecy of Ezekiel:

And, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward … Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea … And it shall come to pass, that everything that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed: and everything shall live whither the river cometh.

The prophet Ezekiel has just seen a vision of a glorious temple. Now he beholds a river whose waters issued from under the threshold of the temple. The river flowed into the east country, into the desert, and finally into the sea. Significantly, the river entered into the Dead Sea. No fish or any form of animal life can exist within the salty water of the Dead Sea. But behold! When the river from the temple enters into the Dead Sea, “it shall come to pass, that everything that liveth, which moveth whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish.”

The river that flows from the temple has such restorative energy that even the Dead Sea—symbol of God’s curse against sin—is filled with a multitude of fish. May we hint of the fulfillment of this vision by recalling the voice of one who cried to a group of fishermen, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men”? He also directed his disciples, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.” They cast the net and were not able to draw it for the multitude of fish. Through the restorative powers of the River of Paradise children of God would appear in nations that previously had been under the curse of God.

Ezekiel also relates how the river affected the desert places, “And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed” (Ezek. 47:12). The ripple of the same river is heard in Jeremiah 17 and Psalm 1 where we read that those who are planted by that river bring forth their fruit in their season and their leaf shall not wither. May we hint at the fulfillment of this part of the vision by recalling the statement of him who said, “I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” The disciples of Christ are indeed planted by the River of Paradise and bring forth fruit unto everlasting life.

A River Of Life

We would love to dwell wherever we hear the sound of the rippling of this river in Scripture; but we pass on to the very last chapter of the Bible where the river reappears. (Oh those blind leaders of the blind who deny the unity and inspiration of the Scriptures! Could mere man keep this river flowing through the books of the prophets and apostles during the course of centuries? What fools men be who deny the divine authorship of the Book of books!) In words reminiscent of Ezekiel’s vision, the river appears in verses 1 and 2 of Revelation 22:

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

The water of this river is pure, living, clear, fresh and wholesome. Unlike the salt water of the restless sea or the stale stagnant water of broken cisterns, this water possesses life-giving power. As the river flows desert places are changed into gardens of Eden.

The river finds its source in the throne of God and of the Lamb. All life comes from God the Father, in God the Son, through God the Holy Spirit. The Lamb is specifically mentioned because all life is bestowed by virtue of his atoning sacrifice on Calvary’s cross. Those who search for living water outside of Christ, search in vain.

But let us draw even closer to this life-giving river. In the seventh chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks these thrilling words:

If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive.

The River of Paradise is Jesus Christ. It consists of the life of Christ conveyed by the Holy Spirit to believing and thirsting souls. They who drink of the water of this river are quickened and made alive forever more. Their souls resemble a watered garden. Where desert plants of uncleanness, idolatry, hatred, wrath, strife, drunkenness and deceit once thrived, there now appear fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. The barren soul becomes a garden of Eden watered by the River of Paradise, Christ Jesus.

Each One A Branch

Each individual soul becomes a branch of living water, reaching out to barren souls. The four branches of Eden become a multitude of streams flowing to the four corners of the earth. The River of Paradise entered into the Church of the New Testament on the day of Pentecost. The preaching of Christ by Peter was the first bursting forth of these waters from the temple. Three thousand souls were quickened and received the gift of the Holy Spirit. From Jerusalem the river and its streams flowed into Judea, Samaria, Syria, Asia, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, Holland, England, America, China, Africa, India and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.

Each believer by the indwelling Spirit becomes a branch of the River of Paradise and conveys refreshing and healing waters to thirsty souls in desert places.

The River of Paradise which first appeared in the second chapter of Genesis has been found. In the midst of the roaring and raging of the restless sea, the ripple of this gentle, quiet, soft-flowing river is scarcely heard. Yet its healing waters continue to flow, causing the fragrant flowers of love, peace and joy to appear—love that abides, peace that remains throughout eternity, joy that never departs. The river regains Paradise for the soul.

He who is the River of Paradise has promised, “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring: and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses.”

END

- More from J. Marcellus Kik

Cover Story

Ecumenism and the Lord’s Table

R. J. Rushdoony

With the current interest in ecumenism and church union, there is a growing emphasis on the Lord’s table and a revival of interest in liturgics. Much of this latter interest has been properly criticized as romantic, as concerned unduly with rubrics, chants, stained glass, choral and congregational responses, clerical garb and the like, and as irrelevant. The Lord’s Supper began as a simple meal in an upper room, and, in the early church, was closer to the church potluck supper than to the modern observance. On the other hand, it must be clearly understood that we are not tied to the original form of the Lord’s Supper, in which case an upper room would be required, but to the essential form and content, as given in 1 Corinthians 11:18–34. Concerning the basic form, the words of institution, there is general agreement.

But what then is the essential content of the Lord’s Supper? Here, for many persons, the old term “communion” is most expressive. It is the Christian bond of peace and unity, the outward token of an inward and outward communion in and with Christ. As such, the Lord’s Supper has become the symbol of the current aspirations for ecumenity. Christ’s Church, sorely divided into many fragments and splinters, must be again united so that, with an effective and united voice, she may witness to a troubled world. In terms of such thinking, every service of communion becomes an indictment of the Church for continuing in disunion.

The fallacy of such thinking, however, is that it makes central to the Lord’s table the human communion of many believers, the totality of human strength as essential to witness, and the centrality of unity to Christian faith and life. It inevitably obscures the essential meaning of the sacrament, the atonement and redemption effected for believers by Jesus Christ, their continuing preservation, sanctification and unity in and with him. That unity does have an important part in this picture is obvious. But to emphasize it unduly is to distort the entire picture, if not to destroy it. In ecumenical thinking, incredible latitude is permitted with regard to the doctrinal aspects; these need not be taken literally, but unity must be taken literally. Thus the ecumenical approach allows a latitudinarian interpretation of the deity of Christ, of his atonement, of security, sanctification, and other doctrines, but insists on a literal approach to unity. The opponents of unity insist on a literal subscription to dogmatic statements but insist on a spiritualizing and latitudinarian interpretation of unity.

Truth And Unity

Obviously, therefore, the concept of unity needs examination. It must be first of all noted that the modern ecumenical movement has no relationship to the councils of the early Church. There the emphasis was on truth above unity, and unity only on the grounds of truth. The enduring value of these councils, despite many disorders as well as doctrinal variations, consisted in their emphasis on truth as the only valid ground for union. This emphasis, however, gave way gradually to the Roman Catholic emphasis, which, from the Protestant point of view, is on unity above truth. The differences preceding the Vatican Council were subordinated to the principle of unity; the long history of theological differences, for example, between Dominicans and Franciscans, shows also their subordination to the opinion made dogmatically binding. To the Protestant, truth and unity have a transcendent reconciliation in Christ; to the Roman Catholic, believing in Christ’s continuing incarnation in the church and the apostolic authority of the See of Peter, truth and unity have an immanent reconciliation in the pope; and hence papal infallibility is not an exotic but natural development of this immanence. Since the principle of unity is present in the person of the Roman pontiff, the principle of unity cannot exist apart from him or be reserved to the church and its schools. Thus devout Roman Catholics can submit to doctrinal pronouncements previously unacceptable to them because doctrinal pronouncements “concerning faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church” are truly and authoritatively defined by the Roman pontiff alone “and not by virtue of the consent of the Church” (Vatican Council). To the evangelical Protestant, truth and unity are perfectly reconciled in Christ only, not immanently in any social order or church. The modern ecumenical emphasis is analogous to Rome in that unity is the means to truth and the very ground of truth. The Roman concept of unity is imposed from above. The modern Protestant ecumenical movement differs from the Roman approach only in seeking unity more democratically. It agrees with Rome in emphasizing peace and unity as more important than truth and as the real ground of truth in Christ.

Unity Does Not Stand Alone

In terms of such thinking, Athanasius, Luther, and Calvin were clearly wrong in insisting that truth is more important than peace and unity. They were wrong then in believing that Christians must be exposed to the turbulent and demanding claims of truth and in insisting, through the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, that all Christians, and all men, must be brought face to face with the truth in Jesus Christ, and with the whole counsel of God in his Word, that unity might grow out of a priesthood grounded and established in truth.

Here it must be pointed out that the very conception of truth and unity as well as truth versus unity is in a very important measure defective. First of all, it must be recognized that by its very nature truth is divisive. It compels a demarcation and a definition, a separation from error and evil. Truth must therefore always be underrated and obscured if a blanket unity is to be furthered. Second, unity in itself is no more a virtue than is sincerity. The sincerity of Hitler and the unity of the German people under him constituted no moral value or gain. Sincerity and unity possess moral validity only as they are attached to persons and causes having moral validity. If unity is sought on grounds which undervalue truth, then unity becomes to that same degree reprehensible. Third, it must be recognized, however, that truth in itself can be barren, if, indeed, it is possible for truth to so exist. A very important question must here be raised: can truth exist without grace? For a Christian, such a thing is inconceivable: truth and grace are different aspects of one revelation. “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Jesus Christ is the revelation of God’s truth and grace. Truth cannot exist without grace, and grace cannot exist apart from truth. Thus, the doctrinaire and belligerent attitude of some opponents of ecumenity is grounded neither in grace nor in truth but in a partisan spirit which is as defective as the barren insistence on union. The truly ecumenical insistence will not be on peace and unity but on truth and grace, and the only effective opposition to the defective ecumenity of our era is one which presents truth and grace. Fourth, it must be stated that there is a difference between unity and union. Union can exist without unity, and unity without union. Ecumenical thinking too often aims at union rather than unity, at an outward marriage, leading to a Protestant Rome, rather than a true marriage of minds and spirits. All such attempts only compound weaknesses and troubles and render sick churches more sick. On the other hand, it is not enough to emphasize unity without union. Where true unity exists, is there no obligation to union? Is it not indeed a form of irresponsibility to emphasize our unity and berate union?

Evangelical Contributions

Fifth, it is obvious that many churches today are far more interested in union than in unity. One of the ironic notes today is the growing destruction by ecumenity of its own parents. More of the modern ecumenical movement stems from various evangelical movements of the past century than is commonly recognized. Moody’s revivals, for example, cut across denominational lines and did more to foster interchurch relations than is generally conceded. Revivalism, with its “common denominator theology,” did much to correlate the theologies of the various churches. The Christian Endeavor movement, for many decades shaping the lives of the potential leaders of various denominations, trained them into a common denominator Christianity, albeit a conservative one, and emphasized interchurch unity. These movements and others like them were important in their major impact on American life in extending the frontiers of faith and life; they were also important in leveling the specifically Calvinist, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, and other specifically theological and ecclesiological emphases in favor of a skeletal Christianity. As such they were a major ecumenical factor, whatever our opinion of their value.

But modern ecumenical leaders are at one and the same time active in promoting specifically denominational youth programs, church revival, and evangelism endeavors. They insist on union rather than unity, and on church loyalty rather than basic and fundamental doctrines. Clearly, church loyalty is a needed emphasis in the face of so much atomistic and individualistic thinking with regard to the Christian life. Without it, the church cannot be a church. But church loyalty is a dangerous concept unless subordinated to truth and grace, unless it is held in recognition of the freedom of the Christian believer and is truly a part of our obedience to the triune God. The Church and its leaders are never free of sin and every trifle cannot be made an occasion for revolt, but neither can the Church require obedience where it seeks to be the lawgiver as against God in his Word. Jesus Christ is King of the Church and its only lawgiver, and none other can bind the consciences of men. The Church can bind and loose only ministerially, not legislatively; only in Christ, not in its own authority; and loyalty must be ministerially, not legislatively, required.

Meaning Of Lord’s Table

Ecumenity, and the opposition to ecumenity, needs to be recalled to the true meaning of the Lord’s table, which indeed is the true bond of our unity and peace in Christ. According to Paul, those who failed to discern the Lord’s body (1 Cor. 11:29) were those who failed, first, to understand the nature of the sacrament, the meaning of the death, resurrection, atonement, sanctifying and preserving work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Second, they revealed their lack of knowledge of truth by their lack of grace and order in their supper observances, their gluttony and drunkenness, their disunity and contempt of their brothers, and their self-satisfaction with their worship. They thus failed to discern the Lord’s body in the supper, that is, in its meaning, and failed to discern the Lord’s body in his Church. Today, in both the proponents and opponents of ecumenity there is a similar failure. It may again be said or this generation, both Christians and churches, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep” (1 Cor. 11:30). The penalty for failure to discern the Lord’s body is still judgment (1 Cor. 11:29).

Robert Paul Roth has been Professor of New Testament Theology and Dean of the Graduate School at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, S. C., since 1953. He holds the M.A. degree from University of Illinois, B.D. from Northwestern Lutheran Seminary, and Ph.D. from University of Chicago. He was formerly Professor in Luthergiri Seminary, India, and in Augustana College.

Alternatives

Not with mere stuttering repetition

Or useless aspirations dumbly spun

From wheels forever whirled on fitful winds

Over bleak gullies washed by turbid streams;

Nor egocentric flailing of dull flesh

Practised in the cloistered cell by night,

With wielded scourge and trickling blood and grief,

For extrication of essential guilt;

Nor bruised knees upward groping on the steep

Cross-studded sacramental stairs nor tear-

Groined cheeks to squatting idols bowed, with hope

From bloodless stone to gather certitude:

Neither these nor other agonies of heart

Preclude the grace that caused the veil to part.

JOHN JAMIESON

- More from R. J. Rushdoony

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The Leveling Of Christianity

The Loss Of Absoluteness

The Lowering Of Missions

The Lessening Of Man

The Light Of Light

The Iron Gate

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A Test Of Beliefs

Denying The Lord

Ground Of Belief

A Word To The Ministry

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Tragic Return

Devotional Values

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Nature Of Ministry

Oberlin Comments

National Day Of Prayer

Cathedral’S Fiftieth

New York, Baptist Target

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Christology And Confession

Race Relations And Christian Duty

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Piety Of The Psalms

Origin Of The Psalter

Structure Of The Psalms

Useful Psalm Studies

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Another River

A Healing Stream

A River Of Life

Each One A Branch

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Truth And Unity

Unity Does Not Stand Alone

Evangelical Contributions

Meaning Of Lord’s Table

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