Three Questions to a Man in Trouble

Text: Job 38:4; 40:12b; 40:15; 41:1

In a world where most persons are filled with a strong passion for publicity and recognition, it is difficult to conceive of an author giving to the world what is unquestionably one of its greatest books and then scorning to blot it with a name.

We do not know the identity of the author of the Book of Job any more than we know who wrote the great Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, or the Latin hymn of the nativity, “Adeste Fideles.”

We do know that the writings of a Homer, a Dante, a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Goethe cannot approximate the Book of Job. We have long since reached the conclusion of James Anthony Froude, who said that the Book of Job towers up alone, far above all the poetry in the world. We agree quickly with Thomas Carlyle when, in his Heroes and Hero Worship, he describes the Book of Job as “a noble book, grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity, in its epic melody … and its sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation, the oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind—so soft and great, as the summer midnight, as the world with its stones and seas.” “There is nothing written,” Carlyle goes on to say, “in the Bible or out of it of equal literary merit.”

The scope of the Book of Job is sometimes lost to us in the loquacity of Job’s would-be comforters. Let us refresh our memories by going over the broad outline of the book.

Job was a God-fearing, clean-living, upright man. He was exceptionally prosperous and in his prosperity he did not forget his religion and his God. He was a man of prayer. He was a man of kindness. The law of kindness was on his lips. Like Barnabas, in the Acts of Apostles, he was a “son of consolation,” whose vigorous, tactful, well-chosen speech gave encouragement and stability to other lives. He was a family man and gave large thought to the spiritual welfare of his children. It was for them that he constantly interceded before God.

Upon this irreproachable man troubles descended in ever-increasing measure. Job was the victim of thugs. Bandits swooped down out of the hills, slaying all of his servants except one sole survivor who brought him the shocking news. Again, Job was the victim of the mercilessness of nature. Lightning struck his shepherds and his sheep in the field. Yet again, a second band of robbers out of Chaldea raided one of his farms and stole his cattle.

Tragedy was not done with him yet. He fell victim to nature’s cruelty once again. The younger generation of his household were holding a family party. The eldest son played host to them in his home. A cyclone struck the house and, when the night of terror and storm was over, the bodies of Job’s seven sons and three daughters were discovered in the debris. The plight of Job’s family reminds us of that tragedy in the spring of 1953 when an entire family reunion group was wiped out in a cyclonic storm in Nebraska.

The victim of criminals and of untamed forces of nature, Job fell the prey of a vile and disgusting disease. His sickness was as humiliating as it was excruciating. His own wife proved to be of no help to his faith. So Job retired to the city dump—a miserable, pathetic spectacle. He resembled a cat or a dog, crawling out to some spot away from public haunt and finding there a suitable shelter in which to expire. As George MacDonald wrote, “Must it not be a deep spiritual instinct that drives trouble into solitude? Away from the herd flies the wounded deer; away from the flock staggers the sickly sheep to the solitary hiding place to die.” Three friends of Job came to his refuge at the city dumping ground. At the outset they maintained a respectful silence. One of the strongest supports in a time of profound sorrow may be the presence of friends who have the grace and good sense to come and be silent. At length Job was moved to speak out against his desperate plight. His bitter questionings may be summed up in a single word: Why? Like many others, he asked, “Why should this affliction befall me?”

The modern world is filled with persons suffering multiplied distresses. During his radio preaching, the late S. Parkes Cadman received this melancholy communication: “I am a man seventy-four years of age and I find myself utterly unable to explain the following situations. In 1895 my wife, sick with melancholia, took her own life. In 1901 my eldest son died of a fever. In 1920 my eldest daughter committed suicide during a period of mental depression. In 1921 my only remaining son and his two children burned to death in their own home. My questions about life can be summed up in one word, Why?”

In the face of a situation like that, what word is there from the Lord?

When Job reached the end of his questionings, God spoke. He asked three questions of Job. These three questions are found in the latter chapters of the Book of Job. They are questions equally applicable to the man in trouble today.

The Question Of Nature

The first question God asked Job was, What do you really know about the mysteries of nature? What do you really understand about the mysteries of science? “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” Where were you in creation’s morning? What do you know about the mystery of life and nature, about its origin and preservation? Where were you “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

God directed Job to the wonders of creation, so little of which man can fathom. What do you know about the mystery of the sea? Long ago Lord Byron wrote, “Man marks the earth with ruin. His control starts with the shore.” In a very recent and popular book, The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson reaches the conclusion that, with all of our modern scientific instruments, the mysteries of the sea will never be solved.

What do you know about the mysteries of light? We would paraphrase the question, What do you know about the mystery of electricity? Thomas A. Edison, who explored the realms of light more than any other in our age, said, “No one knows one seven-billionth of one per cent about anything.”

What do you know about the mystery of rain? “Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?” What do you know about the mystery of snow?” “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail?” While under the shadow of a crushing bereavement, James Russell Lowell exquisitely interpreted Job’s question:

I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky
And the sudden flurries of snowbirds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently
As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, “Father, who makes it snow?”
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snowfall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o’er our first great sorrow,
When the mound was heaped so high.

And again to the child I whispered,
“The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall.”

[Reprinted by permission of Houghton-Mifflin Company.]

What do you know concerning the mystery of the stars? “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?”

What do you know about the strange instincts of the animal kingdom, the little wild things that share with us the mystery of life, the beasts of the field whose ways are still past our finding out?

The most distinguished scientists have had to stand awed and baffled before the opaque depths of life. They have to exclaim with Job, “We are but of yesterday, and know nothing.” Or with Paul, “Now we see in a mirror darkly, we know in fragments.” Or with Socrates, “One thing I know, that I know nothing.” Or with Emerson in his teasing epigram, “Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.” Or with Herbert Spencer, who declared that in its ultimate nature, life is incomprehensible. Or with Ernest Haeckel, who, though he was possessed of a certain arrogance in his claims which would cause one to suppose that for him the mysteries of science were a diminished domain, made the confession, “We grant at once that the innermost character of nature is just as little understood by us as it was by Anaximander and Empedocles twenty-four hundred years ago, by Spinoza and Newton two hundred years ago, by Kant and Goethe one hundred years ago. We must even grant that this essence and substance become more mysterious and enigmatic the deeper we penetrate into the knowledge of its attributes.” Honest science is brought back repeatedly to the confession that the world grows more mysterious the more we know about it.

In the mysterious realm of nature we have to trust to the wisdom and greatness, the goodness and integrity of God. Like the marsh hen in Lanier’s poem, secretly building her nest and ordering her uncertain flight on the greatness of God, we have to repose our confidence in the God to whom the darkness of nature is as light. If we trust him in the mysteries of nature, shall we not trust him as completely in his mysterious, providential dealings with us?

The Question Of Evil

The second question which God addressed to Job in his trouble, and which he addresses to us is, What do you really know about the mystery of evil? “Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him. Look on every one that is proud and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.” Can you “tread down the wicked in their place?” What do you really know about evil when it is treated as a theological problem? What do we know about its origin, its continuance in a world governed by God, the manner in which it is overruled and even used for his glory?

What do you know about evil as a social problem? Do you really comprehend the motives for the crime and violence now menacing the nation, “the black fringe around our society,” as the late Joseph Fort Newton once called it?

Not long since I visited the beautiful campus of Williams College at Williamstown, Massachusetts, with its venerable memories of Dr. Mark Hopkins, the physician turned preacher and philosopher, of President Garfield and John Bascom, and of William Cullen Bryant, who as a seventeen-year-old college student there wrote his immortal “Thanatopsis.” It was there, too, that the Haystack Prayer Meeting was held, which was the fountainhead of the American foreign missionary movement. That very summer day as I stood under the elms of Williamstown, the newspapers printed the story of two brothers from that historic and cultured community, aged twenty-three and eighteen, who that week had embarked on a series of criminal exploits that led them eventually into the mountains of Pennsylvania. In the presence of so much that is noble and exalting and good, how can young men launch out on careers of crime? More perplexing than the episode of those boys from the hills of western Massachusetts is the sinister course followed by some who have enjoyed the advantages of a devout and godly parentage in the formative years of life. One thinks of the renegade sons of the priest Eli, and of the sons of the prophet, Samuel, who brought disgrace upon their fathers. It is always baffling to see children, who have been born and bred in Christian homes and have been environed by the purest Christian influences, degenerating in lives grown sordid and stained and sodden.

We know little of evil as a psychological problem. Long ago the inspired Psalmist anticipated the modern depth psychologist who probes the recesses of the subconscious in order to explain human behavior. The Psalmist asked the question, “Who can understand his [own] errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.” Jeremiah expressed the same thought, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

We know but fragments concerning evil as a theological, social and psychological problem. God’s provision for the forgiveness of our sins is no less beyond our poor powers to understand. We are “lost in wonder, love, and praise” as we contemplate the plan of salvation from sin. Through his atoning sacrifice of himself, in his death on the cross, Christ satisfied the divine justice, procured our pardon before the holy God, and was made sin for us (although he knew no sin) that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

God’s power to change human life is as mysterious to us as his plan of salvation. His only begotten Son’s blood can make the foulest clean—as white as snow—releasing men and women from the thralldom of evil, lifting them out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, setting their feet upon a rock, transfiguring the worst of characters into the best.

We trust the mystery of evil, its existence and control, its redemption and conquest to God. Should we not also trust him in the quite inscrutable dispensations of his providence?

The Question Of Death

The third question which God addressed to Job in his perplexity and which he puts to us is, What do you know about the mystery of death? What do you know about that undiscovered country which lies beyond the last door of life?

God said to Job, “Behold now behemoth,” and again, “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?” Behemoth indicates the hippopotamus and leviathan the crocodile. In 1850 Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote in an essay, “I have seen the hippopotamus both asleep and awake and I can assure you that awake or asleep he is the ugliest of the creatures of God.” In the mythological imagery of Egypt and the ancient East, the hippopotamus and the crocodile always represented death and the realms of the dead. In the symbolism of the Coptic church of Egypt in the early centuries, Christ is depicted standing upon a crocodile. Our Lord is thus shown in the splendor and power of his resurrection triumph over sin and the grave.

We know little of that soft, fascinating sleep men call death. We know little of that strange country of the beyond. It is sufficient for us to know that Christ demonstrated by his resurrection that he has the keys of death and the realm of the dead. It is sufficiently reassuring for us to know that as Richard Baxter, the Puritan divine, has said, “Christ leads us through no darker rooms than he has been before.” It is adequate comfort for us to possess the confidence that when we lie down to sleep for the last time, or when we watch our loved ones put out to sea, Christ stands at the gateway of immortality as our Savior and friend.

My knowledge of that life is small
The eye of faith is dim,
But it’s enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with him.

We trust our heavenly Father in the mystery of nature, in the mystery of evil and in the mystery of death. Should we not trust him through all the changing scenes of life?

At length Job in his experience passed beyond a mere intellectual concept of God to a knowledge of him as Father and* friend. “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.” Job had found the God of his life, to whom he could say, Thou art mv God! Thou art the God who loves and cares for me and all whom I love here and beyond the bounds of vision.

We who know God in Christ trust him as the creator of the ends of the earth, the one in whom all things cohere, the redeemer who by his cross and precious blood answers the problem, sounds the doom and interprets the uses of evil. He is the Lord of life and death who “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

In a time when the faith of many was shaken and beclouded, Washington Gladden wrote these serene lines which voice the ultimate faith of Job and of all those whose hope and trust is stayed on the Lord Christ, and on the Father who sent him into the world and is with us as he was with him:

In the bitter waves of woe,
Beaten and tossed about
By the sullen winds that blow
From the desolate shores of doubt,
When the anchors that faith had cast
Are dragging in the gale,
I am quietly holding fast
To the things that cannot fail.

In the darkest night of the year
When the stars have all gone out,
I know that courage is better than fear,
That faith is better than doubt.
And that somewhere beyond the stars
Is a love that is better than fate,
When the night unlocks her bars
I shall see him and I will wait.

Galbraith Hall Todd, D.D., is minister at Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.

- More from Galbraith Hall Todd

Cover Story

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Edward J. Young

It was in 1947 that the first discoveries of the remarkable manuscripts, now commonly known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, were made. Already the amount of literature concerned with these scrolls has grown tremendously. Several popular books have been published, to say nothing of numerous articles, both popular and technical; even some books of a technical nature have appeared. It is of course impossible to keep up with this large output, and even a specialist in the Old Testament can do little more than read the more important publications. Sufficient time has elapsed, however, so that it is now possible to speak with some positiveness as to the relationship these scrolls bear to the origins of Christianity. This is particularly needful inasmuch as the idea is widespread that the scrolls were the work of Essenes, and that John the Baptist was once a member of the Essenes, who introduced some of their ideas into Christianity.

The Principal Documents

In this present article we shall seek to present a survey of the principal documents discovered so far and to indicate briefly their relationship to Christianity. In a following article we hope to deal in more detail with the importance of the Isaiah manuscript for biblical studies generally.

The scroll of Isaiah is perhaps the most important of all the manuscript finds, and is certainly the most sensational. It is written on seventeen sheets of leather sewed end to end, in fifty-four columns of writing, and in its entirety is more than twenty-four feet in length.

The manuscript has been dated as belonging to the second half of the second century B.C. If this dating is correct, it is the oldest extant copy of any biblical book. This fact is of the utmost importance, for previous to the discovery of the scroll the earliest copies of portions of the Hebrew Bible were only as old as the tenth century A.D. Here, then, in this new discovery, is a copy of an Old Testament book, antedating by about one thousand years any previously known copies in the Hebrew language. On the whole the text shows a remarkable faithfulness to the Hebrew text already in our possession. There are, however, some minor divergences, principally in the matter of spelling. The importance of such an early witness to the text of the book of Isaiah can scarcely be over-estimated.

The first to identify the scroll, it seems, was a great Catholic biblical scholar, J. P. M. van der Ploeg of Nijmegan, Netherlands. He was granted the privilege of seeing the scrolls, which were at a small monastery in Jerusalem, supposedly built on the site of the house of Mark’s mother, and belonging to the Syrian Orthodox Church. Upon being shown the manuscript of Isaiah, he at once identified it. Later, when it was brought to the American Schools of Oriental Research, an American scholar, Dr. Trever, copied out a passage from the manuscript, which turned out to be the first verse of Isaiah 65.

The Habakkuk Commentary

Another manuscript that has proved of unusual interest is one that scholars have designated the Habakkuk Commentary. It is far shorter than the long Isaiah scroll, and consists of only two pieces, sewed together. It is about five feet in length, and contains the first two chapters of the book with a commentary. It has been suggested that this may indicate that the third chapter had not been added to the book of Habakkuk at that time. Such a conclusion, however, does not necessarily follow, for it is more likely that the commentator found only the first two chapters suitable for his purpose. The third chapter of Habakkuk is actually a psalm and of different style from the first two chapters; for that reason the commentator may not have wished to discuss it.

The work is not a commentary in the modern sense of that term. When the author wishes to comment, he inserts after the verse in question the word pishro, i.e., its interpretation is. Then follow the comments he wishes to make. These comments, however, are not a serious attempt to bring out the meaning of the biblical text. They are simply references to conditions existing in the sect to which the writer belonged. It is for this reason that the work is sometimes described as pesher (a word meaning interpretation.It is a form of this word, pishro, with which the comments are introduced.). Thus, to take an example, the comment on Habakkuk 1:4 may be translated, “its interpretation is, the wicked one, he is the Wicked Priest, and the righteous one, he is the Teacher of Righteousness.” The first part of the comment is lost, although doubtless it began with words that could be translated as we have just done. The Teacher of Righteousness who is introduced in this comment was evidently a member, possibly the leader, of the group to which the writer belonged.

Similarities Are Formal

Without a doubt the Habakkuk Commentary is one of the more important of the Dead Sea finds. Already much study has been devoted to it. At least one large technical volume has been written about it. And it is this “commentary” which, according to many, is supposed to furnish much of the evidence for the view that the teachings of Christianity are to be derived from the group that produced it.

Does the Habakkuk Commentary, however, really support the view that the ideas of Christianity are in some measure to be derived from the group that lived at Qumran near the Dead Sea? The answer to this question can of course be determined only by a careful study both of the New Testament and of the Habakkuk Commentary. Such a study shows that whatever similarities there are between the two are of a merely formal nature. To take but one example, the Habakkuk Commentary in its remarks upon Habakkuk 2:4 speaks of “all who do the law in the house of Judah whom God will deliver from the house of judgment [the court?] on account of their toil and their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness.” At first blush this seems to be very close to the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone. In all probability, however, the commentator simply used the word “faith” because it was found in the text of Habakkuk.

Misunderstanding Of Faith

That the commentator did not have a proper understanding of the meaning of the word “faith” is shown by the fact that he links it with the word “toil.” According to the New Testament (in fact, according to the Old Testament also), a man is saved by faith without the works of the law. If salvation is of faith, it cannot be by works, for faith excludes works. Likewise, if salvation is by works, faith is excluded. It can be one or the other, but not both. The Bible makes it clear that salvation is by faith alone. Very different, however, is this Habakkuk Commentary. The commentator teaches that deliverance from the house of judgment will come on account of both works and faith. This is the very opposite of what the Bible teaches.

The Manual Of Discipline

This work consists of five sheets of parchment, forming a scroll of a little over six feet in length, sewn together and comprising eleven columns. It appears to be a manual of instruction for those who wish to be members of the community. According to this document there was to be a kind of communal life. “They shall eat together, bless together and take counsel together” (v. 3). In early Christianity, however, this practice was not compulsory but voluntary (cf. Acts 4:32 ff.). The members of the community were to devote themselves to the study of the Law. They are described as those who “turn away from all evil and hold fast to all that He [i.e., God] has commanded in accord with His good pleasure;—to become a group in the Torah [Law] …” (v. 1, 2).

Did the practices of this group bear any relationship to those of Christianity? What, for example, shall we say about baptism? It is true that the sect whose customs are reflected in the Manual of Discipline engaged in certain lustrations and bathing, which seems to have been for a purificatory purpose. What its nature was, however, is difficult to determine, nor is the manner in which these washings were performed known as clearly as one could wish. It seems perfectly safe to say that they were not similar in purpose to baptism as taught in the New Testament.

The same is true of the communal meal of which the community partook. It must, of course, be noted that the practice of such a communal meal is also to be found elsewhere in the Jewish world, and was not restricted to the group that lived near the Dead Sea. The Lord’s Supper, however, was instituted by the Lord himself for the purpose of showing forth His death till He come (1 Cor. 10:20). Insofar as we may speak of historical roots of the Lord’s supper, they go back to the Old Testament, not to the customs or practices of Qumran.

At this point it is well to note that the community that lived at Qumran was a Jewish one. Whether it is to be identified with the Essenes is an open question. Such identity can neither be proved nor disproved. Inasmuch as the group was Jewish, in the nature of the case it is to be expected that its practices would largely reflect the teachings of the Old Testament, and this is just what we find. The roots of many of the practices of the group go back to the Old Testament, and for this reason we find a superficial resemblance between them and certain teachings of the New Testament. It would be a grave error, however, to assume that the practices of the group actually constituted the source from which the New Testament teachings were derived.

Other Manuscripts

In a short article of this kind it is impossible to do justice to all the manuscript finds. We may simply note one manuscript that is now generally designated “The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.” It contains nineteen columns of writing, and describes a holy war between the descendants of Levi, Judah, and Benjamin (the Children of Light) and the men of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Philistia, and the Kittim of Asshur (the Children of Darkness). There has been much discussion as to the historical references and the background of the document and its contents. Probably it describes the struggles of the Jews with their adversaries down to the Roman period.

Of unusual interest is the scroll containing what are designated the “Thanksgiving Hymns.” These are praises to God, much in the style of the biblical Psalms. They reflect a period later than that of the Old Testament and evidently represent the community at worship. They are largely filled with biblical phrases and thoughts. A comparison with the divinely revealed Psalms of the Bible, however, very decidedly shows them to be far superior to the Thanksgiving Hvmns.

Mention must also be made of three small fragments of Daniel which come from two different scrolls. Two fragments contain parts of the third chapter of Daniel, while the other has the section in chapter two where the language of Daniel changes from Hebrew to Aramaic. On the basis of paleological grounds (i.e., the nature of the script) these fragments have been dated in the late second century B.C., less than a century after the date “critics” give for the origin of the book itself. (Those who do not accept the witness of the Bible to itself usually date the final edition of Daniel at about 165 B.C.). This is most striking, for it apparently shows that two copies of the book were in circulation very shortly after the alleged time of its composition. It begins to look as though this consideration will make more difficult the maintaining of a late date for the authorship of the prophecy of Daniel.

A word must be said about the two copper scrolls discovered in one of the caves. They have finally been examined, and a first report claims that they contain directions for the location of buried treasure. To the best of the present writer’s knowledge, no technical report upon them has yet been made available, so that it is too early to say anything about their significance.

A word may be said by way of summary. Over four hundred fragments of biblical manuscripts have now been found. In fact, there are parts of every book of the Old Testament, with the possible exception of the book of Esther. Not all of this material has yet been made available for study, and it will doubtless be some time before it is ready. Great credit, however, is certainly due those scholars who have made manuscripts available. Is it too early to say anything definite about the effect which these discoveries will have upon biblical scholarship? For our part, we think not. Even now it is becoming apparent that many of the positions that have been held by those who do not accept the infallibility of Scripture must be abandoned. On the other hand, as a result of these discoveries, not one position that the conservatives have held has had to be abandoned or even modified. Not one teaching of the Scriptures has had to go by the board. This is indeed heartening, but it is what we might expect, for the Scriptures were not given by the wisdom of man but are the revealed oracles of the one living and true God.

END

Preacher In The Red

LONG TIME BETWEEN CALLS

A few months ago I paid a hospital call on a young woman of our church who had given birth to a child.

Recognizing that the patient’s room was in the same end of the hospital, and in about the same location, as one recently occupied by another of our parishioners, I ventured to say, “You know, I think this is the very same room that Mrs. A was in after her operation.”

Graciously refraining from laughter, the patient was quick to respond, “Well, if Mrs. A was ever in this room, it was long ago.” Immediately I realized that I was in the maternity ward, and that Mrs. A had borne her last child twenty-five years before.—WILLIS C. ROEBUCK, JR., Pastor, Braes Baptist Chapel, Houston, Texas.

For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Suite 1014 Washington Building, Washington, D.C.

- More from Edward J. Young

Cover Story

Evangelist-Theologian: Appreciation of James Denney

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

“If evangelists were our theologians or theologians our evangelists, we should at least be nearer the ideal church.” So wrote James Denney (1856–1917) in the foreword to his famous work on The Death of Christ (London, 1902, p. viii), a book which displays in a remarkable manner the truth that the evangelical theme of atonement is central in its significance for Christian theology. Equipped with one of the most brilliant intellects of his day, the whole life of this humble and single-minded man was an illustration of the way in which a theologian could be at the same time an evangelist, not only in his preaching but also in his thinking and writing.

Centennial Of Denney’s Birth

Denney was born in Paisley on the 5th of February, 1856; but he grew up in Greenock where he rejoiced in the friendship of that man of genius, J. P. Struthers.

At the age of eighteen his illustrious career as a student in the University of Glasgow commenced. Prizes and gold medals came his way almost as part of the natural order of things, and so outstanding were his abilities that already many visualized him as the future occupant of a professorial chair in the Arts faculty—just which chair might depend on his own choice. His choice, however, fell not on one of the Arts subjects, but on Theology, which he proceeded to study in the Free Church College in Glasgow.

After his graduation in divinity, he accepted a call to be minister of East Free Church, Broughty Ferry. There he spent eleven happy years. His preaching, disciplined, incisive and directed to the consciences of his hearers, was essentially evangelical, and, indeed, was influenced by his reading of the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. It demonstrated that his belief that “preaching and theology should never be divorced” was not merely a theoretical conviction of the study, but one which he did not fail to put into practice. He was convinced that “the simplest truth of the gospel and the profoundest truth of theology must be put in the same words—He bore our sins” (ibid., p. 282), and he effectively summed up the urgency of the preacher’s task when he wrote: “The proclamation of the finished work of Christ is not good advice, it is good news”; accordingly, “the man who has this to preach has a gospel about which he ought to be in dead earnest” (ibid., pp. 312, 326).

From Pulpit To Professorship

From Broughty Ferry, Denney returned to Glasgow as Professor of Systematic Theology in the Free Church College. Then, in 1900, he exchanged this Chair for that of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology, as successor to Professor A. B. Bruce. By 1915, when he was appointed Principal of the College, his influence and reputation as theologian and leader in the Church of Scotland were second to none. His death took place in June, 1917, when he was at the height of his powers; and his dying, like his living, was marked by unfaltering confidence in the perfect atoning work of Christ.

Centrality Of Christ’s Death

But James Denney still speaks to us today through his writings, and it is to his theology that I now wish to turn.

The significance of Christ’s atoning death for mankind was his preoccupation; it was a theme which ceaselessly gripped him, and the simple reason for this was his conviction that “the death of Christ is the central thing in the New Testament” and that “where there is no Atonement there is no gospel” (ibid., pp. 283 f.). It is therefore not surprising that three of his most important books should bear the titles: The Death of Christ, The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation (London, 1917), and The Atonement and the Modern Mind (third edition, London, 1919).

His exposition of this noble theme is full, fearless and always gracious and crystal clear. With certain theologians who regarded the Incarnation as an end in itself he found it impossible to agree: “The New Testament,” he wrote, “knows nothing of an incarnation which can be defined apart from its relation to atonement … Not Bethlehem, but Calvary, is the focus of revelation, and any construction of Christianity which ignores or denies this distorts Christianity by putting it out of focus” (The Death of Christ, p. 325).

Objective Aspect Of Atonement

Denney recognized the Atonement as in the first place an objective act of God, and, as such, an act which is consistent with God’s whole character. He thus speaks of the “divine necessity—not to forgive, but to forgive in a way which shows that God is irreconcilable to evil, and can never treat it as other or less than it is” (The Atonement and the Modern Mind, p. 82). So Christ went to the Cross, for “God could not do justice to Himself, in relation to man and sin, in any way less awful than this” (ibid., p. 91).

In this vital respect, as Denney perceived, the modern mind is not different from the ancient; for both “the attraction and the repulsion of Christianity are concentrated at the same point; the cross of Christ is man’s only glory, or it is his final stumbling block” (ibid., p. 3).

The Atonement is, in fact, a revelation both of the love of God and of his justice. “Justice,” declared Denney, “is in no sense at war with mercy. The opposite of justice is not mercy, but injustice, and God is never either unmerciful or unjust.… In the divine nature justice and mercy do not need to be composed, they have never fallen out” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, pp. 104, 233). The meeting of mercy with justice is seen in the fact of the divine necessity “that sin, in the very process in which it is forgiven, should also, in all its reality, be borne.” No element of the tremendous reality of sin is ignored or evaded by Christ. “On the contrary,” says Denney, “sin is exhausted in His appearance on the cross; the cup is not tasted, but drained.” The ultimate truth about forgiveness was, for Denney, simply this, “that sin is only forgiven as it is borne. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree: that is the propitiation. It is the satisfaction of divine necessities, and it has value not only for us, but for God” (ibid., pp. 161 f.).

Calvary Makes A Difference To God

It was maintained by Denney that “if we say that the death of Christ was an atoning sacrifice, then the atonement must be an objective atonement. It is to God it is offered, and it is to God it makes a difference.” In the ancient Church the death of Christ was universally regarded as “an atoning sacrifice through which sin was annulled and God and man reconciled” (ibid., p. 30); and equally primitive is the conception of Christ’s death as a ransom, the cost of man’s emancipation. These ideas of sacrifice and ransom both “imply that Christ did with God for men something which they could not do for themselves, and which made them infinitely His debtors” (ibid., p. 33). Denney insisted that “we cannot dispense with a work of reconciliation which is as objective as Christ Himself, and has its independent objective value to God.… The world with Christ and His passion in it is a different place from the world without Christ and His passion in it. It is a different place to God, and God’s attitude to it is different” (ibid., p. 236)—and the explanation of this is that it is God’s complete and final act on behalf of sinners: “the one thing needful for the salvation of sinners was once for all done and endured at the cross” (ibid., p. 284).

Subjective Side Emphasized Also

Yet it must not be thought that Denney failed to appreciate that the subjective aspect of the Atonement is also of importance. One who emphasized, as he did, experience as a theological criterion was not likely to make this mistake. “The work of reconciliation,” he affirmed, “must have justice done to its subjective as well as its objective reference; the doctrine must recognise its ultimate effect in man as well as its value for God” (ibid., p. 109).

It is true that he spoke of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo as “the truest and greatest book on the Atonement that has ever been written” (The Atonement and the Modern Mind, p. 84), but this did not prevent Denney from criticizing the book’s serious inadequacies, nor from appreciating what is of value in Abelard’s view of the Atonement as a demonstration of divine love. Denney urged, however, that “the death of Christ can only be regarded as a demonstration of love to sinners, if it can be defined or interpreted as having some necessary relation to their sins” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 79).

Significance Of Christ’s Life

Nor should it be imagined that Denney underestimated the significance of Christ’s life as integrally connected with his redeeming function. His study of the New Testament led him to see that Christ’s life “attains its true interpretation only as we find in it everywhere the power and purpose of His death.” So assured was Denney of this truth that he felt able to define Christ’s life as “part of His death: a deliberate and conscious descent, ever deeper and deeper, into the dark valley where at the last hour the last reality of sin was to be met and borne” (The Atonement and the Modern Mind, pp. 108 ff.). But, thanks be to God, Christ’s death is not the end of the story, for it is followed by His resurrection from the dead. “The New Testament,” says Denney, “preaches a Christ who was dead and is alive, not a Christ who was alive and is dead.… To preach the Atonement means not only to preach One who bore our sins in death, but One who by rising again from the dead demonstrated the final defeat of sin, and One who comes in the power of His risen life … to make all who commit themselves to Him in faith partakers in His victory” (ibid., p. 112).

The Atonement And Our Century

This brings us to the question of the reality of the Atonement for man in this twentieth century. What, to use the modern terminology, is its existential significance, if any? This was a question of which Denney was keenly aware.

But he was first of all convinced of the historical foundations of Christianity. “The whole power of Christianity is in its historical character,” he asserted, “and to replace its sublime and tragic facts by a system of ideas, however true and imposing, is to destroy it altogether” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 131).

But it is precisely in relation to this soteriological history that the existential import of Christianity must be perceived. “There is certainly no reconciliation but through the historical Christ: there is no other Christ of whom we know anything whatever. But,” he adds, “the historical Christ does not belong to the past. The living Spirit of God makes Him present and eternal; it is not from Palestine, or from the first century of the Christian era, but here and now that His reconciling power is felt” (ibid., p. 9). In this sense the Christian believer today is no more remote from Christ and His power than was, for example, the Apostle Paul nineteen hundred years ago. Paul was not philosophizing in the abstract or indulging in academic theological speculation when he wrote his epistles. On the contrary, he was writing of what he had himself experienced. He knew the power of the risen Christ as a reality in his own life; and the same has been true of every believer in every age. With this in mind, Denney was even willing to state that “the basis of all theological doctrine is experience” (ibid., p. 199; cf. Jesus and the Gospel, third edition, London, 1909, p. 36). Thus, while maintaining the full historical character of the Christian religion, he stressed that its saving truth is not limited to the past, but is “here, in the living Christ and in the experience of Christians” (ibid., p. 376).

God Demands A Response Of Faith

The response which God demands from man to the finished work of Christ is that of faith. “He must trust himself to such love instantly, unreservedly, for ever,” says Denney. “He cannot negotiate with God about it.… The only right thing to do is to trust it, to let go, to abandon ourselves to it, keeping nothing back” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 163). Faith, he explains, is man’s “absolute committal of himself for ever to the sin-bearing love of God for salvation.” Faith, indeed, is “just as truly the whole of Christianity subjectively as Christ is the whole of it objectively” (ibid., p. 291). And when he describes the life of faith as “passionate identification” of the sinner with Christ in trust and love, and as “self-abandonment” to God’s redeeming love in Christ, his words have a genuinely existential ring about them (ibid., p. 324).

Impatience With Creeds

Linked with his emphasis on the criterion of experience was Denney’s dislike of creedal formulations. He felt that there was an ever-present danger lest through their imposition, faith in a person should be displaced, all unconsciously, in favor of faith in articles, and lest any “preliminary demand for orthodoxy” should act as a barrier “between the soul and the reconciling love of God in Christ” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 109). It was his opinion that the process of intellectualization of the faith was responsible for the transformation, or deformation, of the primitive Church into “the historic Catholic Church.” The metamorphosis of the Church he summed up in three stages: “first a holy society, then a society of true doctrine, and finally a clerical polity” (Studies in Theology, eighth edition, London, 1904, pp. 193 ff.), or hierarchical institution. This, no doubt, is an over-simplification of history, but that does not mean that there is no truth in it. Here, however, we feel bound to urge, against Denney, that the New Testament shows that the preservation of “true doctrine” was very much an apostolic concern—a concern, that is, of the original Church.

What Denney was contending for was the view of Christianity, “not as a theological system, but as a religious life” (Jesus and the Gospel, p. 381), and he was insistent that no Christian was “bound to any Christology, or to any doctrine of the work of Christ” (ibid., p. 382), but to Christ alone. Not, of course, that Denney disparaged the need for Christians to achieve an appreciation of the intellectual implications of their faith, otherwise he would never have devoted his energies to the task of theology; but he demanded for every believer “entire intellectual freedom” (ibid., p. 384), to think things out for himself. The requirement of subscription to “elaborate creeds” he regarded as divisive in the Church, and he advocated the introduction of a brief and simple affirmation of faith which, by contrast, would stand as a “symbol of the Church’s unity.” The formula he proposed was: “I believe in God through Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord and Saviour” (ibid., p. 398).

Weakness In Doctrinal Position

Once again, it may be objected, Denney has produced an over-simplification. An affirmation of this sort, simple though it is, presupposes not only a doctrine of the person and work of Christ, but also, if it is to be meaningful, a right doctrine. It cannot be divorced from Christology and soteriology—a fact to which, somewhat ironically, Denney’s own careful and extensive writings bear testimony. To contemplate with complacency, as he did, the unity, under cover of this formula, of Arians and Athanasians (ibid., pp. 402 f.), is to fail to perceive that Arianism strikes at the very foundation of redemption in Christ. We do not dispute that many holding Arian views may at the same time have exercised a vital saving faith in Christ, but that does not justify Arianism any more than the presence of hypocrites among the orthodox disqualifies orthodoxy. Nicene Christology cannot be dismissed (as Denney wished to dismiss it) as “explaining nothing,” nor should an otherwise laudable zeal for unity in the Church be permitted to blind us to the necessity for right doctrine.

It is also necessary to suggest that Denney did less than justice to the scriptural evidence when he opposed the classic doctrine of the Trinity, rejecting in particular the personality of the Holy Spirit, whom he defined impersonally as “an experience which comes to people through faith,” the “experience of power, life, and joy” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, pp. 308 f.).

When his work is viewed as a whole, however, such blemishes as have been pointed out are seen to be incidental; but they are blemishes, nonetheless, and candor demands that they should be pointed out, for they indicate a weak point at the basis of his thinking. That weak point, in our estimation, may be described as an undue bias, in an otherwise finely balanced mind, towards a type of pragmatic subjectivism. But having said that, we remember that James Denney, like the rest of us, was not immune to human frailty and inconsistency.

Unity Of New Testament

The radical and frequently destructive criticism of the New Testament which was at its height in Denney’s day, particularly in Germany, caused him to give himself to a searching and systematic study of the New Testament writings, so that he might assess the validity of this criticism. His verdict was that the New Testament is essentially a unity. In his judgment, the contrasts found within it are not oppositions and there is no justification for speaking, as many were then doing, of “antagonism between the gospel of Jesus and that of Paul, or Peter, or John” (ibid., p. 129). Nor did he approve of the view that the thought-forms of St. Paul are antiquated, incomprehensible, and therefore unacceptable to modern man. To speak like this he denounced as “flying in the face of history and experience.” Denney’s answer here, his appeal to history and experience, seems to me to be irrefutable. The Church today, and not least the theologians, should give careful heed to these words which rose from the wisdom and warmth of his evangelical heart: “There have always been people who found Paul intelligible and accepted the gospel as he preached it,” he said. “There are such people still, if not in theological class rooms, then in mission halls, at street corners, in lonely rooms. It is not historical scholarship that is wanted for the understanding of him, and neither is it the insight of genius: it is despair. Paul did not preach for scholars, nor even for philosophers; he preached for sinners.”

These words show us the essential Denney, the man whose great passion was the Gospel of Jesus Christ as God’s remedy for sinful mankind. They show us, in short, one who was truly an evangelist-theologian.

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, B.D., M.A., is former secretary, Church Society (Church of England); former vice-president, Tyndale Hall.

- More from Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

Review of Current Religious Thought: November 12, 1956

John H. Gerstner

In some fifty current periodicals, one theme paces the field: neo-orthodoxy. Qumram takes second place; church union, third; and the ordination of women, “also ran.” We restrict our observations to this topic.

Theology Today has devoted virtually its whole issue (October 1956) to an American literary celebration of Karl Barth’s seventieth birthday. Princeton Seminary’s president, Dr. John A. Mackay, honors the Basler as his deliverer from the traditional view of biblical inspiration. “How liberating it has been for Christian faith—mine and that of a multitude of others—that a high view of Holy Scripture and the reality of biblical authority is not bound up with the genetic or historical problem of the composition of the books!”

Dr. Norman F. Langford (Secretary of the Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.) finds Barth still more liberating. “He has shown me that theology can never come to repose in a fixed orthodoxy—not even a neo-orthodoxy!—but must ever be moving on with no knowledge of where the journey will lead.”

¶ Some able articles on Barth, as well as additional testimonies to him, are found in this issue. Of special value for the sheer understanding of Barth is Arthur C. Cochrane’s summarization of Kirchliche Dogmatik, Vol. IV, Part 2, entitled “The Doctrine of Sanctification.” One general emphasis found here and elsewhere is that Barth’s theological shift in recent years has been from transcendence to incarnation (or transcendence viewed in relation to man).

This “shift” has led some to think Barth is becoming more evangelical, and that thinking in turn led Dr. Cornelius Van Til to write an article, “Has Karl Barth Become Orthodox?” (Westminster Theological Journal, May, 1954). This he not only answers with a documented negative but concludes with these words which Van Til’s friends say he believes today more than ever. “No heresy that appeared at any of these times [referring to times of Nicea, Dort and Westminster] was so deeply and ultimately destructive of the gospel as is the theology of Barth. Never in the history of the church has the triune God been so completely and inextricably intertwined with His own creature as He has been in modern dialectical thought.”

While Interpretation (July, 1956) was in no sense dedicated to Karl Barth, at least two important articles show the master’s stamp. Joseph Haroutunian, of McCormick Seminary, in “The Doctrine of the Ascension” writes that Christ “did not rise bodily, so as to be confined to the space of the creatures. He did not rise in spirit, so as to be the ghost of the man who lived among us. He himself arose, in his humanity as well as his divinity, and he ascended to heaven as Jesus Christ, and he is the Head of the Body … This is … the same revelation and hiddenness in the Ascension as it is in the Incarnation.” Edinburgh’s T. F. Torrance in “The Israel of God” gives a view of Israel’s rejection (which involves election.) (For a clear statement of Barth’s view, the final issue, February 1956, of The Calvin Forum, to which we say a regretful farewell, may be consulted). But getting back to Dr. Torrance, we hear him saying: “… within the Church of Christ, the Israel of God, there will be a special place for Israel as a people, and that even in its present blindness or rejection, Israel has a unique mission in the world, for by his election of Israel God has once and for all bound the salvation of mankind with Israel.” He cites Paul’s analogy of a root with its branches lopped off (Israel) and the new branches grafted in (Gentiles) as showing that even rejected Israel is tied up with the elected people!

¶ America’s most famous neo-orthodox theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, also continues to be in the theological and popular limelight. While The Union Seminary Quarterly (May 1956) was holding a quiet symposium on his thought and influence, he was soon to ring a bell-rope all his own by telling the world in general and New York City specifically that Billy Graham was not the answer to their ills. Liberal Van Dusen had previously chided Niebuhr for this type of thing. This time neo-orthodox Homrighausen and conservative Carnell did so. Carnell tried to point out that Graham was doing the best he could, and that Niebuhr too was morally peccable (Christian Century, Oct. 17, 1956). But Homrighausen hit where it must have hurt most, and Eternity magazine in its September issue was pleased to quote these words which would test neo-orthodoxy by its ministerial fruits: “Where are the new orthodoxy evangelists? I have frankly been disappointed in [neo-orthodoxy’s] inability to lead the way in the revival or rebirth of a relevant Protestantism in the local church.”

¶ As proof of the adage that whales do not get harpooned except when they spout off, Niebuhr had to take a sharp rebuke from John Paul Roth (The Lutheran Quarterly, August 1956). This was for his censure of the Lutheran Church for its censure of the heresy of the Rev. Mr. Crist. Niebuhr had said in that connection that doctrines needed to be taken seriously but not literally. Roth asks if the incarnation should not be taken literally? Showing a degree of exasperation with the symbolism of Niebuhr, Roth observes that “When Thomas bowed at the feet of the risen Jesus he did not confess ‘You are the event which clarifies the mystery of the divine and gives meaning to the human situation!’ He confesses that Jesus was Lord and God.”

¶ “Two Conflicting Trends in Protestant Theological Thinking” by Deane W. Ferm (Religion in Life, Autumn, 1956) refers to the old liberalism and the new orthodoxy. As a person who will take his orthodoxy straight, the writer stands on the sidelines, but by no means uninterested, in watching the pot calling the kettle black. Ferm laments that “The Neo-orthodox theologians are in the majority—or rather, in the positions of influence and power—as have been the orthodox down through the centuries. The reconstructionists (liberals) are evident throughout the Church and are particularly strong among the laity. Neo-orthodoxy is the general temper of almost all the leading theological seminaries today. One indication of this is that the course in Philosophy of Religion is rapidly disappearing from the theological curriculums. The substitute course is Philosophical Theology, the philosophizing about Christian Theology; the faith seeking an understanding. Present-day reconstructionists such as Bixler, Ross, Germ, Enslin, and Moehlman are almost unknown to seminary students.”

- More from John H. Gerstner

Book Briefs: November 12, 1956

Meredith G. Kline

No Happy Ending

The Old Testament Since the Reformation by Emil Kraeling, Harper, New York, 1955. $5.00.

“Should the Old Testament have any authority in the Christian Church, and if so how is that authority to be defined?” So Kraeling formulates what he calls “the master problem of theology” (pp. 7, 8)—not too difficult a problem if one bows the knee before Christ the Lord. He regarded the Law and the Prophets as His Father’s infallible word—for man to hear gladly and by it to live.

Our author, a Lutheran clergyman, endorses the majority opinion of his fellow specialists in Old Testament and Oriental studies, that the Old Testament teems with heathen myth and legend, falsified history and fraudulent claims of authorship, and sub-Christian theology and ethics. He thinks there are “terrible and shocking things contained in that book” and “the most monstrous contradictions” (p. 162). To modern theology informed by this negative criticism the Old Testament is understandably an annoying relic in the Church’s heritage. Inextricably entwined in Christian beginnings and deeply ingrown in Christian traditions, it cannot be dispatched forthwith and outright. And though it be crucified and buried quietly—for fear of the people who in their simplicity take it for the Word of God—it rises again to confront its executioners anew whenever they open their New Testaments. Hence the Modernists’ quandary, “What to do with this Old Testament?” Actually, the implication that this is a distinctively Old Testament problem for Modernism is misleading, for Modernism regards the entire Canon of the two Testaments as error-ridden.

Kraeling claims this question “runs through the whole of Christian history like a scarlet thread” (p·7). It certainly has been a live issue in the modern ecclesiastical scene, but hardly “through the whole of Christian history.” Such anachronism springs from anxiety to secure for Modernism’s defamation of the Bible (which has created this authority dilemma) the prestige of ancient and legitimate ecclesiastical lineage. Of such it is devoid. Within the confessing Church it is a bastard of recent intrusion. To be sure the Church has always struggled with the difficult task of determining normative demand from mere historical description in the Old Testament and beyond that, of distinguishing within the normative demand between the temporary and the permanent. Such investigation, however, does not call in question the fact or degree of the Old Testament’s authority. It rather originates in the full recognition of the divine authority of the Old Testament and is motivated by hearty commitment to the divine Author’s will.

In surveying critical thought on the Old Testament since the Reformation, Kraeling shows himself as accomplished in philosophical profundities as he is in antiquarian technicalities. His compendium of scholarly viewpoints provides a useful introduction and convenient reference to the essential ideas of a long array of the famous and the less known in the modern theological parade. Especially helpful is his unfolding of the still developing existential approach.

Unfortunately, the historic Christian doctrine of Scripture is largely ignored and appears only as the butt of inuendoes concerning the enlightenment or integrity of its defenders. In the case of Luther the common attempt is repeated to make him a forerunner of Modernism by quoting the worst of his less circumspect remarks. Even Paul does not escape Modernism’s genealogy mania. “The radical line” in his thinking is identified with Hirsch’s interpretation of the Old Testament as the very antithesis of Christianity (p. 239)! With Orthodoxy thus all but unrepresented in Kraeling’s survey, modern man’s reaction to the Old Testament appears there as a wearisome circling about an unsolvable problem—a phantom created by his own unbelief. “To this development,” Kraeling frankly confesses, “there is no happy ending” (p. 284).

MEREDITH G. KLINE

Heresies

The Rise of the Cults, Walter R. Martin, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1955.

The Christian Science Myth, Walter R. Martin and Norman H. Klann, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1955.

Jehovah of the Watchtower, Walter R. Martin and Norman H. Klann, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1956, revised edition.

Here are three books which deal with various cults. The first one discusses a number of cults such as Mormonism, Christian Science, Theosophy, Unity, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Father Divine. The latter two are devoted to two specific cults, Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Rise of the Cults is an elementary book which is designed primarily for the layman. The author himself reveals this in the introduction, and in the light of his objectives he has produced an interesting and informative volume. The material is limited in content and a minimum of facts are presented. This serves to create an impression of sketchiness, but it does not hurt the interest. The movement and description are rapid and dynamic. The intrusion of the author into the book does not lend to its stature, but it creates a note of personal experience. One can rightly question the two dollar price of a book which runs less than 30,000 words and which has in it fewer than 115 pages. One awaits with interest the larger and more authoritative volume on cults which is yet to appear and on which the author states he will have spent ten years of labor. At the moment there is no really first class treatment of the cults in detailed form within the evangelical framework.

The Christian Science Myth is a larger volume and reflects good use of primary and secondary sources. The authors do a thorough job of unmasking the errors of this extraordinary cult, and the analysis is penetrating and solid. Adherents of the cult will find it difficult to answer some of the compelling objections raised here and in numerous other exposes of the movement. The picture of Mary Baker Paterson Glover Eddy reflects the general consensus of opinion by those who have studied her life. It is an unhappy picture.

Of all the cults this is the most illogical and difficult to appreciate from any normal standard. Psychologically, Christian Science baffles the normal mind when it tries to grasp Mary Baker Eddy’s ungraspable, for she reverses all of the processes of reason, logic, and common sense. How otherwise normal people can embrace this cult is a deep mystery. It is unfortunate that the book is marred by two noticeable defects. One is the less than irenic and objective fashion with which the material is handled, lending the impression that the authors are biased beyond scholarly limits, and the other is poor proof reading as evidenced, e.g., by gross error on page 22.

Jehovah of the Watchtower presents a first rate indictment against this cult which admits no logical answer. The authors did justice in delineating the leading figures of the cult and indeed, could have added additional information of a more damaging nature. The analysis of the leading deficiencies of the cult over against the historic Christian faith is excellent, and the examination of key passages of the Bible which are distorted beyond recognition by Jehovah’s Witnesses strikes a telling blow.

One of the most difficult jobs—and it has not yet been done—is that of discovering the true reasons why people embrace this or other cults. The authors do offer suggestions which are helpful, but an outstanding contribution could be made to the field of study by a Christian psychiatrist who has the biblical background and the scientific training.

The authors are to be commended for undertaking a difficult job and for creating what is the beginning of a substantial apologetic against these heresies. We can look hopefully for further additions to the literature about the cults in the days ahead.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Realized Eschatology

Many Things in Parables, by Ronald S. Wallace, Harper, New York, $3.00.

This is a book of stimulating sermons on the parables of Christ. If the reader can manage to make due allowances for the author’s eschatological viewpoint, he will find page after page of fresh, arresting and pertinent observations.

The language is strongly evangelical and delightfully Christ-centered. But as most of the parables of our Lord abound in eschatological references, the reader of this book cannot help but notice that the author’s application is all too often without any other-worldly frame of reference.

Mr. Wallace, who is a minister of the Church of Scotland, clearly belongs to the school of C. H. Dodd and others, which is “realized eschatology.” However, according to Mr. Wallace, his is a “modified” form of realized eschatology. He acknowledges the prophetic element in the parables, interpreting it futuristically in the sense that it is taken to apply to “the present extension of the eschatological tension.” In other words, Wallace sees in the parables not only a contemporary application for the Lord’s day, but a continuing one for our own day.

But this variation upon the theme of realized eschatology in no wise frees Mr. Wallace from a view of history and eschatology which is essentially the religious equivalent of existentialism. To the extent that Wallace modifies C. H. Dodd, it is only in that “the whole sphere of the world today is being disturbed by Jesus Christ,” as was His own day—and this is the fulfillment of the prophetic element in the parables.

Thus in connection with the parable of the Pounds, we read that Christ has “gone to be in heaven” and now “sits at the right hand of God, controlling all things and awaiting the good pleasure of the Father till He shall return.” But, at the same time, the day of reckoning takes place whenever “Jesus comes to face men and reckon with them about their lives.” Then it is that “the truth about men’s attitude to the Lord comes out,” and “men begin to read their own hearts aright in the presence of Christ.”

Again, one reads appreciatively of the “living” Christ to our day until one suddenly discovers what Mr. Wallace means by “living.” He means that Christ must become as real to each of us as though we were among those who actually knew Him when He was living. In other words, for us to “take the living Christ into our lives” means that we must project ourselves backwards 2,000 years and walk with Him there. This, to me, is a new one.

This book vividly illustrates the danger facing historic Christianity today in the form of those modern theologies which blandly appropriate all of the thought-forms and phrases of Scripture but with an interpretation which makes eschatology into an ideal, history into poetry, and the other-worldly frame of reference only an attitude of the mind and heart. The untrained seeker after truth falls flat on his face before he realizes the ground has dropped from under him.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Luke Paraphrased

St. Luke’s Life of Jesus, by G. Aiken Taylor, Macmillan, New York, $2.75.

A translation has to do with the transfer of the exact thought expressed in one language into another. A paraphrase is a restatement of a text giving the meaning in another form, usually for clearer and fuller exposition. It is more a free rendering than a translation. The volume under review must be categorized as a paraphrase rather than a new translation. Dr. Taylor has gone to the original Greek to express Luke’s meaning in each verse, but has exercised considerable latitude in order to be more intelligible to the reader. His purpose has been to retell the gospel narrative in the language of our day. The author writes, “I offer this story I think Luke told. Taken from his writings only, it is a modern version of what I believe he wanted to convey through his story of Jesus Christ.” Again he states, “Mine is not primarily the story of what Jesus said and did, but what Luke intended to say about what Jesus said and did.”

The first section is called, “The Prelude.” The paraphrase reads as follows:

Thus, Theophilus, the Lord came; no stranger, not secretly, but with His credentials openly in His hand and unmistakable from the very beginning. As a matter of fact, they knew He would be someone special before the beginning as men count time. Wherever God’s invasion of Time through the miracle of the Incarnation touched the human sphere, those who stood at the points of contact knew they had been touched. We say this because among us today live those who felt it. Make no mistake: no mere man walked Galilee’s rolling hills and died on Judea’s barren Place of the Skull. He who did so bore in Himself that radiance the pale reflection of which shines from each human heart lately brought to Life by a Power greater than itself.

It is safe to say that for years to come this volume will be helpful to all who desire to appropriate more fully the Gospel as recorded by Luke. This lucid and penetrating presentation of the person, life, ministry and words of Christ is needed today and into the end of time. It should prove suggestive to ministers, Bible students and laymen. No thoughtful reader will leave this book without a deep and rich Christian experience.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Without Footnotes

Ecclesiastical History, by Eusebius, Baker, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1956.

This is a reprint of a great classic. No one familiar with the field need be told anything about the significance of this early church history which has come down to us.

Anyone interested in the history of the early church must sooner or later have recourse to Eusebius. It is an extraordinary document and contains much important information about the progress of the Christian faith. Persecutions, heresies, leading ecclesiastical figures all find their way into the pages of the volume. Contained therein is a mine of useful information about the life and times of Constantine.

The most serious defect of this popular edition is not what it does but what it fails to do. It lacks the notes which one can find in the Second Series of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers which appeared under the editorial supervision of Schaff and Wace. The profusion of notes is precisely what makes this other edition so valuable. These notes are lacking in the popular edition which is limited to the Eusebian text. And the text without the footnotes is far less valuable.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Salient Mission Facts

A Survey of World Missions, by John Caldwell Thiessen, Inter-Varsity Press, Chicago 10. $5.95.

It is one thing to lament the existing gaps in various fields of evangelical literature; it is quite another to do something about it, and not many choose this latter alternative. The author of this work, the Professor of Missions at the Detroit Bible Institute, was deeply concerned about the lack of an up-to-date text book on the growth of the missionary enterprise, and he set himself to remedy the situation.

The result of his labors, and they must have been prodigious ones, is seen in A Survey of World Missions. Prefacing his consideration of present-day conditions by a brief treatment of the missionary movement through the ages, Mr. Thiessen goes on to consider the salient facts concerning the present-day situation in all the nations to which the Gospel has been taken.

He accomplishes his purpose by dividing the world into major areas, then considering each country within a given area as to the land, the people, and the religious situation. This is followed by a treatment of the political history and the missionary history of each nation. In each major section a chart is given, offering a comparative presentation of the more significant facts concerning the countries within the area.

In his description of the missionary history of the various lands, the author has endeavored to be scrupulously fair and inclusive in his treatment of the various missionary organizations that have labored in them.

It all adds up to a tremendous piece of work, which makes a real and much-needed contribution to the field of evangelical literature. Nowhere else is this material available in such accessible form, and it would seem incontrovertible that this book would be much desired, and much used by any missionary-minded pastor; or by any layman who is concerned for the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

Because of the scope of the work, and the obvious necessity of making use of secondary sources, it is inevitable that there should be deficiencies in such a book. There are minor errors of fact, which will probably be remedied in a later edition. By choosing to make his survey nation by nation, the author is unable in any one place to treat major factors which influence the current situation in large areas of the earth. It is possible, for example, to read the whole section on Latin America without getting anything like an adequate picture of the effects of the amazing population expansion and the rise of nationalism on the missionary enterprise there. The proportion of space given to some organizations over against others is debatable, to say the least, and the occasional mention of the missionary work of the various sects is not adequate to convey their tremendous influence on some mission fields. The subject of evangelical literature does not seem to get the prominence it merits.

While these criticisms are significant enough to mention, they should not be allowed to obscure the great value of Mr. Thiessen’s work. He has remedied a serious situation in the realm of missionary literature. There will be many who find not only helpful information and a stimulus to intercession, but cause for thanksgiving in the pages of this book. It represents a difficult task well done.

H. L. FENTON, JR.

Distaff Side

How to be a Preacher’s Wife and Like it, by Lora Lee Parrot, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, $2.00

Here is a volume which can be read with profit. Mrs. Parrot has prepared a thorough and well-organized manual for the minister’s wife, based upon broad experience as daughter and then wife of a minister.

She gives practical hints on efficient and economical home management which would be helpful to anyone on a limited budget. But even more valuable are her discussions concerning problems peculiar to ministers’ wives. She analyzes reasons for criticism and ways to deal with it. Procedures to overcome nervous exhaustion are suggested. She is excellent on the subject of the parsonage, including the parsonage telephone and church-owned furniture! She discusses appropriate dress for the minister and his wife.

While some of the material is admittedly based upon Mrs. Parrot’s personal preferences or prejudices, the great bulk is based upon sound principles of psychology and domestic science and all in accord with scriptural attitudes.

NORMA R. ELLIS

- More from Meredith G. Kline

News Report: Conflict of the Gospel with Paganism, November 12, 1956

Mechanized March By Children Of Israel

A history of conflict, dating back to the time of Moses when the Israelites were enslaved by the Pharoahs, erupted again in recent days when the mechanized children of Israel used only a few hours to cover much of the same territory over which their ancestors wandered for 40 years.

The push into Egypt by Israelis was made through the Sinai Peninsula—a barren waste of land inhabited mostly by nomads. But for centuries it has been an important corridor linking Egypt with Asia. The distance from Israel’s border to the Suez Canal is 130 miles.

A variety of reasons have been given as the cause of the conflict. The Israeli foreign office said Egypt had remained in a state of war despite provisions of the Egyptian-Israel armistice, had sent murder gangs into Israel and had encompassed the land with a ring of steel. The Syrian-Jordan-Egyptian military command had been set up under the Egyptian military chief, with Russian arms for support.

The issue, according to Israel, was stark and simple—plain survival. She was a tiny nation of 1,600,000 set in a sea of 50,000,000 Arabs.

As the Arab nations looked at it, Israel was an aggressive intruder who had seized lands controlled by Arabs for more than a thousand years. The Arabs feared that Israel, with western support and technical superiority, would dominate Araby economically and destroy its ancient way of life.

Many in Christendom, although sympathetic with the plight of Israel, were grieved over the aggression. Whether this was a spontaneous action or one instigated by outside sources probably will be clarified before this appears in print. Christian leaders of western nations appealed to Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion against the use of force. The appeals were rejected by Ben-Gurion, who has been described by Time as “testy … volatile … visionary.”

Some evangelical Christians look at the conflict from the standpoint of prophecy, as well as politics. Many feel that Israel will be converted to Christianity and will possess Palestine. Others feel the conversion of the Jews does not involve the possession of the land. All feel that blessings will descend upon the Jews only when they recognize that Jesus is the Messiah revealed to the prophets.

Undoubtedly, there are prophetic enthusiasts who will see in this new crisis specific fulfillment of prophecy. Such may be the case, but many observers feel that Christians will be wise to refrain from hasty judgment while centering their energies more on praying for all concerned … that God’s restraining hand may be in evidence and that even in this conflict the wrath of man may please Him.

Christian Vision

The ordinary people of two southern cities, Richmond, Virginia, and Louisville, Kentucky, are sending $49,000 to New York so the teeming millions of the famed city can hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ as proclaimed by Billy Graham.

Richmond is giving $28,000 and Louisville $21,000 toward expenses of the biggest crusade ever planned by the evangelist. None of the money will go to Graham. Rental of Madison Square Garden will cost $7,500 each night for the period of eight weeks, beginning next May 15.

Roger Hull, noted New York business leader and chairman of the New York crusade committee, said the generosity of Christians in Richmond and Louisville was a great factor in encouraging New York leaders to face the almost insurmountable problems.

Hull visited Louisville during the final week of the recent successful campaign there to express his appreciation to the people.

Louisville, in many respects, was among the greatest campaigns ever held in the United States by Graham. The exact attendance was 493,850, an average just under 19,000 for the 26 meetings at the Fairgrounds Coliseum and Stadium. A total of 8,189 made decisions for Christ.

Only two four-week Graham campaigns in American cities topped the one in Louisville. At Nashville in 1944 there was an attendance of 660,000 and 8,860 decisions. In 1953 at Dallas 513,00 attended and 5,869 made decisions.

A crowd of 38,600 overflowed the stadium for the final service in Louisville. When the invitation was given, 1,167 streamed from the stands for Christian commitments.

The impressive attendance and decision totals, however, were not the most outstanding results of the crusade to some observers. Ora Spaid, religion editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, said the greatest accomplishment, in his opinion, was the spirit of unity it brought among the ministers of different denominations.

“The ministers have worked together in spite of their theological differences,” he said.

In commenting on this phase of the crusade, Graham said:

“We have sort of forgotten that we are Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians, and we have been followers of Christ. It does us good to forget our denominational differences and just be Christians.”

Hate In Hungary

The rebellious people of Hungary, fighting to rid themselves of communist domination, took their cue from the inscription on the war memorial in Budapest University:

“Endure everything: sorrow, pain, suffering and death; but do not tolerate one thing—the dishonor of the Hungarian people.”

One victory for insurgents in the fighting, which brought death to hundreds on both sides, was the election of Imre Nagy as head of the new government. At press time, however, there was no way to determine the permanence of this victory.

The rebels demanded full religious freedom from the new leader.

Nagy was ousted as premier in April, 1955, after an 18-month rule during which Hungary was said to have enjoyed more religious freedom than under any previous Communist leader.

The premier, 60, was born of a peasant family of strict Calvinist faith. Although a convinced communist who had fought in Russia at the outbreak of the Revolution, he apparently raised no objections when his daughter married a Protestant minister.

During his previous term as premier, he followed the Malenkov economic line, stressing greater output of consumer goods, and inaugurated a series of concessions to public opinion.

A Hungarian broadcaster in Moscow during World War II, Nagy came back to his homeland with the Soviet Army in 1944. Before becoming premier, he held various government posts.

Jerusalem + Judea + Samaria

Answers From Israel

The “dollar diplomacy” of missions to the Jews will never take the place of genuine and active Christian love for the Jew next door.

This was the summary of Donn C. Odell, correspondent for CHRISTIANITY TODAY in Israel, after a revealing interview with a leading Israeli Zionist, who preferred to remain anonymous. (The interview was inherited after Professor Joseph Klausner, one of Judaism’s noted figures, had to break an appointment with the Zionist attorney).

Odell found that distrust of Christian missions often runs as deep as distrust of Arab politics.

The frank questions and answers are as follows:

Q—Do you feel that the establishment of Israel is a fulfillment of prophecy?

A—Yes. This is part of the Zionist vision.

Q—Should Israel be an all-Jewish State?

A—Yes. However, minorities have a right to live in Israel. But the leadership should always be Jewish.

Q—Do you look for a personal Messiah or a symbolic Messiah such as the Jewish State?

A—We do not know who or what the Messiah will be. We do know, however, that he will not be a Christian Messiah.

Q—Do you think it is possible for a Jew to believe that Jesus is the Messiah and still remain a Jew and loyal Israeli?

A—No. This is a contradiction of terms. Jesus represents a foreign, non-Jewish religion. To believe in Jesus means a renunciation of Judaism.

Q—What is your definition of Judaism?

A—All the spiritual values created by Jews that have come to an expression in Jewish life.

Q—On the basis of your definition of Judaism, would you say that communists and other atheists born of Jewish parents are Jews?

A—No. Judaism is an incorporation of spiritual values. To disbelieve in these values is to cease being a Jew.

Q—Does the average Jew believe in a self-conscious life after death?

A—No. There is no doctrine of immortality in the Jewish faith. Besides, every generation of Jews has been forced to give its full attention to just staying alive and has not had time to reflect on the hereafter.

Q—Why does the average observant Jew keep the law? Is it connected with a better relationship with God?

A—We keep the law because to do so is part of being a Jew. Judaism is not a theology. Therefore, we cannot give systematic answers to theological questions.

Q—Would you say that the unhappy historical relations between Jews and Christians are the bases for the Jewish fear of Christianity?

A—Not only this. There is a vast difference in philosophies and moral standards.

Q—Do you mean by this that Christianity is less moral than Judaism?

A—I mean that Jews have undergone terrible suffering at the hands of Christians. They talk about love but they have beaten us with the cross in their efforts to convert us.

Q—I understand that there is a fear of a possible encroachment of Gentile political influence in Israel through their foreign missions. However, there are a number of Jews in Israel who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but who have no connection with any of the missions and who are loyal Israelis. Do you believe that they should be granted freedom of open worship and employment even though they are Jewish-Christians?

A—Yes. No one should lose his job because of what he believes.

Q—Do you recognize a basic difference between world organized Christianity and the simple message of the New Testament?

A—No. Christianity could not have expanded the way it did without its organization. Even though you say that the ministry and life of Jesus have been contradicted in history by acts of the Church, every Jew can find in Judaism the love and security he wishes.

100 Years Of Trying

Evangelical churches in Iran celebrated the 100th anniversary of their founding this month at festivities in Rezaieh, formerly known as Urumieh.

Plans were made at the celebration to carry the message of Christ to 18,000,000 Moslems in Iran.

The first missionaries of the American Board of Foreign Missions arrived in Persia in 1834. In 1835 they began to work among the Nestorians (now usually called Assyrians), who lived near the borders of Turkey and Russia. Purpose of the missionaries was not to form a Protestant denomination, but rather to revive the dying Syriac-speaking Nestorian Church and enable it “through the grace of God to exert a commanding influence in the spiritual regeneration of Asia.”

The Bible was translated into modern Syriac. Books were printed and schools opened. There were schools for the clergy as well as for boys and girls. Christians and Moslems received medical attention. Earnest prayers for revival were offered.

After years of waiting and working, the revival came. Hundreds of Assyrians were converted and became witnesses for Christ.

The evangelical Christians gradually united for fellowship and, in 1854, began to take communion together. Ministers were former Nestorian priests who had accepted the evangelical teachings.

Prior to World War I, the Evangelical Church in Urumieh numbered more than 3,000. After the war the Assyrians scattered, leaving about 1,000 members there. They are now part of the Evangelical Church of Iran, established in all the larger cities.

Less than 100 Protestant foreign missionaries are active in Iran.

W.M.M.

Opportunity Unfolds

Bud Schaeffer, two-time Little All-American basketball player at Wheaton College and now serving in the Far East with Orient Crusades, is scoring with athletic evangelism as coach of the Nationalist China Olympic basketball team.

The team has been training for two months in Taipeh, Formosa, for the Olympic Games at Melbourne, Australia, in December.

Since practice began, Captain Tang and little Mr. Chu, a jet-pilot with 20 missions over Red China, have received Christ.

The opportunity unfolded like this:

In 1954 the Chinese Olympic committee needed a basketball coach for the Asian Games. The officials, on a visit to Manila, found one—Chuck Holsinger, Orient Crusades missionary. Holsinger led the team to runner-up honors.

This year, with the international games approaching, the committee again turned to Orient Crusades for assistance and found a man, Schaeffer. The Wheaton grad had attracted wide attention in the Far East as a player with the “Venture for Victory” basketball team—young Christian men who played hard and then gave testimonies at half-time. Thousands were reached at the games and school coaching clinics.

Schaeffer has requested the prayers of Christians around the world for the Olympic opportunity.

Concerning the decisions already made, he said:

“Holsinger planted, Schaeffer watered, but God gave the increase!”

Too Much Of Good Thing

“Perhaps we have had almost too much of a good thing” is an opinion being voiced in fast-growing New Zealand about “the great spate” of evangelistic activity by visiting Americans and Englishmen.

Remarked the Rt. Rev. A. K. Warren, Bishop of Christ Church:

“In the past year there have been several evangelical missions which have arrived in the country, unheralded and uninvited.

“It is not surprising that those who are anxious to get hold of people who have strayed, or who have never committed themselves to the Christian way of life, should frequently turn to these missions as a way of solving their problems. But I am convinced that we err greatly if we look upon mass evangelism as the one and only solution to our problem. Indeed, there is a great risk in doing so … mass evangelism requires long, careful and prayerful preparation.”

Condition Of Welcome

Political leaders in West Africa are keeping their eyes on the way churches and missionary societies adapt themselves to national progress.

“As long as you show that you are in sympathy with our aspirations, we shall welcome you missionaries in our country,” a Nigerian official told Dr. A. D. Helser of the African Challenge, leading religious publication. “When you cease to show that, we shall cease to welcome you.”

The British Colonial Office announced last month that the Gold Coast will receive full independence on March 6, 1957.

—W. H. F.

Country’s Fame

The South African rugby team was beaten badly in New Zealand recently because of its “failure to observe Sunday properly,” according to a Netherlands Reformed Church clergyman.

The Rev. J. H. Lange recalled that the team devoted the Sunday before leaving on the trip to having passport photos taken, being inoculated and making other arrangements.

“Would it not have been much better,” he said, “if these men, as envoys of a Christian land, had quietly visited some church on that Sunday?

“If our churchmen, statesmen and sportsmen continue to desecrate God’s day on the pretext of advancing our country’s fame, the day will come when we will have no fame left.”

Digest …

Dr. Ralph E. Dodge, 49, formerly of Ridgewood, N.J., elected Bishop of the Methodist Church for Central and Southern Africa.

Dr. Robert G. Cochrane, London, technical advisor of American Leprosy Missions, cited by the government of India for outstanding service in the field of leprosy treatment and control.

Prime Minister Jussein S. Suhrawardy of Pakistan refutes report by Peiping Radio that he said there was religious freedom in China.

Eight-member delegation of top Australian Anglican churchmen visiting China as guests of Chinese Episcopal Church. First representative group of religious leaders to visit China since communists took over in 1949.

Reorganization of National Christian Council of India, aimed at disassociating group from foreign influence, approved at meeting in Allahabad. Foreign missionary societies, not integrated with Indian churches, will be limited to associate memberships. Dependence on foreign funds to be reduced gradually, according to vote of delegates at triennial conference of the Council.

Prime Needs Of Christianity Cited

Four Protestant clergymen of as many denominations sat down in Oklahoma City to summarize the needs and faults of preachers.

The findings came out like this:

“More forceful presentation of hard-and-fast biblical rules with a ‘thus sayeth the Lord’ emphasis, instead of man’s opinion, is needed to meet modern world needs. People have heard the word of man. Now they want the Word of God, because they’ve tried everything else and it hasn’t worked.”

Among the faults pinpointed were:

Vague rambling in sermons with no clear-cut point—often done to please congregations instead of enlightening them.

Pretentious and highly-colored delivery, either with little or no feeling, or an ostentatious amount of it.

Increased cutting of sermon length to “make it easy on the congregation.”

“Toning down” of the spiritual message to “please people” or make the Word of God “flexible.”

Timidity in stressing the harder demands of religion in action.

Members of the congregations didn’t get off entirely free. “Greater consecration” was urged by the ministers.

Signers of the statement included a Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Disciple.

Britain And The Continent

World’s Fair Plans

Wide-awake Protestants in Belgium, numbering only 75,000 in a population of 8,500,000, are making determined plans for God to have a choice spot in 1958 at the Brussels World Exhibition, which is expected to attract 25,000,000 visitors from 50 countries.

The small minority has commissioned construction of an aluminum brass church and hall in the center of the Exhibition. A series of 12 exhibits, showing various aspects of the life and work of the Protestant Church around the world, will be displayed. Total cost is expected to be about $100,000.

Exhibition officials have approved the church and hall plans. One official described them as “the best of all projects submitted until now.”

The church will be constructed so that it can be moved to a new location for continued use after the fair.

(The United States Congress has authorized $4,000,000 for an American exhibit).

A Man’s First Words

What is the message of a minister when he returns to a pulpit for the first time after being imprisoned in Hungary on a false charge of black market currency dealings?

An estimated 1,200 showed up at the 400-capacity church in Budapest recently to hear the words of freed Lutheran Bishop Lajos Ordass, a man who seemingly had lost everything.

This was the message:

“When everybody deserted me and I shook with fear, my Savior called me and took me in His strong arms. He led me through a burning flame and showed me the beginning of a new life.

“I knew then that if nothing is constant in this world, God is unchanged; and to Him, that which was sin yesterday remains sin today, and that which was holy yesterday remains holy today.”

Stott Visits America

The Rev. John R. W. Stott, evangelical rector of All Souls Church, London, and one of the contributing editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, will arrive this month for a four-month visit to the United States and Canada.

He will conduct a series of evangelistic missions for students at Yale, Harvard, Illinois and Michigan universities in the U.S. Students at Toronto and Montreal in Canada will hear him also.

The young Church of England clergyman is a Cambridge graduate with an outstanding academic record. To an exceptional degree, he combines gifts of Bible exposition, evangelistic preaching and church administration. His church in central London is packed to capacity twice each Sunday.

Money Plan Hit

The British Government’s new plan for premium bonds has come under fire from churches on grounds that it is a lottery.

Under the plan, people are invited to purchase bonds which will pay no normal or regular interest. A “draw” will be held from time to time and holders of the lucky-number bonds will receive a special bonus. No gamble is taken on the capital sum invested.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, in his diocesan letter for November, describes the plan as “a cold, solitary, mechanical, uncompanionable, inhuman activity,” with “nothing to redeem” the element of chance.

Dr. Fisher said Christians deplore the ever-increasing pressure of irresponsible money-making. “I believe,” he said, “that the best course is to leave the whole thing alone—if you like, severely alone.”

Evangelical opinion, generally, backs Dr. Fisher.

The Christian remarked:

“Christians should have nothing to do with gambling in any form, not even when it is presented in the guise of patriotism.”

F.C.

Historic Church Rebuilt

The new Pilgrim Fathers Memorial Church in London, said to be the oldest Congregational Church in Britain, was dedicated recently by U.S. Ambassador Winthrop W. Aldrich.

Queen Elizabeth II sent a message saying the work performed by the church members “cannot fail to strengthen the bonds between Great Britain and America.”

The Pilgrim Fathers prayed in the church before sailing for America in 1620. It has been rebuilt three times since the original structure was built in 1616 by martyrs from the adjoining Clink Prison.

Minister Of State

Zoltan Tildy, Hungary’s new Minister of State, is a clergyman of the Reformed Church who was the country’s first postwar President.

Tildy was appointed by Premier Imre Nagy after the anti-Soviet armed revolution.

The new cabinet minister attended a Protestant school at Pappa and later went to Ireland, where he studied at Belfast Presbyterian College.

Elected President after World War II, he was under constant pressure from the communists.

Digest …

Dr. George Fielden MacLeod, founder of Ionia Community (laboratory of Christian living) and chaplain to the Queen in Scotland since 1954, elected moderator of General Assembly of Church of Scotland for 1957.

Among last words of Lasclo Rajk, former Hungarian communist leader executed during purge, were prayers to God for forgiveness, Radio Budapest reports.

Religious groups in Soviet Zone protest to East German authorities against intensive atheistic propaganda campaign said promoted among members of newly-formed East German Army.

Lutheran Church of Sweden appoints two new bishops—the Rev. Gert Borgenstierna, Bishop of Karlstad, and the Rev. Ivar Hylander, Bishop of Lulea.

Training intensified in Geneva for colporteurs (traveling evangelists of Bible societies) at John Knox House.

Church publications in West Germany total 492, with circulation of 16,906,402. Largest circulation in pre-Nazi Germany—10,300,000 … Alcoholism alarming in Sweden. Church says “one no longer dares to hope this is only a passing phenomenon.”

Moscow Radio complains that lack of cultural opportunities throughout Soviet Union making young people “turn to Church for consolation.”

A sect of Islam has initiated missions venture in Sweden aimed at winning converts … In Copenhagen, Roman Catholic has, for first time, been appointed principal of Danish primary school, in which religious instruction, by law, “must be in accordance with teachings of Evangelical Lutheran Church.”

Josef Cardinal Mindzenty set free by Hungarian insurgents after eight years as prisoner of communists.

CHRISTIANITY TODAYis a subscriber to Religious News Service and Evangelical Press Service.

Christian Labor Union

The Christian Labor Association, an independent union which includes prayer and Bible reading in all meetings, has won a foothold in western Minnesota against the giant AFL-CIO.

CLA’s highway-construction Local 78 defeated AFL-CIO engineers Local 49 in National Labor Relations Board elections among some 120 employees of two highway contractors.

AFL-CIO leaders were disturbed before the elections.

“We know how to whip a dual union,” one commented, “but how can you do it if they claim God is on their side?”

More Than An Anthem

Men for Missions, not content to sing an anthem for the five young missionaries who were killed by savages in Ecuador, will establish a base from which trained nationals can evangelize the unreached tribes.

In announcing the project, the laymen’s voice of the Oriental Missionary Society said the headquarters building will be located in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Keeps On Keeping On

Dr. John S. Wilder, in his 50 years as pastor of Calvary Baptist Temple in Savannah, Georgia, has preached 6,128 sermons, made 141,138 sick calls, raised $1,110,759 for church purposes, performed 6,505 marriages and conducted 6,271 funerals.

In addition, he has led 5,908 meetings, written 5,403 published articles and served as president of the Georgia Baptist Association. He is continuing.

Fair Enough

The First Baptist Church of Little Rock, Arkansas, has offered to refund the money of any member who isn’t satisfied after tithing for three months.

Klansmen In Church

Ku Klux Klansmen, known mostly for angry cross burnings, have been making peaceful church visits lately around Mobile, Alabama.

About 50 of the Klansmen, hooded and robed but with faces unmasked, attended services at two Baptist churches. As they entered, the organists played “Onward Christian Soldiers.” After one service, they filed up the church aisle and left contributions.

Mobile Baptist Pastors Conference promptly adopted a resolution decrying “the presence or financial contributions” at worship services of any group “whose purpose in coming may be to glorify itself.”

Postcard Tracts

A new U.S. international postcard, which will carry a message first class to any part of the world for four cents, will feature the national motto, “In God We Trust.”

An eight-cent postage-paid reply card, carrying the same motto, can be returned free from anywhere.

They will be placed on sale November 16 in New York City.

Worth Quoting …

“It is heartening to see so many Americans supporting the faith which lies at the bedrock of our society.”—President Eisenhower.

“I believe the most patriotic thing a man can do is to give his life to God.”—Dr. Billy Graham.

“Deeper life conventions are a dime a dozen these days, but yet we do nothing bout crucified living.”—Dr. A. W. Tozer, Christian Missionary Alliance pastor in Chicago.

Digest …

“The highest fee ever expended for the outright seduction of youth” was $50,000 paid Elvis Presley for appearing on Ed Sullivan TV show, charged the Rev. William J. Shannon, Syracuse diocesan director

Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, to attend Jamestown (Virginia) Festival next April, celebrating 350th anniversary of first successful English colony in America.

Rep. Thomas J. Dodd (D.-Conn.) member of House Foreign Affairs Committee, urges President Eisenhower to insist on “positive guarantee” from Marshal Tito that full religious freedom be restored to Yugoslavia before further military and economic aid.

Country churches, because of population shifts, closing at rate of about 1,000 a year … Lutheran home for elderly people to be built in Sioux City, Iowa, at cost of $3,000,000 … Plans made for $20,000,000 project to re-create biblical Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth near San Diego, Calif. Announced by American Foundation for Preservation of Christian Heritage.

Liquor establishments outnumber churches better than four to three. FBI says 60 per cent of 2,945,216 arrests during first six months of ’56 related to alcohol.

Gideon Bibles soon to be available in waiting rooms of many Connecticut industrial plants. Said to be first Bible-in-industry movement in America.

Shipment of 52 heifers and three bulls, investment in peace, sent from Houston, Texas, to Russia by Heifer Project of New Windsor, Md.

Are Evangelicals Literalists?

J. Marcellus Kik

Literalist and evangelical are considered in some circles to be synonymous terms. Deep concern has been expressed that the growing strength of the evangelical movement may initiate a “return to literalism.” Reinhold Niebuhr, for instance, has warned of the tendency toward literalistic orthodoxy encouraged by Barth and of the danger of simplifying the Gospel in either literalistic or individualistic terms as typified by Billy Graham. A recent book baldly states, “Protestantism’s ugliest feature has been its frequent relapse into literalism, usually caused by making a fetish of biblical authority.”

The Use of Terms

Are evangelicals literalists? The question cannot be answered with a categorical yes or no because of the different ways in which the two terms are understood by their users. To some, “evangelical” conjures up the picture of an unlettered extremist who takes every word of the Bible literally. Without deprecating such an individual—for a naive faith is not the greatest of evils—the historical definition of “evangelical” brings to view a different conception. The term “literalist” is often applied to those who interpret all the words of the Bible literally. But those who hold steadfastly to the doctrines of the Scriptures are on that account often called literalists.

Historically, the term “evangelical” designates one who holds to the absolute supremacy of the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice, and to justification by free grace through faith. Webster’s New International Dictionary defines “evangelical” as “designating that party among the Protestants which holds that the essence of the Gospel consists mainly in its doctrines of man’s sinful condition and the need of salvation, the revelation of God’s grace in Christ, the necessity of spiritual renovation and participation in the experience of redemption through faith.” In accord with this definition the evangelical follows in the succession of Augustine, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, Whitefield, Spurgeon, Hodge, Moody, Kuyper, Warfield, Machen and men of like caliber. Not the aberrant but the normal evangelical should supply the meaning of the term.

If literalist designates one who follows the literal sense of construction evidently meant to be figurative, the evangelical emphatically denies the applicability of this term to him. However, if literalist designates one who retains the literal sense of Scriptural teaching concerning the virgin birth, the deity of our Lord, the bodily resurrection, and who holds to such doctrines as the vicarious atonement, justification by faith and plenary inspiration, then the evangelical acknowledges the appropriateness of the term, even if it is employed beyond its dictionary sense.

Principles of Interpretation

No serious student of the Word maintains that all Scripture is literal or that all is figurative. The evangelical is cognizant of the fact that the Bible employs metaphor, metonomy, simile, synecdoche, personification, hyperbole, irony and other figures of speech. Anthropomorphic descriptions of God are not understood literally. What evangelical is unaware that God is spirit?

The evangelical is not so naive as to interpret every passage of the Bible in a literal sense. His exegesis is guided by hermeneutical principles. He has sufficient literary sense not to confuse James, Cephas and John with literal pillars when they are styled pillars of the Church. Nor does he look for a literal door or lamb when Christ is so titled. A literal beast with seven heads, a literal lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, and a literal scarlet woman are not envisaged as he reads the Book of Revelation. Only a naive critic would believe otherwise of the evangelical.

The conservative scholar avails himself of the grammatico-historical method of exegesis. The knowledge of grammar and of the facts of history helps determine his exposition. In this he is not awed by the external authority of the Church, nor moved by his own feelings, nor enslaved by any prevailing philosophical system, nor subject to contemporary higher critical presuppositions. Higher criticism is applied without the subjectivity that has brought it into such ill repute. The evangelical restrains his imagination in dealing with the problems of age, authorship and sources. By the use of painstaking scholarship he seeks to obtain from Scriptures and history the exact meaning the writers intended to convey.

Spirit Against Exegesis?

Some modern scholars, on the other hand, find no satisfaction in this simple exegesis. The evident meaning of a verse often seems distasteful to a twentieth-century mind. He, therefore, takes the “spirit” of the verse or interprets it with the “mind of Christ.” This methodology can change white to black and “infer” meanings the very opposite of those intended by the writer. The modern scholar’s “omniscience” enables him to determine that the writers of Scripture would do a volte-face if they lived in this enlightened generation.

How often “the spirit” has been invoked to kill the “letter.” For instance, it is claimed that the scriptural teaching of the bodily resurrection of Jesus must not be taken literally. The letter killeth, we are told. The spiritual resurrection of Jesus must have been intended. But the vocabulary of New Testament writers included the word “spirit,” and they would have employed it if that had been their intent. The letter on occasion may kill, but in the twentieth century the critical spirit more often is the murderer.

The envisioned “spirit and mind of Christ” are frequently summoned by the modern scholars to harmonize the Bible with twentieth-century denials of supernatural intervention. The wider context supplied by the growth of human knowledge must be considered, they insist, rather than the context furnished by the Scriptures. For instance, to express the uniqueness of the Son of God, Matthew and Luke related the story of the virgin birth. Modern theory does not recognize the possibility of supernatural conception. Only a literalist, it is claimed, takes the account of the virgin birth seriously.

The historicity of Adam furnishes another illustration. Jesus in the Gospels and Paul in the Epistles regard Adam as a literal man living in history. So does the evangelical. Those who claim the modern mind of Christ, however, state rather dogmatically that Adam belongs to fable and folklore. The Interpreters Bible asserts:

Obviously the book begins in that misty region of tradition and transmitted myth in which imagination precedes knowledge. Few will suppose that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden belong to factual history. Cain and Abel and Lamech and Nimrod and Methuselah and Noah—these also come down to us as legends rather than as persons identifiable in the literal history of a particular time” [Vol. 1, p. 460],

This view is in direct opposition to that taken by writers of the Gospel and the Epistles. Thus the twentieth century contradicts the first century.

Bultmann’s Demythologizing

A recent example of compressing the New Testament into the modern mold is Bultmann’s program of “demythologizing.” Contemporary culture and science form the solid existential mold into which biblical revelation must be poured. The miracles become extraneous as does all that is judged mythical. The inflexible mold excludes among other teachings the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, the vicarious atonement and justification by faith. The final product of the mold is a pitiful human figure poorly adorned with existential wisdom and bearing the inscription: created by Bultmann.

Literal and Figurative

We do not seek to exculpate individuals who take every word of the Bible literally; yet we would take issue with those who affirm that Protestantism’s ugliest feature has been its frequent relapse into literalism. To say the least, the literalism that has ignored the figurative has not robbed Christ of His deity nor the Church of her vital redemptive message.

What is forgotten is that one cannot wave away truth because it is expressed in figurative language. Figures of speech often express truth and reality more vividly than prosaic language. Truth stands out more boldly, for it is the nature of pictorial language to proclaim strong, clear impressions of the reality defined. Figurative coloring aids in the appreciation and understanding of truth.

Christ utilized the metaphor to express truths of his kingdom. The radical change of nature demanded of those who would enter into the kingdom was expressed by the metaphor of the new birth. If the evangelical is called literalist because he holds fast to the necessity of being born again, then lie bears that yoke gladly, for it is light and easy. The metaphor of the strait gate was used by Jesus. If the evangelical is termed literalist because he insists that the wide “liberal” gate will not gain entrance into the kingdom, he accepts that designation as part of the price of walking the narrow path. Jesus employed the vivid metaphor of plucking out the eye to escape perdition. If the evangelical by urging separation from lustful enticements is called a literalist, he bears that title with patience and long-suffering.

Truth in Metaphor

One of the beautiful metaphors describing Christ is that of the Lamb. The evangelical accepts the biblical content of the term. Through knowledge of Old Testament revelation he learns the significance of John the Baptist’s cry, “Behold the lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” The apostle Peter sharpens the content of the metaphor in writing that we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of the lamb without blemish and without spot. The evangelical recognizes both the figure of speech and the truth expressed by it. He does not take the lamb literally, but he does take literally the truth portrayed by it.

The rewards and punishments of the other world are described by the sacred writers in vivid terms and phrases usually employed to signify what physically affects us in this present life. The rewards mentioned in the second and third chapters of Revelation are these: fruit of the tree of life, crown of life, white stone, white garment, pillar in the temple. These are figures of speech signifying spiritual realities. Punishments are portrayed by such vivid terms as Gehenna of fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth, fire unquenchable, chains of darkness, lake of fire burning with brimstone. Figures of speech? Yes, but portraying fearful and awful punishment. Acknowledging them to be figurative does not do away with the reality. If these are but the figures, how terrible is the reality!

Spirit and Scripture

The evangelical considers the Bible to be authoritative in faith and practice. He continues the formal principle of the Reformation. This position has been clearly and adequately stated in the creeds of historic churches. With the Reformers he accepts the authority of the Scriptures. He does not invoke an authority of the Spirit that contradicts the Scriptures. The Westminster Confession of Faith well states of the Bible that “our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts” (Chap. 1, Sec. 5).

Because the Scriptures are authoritative the evangelical labors to obtain the precise meaning that the sacred writers intend to convey. He acknowledges his dependence upon the Holy Spirit but not in the sense of certain Pietists who disregarded rules of grammar and the common meaning and usage of words because of inner light claimed to be received of the Holy Spirit. The same principles, the same grammatical process, and the exercise of common sense and reason are applied to the Scriptures that are applied to the interpretation of other books.

Are evangelicals literalists? If the historical and dictionary sense of literalist is meant, the answer must be an emphatic no. If the loose sense is accepted that a literalist is one who accepts the teachings of the Bible as authoritative, then the answer is an emphatic yes.

J. Marcellus Kik is associate editor of Christianity Today.

- More from J. Marcellus Kik

Eutychus and His Kin: November 12, 1956

OLD GRAD

At our homecoming grid classic I was attracted to an Old Grad type who was blocking my view of the field. Several contacts were made during the game, mostly by his elbows, but I established rapport—after the winning touchdown—when he embraced me and then helped find my glasses under the stands.

When that old boy pulled off jersey 66 in ’26 he lost not only his glory but his identity. Homecoming was the annual climax of his quest for community.

The pathetic Old Grad is a rare bird, but the species is plentiful in different plumage. There is the lodge member variant; in business men’s clubs the cultic backslap is the mark of the order. The most ominous mutation has the widest distribution; the Old Grad Patriot. At a political rally he cheers the American Way of Life with the Old Grad’s compulsive zeal. Secretly he yearns for a Big Game (with survivors, of course, to celebrate V-R day).

The Old Grad is an idolater. He seeks the meaning of life in communities which are only means in life. Loyalty to a group or a nation, made supreme, becomes a curse. Modern nationalism from the French Revolution to Hitler and Stalin has been a pseudo-religion feeding like a heavy-bellied vulture on the corpse of the Christian faith.

We dare not offer the American eagle that diet. To insist in the name of democracy that a man’s religious creed makes no difference if he is a “good American” is to make Americanism the sole creed that is religious. Christ’s disciple is a loyal citizen for conscience sake, but he has one Master to Whom alone he renders that which is God’s. Over all his loyalties is the cross he took up when he denied the world to follow Him. The citizen of heaven is not an “Old Grad” but a new creature!

EUTYCHUS

PEACE IN OUR DAY

Most men and women want peace, first because war hurts them and secondly because it hurts other people. Few—if we are honest—hate war because it hurts God! And so we desire and maybe pray for peace.

Now I never pray for peace, not because I want war, for I hate war as much as anybody else, and have had my fill in two world conflagrations. But I don’t pray for peace: I pray for righteousness, for the simple reason that if individuals and nations were righteous, peace would inevitably follow.

The Bible is so clear on the point. “The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever” (Isaiah 32:17). In Romans 14:17 and 2 Timothy 2:22 the order is righteousness, peace; and note how peace comes second in James 3:17, “The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable.” And so the Christian motto is “Righteousness at any cost” and not “Peace at any price.”

LT. GEN. SIR ARTHUR SMITH

Pres., World Evangelical Fellowship

London, England

AUTHORITY OF BIBLE

Some day—25 years from now—you will write what we liberals have been preaching for years … Jesus Christ is the word of God to man … You conservatives still distrust the Holy Spirit and want “word” authority in place if the Pope. The early church had no “Bible” in the sense you speak … The basic authority of Bible truth is found in experience …

VERNON T. SMITH

First Presbyterian Church

Holt, Mich.

• Evangelical theology asserts, on the authority of the biblical witness, that Jesus Christ is the Word of God to man. And it notes that Jesus provided, in his regard for the Old Testament, a precedent for the view that there exists an authoritative canon of revealed truth.—ED.

STUDY OF MATTHEW

In the outline of Matthew’s Gospel (CT, Book of the Month, Oct. 15) the writer states: “Resurrection and Ascension, chapter 28.” Matthew does not mention the ascension of Christ. It is a studied point … that he leaves the Christ with us.… In the beginning of his Gospel he writes, “Immanuel, … God with us,” 1:23; in the middle, he records Christ’s words, “there am I in the midst of them,” 18:20; at the end, he records “I am with you always,” 28:20.… The error detracts from the meaning of the endings of the Gospels—Matthew with the Resurrection, Mark the Ascension, Luke with the promise of the Spirit’s coming, John with a word of the coming again of Christ.

DR. ARTHUR PETRIE

Seattle Bible Training School

Seattle, Wash.

EBB AND FLOW

First issue good, but anemic—not militant enough.…

LEROY VICTOR CLEVELAND

Henniker, N. H.

It’s nice, it is even crickett and I’ll be doggone if it’s not religion—not this modernistic kind but this plain old Jesus died up for us. Hold up you’ han. Make money for de lawd.

CENTURY LOVER

New Orleans, La.

I had no idea that something so vital would ever be coming onto the American scene … Much encouragement, and my subscription.

HERBERT A. SCHULZE

Immanuel Ev. Luth. Church

Bristol, Conn.

Theological Liberalism has no appeal for me but neither has condemnatory Fundamentalism … Your effort to lead ministers to true Bible preaching ought to bear rich fruit.

F. J. MONSCHKE

Alhambra, Calif.

Right now I don’t see how you can remain true to your announced outlook and aims without a major conversion of your announced staff. The first issue reads much like a “must.” But I am still a “Thomas” for the time being.

H. LOUIS PATRICK

Westminster Presbyterian Church

St. Louis, Mo.

It is what a young pastor needs to keep up with the trend of thought and to receive inspiration.

BOB MARSH

Spring Hill Ave. Baptist Church

Mobile, Ala.

Ideas

The Perils of Independency

The contemporary American church scene discloses significant spiritual trends. Tendencies originating obscurely in the past have now assumed forms quite obvious to the students of religious life.

American Christianity is dynamic, not static. It exists in a shifting historical situation, not in a vacuum. The visible church cannot fully escape this fact of historical change as the climate of the day. From day to day, reactions to it may appear quite imperceptible; in the span of a generation they will become quite apparent, and may even be cataclysmic.

The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth centurn represented a break with both the doctrines and the hierarchy of Romanism. Justification by faith alone was not the only cardinal theological tenet of the Reformers. Intrinsic in the movement of reform was a desire to break with the suzerainty of Rome. Against the papal claim of ultimate authority in the Church and thus in the pope of Rome, the Reformers re-elevated to authority the written Word of God as the sole regulator and restrainer of conscience.

Protestant churches became independent and autonomous bodies, although often within the framework of national states. Yet in many instances independency, or existence outside these bodies, was not tolerated. The nonconformists in England were viciously persecuted. In Lutheran countries, Baptists and others eked out an uncomfortable survival. Even in early America, often pictured as the land of religious freedom, the same situation prevailed. In New England, for example, dissenters from the Puritan hope were exposed to the wrath of persecutors. Roger Williams, Henry Dunster and Ann Hutchinson shared in it personally.

More recently, certain trends in the United States have brought into sharp focus at least two virtually contradictory forces operating in community religious life. These forces are diametrically opposed, representing ultimates or extremes. Beyond them, it is impossible to move much to the right or to the left. These forces have not reached their limits in either case, but are headed in the direction of ultimates. But these two movements do not hold the field alone, for between these antitheses, other groups stand uncomfortably exposed to the pressures of history, keenly conscious that the immoderate forces of extremity bode ill for Protestantism.

The two clashing movements of which we speak are Independency and Organic Church Union, embodied in agencies familiar to all. Their conflicting tendencies are visible in the big cities and the tiny hamlets of the nation. The Independents could be illustrated by many diverse groupings, but the extreme right wing is the American Council of Christian Churches, which finds its larger orientation in the International Council of Christian Churches. Organic Church Union could be represented in its most intense form by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., which is integrated within the framework of the World Council of Churches.

Each has its own tensions and perils. Independency tends to be intolerant, Church Unionism to be tolerant. The former moves in the direction of exclusivism, the latter toward inclusivism. One holds a low view of the Church in its visible and historical aspects, and the other a high view. The one glorifies separateness, while the other reaches out toward ecclesiasticism. Independency remains highly creedal in minute detail, while Church Unionism becomes vague and ill-defined in theological basis. One can easily become Pharisaic, the other Sadducean.

Some may object to any implication that Church Unionism is well-nigh creedless, pointing to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Anglicanism, the Westminster Confession of Presbyterianism and the Canons of the Synod of Dort of the Reformed churches. But Church Unionism relegates creeds to a peripheral position. With the statement that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, the forces of Organic Union halt, and even this affirmation they leave to whatever interpretation a particular group within the Council may wish to put upon it.

By contrast, Independency has become more and more creedal. And, with its dissociation from organized Christianity, this movement has frequently incorporated secondary doctrines into its creeds with an absoluteness that is incredible. A particular brand of millennialism or an insistence on a dispensational pretribulation rapture of the Church is a case in point. Not long ago Western Baptist Theological Seminary in Portland, Oregon, was divided and its faculty scattered over just such concerns. Its creedal statement, which could not be changed legally, was interpreted to require a pretribulation rapture, so that the creedal statement itself was supplemented by the interpretation, and institutional rupture was the result.

Between Independency and Church Unionism stand the middle parties. Many of them have found a mutual ground in the National Association of Evangelicals. Consciously or unconsciously this group is opposed in temper to both the American Council and the National Council. But its position is not so easily defined, since the lines are not so sharply drawn. It subscribes to some concepts of each of the extremist groups, but opposes others, finding its rationale in a mediating view, or perhaps better described as a perspective above the extremes. Extreme positions are easier to perceive and less difficult to defend to the popular mind. Whether they are truer is a matter for debate.

We do not purpose on this occasion to discuss the problems of Organic Church Union, but to speak rather of the perils of Independency. What we say should not, therefore, be construed as a blanket condemnation of Independency. We merely point out dangers inherent in Independency in the movement of contemporary Church history, and indicate some factors with which its adherents must reckon.

One major truth about the foundations of Independency must first be stated. This movement is grounded in a desire to defend the orthodox faith by exalting the Word of God and glorifying the Christ of the Scriptures. Whatever disagreements and errors exist within the extremes of the movement, those who honor fidelity to doctrine cannot but endorse the concern for theological soundness. Such a high goal, however, gives its adherents no automatic guarantee against a blundering course, nor does it, by itself, safeguard the movement of Independency from shipwreck. Indeed, failure to avoid the pitfalls peculiar to Independency can bring about the deterioration and destruction of the movement in a single generation. Independency is as answerable to the verdict of history and as susceptible to the judgments of God as any other movement.

Independency tends to produce a divisive spirit. It refuses to cooperate even with those with whom it is in essential theological agreement. Its concept of separation forbids fellowship with men sound in the faith but associated with objectionable movements. It indicts others for allegiances they have held for years, and often promotes a divisiveness that is disruptive.

Independency usually begins, as we have noted, as a movement against heresy or apostasy. Where this is true it cannot be accurately labeled as divisive. No one can justly inveigh against that form of Independency which comes out of apostasy and holds to a positive doctrinal witness.

But in many instances the apostasy condemned by Independency is not as clearly discernible as is assumed. The movement sometimes arrogates to itself judgment belonging to God. Even though concern for doctrine is necessary, a spirit of divisiveness may be stimulated so that a good end is subordinated and the danger of an evil one looms large. The form of separation with which a movement originates often tends to deteriorate, and internal divisiveness may even raise doubts over the justification of the original separation. Recent history eloquently confirms this danger, and indeed supplies new evidence that the danger stage has passed into ugly historical fact.

Years ago the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. witnessed a movement of separation marked by the formation of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Led by men like J. Gresham Machen, this movement resulted in the formation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. While this denomination was committed to carry out Presbyterian principles of government, the independent spirit within the new group occasioned further fragmentation as evidenced by the establishment of the Bible Presbyterian Church and Faith Theological Seminary. More recently, further division has taken place, caused by a clash of personalities rather than differences of doctrine. Faith Theological Seminary has been rent asunder and a new college and seminary, Covenant, has been formed in St. Louis, Missouri.

Two educational institutions have been involved in recent schisms. Highland College of Los Angeles, a strict separationist institution, lost its president and members of the faculty to the new Covenant College, after an internal upheaval among men of like faith. A similar situation exists at Shelton College. Originally located in New York City under the name of the National Bible Institute, it was wooed into the framework of the American Council of Christian Churches. Then its properties were disposed of, a new location in New Jersey found, and the name changed to Shelton College. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., who was among the early separationists from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and who had separated from the Westminster-Machen forces, was now caught in the toils of a new schism. Deposed from the presidency of Shelton College, deprived of his chair at Faith Theological Seminary, he joined in the establishment of Covenant College in St. Louis.

The charge of apostasy or modernism has occasioned none of these divisions since the original departure from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The divisive spirit that led to new splits was in no sense related to the heart of theological orthodoxy. Independency, clearly, is involved not only in tension with theological infidelity outside, but with the divisive temper inside.

The divisiveness of Independency becomes so highly exclusive that it excludes true believers from its fellowship. Herein lies one of the great misfortunes of extremism on the right. Because Independency by definition is dogmatic and because extreme dogmatism is often conducive to a condemnatory spirit, the unity of the Spirit is easily quenched. True believers are separated one from another. Afraid for the safety and purity of its movement, Independency erects thicker and higher hedges for self-protection. As it moves in the direction of Phariseeism, man-made appendages to the Gospel become all-important, constituting a test for fellowship. Not one’s belief in Christ as God and Savior but whether one sits in the right millennial pew, and properly dots every “i” and crosses every “t” according to the approved subsidiary requirements, is determinative. Ultimately, this chokes orthodoxy in the maze of the peripheral; it majors in minors, departing from the heart of the true faith while protesting that it alone possesses the “real” truth.

Another peril of Independency lies in its refusal to communicate with those with whom it is in disagreement. This results often in shocking rudeness and incivility. It refuses to reckon with the possibility that other camps may hold sincere and earnest seekers after truth. Independency sometimes labors under the suspicion that whoever is unaffiliated with it, if not a rascal, is at least an eccelesiastical enemy. Whether this suspicion arises from a deep-seated inferiority or from the misunderstanding of “compromise” is hard to judge. But woe betide the orthodox brother caught in conversation with the “opposition.” The scourge of the brethren, or a high-level brain washing, is his ministerial prospect. The ideal of separation from “the apostasy” is stretched to exclude traffic with the persons who converse with those infected with the disease.

Independency is tempted easily to use a vocabulary of stigma and reproach. It draws a razor-thin dividing line and everyone is judged by its cut. Deviationism leads swiftly to vicious name calling. Two words common to the vocabulary of Independency are “compromise” and “modernist.” Whoever does not conform closely to the “line” is likely to be accused either of compromise or of Modernism. Differences over minor points of eschatology have resulted in charges of latent Modernism, or of compromise of the historic faith, leveled against some of the most competent defenders of the evangelical position. It is true enough that Modernism has its own vocabulary, and can use it for sharp ends, but this does not excuse Independency for the same vice. “Scapegoating” in its ecclesiastical form has done much to harm the reputation of men true to the Word of God, and to destroy the confidence in them of other true believers, especially among weaker brethren anxious to believe any charge uttered by the tribal council.

But the most serious deficiency of Independency is its departure from the New Testament theology of the Church. If any teaching is clear in the New Testament, it is the teaching of the unity of the true body of Christ. A transcendental outlook detaches Independency from the present historical scene in relation to the heavenly and otherworldly side of life. This detachment produces more and more fragmentation, and encourages militant opposition to efforts looking toward an undivided Church. While concentrating on the heavenly body, or the invisible Church, Independency often loses sight of the empirical Church in history, and fails to realize its own continuity with this historical phenomenon. “Not of this world” is unfortunately and erroneously taken to be the virtual equivalent of “not in this world.” But Christianity teaches an ambivalence the Church cannot escape: it is both “not of this world” and “in this world” at the same time.

If Independency is not to disintegrate in riot, it must reconstruct its theology of the Church in the light of biblical teaching. The solution of its related problems does not lie in easy acquiescence to a completely separationist and divisive philosophy. There is a biblically defined unity of the body, even in diversity. The witness of believers can never be wholly transcendental. The Church has empirical as well as transcendental aspects, and neither can be overlooked without impairing the biblical view.

Perhaps among the very grave problems of Independency is the lurking assumption that true Independency implies individualism. What frequently has been characterized as identification with Independency is individualism of an unrestrained and frightening sort. This individualism stresses the autonomy of the human spirit while professing to be shackled to divine revelation and repudiating dependency upon other human beings in this relationship to God. True biblical Independency is essentially a group enterprise, banding together men of like mind and spirit for the preservation of what they believe to be true. Only where two or three are gathered together with Christ in their midst is there a true church. Refusing subjection to superior ecclesiastical powers and authorities. Independency has in it the seeds of individualism. When Independency allows these seeds to germinate, the fruit ripens into the man who becomes a law unto himself, even though he may attempt to validate his proclamations and deeds on the assumption that they are performed for the glory of Christ. The biblical Christian knows nothing of such individualism. No man is a law unto himself; each is to be subject to the brethren, and no one person can make himself the arbiter and judge of others.

Independency run riot produces individualism in the end, as depicted in the Old Testament where we are told that in some areas every man did what was right in his own eyes. Independency may be the spawning ground of spirits not truly in the tradition of Independency, but in the tradition of individualism. The end of individualism is a “church” in which each man is his own ministry and congregation, ruler and subject, making and judging his own laws. In such an assembly there is little regard for Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, or for fellow believers who make up the visible body of Christ on earth.

One dare not charge that all who are identified with Independency have succumbed to these tensions and dangers. Nor can it be fairly alleged that the whole movement has succumbed to them. But the dangers have been actualized sufficiently to indicate the historical direction if the movement continues on its present path. Undoubtedly many adherents within the camp of Independency are not victims of the defects we have outlined, and their catholicity of spirit and irenic pursuit of the truth are exemplary. They embrace the doctrine of Christ in the spirit of Christ. While subject to the temptations and tensions common to Independency, they have not yielded to them. They are the hope of their movement, and the guidance they give or fail to give may be the decisive factor that will avert or lead to a complete disintegration.

Independency will collapse if it surrenders to its peculiar temptations. Contrariwise, it can help to purify the Christian Church. To purify without destroying, and without being destroyed, is its critical challenge in the movement of Church history.

[Editor’s note: See also the next issue’s follow-up editorial, “The Perils of Ecumenicity.”]

***

Is The Church Too Silent About Personal Morality?

In writing the Colossian Christians, Paul indicts sins found on every hand today: “Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, uncontrolled passion, evil desire, and the lust for other people’s goods.…”

Americans are now faced with immorality paraded in attractive guise by almost every media of entertainment. That the Church seldom speaks out against this evil is a strange phenomenon.

Why this silence? The Bible says that because of these very things the holy anger of God falls on those who refuse to obey. By this token God’s judgment hangs over America at this very minute.

Any reference to puritanism will bring either a sneer or the raised eyebrows of a people sated by twentieth century sophistication. But unless there is a Spirit-led return to those moral standards so plainly stated in the Bible, and from which we have departed so far, how can God’s holy wrath be deferred?

This is a matter of the first magnitude. National survival and individual souls are at stake. Parents are confronted with decisions which will gravely affect their children. Never has a generation of young people had access to licentiousness, in its deadly effects, as in the case of teen-agers today.

Certainly there has never been a greater need for the Church to assert herself for holy living.

Raise in a church council a question on Christian race relations, and an almost unanimous response is assured. Raise the question of moral conduct, and often there is little effective reaction.

One does not have to choose one course of righteousness at the expense of another. It is the obligation of the Church to show concern in many areas of life. But at the present time individual Christians and the Christian Church are far too silent about the immoral concepts that are gaining ascendency in the thinking and living of the multitudes.

For the sake of all concerned let the Church speak up.

Majoring On The Minor In Contemporary Preaching

There is an amazing deficiency in much of contemporary preaching, a lack of the one thing which lies at the heart of the Gospel message. The average sermon is so concerned with telling men how to live that there is little or no room for the question of prior importance: how to die.

The jailor at Philippi was enmeshed in Roman colonialism at one of its seamiest outposts. Suddenly he was confronted with a crisis involving two men who knew the answer to life’s most important question. His eager inquiry: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” brought a direct answer: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”

There is no more superlative text today. Nor is there any other adequate answer. Strange that there is such a resounding silence where the message needs to be shouted from every pulpit in the land.

The oxygen tent or the crash site with uniformed police escort should not be the place where men first hear that their eternal destinies depend on faith in Christ as Savior.

Our Lord sent out seventy preachers with divinely given powers and on their return they were inclined to brag about their accomplishments. Jesus put things in their right perspective when He said: “… in this rejoice not, but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”

Because no man is prepared to live as he should until he is prepared to die it should seem logical that in the preaching of the Gospel first things should be put first.

International Crisis On The Sandy Wastes Of Sinai

The battle on the sandy wastes of Sinai dramatizes the breakdown of international political morality.

Western objectives, on the whole, are acceptable enough: unimpeded flow of international traffic through the Suez, containment of the provocative and defiant opportunism of Nasser, and an end to the strife and economic boycott which embroil the Middle East.

The existence of the nation Israel stems back to the travail of the past two decades when one-half of Jewry was exterminated by totalitarian states. Yet Israel herself has been ruthless and aggressive, as the tragic camps of 900,000 displaced Arabs attest.

The Anglo-French-Israel initiative stands condemned by a majority action of the United Nations, wherein the United States displayed vigorous leadership.

But both the Anglo-French and American positions leave something to be desired.

Of the two positions, that of the United States carries with it the major force of world opinion, including not only United Nations support, but that of Soviet Russia (for whatever reason). It appeals to persuasion, and refuses to resort to force to expedite the right, in the hope of finding peaceful solution and avoiding the unnecessary risk of devastating world war. The Anglo-French approach reflects the power-politics of the past. Russia has used the United Nations to frustrate her opponents, while aggressively subjugating lesser powers; in such a climate of politics the use of force, as a police action to guard the larger interest, may at times seem justifiable. Timely intervention in Egypt, it was thought, would forestall the provocative solidification of the Arab League around the dictatorial Nasser as its leader, the threat of attack against Israel which might flare into total war, and the strangling of Britain and western Europe by the use of Suez as an economic weapon.

President Eisenhower’s criticism of British and French initiative as “taken in error” and as irreconcilable with “the principles and purposes of the United Nations to which we have all subscribed” was forthright and courageous. It marked blunt admission of another serious rift in the eleven-year-old United Nations, plagued now not only by the frustrating veto of the Soviet orbit, but by the action of two Free World powers that hitherto have sought earnestly to maintain its integrity. It involved further a sharp moral criticism of allies, interrupting the unanimity of the North Atlantic Treaty powers. Both the rift among friendly partners in the western network of alliances, and the widened cleft in the United Nations, called for frank acknowledgment, despite an election campaign during which the President’s public leadership of the Free World’s international policy was doubtless dealt a blow. Yet the President’s role as a moral leader was enhanced by his prompt and principled action.

An air of unrealism, however, clings to the President’s announced policy. That the United States will not intervene in the present hostilities is doubtless reassuring to all who dread the perils of war in an atomic age. But recent American pronouncements suggest at times the notion that war must always be avoided as the worst of all evils. This not only confers an advantage on aggressor nations, but virtually establishes the policy that only in the face of direct attack is anything worth fighting for. Alongside this mood exists an excessive trust in the power of colossal human organization, in the United Nations as the potent resolver of all major world disputes. President Eisenhower’s swift appeal to the United Nations has merit, and the speedy action of the Security Council in part at least answers the British complaint over that organization’s impotence in the face of aggression. But it ignores two corrosive facts. The moral power of the United Nations is compromised already by its inclusion of the foes as well as the friends of justice; Soviet enthusiasm is given United Nations’ action only when it best serves the interests of Russia herself, something usually inimicable to the rest of the world. Moreover, the moral power of the United Nations is now further weakened by the Anglo-French declaration of its inefficiency in international relations.

The irony in Sinai is the neglect of the God of Sinai. Our modern statesmen no longer quote the Living God and his commands. They walk where Moses walked but, instead of seeing the bush of God aflame, they toy with the flame throwers of another world conflagration. They debate expediency and world opinion, but do not bend before the Law of God. They turn eyes to the wilderness of Sinai only to give man-made programs precedence over the guiding hand of the God of Sinai.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Reflections on a Poll of the Protestant Clergy in America.

Protestant ministers of all denominations throughout the United States responded with candor and directness to CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S inquiry: “What change for the better in American affairs do you desire for your candidate if elected?” More than 2,000 clergymen, participating in this representative sampling of personal conviction, mirrored their long-range concern for a brighter America.

Their answers hold a significant interest not simply for the victors at the polls, but for the large and influential Christian community in American life.

In its pre-election news section (Oct. 29 issue), CHRISTIANITY TODAY reported that its random sampling of ministers from all states indicated favor for President Eisenhower over Governor Stevenson by eight-to-one. These percentages were more than confirmed by many hundreds of additional replies received after press time. Yet the manses, parsonages and rectories of America left no doubt that, whichever party would be triumphant at the polls, the national scene calls urgently for specific improvements during the next four years.

The wide disparity between the eight-to-one ministerial vote and the public vote generally sounds a warning against regarding ministerial conviction as an automatic index to the public mind. Less disparity exists between the Protestant clergy and Protestant church members, doubtless, than between the clergy and the citizenry as a whole. Yet the clergy are often motivated more intensely (dare we say, always more highly?) and their statistics provide a specialized index of opinion.

Ministers expressed deep conviction that the future of America depends more upon the application of spiritual concepts in national and international life and less upon a specific political party or candidate. The pulpit popularity of President Eisenhower in his re-election campaign sprang from his identification with an attitude of faith in God and in objective moral norms more than sheer party considerations, although policy issues bore conspicuous weight.

Facing The Right Way

Ministerial anxiety for the enhancement of national life is not confined simply to one party or shade of political conviction. It included, however, an underlying confidence in the direction given to political life by the Eisenhower administration. This accounts, no doubt, for the relative absence of any radical indictment of prevailing American outlook. Almost one in eighteen of the ministers who voted for Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956 in effect wrote: “No change; he is doing O.K.” Endorsement of policy ran considerably higher among pro-Eisenhower clergy who had no vote in 1952. Better than one in three in this category urged simply that he “keep up the good work.”

Although no sense of panic prevails about the temper of national life, the ministerial hope for the future nonetheless incorporated the hope of dramatic change. Appreciative of the fact that America in the last four years had been put somewhat more conspicuously “under God” than in recent decades, they shared no illusion that “God’s in the White House (or hovers very near),” as a writer in The Manchester Guardian recently opined. The significant proposals came from clergy of Republican and Democratic vision alike, as well as from those identified with neither party. They came from ministers who supported the same candidate both in 1952 and 1956 as insistently as from switch-voters.

Foreign Policy A Concern

CHRISTIANITY TODAY returns were tabulated as pro-Eisenhower, pro-Stevenson, and Others (Undecided), with special alertness to switch-voting. In almost every block of clergy votes, an improved foreign policy during the next four years was marked the greatest imperative. Ministers who switched from Stevenson in 1952 to Eisenhower in 1956 provided the lone exception, for they assigned greater urgency to the pursuit of an aggressive and realistic program of racial desegregation.

Dissatisfactions over foreign policy ran deeper than agreement on a satisfactory alternative. Many recommendations were vague and general, favoring a program more vigorous, stable and progressive. The goal of “continuing maturity” and of “less sporadic moves” in foreign policy was vigorously pressed.

Specific suggestions for implementing a program of strong world leadership were not lacking, however, and ministers sought to outline elements of “a more decidedly Christian foreign policy.”

Clergymen voting for Stevenson both in 1952 and 1956 suggested that a realistic grasp of international affairs would involve less reliance on military measures and more active support of international cooperation.

Clergymen twice supporting Eisenhower also worked their creative concern for continued progress and integrity in world affairs into specific suggestions for the easing of international tension. Only occasionally was there a protest against “many blunders” and a demand for “changes in the State Department,” for example, “get rid of Dulles.” Most expressions reflected a more moderate pursuit of “wise and planned foreign policy.”

Specific recommendations divided almost equally along four lines: world peace, the United Nations, foreign aid, and long-term moral perspective.

International Morality

An aggressive spiritual-moral international policy was a recurring plea. Ministers asked for “foreign relations from idealistic principles and not from opportunistic motivation,” for “world security built on a trusting spiritual level, and less on military spending,” for “more consistent emphasis on spiritual values,” for “continued stress on moral and spiritual uplift.” “Russia is ahead of us in propaganda,” wrote one minister, adding a plea for good will. Virtually all who touched the subject asked for a tougher policy with Russia: “less bending before Russian bluff,” “a firmer stand toward Russia … whose pledged word cannot be trusted. Oh, for a Teddy Roosevelt!”; “more drastic stand against Russia and the Communist party,” “no dealings with Russia, no recognition of Red China,” “firmer policy with regard to Red Countries, and passage of the Bricker amendment.” On the positive side were suggestions like: “stand up more firmly for freedom all over the world,” “help the colonial states obtain independence.”

The subject of future relations to the United Nations was as frequently raised. Some clergymen, without any reference to the U.N., urged greater appreciation of world responsibility: “internationally-minded government,” “improved relations with Far East and India as well as Near East,” “more interest in under-dog nations,” “less nationalism, more world vision.” But nationalistic emphasis was not lacking. Comment on U.N. participation was sharply divided, with a seven to five edge for those favoring greater activity. Opposition to U.N. participation was often strongly worded: “take U.S. out of the U.N. and U.N. out of the U.S.”

Pursuit Of Peace

Yet Protestant ministers reflected the need for greater determination in the pursuit of world peace. Only one minister, however, went so far as to urge “peace at any cost.” But others stressed the need for “creative world-peace pursuits.” One in five of the ministers who stipulated world peace as the major concern of the future called for a lessening of preparation for war: “cut spending for war efforts,” “less emphasis on bombs and materials of war,” “more effort on international disarmament.” On the positive side, ministers urged a stronger peace program “by a firmer stand on equity,” “work diligently for international friendships,” “work in the interests of world peace through the U.N.”

Foreign Aid

The controversial subject of foreign aid drew wide suggestion of future overhauling. The conviction that foreign aid should be reduced outweighed that emphasis that it be increased three and one-half to one. For increased spending came such sentiment as: “more Point IV aid to backward foreign peoples,” “more liberal policy of aid to needy peoples or nations,” “use of U.S. power, food, natural resources for world-wide peaceful progress,” “more foreign aid—in the form of raising their standard of living.” On the negative side, ministers urged curtailment, but only one called for “cancellation of foreign aid.” The prevailing tenor was for “foreign aid—but less,” “re-evaluation of our foreign give-away,” “a gradual weaning from federal giveaway.” Suggested principles of limitation were: “stop aid to Yugoslavia,” “support freedom and justice only in foreign policy,” “foreign aid reduced and the money used to improve America,” “quit trying to buy friendship from other nations,” “less military, more economical and technical assistance.”

Changes From Eisenhower

Foreign policy aside, the main areas of hoped for improvement revealed in CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S poll, by those who had supported the Eisenhower candidacy twice, were ranged in the following order of priority: readjustment of the economic outlook (10%); intensification of the spiritual-moral emphasis (10%); decentralization of government, with stress on state rights (7½%); implementing of desegration (3½%); anti-liquor legislation (2%); more vigorous policy of church-state separation (1¼%); more vigorous anti-communist program (1¼%); federal aid to schools (1%). The only conspicuous counter-trend was in the priority assigned by almost 4% to “care for the little man,” mostly in the interest of the farmer. The antisocialist sentiment (3%), included in the figures for decentralization of government, was frequently linked to a plea for curbing labor unions. The top priority was given foreign policy by just under 11% of the clergy twice supporting Eisenhower.

The issues just indicated accounted for half of the returns in this category. They do not reflect, however, vigorous pleas (although in lesser number) for curtailing military spending, special interest legislation, and for increasing old age benefits, strengthening social security laws, improved solution of the Palestine refugee problems, and scores of other problems assigned first importance by individual clergymen.

The Undecided Vote

The “undecided” vote included almost twice as many ministers who had voted for Eisenhower in 1952 as for Stevenson, and as many who had not voted in 1952. Some reflected dissatisfaction with both major parties and candidates. “We need a new party, or a candidate who will dare to commit himself to constitutional government,” wrote a New York City pastor. One Indiana minister wrote that he would vote for “nobody,” and another, “either the third party or none at all.” A Florida minister said he is still looking for a candidate “who will balance well all interests in American life—labor, financial interests, segregation.” The bulk of the disappointment over President Eisenhower’s first term concerned the failure to reverse the trend to socialism, and the failure to curtail the huge foreign aid program and to reduce taxes at home. The plea for a stronger anti-communist foreign policy, for an end of creeping socialism (“get government out of business”), for drastic reduction of expenditures and taxes, represented more than half the replies in this category. The defection from Governor Stevenson reflected greater confidence in the current Republican foreign policy, despite criticisms, than with the Democratic alternative. A number of “undecided” ministers called for a firmer stand on church-state separation, asking, for example, for “a positive stand on freedom of religion wherever American money and troops are sent abroad” and for a cessation of federal aid “to any church-sponsored institutions at home and abroad.” Undecided ministers voting for the first time showed, proportionately, the greatest concern over the liquor traffic in America, coupled with a marked determination to vote the Prohibition ticket. Ministers in at least five states called insistently for outlawing the liquor traffic.

Risks In A Lobby

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S poll of Protestant ministers dramatizes the risk of attempting to express “the position” of a denomination—either the views of its clergy or of the church members—on political and economic issues.

Among Protestant clergymen, remarkable diversity of conviction prevails on the direction in which spiritual priorities are to be applied, and hence on social issues of the day. Protestant ministers do not receive socio-economic directives from a church hierarchy, which imposes upon them an official ecclesiastical “party line.” The turmoil of conflicting Protestant opinion on far-reaching social issues may provide little comfort for those who feel that the church should vote and act with one mind on the political scene. But the unanimity which the church should have is the proclamation of the Gospel of personal salvation, which in turn shapes a new social order by shaping new men. The fact of conflict in assessing politico-social options is not wholly disastrous, although in some respects it grows out of a departure from the principles of biblical social ethics—as when Christianity is identified, as it has been by liberal thinkers, with pacifism, Communism, or some other “ism.” For biblical principles applied even to secondary options will have a way of inspiriting them and lessening their lameness.

But the stark fact of disagreement on leading social issues is a reminder that official church agencies only at great risk constitute themselves pressure lobbies for specific politico-economic objectives. Seldom do they actually have a mandate from the ministers of their churches, let alone the laity, to absolutize such objectives in the name of their denominational constituencies. In doing so, they run the peril of violating democratic rights within their churches, in the presumed course of contributing stability to democracy in the nation.

Protestantism obviously lacks an authoritative view on social issues in a generation plagued by social ills. The division on social strategy runs as deep today as the theological cleavage in Protestantism, although the two factions do not correspond absolutely. More liberal churchmen, whose theology has not undergone a full conservative revision, today acknowledge the fallacy of socialism, and appear ready to combine the theological left with the economic right. In the welter of confusion, it is understandable that men with a concern for the Protestant witness to a culture near chaos should promote the idea of unity in social reconstruction. But to compensate for a disunity which grows out of a basic departure from biblical norms by a unity which is manmade is to jump out of confusion into caprice.

The Present Imperative

The great need today, as American Protestantism recoils from the invasion of its theology and social ethics by speculative evolutionary principles during the century of Liberalism, is to find its way back to the centrality of the Gospel, and to the recognition that hope for a new society is best mediated to any nation through the spiritual regeneration of its masses. In the long run, it is the decision made at this level which will answer the question of where America goes from here.

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The Question Of Nature

The Question Of Evil

The Question Of Death

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The Principal Documents

The Habakkuk Commentary

Similarities Are Formal

Misunderstanding Of Faith

The Manual Of Discipline

Other Manuscripts

Preacher In The Red

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Centennial Of Denney’s Birth

From Pulpit To Professorship

Centrality Of Christ’s Death

Objective Aspect Of Atonement

Calvary Makes A Difference To God

Subjective Side Emphasized Also

Significance Of Christ’s Life

The Atonement And Our Century

God Demands A Response Of Faith

Impatience With Creeds

Weakness In Doctrinal Position

Unity Of New Testament

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No Happy Ending

Heresies

Realized Eschatology

Luke Paraphrased

Without Footnotes

Salient Mission Facts

Distaff Side

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Mechanized March By Children Of Israel

Christian Vision

Hate In Hungary

Jerusalem + Judea + Samaria

Answers From Israel

100 Years Of Trying

Opportunity Unfolds

Too Much Of Good Thing

Condition Of Welcome

Country’s Fame

Digest …

Prime Needs Of Christianity Cited

Britain And The Continent

World’s Fair Plans

A Man’s First Words

Stott Visits America

Money Plan Hit

Historic Church Rebuilt

Minister Of State

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Christian Labor Union

More Than An Anthem

Keeps On Keeping On

Fair Enough

Klansmen In Church

Postcard Tracts

Worth Quoting …

Digest …

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The Use of Terms

Principles of Interpretation

Spirit Against Exegesis?

Bultmann’s Demythologizing

Literal and Figurative

Truth in Metaphor

Spirit and Scripture

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