Eutychus and His Kin: October 29, 1956

HALLOWEEN REFORMATION

Would you be interested in publishing my forthcoming pamphlet, Survival in a ‘Trick or Treat’ Raid? Halloween, it concludes, is not only here to stay, but will enjoy the same cancerous growth other American holidays have known.

First-aid is offered to stricken parents. Have you thought of sending your children out early to ring doorbells, so that their accumulated loot may be used for your free distribution?

Another suggestion for your readers: Wrapping candy corn in Gospel tracts can’t be the best way to bring a Christian witness at Halloween. Why not show old-fashioned Christian hospitality to charm the hoboes, clowns, and other rubber-faced baboons that appear for this junior shakedown?

Since writing this informative booklet I have been hearing more about “Reformation Day.” Apparently it was no accident that Martin Luther nailed up his ninety-five theses on the eve of All Saints’ Day. The indulgences Luther was attacking went on sale that day. Picture a priest posting anti-bingo placards on the eve of the annual parish carnival! Perhaps if we took Reformation Day more seriously we could awaken our neighbors from a misty reverence for Halloween as a ritual of the American Way of Life to a concern about the Gospel which is The Way of Life.

If Reformation Day only means staging successful rallies, however, the term should be used with apologies. Luther’s sense of timing was not that of an advertising executive but of a soldier. “Here I stand” … He challenged the lie with his life. His strong views are now discounted as products of his rude age. Modern ecclesiastical crusading moves in an atmosphere of sweetness and light. Martin Luther breathed the fire of love, which is quite different—love for deluded souls destroyed by a works religion, love for Jesus Christ in whose righteousness alone he was justified by grace. The Reformation was an onslaught of love on specific errors at the right time and place: The castle church door on All Saints’ eve.

Your humble scribe,

EUTYCHUS

DEUTERO-EUTYCHUS

Why not just sign Eutychus’s real name—Norman Vincent Peale?

A.D.E.

New York City

TRITO-EUTYCHUS

… You can’t keep it secret for long, so why don’t you say so now? Merv Rosell is your reticent scribe.…

D.T.

Los Angeles

HELLENIC INFLUENCE

… It reads to me as if you’ve hired Simeon Stylites on the side.…

A.R.

Wheaton, Ill.

GRAVITY IN THE PREACHER

Perhaps there is an element of peril in your feature “Preacher in the Red.” Through the years I have often called the attention of students and ministers to Brooks’ warning in his Yale Lectures … On page 58 he says: “Refrain from all joking about congregations, flocks, parish visits, the mishaps of the pulpit, or the makeshifts of the study. Such joking … takes the bloom off a young minister’s life.” Jowett wrote much the same.…

READER

Philadelphia, Pa.

• CHRISTIANITY TODAY endorses this counsel against pulpit entertainment. But it also finds virtue in the minister’s ability to laugh at himself when others discover that he shares their fallibility and discomposure.—ED.

UNEMBARRASSED PULPIT

… When a paper goes to laymen, it ought to stress the authority of the pulpit, not its fallibility.…

CONTRIBUTOR

Philadelphia, Pa.

FIFTY CENT WAGER

… The burden of proof rests on you: and the odds seem too long to make a $5 gamble the least bit attractive. 50c yes, but $5 no!

DONALD VISSCHER

Oxbow, N.Y.

THEOLOGIANS WANTED

I enclose my check … What we need today is a living, aggressive, Protestant, evangelical, theological magazine. Eliminate the preacher editors; maintain a staff of about a dozen theological men who know what they are talking about, one for each major field of Christian life.…

LEROY HENSEL

Cleveland, O.

BY WIRE

CONGRATULATIONS ON … A SPLENDID FIRST ISSUE

STANLEY HIGH

NEW YORK CITY

CONGRATULATIONS … TIMELY, NEWSWORTHY AND MEATY

GEORGE WILSON

MINNEAPOLIS

SPLENDID START … BE ASSURED OF CONTINUED PRAYERS IN THIS LARGE AND CRUCIAL MINISTRY

F.F.T.

PASADENA, CALIF.

CONGRATULATIONS, CHRISTIANITY TODAY … FIRST ISSUE HAS WARMTH, VITALITY AND DIGNITY … EXCELLENT START. KEEP IT UP.

WILLIAM BRUSSEAU

PASADENA, CALIF.

WESTMINSTER FILMS

FIRST MAIL BAG

Full of top-rate material for worthy use of one’s time … Some of the advertising seems a bit ‘Pathfinderish’ …

H.B.

Pasadena, Calif.

Faith is such a vital element in … mental survival stamina … You are dealing with the most decisive element in politics and diplomacy, as developments have shown.

EDWARD HUNTER

Port Washington, N.Y.

First issue is terrific. Just what we preachers need. It certainly meets a need in my study.

LAVERNE E. ROHRBAUGH

Biglerville, Pa.

Vol. 1, No. 1, arrived today and is two-thirds devoured now, with no complaints. I especially appreciate your Book of the Month department (so far).

K. MARTIN

Havelock, Ontario.

I quite approve the motive and attitude and plans of the magazine.

CHARLES ERNEST SCOTT

Philadelphia, Pa.

Long has evangelical Christianity needed a publication such as this.

PHIL JONES

Newberry, S.C.

Ideas

Pulpit and Pew: An Appraisal

The Minister Looks At The Pew

Mixed feelings possess the minister in his appraisal of the pew, the source of his joy and distress. The virtues and excellencies of the congregation sustain his spirit; the defects and imperfections weigh down his soul. The pew displays the paradoxes of loyalty and indifference, knowledge and ignorance, humbleness and pride, generosity and covetousness, warmth and coldness, sincerity and hypocrisy, good and evil. The spiritual and the natural are both in evidence.

Surely one of the gratifying virtues in the life of a congregation is loyalty. Whether the church is at peace or beset with troubles, whether the church is prosperous or destitute, a band of devoted members exhibits resolute loyalty. Difficult situations beset the life of almost every congregation but are overcome by the steadfast and the unmovable. The minister, too, benefits from this virtue. Whether his gifts be many or few, whether his sermons be worthy of praise or blame, loyal support rejoices his heart.

Of inestimable value to church and minister is the inner circle of spiritual Christians found in every congregation. They hunger and thirst for the Word; they hold up the ministry in prayer; they serve generously with their tithes and time. Appreciative, not critical, tolerant—they form an oasis in what sometimes seems a barren land.

In spite of the presence of those who hunger for the Word, a shock early in the ministerial life is the awakening realization that the majority in the pew have no desire for a deeper knowledge of the Scriptures. Even some of the soundest evangelical congregations have little appetite for the meat of the Gospel. Nor may the preacher presuppose any diligent study on the part of the pew in preparation for the message. He must make the message light and airy to sustain interest. He knows that nominal Christians prefer vague generalities, enhanced by the eloquence of Athens, and have no taste for the soul-searching truths of Jerusalem.

Piety displays itself in many varieties before the eyes of the pastor. He beholds that ceremonial and ritual piety which does not go beyond the outward rites of the Church. He perceives with sadness that sabbatical piety which limits religion to the first day of the week. He views with alarm that negative piety which consists only of a series he observes the “holier than thou” piety which refuses to mingle with publicans and sinners. He deplores the noisy piety that glories only in the ostentatious and vain-glorious display of statistics and visible results.

In striking contrast to pseudo-piety, the minister discovers a proper piety that constantly grows in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. He perceives that those who grow spiritually are those who cultivate the means of grace. Humbleness and consciousness of imperfection distinguish them from the proud and self-righteous. They bear injuries and provocation with meekness. Fruits of the Spirit become increasingly evident in their lives. Charity toward others is more than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. They sincerely seek to give pre-eminence to Christ. For this genuine piety the minister praises God.

To his distress, the minister discovers that the loyalty of the pew often consists in a loyalty to the local church only. Local programs find warm-hearted support whereas the world-wide program of evangelization, initiated and commanded by the Head of the Church, finds only cold-hearted indifference. Indeed, if his efforts to inspire a world-wide vision are constantly defeated, the flaming ardor of the undershepherd is in danger of being quenched by the coldness of the flock.

Puzzling is the pew’s attitude that the battle for souls and the fight against evil should be waged by the minister alone. The notion prevails that the preacher alone must draw the sinner into the church and cleanse the community of evils. Military battles are not fought by the officers alone. Yet the battle against evil is a thousand times more important and difficult. Christ gave no statement, “the ministry is the salt of the earth.” Nor did He command, “Go ye, clergy, and make disciples of all nations.” Yet that is the prevailing impression on the part of the pew.

The pulpit must constantly guard against those who would secularize the Church by changing it into a social club. The pew may be motivated by a desire to attract the ungodly into the church. “See,” they say in effect, “we are not so narrow or unworldly as reputed. We have the same pleasures you enjoy.” However, the minister knows that the way for Christians to attract the unchurched is not by aping their pleasures but by proving that the Christians’ pleasures are infinitely superior. The Church should be known as the source of spiritual comforts and pleasures for which many in the world hunger and thirst. Would that the passion of the pew were to make the world spiritual rather than the church worldly!

Embarrassing to the minister are questions pertaining to stipend. He takes heart, however, in observing that even the secular press is sounding the alarm about the inadequate compensation of ministers. “The noblest profession of them all” is the estimation often heard, but the insincerity of that phrase on the lips of some is seen in their modest reimbursement of the “noblest,” in contrast with their compensation of other professional men, for instance, the lawyer or physician. Perhaps such reluctant supporters regard estates and bodies of greater value than souls. A Puritan divine made the telling comment that pastors should have tithes that they may have a fellow feeling of the people’s loss, and a fellow comfort in their increases. The Lord made adequate provision for the priest of the old dispensation; the church should do likewise for the minister of the new.

The empty pew, alas, cannot be overlooked. It confronts the vision of the minister constantly. It is a silent yet expressive witness of a preference for the radio and television above the pulpit. It attests to the increasing number of Sunday leaves of absence. The empty pew becomes vocal only at Easter and Christmas—with groans caused by unaccustomed loads. Like a tombstone the empty pew gives cemeterial atmosphere to the church. It witnesses of the dead.

Bitterness, wrath, envyings, strife, faction, and divisions pervade the church in the twentieth century as well as in the first century. These sins are engendered often by the union of petty spirits with small-mindedness. Until the world can say “How these Christians love one another” instead of “How these Christians dislike one another,” Christianity can make no deep impact on the life of the world. Jerome records the tradition that when the apostle John was old and feeble, he was carried by young men to the meetings. He could no longer say much, but he repeated the words, “Little children, love one another.” When asked why he constantly repeated the same words, he would reply, “Because this is the command of the Lord, and because enough is done if but this one thing be done.”

Would that the evaluation of the twentieth-century church were written by Him whose “eyes were as a flame of fire.” He would write of the labor, of the patience, of the zeal, of the tribulation, of the faithfulness, and of the charity evidenced in the life of the membership. Also He would write of the abatement of first love, of the avarice of modern Balaams, of the toleration of heresy, of the decline of good works, of the submission to seductive Jezebels, of the deadness, of the lukewarmness, and of the miserable poverty of those rich in material goods but poor in spirit.

A Layman Looks At The Pulpit

That the pew should look and listen to the pulpit with an appraising eye and an evaluating ear is only proper. What minister would desire an audience so docile and wooden as to take stolidly all that might be preached without a critical analysis of the message? At Berea, the Apostle Paul was stimulated by hearers who searched the Scriptures daily to see whether he was preaching the truth. An enlarged number of spiritual descendants of those Berean Christians would prove a blessing to both pew and pulpit.

It is Sunday morning and we sit in the sanctuary, quietly and restfully. The setting is of minor importance. Whether severe in simplicity or cathedrallike in beauty, no aesthetic or worshipful atmosphere can, of itself, supply the spiritual needs of mankind.

Who is sitting in the pews? Men and women, a cross section of the complex and cosmopolitan world of which we are a part. Some are in financial straits; others more fortunate. Some have social and educational advantages; others lack both. Here may be people with skin of varying color. None of these differences is of eternal import, for only two kinds of people occupy the pews this morning: those who have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, and those who have not.

But can our complicated lives be so easily catalogued? Do not men and women have multiplied problems? Do not Christians represent varied stages of development in Christian faith and living? Do not these obvious variants in experience demand from the pulpit an erudite and all-encompassing concept of the Christian ministry and its message?

There are some in the pew today who feel that preaching has tended to complicate rather than to simplify the Gospel message. By dealing so much with the fringe results of sin in disordered lives, it has obscured the basic need of every human heart. Some hearers would call this an attempt to treat symptoms rather than the disease that causes the symptoms.

The layman needs biblical teaching, and the average layman wants it. He needs a dynamic for daily living, not simply an ethic a little loftier than his own highest aspirations. He needs as much to be told where he can get the power to do the thing he knows to be right, as to be told what to do.

Looking over the Sunday morning congregation, made up of only two kinds of people, the redeemed and the unredeemed, we are moved to reflection. Are not hundreds of sermons wasted, at least in part, because they are instructing non-Christians how to act like Christians?

Admittedly, to insist that all sermons be directed to those in need of conversion would be foolishness. Much of the minister’s work must, of necessity, center in developing Christians in their knowledge of Christian truth and in living as Christians should. But many a layman, as he thinks back to his own admission into church membership, knows that there was no conversion experience with Christ. In fact, it is only too likely that he responded to an impersonal invitation to “join the church,” nothing more.

Now, sitting quietly in the pew, what is the message he hears? What is the content of that message? What is the basis for the sermon? Whence comes its authoritative note, if any? Some who listen may be impressed by oratory, by impeccable pulpit manners, by obvious scholarship, by a clear familiarity with world affairs. But the average member of any congregation has a soul hunger for spiritual bread, that not even a glittering homiletical stone can satisfy.

It is axiomatic, and should not need emphasis, that human wisdom can never compensate for divine truths. When preaching is saturated with and centered in the simple affirmations of the Scriptures, carrying with them an authority, a power, and a transforming quality, men’s souls are fed. When this sacred source of wisdom is ignored, people go away hungry.

Preaching takes many forms, topical, doctrinal, expository, and so forth; all are needed. But preaching is real only when centered in the divine revelation that is the Word of God. Paul called Scripture the sword of the Spirit. It is still quick and powerful; it still convicts and convinces; it still lays bare the inmost secrets of the human heart; it still shows man both how to live and also how to die and live forever.

The pew serves no good purpose when it contributes to an excessive sense either of ministerial insecurity or of security. Some occupants of the pew criticize their pastor, no matter how well he preaches or how faithfully he serves them. Others would gush over the preacher if he got up and repeated a nursery rhyme in a pleasing tone with soft modulation.

Over against these two extremes is that great majority who sit and take whatever is given them, either rejoicing or suffering in silence. The consecrated layman, however, belongs neither in the scorner’s seat, nor in the gulley of the gushers, nor in the valley of affliction.

The layman has a right to expect certain things from the pulpit. We would suggest five.

Simplicity. The man in the pew is not trained technically in theological terms, nor should this be necessary. Even the most profound doctrines can be presented so that the layman can understand them. The simplicity of the Gospel message should never be forgotten.

Authority. The Christian message has a basis in authority, the authority of the Scriptures in which God has spoken by the Holy Spirit. Without such authority, something is lacking, and the pew is easily affected by the deficiency. The preacher needs the authority derived from God Himself and His revealed truth if he would speak to the hearts and lives of other men. The biblically based “Thus saith the Lord” still impresses the hearer more than the profoundest opinions of men.

Power. Power in preaching depends on the presence of the Holy Spirit, both in the preparation and in the delivery of the sermon. For such power—and in human terms it is something both intangible and inexplicable—there is no substitute. Human wisdom, oratorical flights, literary style, personal opinions, all will soon be forgotten. God’s presence in a sermon is imparted to its hearers and carried away in the heart. On such power from the Holy Spirit rests the hope for a repetition of the experience of the men on the Emmaus road: “Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?”

Urgency. This urgency is not one of a possibly imminent world cataclysm. Nor is it an urgency having to do with physical, economic, or social wellbeing, important as these may be. The Christian ethic, as a matter of personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and as a way of life, is the most important decision with which man can be confronted. Until the issue between God and man is settled aright there can be no right solution of man’s problems with man. Jesus expressed the urgency of His own mission to this world in the arresting phrase “should not perish, but have everlasting life.” “Perishing” is a desperately serious matter, and finding the way to prevent it is certainly a matter of the greatest urgency. The second phase of the Christian faith—how to live as a Christian—is also a matter of urgency. In both matters the pew needs to capture this sense of urgency from the message of the pulpit.

Decision. A good salesman works for a decision. A good agent for Jesus Christ does the same. We laymen need to face up to the universal need for such a decision. Only too often we find ourselves confronted with an invitation to “join the church.” Such a step is a vitally important matter, but man’s first decision has to do with the acceptance of Jesus Christ—WhoHe is and what He did. Many of the problems in individual lives, and in the church, stem from the fact that only too often such a decision has never been made. There are many subsequent decisions the Christian must make; in fact, they must be made daily. When Christianity becomes a vital reality to the individual, such decisions inevitably follow.

Finally, the pew should look at the pulpit through eyes and from a heart that has prayed for the one standing there as a messenger of God. In a true sense, he stands as a dying man preaching to dying men. He needs and deserves the sympathetic understanding and prayerful support of those to whom he ministers.

The Church moves forward as pew and pulpit unite in one common faith and purpose: to know Christ and to make Him known.

***

The Christian And Political Responsibility

Differing from any other in the world, the American political scene reaches heights of asininity and of greatness, of fiction and fact, which can easily confound even the most astute.

Despite the defects of political controversy, every American should be thankful that, by and large, the charges and counter charges of political campaigns are projectiles of hot air, not lead, and should glory in the fact that he can vote.

In such an atmosphere Christians, along with all others, can be carried away easily by personalities, emotion, and distortion. In the face of these campaign pressures we need the sobering effect of clear judgment, a judgment possible only by looking at candidates and policies with Christian objectivity.

An increasing number of individuals refuse blindly to follow the dictates of a particular party. This is a wholesome trend. There is always a danger, even in a republic, of unwittingly absorbing the totalitarian philosophy of letting someone else do one’s thinking.

It should be axiomatic that a Christian should be a good citizen. Unfortunately, such is not always the case. One outstanding Christian recently metaphorically threw up his hands in disgust: “Why vote? There are but two alternatives—creeping socialism under different labels.” No doubt there is the danger that a large vote enables each party to claim a mandate from the people for compromise measures. But, in a democracy, where free speech is accorded each citizen, and where all can vote according to the dictates of their own wills, the government one ultimately lives under is the government of his own making or neglect.

Other Christians, with a wistful idealism, see the world through the thick lenses of an earth-bound pessimism. Because no particular candidate meets their idealistic concept, they may be inclined to stay away from the polls and in so doing, their idealism is dissipated into the thin air of wishful thinking.

What should a Christian do?

He should exercise his privilege of voting. The secret ballot is a privilege which millions are denied today, and for which many would make any sacrifice.

The Christian should also look both at candidates as individuals and at the policies they espouse. Let him admit realistically that in this world there are no perfect candidates, nor are there perfect governments.

What should the Christian look for? Is the candidate a man of moral rectitude? Does he look upon his office as deriving its authority from God, and his personal life and administrative acts as under constant divine scrutiny? In other words, a Christian should vote for the man who, in his judgment, will exercise, directly and indirectly, the greatest influence for righteousness at home and abroad.

A Christian should also evaluate the men by whom a candidate surrounds himself, again looking for moral principles and personal rectitude.

Furthermore, a Christian citizen should look at the policies espoused by a candidate and a party. Personal and group and sectional admission to the “federal feed trough” is an incentive for political affiliation which strikes the nadir of selfishness. The national good must take priority over personal and sectional advantage.

Finally, the Christian citizen owes it to himself and to his country to pray for divine guidance. The one vote cast according to God’s holy will, multiplied many times, is the strength of a democracy. Those ultimately elected are entitled also to the concern and consideration enjoined by the apostle Paul: “1 exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings and for all that are in authority … For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour” (1 Tim. 2:1–3).

Church Membership And Spiritual Ambiguity

For the first time the United States shows a church membership exceeding 100 million. The latest compilation of the National Council of Churches’ Yearbook of American Churches discloses that the trend begun during World War II is continuing; church membership gains are outstripping population gains. Last year church membership increased 2.8%, population 1.8%. The total figure, 100,162,529, includes 58,448,000 Protestants and 33,369,000 Roman Catholics.

Does this fact that there are more people in the churches, and more professing Christians, signify the spiritual revival of the nation? Surely the United States today is the lifeline of much of the world’s evangelism and missionary effort. And there have been heartening evidences of new evangelical earnestness.

But it would be too much to say that the soul of the nation has undergone repentance and revival. The minister who said that “the world at its worst needs the Church at its best” did not understate the demands posed by our decade. What prospect is there, one university professor in the South has asked, that Christians will grow up as fast as the inventors of atomic energy work?

We need a demonstration of Christian superiority which is culture-wide, a display of the lordship of Christ which extends to every sphere of life on each day of the week. The early Christians were bent on a maximum experience. Their Christianity not only began at the altar of regeneration and repentance, but it did not end with formal church membership. Their mood was not simply receptive, but appropriative and productive. They were dedicated to an obedience to the risen Lord’s commands, not to a mere conformity to the best standards of society. The cross was for them something to live with and by, as well as something to live under. That is why they gave their contemporaries a demonstration of Christianity superior in awesomeness to any of the moral resources paganism could command.

The Tenuous Prospect Of World Peace

To a generation bristling with hope for world peace, the article by Lieutenant General William K. Harrison may seem like “a counsel of pessimism and despair.”

But it calls for sober reading, even by those who do not share in detail the distinguished general’s eschatological views. CHRISTIANITY TODAY, in the course of time, will present representative views of the way in which the climax of history is anticipated by evangelical Christians sincere in their differences. But the present article confronts us with a significant judgment upon the past and the present no less than upon the future.

General Harrison is one of the senior generals of the United States Army, and served as United Nations truce delegate at Panmunjom. In those tedious transactions with the Communist generals in Korea, he carried in his own heart an anguished world’s hope for the end of armed conflict.

That the general does not share the opinion, widespread even in ecclesiastical circles today, that the United Nations (or any other organization) is the world’s best hope for peace, is significant enough. That he should find that hope in Jesus Christ alone is a refreshing reflection of the biblical emphasis that peace, in national as in individual life, is the gift of God. This conviction may not be popular, especially in a generation whose hopes are sociological and anthropological, rather than theological, but that is all the more reason it needs to be voiced.

Solomon’s trust in horses, and ancient Israel’s trust in alliance with Egypt, may differ from the modern confidence in the atomic bomb and in the United Nations, but the difference is only one of degree, and not of kind. The common factor in both is the neglect of the Living God as the final arbiter of the destiny of nations and of the fortunes of war and peace.

Back To The Bottle The Day After Christmas

The editors of Life published a special “Christianity” issue a year ago. In many respects, the issue was one of the finest of its kind in contemporary journalism. Among its virtues was the absence, at this otherwise lucrative season for such commercials, of liquor advertising.

Like much of the religious interest in America, this sentimentality at Christmas has a sequel. A survey of fifteen leading publications shows that, during the six months January–June, 1956, Life carried more pages of liquor advertising than any of its competitors with the exception of one. During that period the New Yorker carried 221.81 pages, Life 127.80, Time 90.60, Newsweek 89.06, Esquire 79.26, Cue 75.31, Collier’s 68.50, U.S. News and World Report 59.25, Look 51.00, Ebony 50.64; Sports Illustrated 44.98, Holiday 42.91.

There is little virtue in putting Christ back into Christmas if He is ejected the morning after. That is like filling Santa’s pack bag with spirits made in Kentucky, and smuggling them in under the cover of the night.

Reformation Day And Protestant Tradition

The theme adopted by the National Council of Churches for the observance of Reformation Sunday, October 28, is “the continuity of the Christian Church in the Protestant tradition.” What a strategic opportunity to present three great Reformation principles unacceptable to the Roman Catholic Church: (1) Holy Scriptures as the sole normal authority for faith and life, (2) Justification by faith alone without any merits of good works, (3) the priesthood of all believers. The Protestant tradition bases doctrine and religious life entirely on the Scriptures.

Cover Story

Christianity and Peace in Our Day

William K. Harrison

The problem of war is as old as man. War, with I its accompanying passions, destruction, and suffering, is one of the greatest evils in human society. In fact, wars have been so frequent throughout the history of mankind that, in spite of the general desire for peace, we may say that peace is only a temporary condition.

Never has the destructive potentiality of war been so apparent as today. Men today are not more cruel; death and destruction are not more final. But within the life span of many living today two world wars have been fought, not to mention lesser ones. In the future we are faced with the potentiality of atomic world war whose area, magnitude, and speed of destruction are beyond anything formerly thought possible.

The Church of Christ is part of the human community, and if it is to exercise a position of leadership, it must face this problem of war. Indeed, of all men, the Christian minister should recognize the responsibility of the Church to alleviate the sufferings of men.

The dilemma of Christian leadership is complicated by the fact that the teachings and activities of Church leaders through nineteen centuries have failed to make any appreciable impact in advancing the cause of international peace.

It would be unjust, however, to say that Christianity has been no more effective than pagan philosophers and moralists. For the blessings of peace have come, sometimes for generations, to lands blessed with godly rulers and a God-fearing people. Even on the occasion of sudden repentance, God has spared nations calamity, as with Nineveh of old. If the Christian moral code, including such precepts as the Golden Rule, were actually followed by all men, wars would undoubtedly cease. The conflicts, great and small, that trouble society would then be settled amicably and equitably.

The Need Of Moral Power

Yet the truth of the matter is that men, in practice, ignore these righteous injunctions. Many people outwardly profess them as proper standards of conduct, but lack the moral power and courage to live by them.

Partly because of the Church’s failure to achieve visible results in decreasing war, human society has tended to try other methods. Declarations outlawing war, the reduction of armaments, treaties proclaiming peaceful intentions, and the establishment of international organizations—all these have been tried as the means to peace. Each has proved unsuccessful in eliminating war. A particular means, be it readily admitted, may have prevented a particular conflict from developing into full-scale war. And Christian or humanitarian rulers have on occasion avoided actions leading to war. But on the balance sheet of history, none of these efforts has been profitable, and nothing indicates that they ever can be.

War Is Man’s Fault

In seeking to understand the problem of war and its relation to Christianity, it seems useful to consider first the question, Why do wars occur? Too often consideration of the matter starts with another question, What is the cause of war? But the real question is, Who causes war? War is a human activity. No matter what the incentives or secondary causes, men do not have to fight. They choose to do so.

The decision to initiate aggression is made by the political ruler of the nation. The mass of the population do not seek war unless they have first been sufficiently motivated by the propaganda and the actions of their own and the enemy government. The very nature of the modern state prevents spontaneous mass aggression. Similarly, the military forces under their leaders begin military operations when they are launched by the head of the state. Although the military advisers may influence the decision of the ruler, he actually makes that decision himself. Rarely does a military commander take action on his own initiative. In any case, the launching of aggression is the choice of the head of the state.

By understanding this responsibility of the head of the state we can see why it is impossible to prevent war. It is impossible to prevent some men from becoming criminals. It is also impossible to prevent some criminals from becoming the rulers of states. Then, when such a man is the head of a state, there is no way, from a human standpoint, of preventing him from launching an aggression.

The danger is increased by the truism that in every man, hidden deep, are those evil tendencies that in some men result in visible crimes. No proof should be needed to show any thinking man that he possesses such tendencies, though he may usually keep them well concealed. Even a ruler whose intentions are peaceful may be so stirred by a particular set of circumstances that his good intentions are overruled.

Basic Problem Is Ethical

At bottom, the problem of war is a moral problem—the very condition at which the Golden Rule is aimed. An international organization, with or without an authoritative executive head, cannot solve this moral problem. Any organizational structure is merely a framework of relationships and procedures within which men act. No organization can be more effective than the men in it. No rules, constitution, laws, customs, or the like have real significance unless they are enforced. Any organization, no matter how worthy its purpose or how stringent its rules, will succumb to ineffectiveness, corruption, disruption, and destruction unless prevented by the moral integrity of the men in it.

The problems of an international government are similar to those of any national government except that they are greatly magnified. A major and possibly fatal weakness of a world government might prove to be the absence of an external enemy to serve as a unifying force. The tendency to splinter into racial, national, or economic factions would, therefore, be greatly increased. Civil war would probably be inevitable because the armed forces would be subject to the same disintegration.

How a world government could be set up without a world conquest by military force is not clear. Only the fear of a common enemy can make rulers of states willing to voluntarily surrender their sovereignty to a common superior. In a world divided by antagonisms and conflicting interests so serious that fear of war is the prevailing climate, is it conceivable that opposing sides can agree on a common superior, or that either side would submit to the other? Only under pressure of fear of war would surrender of national freedom to a supranational government be seriously considered.

The reason for the perpetuation of war is that man will not eliminate it. He is enmeshed in the chains of his own evil will and desires. Nothing that peaceful men can do can overcome this evil, whether by the efforts of philosophy, the proclamation of the “Christian ethic,” redistribution of wealth, disarmament, international organization, or published laws. All men, peaceful or otherwise, must reckon with the fact of evil in their own natures. It is folly to assume that peace-loving men are sinless and that only the warmongers are sinful. The desire for peace is not an abiding characteristic of unregenerate man.

Supernatural Aid Necessary

In this predicament it would appear that men who face the question realistically have no hope other than to cry, Who can save us? Those who call themselves Christian would probably reply that if men are helpless only God can save them. That seems reasonable. If we lack a natural solution, we are left only with the hope of a supernatural one. Yet if one accepts the idea that we must seek help from God in ending war, several corollaries follow. First, experience confirms what the Scriptures teach, that God’s help is not automatic, it must be sought. Second, although the proclamation and practice of Christianity may have hindered or mitigated war, war has not been eradicated. Third, if God’s help is to be obtained, it must be done in a way approved by Him. Man cannot command God. Fourth, as long as men are intellectual and moral creatures endowed with responsible choice, they must eagerly embrace that help which God wills to give. Man cannot bargain with God. Obviously, if help is available but men spurn it, they must continue in the old path of self-destruction. The crisis today is that with modern weapons this destruction could come soon and in degree unparalleled in the history of mankind up to now.

Options Now Confronting Us

Christianity’s failure to advance the cause of world peace may arouse deep misgivings in many Christians, particularly in many Christian ministers.

Three courses seem open to such men. One is to abandon adherence to the Christian faith and ethic. But if there is no hope in Christianity, what other hope is there? There is no reasonable alternative. A second course is to continue to believe that the Christian ethic alone will slowly transform the human race and lead men to solve their disputes by means other than war. History shows little progress resulting from the contagion of Christian morality, as twentieth-century developments eloquently attest. Unless human nature has a sudden change of heart, modern means of destruction may not leave time for this program to succeed, even if it could. The third course is to re-examine one’s own concept of Christianity in an effort to explain the apparent failure of the Christian faith to solve the problem of war, and to discover what genuine hope that faith does offer.

Suppose we adopt this third course. Earlier, we have said that God’s help in ending war is not automatic but must be sought and that man’s past efforts have not been effective. Now we must seek to understand why this is so. Subjective reasoning and speculation have not found the answer and clearly cannot do so. No known facts in nature or history point the way. The question really is a matter of learning God’s will and the way man can approach Him for help. Obviously, if these things can be learned at all, they can be learned only from God.

The Bible And Its Promises

The original source of information about the Christian faith, still available today, is the Bible. If men will not believe the Word of God, they cannot find His truth by any other method.

Concerning the presence of evil and immorality in every man, the Bible is everywhere consistent. Its doctrine is well summarized in Romans 3:10–18 and Galatians 5:19–21. This teaching coincides with human experience and observation. The Bible also explains why these evils are so deep-seated in men (Rom. 1:18–32). Because men rebelled against God in self-will, He gave them up to those numerous immoralities, cruelties, dishonesties, meannesses and other evils which afflict the race and make wars and crime inevitable. These evils are the visible evidences of man’s primary sin and rebellion and of God’s wrath against it. Here we have a clear, adequate, and logical explanation of the presence of evil in man. Anyone who compares the plain statements of the Bible with the history and current state of mankind cannot fail to see that men live today exactly as the Bible describes them.

In sharp contrast to this dark picture of man’s natural sin and lawlessness are the glorious promises of peace on earth envisaged by the Old Testament prophets (e.g., Isa. 2:2–4). I am confident that these promises will be fulfilled in time and in history. Hence I am not pessimistic about human history, provided we have in view ideal humanity and ideal history.

Confidence in these promises calls forth equal confidence in the Biblical declarations as to the methods and sequence of their fulfillment. I do not regard it as accidental, but rather as essential, that the prophets, and the angels of Bethlehem after them (Luke 2:10), connect the message of “peace on earth” with the Messianic idea. The full and final answer to the problem of war will come with the return of Jesus Christ. With that event, peace becomes historically inevitable.

Slim Prospect Of World Conversion

Many sincere Christians have cherished the expectation of uninterrupted world peace before the Second Advent of Christ, as a result of the propagation and the effect of the Christian Gospel. I admire the zeal of those who preach the Gospel in this expectation that a Christian culture can be created through the Church’s evangelistic efforts. They are at least more Biblical than those who hope for such a utopia simply on the basis of a “Christian ethic” detached from the Gospel of supernatural redemption and regeneration. Yet I cannot share their optimism.

I am confident that the Gospel has power to transform life and that it will yet make progress in the world. I do not imply that the message of repentance is ineffectual in our generation. Nor do I mean that we can never again have an era of peace, although if we do its roots will be spiritual. But I am certain in my own heart that, this side of Christ’s return, we had best prepare for the possibility of war on earth however fervently we pray and work for peace.

The lives of regenerate men, individually and collectively, have influenced Western society to a marked degree. Yet a regenerate world has not resulted from the proclamation of the Gospel and there is no indication that it ever will. Certainly two thousand years of Western history, as well as the witness of the New Testament, give us little basis for expecting world conversion. The truth is that men do not want Jesus Christ, and it is so declared in the Bible. Modern man, like the multitudes of unregenerate men in past generations, would rather endure his life of peril while experimenting with unpromising utopian schemes than put his life right with God.

The Gospel Remains Man’s Hope

A brief summary of the New Testament teaching as to the nature, purpose, and consequences of the Gospel and its ministry will clearly reveal the true hope of mankind. The Gospel is addressed to individuals and is to be proclaimed to every creature (Matt. 11:28–30; John 3:16). The message of the Gospel is that through the gift of God individuals can be saved from sin and reconciled to God by faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, Who procured their redemption by His substitutionary sacrifice on the Cross (Rom. 3:21–24, 6:23). Such salvation can be received only as a gift through faith, since guilty sinners have nothing to offer in return. The New Testament further declares that saved persons are regenerate possessors of a new life (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 5:14–26). They do not lose the old nature in this world, but Christ gives them victory over it.

The truth and effectiveness of the Gospel is fully demonstrated by the experience of believers in Christ throughout the centuries. That experience is just as genuine and verifiable as is the presence of sin and war in the world. This fact should not be ignored by those who have not personally entered into this experience, or who refuse to enter. Lacking this personal experience, they cannot on that account deny its reality.

The reason they reject Him is because they will not admit that they are guilty sinners (Matt. 7:13, 14; John 3:17–21, 15:18–21). That the vast majority of men do reject Christ is undeniable. And without Christ men must remain under the curse of sin.

The Bible declares that God will take out of this world a people for His Name, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 15:14), but that He will allow lost human society to pursue its rebellious course to its inevitable tragic end. Evil and war will continue to the end of the age. The last part of the age will be a period of such terrible tribulation, including devastating wars and their accompanying ills, famines, and pestilence, that were God not to intervene, no one could survive. It is difficult to see in what way this biblical foreview differs in any significant degree from the human view imposed by history and by present realities as distinct from wishful hopes.

But before man disappears from the earth God will intervene. The Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, will come in all His glory at the Second Advent to establish that glorious and righteous Kingdom so often promised in the Old Testament.

Peace A Gift From Above

The Bible does not say and no one knows when the Messiah will come to reign in glory and righteousness. But only then, and then surely, men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (Isa. 2:2–4). Now and until He comes society must face the death and destruction of wars.

Peace is not a natural achievement in human experience and history; it is a divine gift. Personal peace does not depend upon world peace nor on national peace, but its nature is spiritual rather than sociological. Such peace is not a mere negation of hostility and conflict, but a positive experience of divine reconciliation and redemption. Jesus contrasted the peace He brought His disciples with the peace of the world at its best: “My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you” (John 14:27). Peace with God provides the true climate for the hopeful pursuit of peace with men.

Social peace is a virtue and war is an evil. But in an unrighteous world, peace is not always the greatest good nor war the worst evil. Peace which promotes injustice is worse than war in the cause of justice. Christianity must always take the side of a just and durable peace, and oppose an unjust war.

Regeneration Indispensable

Only a regenerate mankind is enabled to tame the lusts and passions which make for war. That is why the preaching of the Gospel of redemption and regeneration is urgently and vitally relevant to each generation of fallen man. What Marx, Lenin, and Stalin needed was not simply an exposure to the “Christian ethic” but to be “born again.” Men who know that “Christ died for our sins” know something of God’s hatred of sin and of His love for the frailest human.

Apart from the Gospel the “Christian ethic” may still encourage an idealistic view of social responsibility and concern in a semi-Christian climate. But its inadequacy is apparent as soon as one deals with the naturalistic mind. This watered-down message, a social ethic without the Gospel, has robbed Christianity of main defenses against Communist assaults.

In fact, the force of sin in this life is so powerful that even a regenerate society would require the constant renewal of the Holy Spirit to prevent deterioration. Whatever deterrents to war men propose—world government, international police force, reduction of armament—may succeed for a season in delaying hostilities, but they will only compound those elements which the scheming minds of unregenerate men will sooner or later pervert for godless purposes.

Any message short of the Christian Gospel is false in varying degree and can only delude men as to their own unsaved state and consequent hopeless end. Peace will not become inevitable, nor war improbable, apart from the transformation of human nature. The apostolic Christian faith as it is declared in the Bible, including both the Gospel of individual redemption and the expectation of Christ’s Second Advent and Kingdom, is the only true hope for men and for society.

Lt. Gen. William K. Harrison, D.D., is commander in chief, Caribbean Command, United States Armed Forces, and senior United Nations truce delegate at Panmunjom.

Cover Story

Admit Red China?

William F. Knowland

No more critical issue faces American leaders in the days ahead than the one of admission of Communist China into the United Nations. As in all major phases of international relationships, Christianity itself has a deep interest in the moral overtones of this issue. It seems apparent that the self-interest of the United States would not be served by permitting our defense barriers to fall back to the Pacific Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California. The previous administration as well as the present one, on the basis of the judgment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, determined that our own security would be jeopardized by any weakening of the defense line running from Japan and Korea to Formosa to the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand in the south and to Okinawa in the north.

The economic life of Korea and Japan is dependent on sea lanes into Southeast Asia, and unfriendly control of these waters would determine to a considerable extent the political life of the inhabitants of those countries. The recent war with Japan demonstrated how closely a military offensive can come to the continental limits of the United States through a lapse in our defensive guard in the Pacific. Every American should ask himself whether he wants to take this risk again as a probable consequence of recognition of Communist China.

The Record In Korea

An argument has been submitted at times that the United States should lodge its future security with the United Nations and depend on that organization’s collective security forces for protection against any hostile actions from the Far East. However, the lessons of recent history are a cold reminder of the unswerving objectives of world Communism, which in the ten years since the end of World War II in 1945 has taken over 600 million once-free people behind the Communist Iron Curtain. Americans will not, I believe, soon forget that the present Chinese Communist regime is the same regime that committed aggression in Korea in violation of a United Nations indictment and was responsible for inflicting 140,000 casualties on us, including 35,000 dead. The United Nations record in Korea was not effective collective security in a military action wherein the United States furnished 90 per cent of its manpower and only 17 out of 60 United Nations members supplied any manpower at all.

The Record In China

Turning to the interests of Asia itself, this country is staunchly committed against the principles of colonialism. Chou En-lai, Peiping’s premier and foreign minister, has asserted publicly and frequently that Asia must be for the Asians while at the same time he builds his military forces and war-making potential through the receipts of supplies from Communist Russia. In other words, what is intended is Asia for the Communists. Since actions speak with the force of conviction, the record of Communist China in Asia to date shows the following: (1) brutal persecution of religious and missionary organizations on the mainland; (2) colonialization of North Korea and the deliberate violation of the United Nations armistice negotiated in that country; (3) inciting and supplying Communist aggressive activities in Viet-Nam and Communist guerillas in Malaya, Burma, and Indonesia; (4) institution of blood purges of the Chinese people, which have been estimated by our Assistant Secretary of State, Walter S. Robertson, as resulting in approximately 15 million deaths. What can the people of Asia expect in the future from this record?

Foreign Policy And Freedom

The foreign and defense policies of this country need to be the people’s business. The decisions made in the months ahead may well determine whether we have a free world of free men. There is no easy solution to the unpleasant facts of today, which we must meet as other generations have had to meet the critical issues of their time.

The United States has provided the world with the greatest exposition of liberty and protection of the rights of man the world has known to date. Our foreign policy should manifest no less an ideal. The recognition of Communist China would subvert the principle long adhered to in this country—the dignity of free men. It would amount to a Far Eastern Munich. To bring our relationships with Communist China up to the time of this writing, an American military plane has recently been shot down with a loss of 16 lives.

We must not forget that Communism is a worldwide conspiracy against freedom and independence and that the objective of the men in the Kremlin was pointed out many years ago in Lenin’s statement that “the Road to Paris is through Peking.” The remaining free peoples of Asia are watching the actions taken by our government, and any compromise of moral principles in this area by the United States would move our defense barriers and influence back to the Pacific Coast for generations to come.

The Record In Russia

There appears to be little reason to expect that the recognition of Communist China would be productive of any greater performance than has resulted from the recognition of the Communist government of Russia in 1933. When that government was recognized by this country, certain pledges leading toward peaceable relations were made and soon broken.

Since all Communists are committed to the destruction of persons and institutions that stand in the way of world domination by Communism, there is no legitimate reason to hope that Communist China would pursue a different mode of operation.

Since foreign policy should be based on the concrete, not on the abstract, perhaps it will be illuminating to look at the question of recognition of Communist China from, first, the point of view of our own self-interest and, second, the interests of Asia.

Diplomatic Recognition?

Another closely related problem is that of affording diplomatic recognition to Red China. Although it may seem ironic, it is nevertheless true that the British government has not yet received recognition from Peiping even though she accorded recognition to Communist China on January 6, 1950, over six years ago. It is understood that the main obstacle to full reciprocity is the insistence by the Chinese Communists that Britain give full support to the seating of Chinese Communists in the United Nations, and that she sever all ties with the government of the Republic of China on Formosa.

If we show the same courage and common sense that motivated the men who sat at Philadelphia and gave us first our Declaration of Independence and later our Constitution, there are none of our great domestic problems we cannot solve and there is no foreign foe we need ever fear.

The Hon. William F. Knowland is minority leader of the United States Senate and was United Nations delegate to the United Nations session in November.

Cover Story

The Integrity of the Nations

Ernest C. Manning

Never in the long history of national and international affairs have the nations of this earth faced a situation comparable to that which prevails in this twentieth century.

Because this is true, it is axiomatic that those whose decisions determine national policy and govern international relationships have a responsibility without parallel in previous generations. Never before was there an age or a situation in which so much hinged on the wisdom of national leadership and on the integrity of nations whose influence in world affairs can tip the scales for either good or ill.

To appreciate the magnitude of this new individual and national responsibility, we must take cognizance of the two major factors responsible for creating the present set of circumstances.

The Extension of Science

The first is the cumulative knowledge man has acquired in the fields of physical science. In ancient times peoples and nations were separated one from the other by the natural barriers of time and space. What happened in one area of the globe was unknown to those of other areas until long afterward, if ever. As long as the barriers of time and distance remained unbridged, what the people of one tribe or nation did or how they lived or what they thought made little or no difference to the people beyond the limited sphere of their influence and interests.

Even after the more attractive land surfaces became populated and the people of those areas were thrown into closer association, the oceans remained effective barriers between continents. When conflicts did arise, they were limited in scope and the destruction occasioned by an entire war, fought with bows and arrows and spears, was insignificant compared to the devastation wrought by one modern bomb.

With the onward march of time all this has changed. Scientific knowledge has pyramided with the passing years until in this twentieth century we witness not only the amazing results of this accumulated knowledge but an acceleration in the rate of progress in the fields of physical science that staggers the imagination when we try to contemplate what the future holds.

The new set of circumstances, which the application of this scientific knowledge has produced in world affairs, has become a matter of gravest international concern. Gone are the ancient natural barriers of distance, time, and space. Modern methods of transportation and communication have reduced this once big world to a small orb on which peoples and nations, once far removed from each other’s influence, now are thrown together in a close and inescapable association fraught with new problems and unprecedented dangers

World news encircles the globe in a matter of seconds. Modern air transportation ignores oceans and brings each nation within quick and easy access of all others. Guided missiles probe the secrets of the stratosphere and herald an age in which no area of the globe is beyond the reach of any modern nation bent on the destruction of another.

Over all is the shadow of a mushroom cloud that has become the symbol of the atomic age and of man’s ability to release destructive forces so great that the annihilation of civilization at last has been brought within the realm of possibility.

In this new set of circumstances, the decisions, the actions, and even the philosophy of the people of each nation are of vital concern to all others. The position and integrity of each nation are no longer matters of mere national import but have become of fundamental importance to civilization as a whole.

The Accumulation of Depravity

The second factor responsible for the existing situation in human affairs is of even greater significance but unfortunately is less readily acknowledged and accepted. It has to do with human nature itself. To many it is repugnant to be told that in this twentieth century mankind is reaping not only the results of his accumulated scientific knowledge but also the accumulative consequences of six thousand years of human depravity. Nevertheless, the fact is irrefutable and must be acknowledged and faced before we can hope to make realistic progress toward a solution of the problems it presents.

The biblical record of the event through which man acquired a nature prone to evil is clear and definite. God had created the original parents of the human race in His own image and righteousness and placed them in the Edenic paradise to enjoy fellowship and communion with their Creator and the glories of the earth which He had prepared to be their home. Of their own free will, they chose to violate God’s expressed will and through their fall not only become separated from God by their sin but were rendered sinful by nature, which condition by the universal law of heredity they transmitted to their descendants. The consequences of their spiritual death and of the sinful nature they and their descendants acquired through their fall have pyramided with each successive generation until in this twentieth century they have reached crisis proportions on a world-wide scale.

Need of Spiritual Renewal

Whether we like it or not, the fact is that beneath and behind every individual problem and every national and international problem in the field of human relationships lies the bigger basic problem of man’s severed relationship with God and of the evil tendencies of the fallen nature of what the Bible describes as the “natural man.” Every effort toward moral reformation is a tacit acknowledgment that there is something fundamentally wrong with human nature. All religion, pagan or otherwise, stems from man’s inherent consciousness of his separation from God. The very word “religion” is made up of the prefix “re” meaning “again” or “to return to a previous state” and the root “ligio” implying “to bend or to turn back.” The word “religion,” therefore, presupposes that man has become separated from God and is in need of a way by which he again can turn back to his original state.

Unfortunately, in analyzing our problems, we are prone to focus our attention on the effect rather than the cause. We view with consternation innumerable acts of selfishness and deception and violence on the part of men, and acts of subterfuge and aggression on the part of nations, and we conclude that such actions should and can be prevented by physical deterrents. Our conclusions would be different if we would look beneath the surface and recognize the basic evil tendencies in human nature that are responsible for evil thoughts, evil desires, and evil philosophies that in turn express themselves in the individual and national and international attitudes and actions we deplore.

Summary of Present Situation

Taking these fundamental facts into account, we may summarize the situation presently confronting men and nations under three conclusions:

First, man’s accumulated knowledge in the fields of physical science has created a new set of world circumstances in which peoples and nations no longer are separated by the natural barriers of time and space and in which man possesses powers of destruction so devastating that any nation aggressively inclined is a threat to the security and even the survival of other nations.

Second, these new physical circumstances are reasons for international tensions and concern not because they are dangerous in themselves but because of the evil tendencies inherent in human nature, which cause both individuals and nations to incline to evil rather than to good.

Third, integrity requires that individuals and nations face and acknowledge the facts responsible for the growing crisis in human affairs and then act rightly and decisively in accordance with what those facts dictate.

Defense and Cold War

Most observers will agree that at the present time national leadership in most nations is on the defensive and is concentrated on two aspects of preparedness. The first is the field of military defense. Almost without exception, nations are strengthening their military defenses against any eventuality while keeping a watchful eye on those nations whom they have reason to believe are a threat to their security.

At the same time, all nations who exercise any influence in world affairs are engaged in a grim war of nerves in the field of international diplomacy where each is maneuvering to gain a more advantageous position. In this so-called “cold” war, all nations participating are subjected to the constant pressures of expediency.

So important have military and psychological and political advantages become in the present global struggle that frequently they are gained at the price of national integrity. The national concern has shifted from what is right to what is expedient. The question no longer is, what does national integrity dictate, but what will best improve the nation’s position from a military standpoint or psychologically, or be to its political advantage in the grim struggle to guarantee its national security and survival?

Compromise Of Integrity

If such advantage can be gained without the sacrifice of national integrity or the violation of principles, once regarded as inviolate, everyone is pleased, but if the advantage cannot be gained without violation of those fundamentals which constitute our national standards and ideals, too often expediency wins on the grounds that the end justifies the course adopted.

It is encouraging rather than surprising that an increasing number of people are asking privately and publicly where this line of reasoning will lead us if followed to its ultimate end. There is a growing conviction that the time has come when individuals and nations should make an honest reappraisal of the whole problem of human relationships in the field of international affairs.

Present Course Inadequate

As a starting point, we must try to define clearly the present course, which is to do everything humanly possible to avert world conflict and the catastrophe of a global war in an age when war means possible annihilation.

To that end, nations desirous of preserving peace are feverishly building up more and more military might as a deterrent to would-be aggressors.

They are working ceaselessly to ease world tensions through the channels of international diplomacy and seeking to neutralize disruptive propaganda and create a better understanding between nations by the free exchange of factual information and by mutual aid and other gestures of good will.

The United Nations Organization has been established to provide a world forum at which it was hoped disputes between nations could be resolved around the conference table and united action taken to curb aggression on the part of those refusing to substitute reason for force.

Realism requires us to acknowledge that the results of all these far-reaching efforts make two conclusions inescapable.

The first is that all these efforts have at best resulted in a deferment of a world crisis rather than a solution to the basic problems with which we are faced. The world situation as it appears on the surface fluctuates from week to week and year to year but beneath the surface, despite all the efforts that have been made, the human attitudes and philosophies responsible for the existing international tensions have undergone no fundamental change nor is there any reason to believe that they will be changed by further efforts along the same line.

Divine Intervention Needed

We, therefore, are forced to a second conclusion. If the existing situation is to be changed and a world crisis averted rather than merely deferred, some entirely new factor potent enough to be effective must be discovered and introduced into individual and national and international affairs.

Such a factor is available to all men and nations if they are prepared to recognize and accept it and meet the requirements of its effective application. That factor is the divine intervention of God.

Surely such a statement should not sound fantastic to the people of nations that are professedly Christian. The fact that many dismiss it as absurd and impractical is evidence of how wide has become the gap between our professed Christianity and our knowledge of God’s sovereign grace and power from the standpoint of personal, spiritual experience. The time has come when not only our individual peace and security but national and international peace and security hinge primarily on our willingness to restore realism to our Christian profession.

God’S Concern with Nations

The testimony of Holy Writ is explicit. The God of the Bible is not one of a number of competing deities. He is supreme, the only true God, eternal and self-existent, omnipotent, omniscient and immutable, and indescribably holy. The magnitude of His love and mercy and divine grace is beyond the measure of our finite minds.

It is the testimony of Scripture that “by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” He is concerned with the present welfare as well as with the eternal destiny of men. That He is concerned with the affairs of nations is evidenced by the declaration of Scripture that He “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live and move and have our being.”

Provision for Man’s Recovery

The greatest proof of God’s concern for mankind is the divine provision he has made for man’s recovery from the position into which he fell through his willful violation of God’s expressed will. God has provided not only a way by which men can be delivered from the cumulative consequences of human depravity but a supernatural spiritual new birth through which men are enabled to become possessors of a new spiritual nature that delights in good rather than evil.

To that end, God sent his pre-existent Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to become a substitute sin bearer in the place of guilty men. “God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved.” It is the record of infallible Scripture that Christ bore the sins of all mankind in His body on the Cross and that He shed His divine blood in atonement for the sins of the world. Through His substitutionary death and vicarious atonement, He satisfied every demand of the eternal laws of divine justice and opened the way for guilty men to be granted divine forgiveness and restored to eternal fellowship and communion with God.

Twentieth-Century Tragedy

It is a world tragedy in this age, when all the evidence points to man’s utter hopelessness apart from divine intervention, that man’s concept of Christianity has become so distorted that multitudes, even in so-called Christian lands, have no knowledge of the fundamental difference between supernatural spiritual regeneration and a mere religious profession or mental assent to a religious philosophy of life that they mistakenly think entitles them to call themselves Christian.

The supernatural spiritual new birth, which is the heart of true biblical Christianity and the starting point of all genuine spiritual life, is something much greater than any mere religious philosophy of life. It is the divine intervention of God into the life of an individual resulting in a personal, spiritual experience that not only restores him to fellowship and communion with God but creates within him a new spiritual nature that changes his entire attitude of mind and outlook on life. Men in ignorance and spiritual blindness may scoff at the idea of the lives and thoughts and attitudes of men being altered and lifted to a new and higher plane by a literal spiritual “conversion,” but the fact remains that not in all this world is there a material power or earthly influence known to man that can remotely compare with the transforming power which genuine supernatural spiritual regeneration exerts in the souls and minds and lives of those thus born again from above.

Urgency of Individual Decision

It is the good news of the Christian Gospel that this divine regeneration is available to all men who will receive it as a gift from God. It is not bestowed on the grounds of merit but of grace. It is an integral part of a present and eternal redemption purchased for mankind by Jesus Christ through His death on the Cross in man’s stead. Man cannot appropriate it through reformation or profession or earn it by good works. It can be his only by receiving the living Christ into his heart and life as his personal Saviour and divine Lord. In the words of Scripture, “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on his name.”

The Scriptures emphasize the individual and personal nature of man’s acceptance of Jesus Christ and of the spiritual new birth that accompanies a genuine acceptance. God’s mercy and forgiveness and redemption are not extended to mankind collectively but to each individual. Each is held personally accountable to God for his acceptance or rejection of Jesus Christ. In the life of each individual who receives Him as Saviour and Lord, the supernatural spiritual new birth is a sacred personal experience. This divine recognition of each individual is in striking contrast to the doctrines of collectivism so widely advocated and accepted in this twentieth century. It underscores the fundamental difference between God’s approach and man’s approach to the issues responsible for the developing world crisis. It indicates the key to the solution of our problems.

Myth of Collective Security

Nations have become imbued with the philosophy of man-made collective security. The individual has been relegated to a less and less significant position as man’s approach to the problems of life has become more and more universal in scope. We have come at last to the place where, having expanded our collective human efforts to the greatest dimensions to which they can be enlarged, we stand amid the growing evidences of our failure to solve the real problems confronting us and ask where we should go from here.

In the light of our experience and the eternal facts of life revealed in Holy Writ, it is folly to continue further on our present course.

It remains to be seen if men and nations will recognize before it is too late that there can be no effective solution apart from the divine intervention of an omnipotent and merciful God.

That divine intervention comes through the spiritual regeneration of individual men and women. If sought and accepted by individuals, it will reflect itself in the attitudes and actions of nations. This is the road down which the solution to our problems can be found.

God and Modern Gomorrah

It is not a matter of all men being converted before the impact of God’s divine intervention will be felt in national and international affairs. God delights in mercy and He is the same today as when He was willing to spare the entire civilization of Sodom and Gomorrah if even ten righteous were found within their borders.

The immediate need is twofold. The first is for individual men and women to respond to the invitation of God’s grace and yield themselves unreservedly to Jesus Christ. The second is for professing Christian nations to restore realism to their profession by placing allegiance to Almighty God ahead of human judgment, and obedience to His divine council ahead of surrender to the pressures of expediency. When this is done, the dubious rationalizing now so frequently employed to justify surrender to such pressures will give place to firm new standards of national integrity based on the absolutes of divine revelation and the immutable principles of eternal truth.

The Hon. Earnest C. Manning, LL.D., is premier of Alberta, Canada, since 1943 and president and conductor of Canada’s “Back to the Bible Hour.”

We Quote: October 29, 1956

Recent comments of note.

BERNARD W. WISHY

Instructor in History, Columbia College, and Editor of the forthcoming work, A PROLOGUE TO POLITICS ESSAYS OF JOHN STUART MILL

Twentieth-Century life certainly seems to confirm the opinion that our times are characterized by a revolt against traditional standards of decency and the possibilities of creative intelligence. Deliberate brutality, enslavement and murder, gas ovens with six million dead, and slave labor camps with fifteen million degraded human beings color our political life and imaginations. Our political vocabulary is apocalyptic: “total war”, “unconditional surrender”, “massive retaliation”, “agonizing reappraisal”, “meeting at the summit.” (“Is There a Revolt Against Reason?,” in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. LXXI, No. 2 [June, 1956], p. 244).

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

Professor of Preaching, School of Theology, Temple University

Here I rest my case, with the plea that the reader lay the matter before the Lord in prayer. For the sake of Christ and His Kingdom, for the sake of the home church and community, for the sake of your own growth and happiness, give yourself to the mastery and preaching of Christian doctrine.—in Doctrinal Preaching for Today, p. 208 (published 1956).

D. M. MACKINNON

Contributor to a series of studies by members of the Anglican Communion

… For Christians, the methods whereby war is waged today raise problems which must be faced.… In the light of the revelation of the divine love, … we must ask ourselves whether in this hour we are not compelled, be the consequences what they may, to say no to such things as the napalm and the atomic bombs. If we repudiate the morality of the Kremlin, it must not be simply in order to embrace that of the Pentagon.—in Christian Faith and Communist Life (London, MacMillan & Co. Ltd., 1953).

CHARLES W. LOWRY

Chairman, Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order

When the Congress of Vienna in 1815 issued its Treaty Document, it inserted … the words: ‘In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity.’ It went on to assert the encompassing and uniting reality of Christian brotherhood. Since then, Europe has changed, drastically and catastrophically What country today would invoke in an official document the name and being of God? Yet … the Supreme Court of the United States, in a momentous decision, said: ‘Our institutions presuppose the existence of a Divine Being.’ The State Papers of the United States, from the Declaration of Independence and the addresses of George Washington down through Abraham Lincoln and up to the present, mark her as unique among s modern nations in public adherence to religion.—in an address on “The State of Christian Civilization Today” in Florence, Italy, as United States delegate to the International Convention on Peace and Christian Civilization.

Steadfast Taper

Luci Deck Shaw

“His candle shined upon my head.…” (Job 28:3).

His candle shines upon my head.He trims the wick and guards the flame,And though the darkness creeps in closeThe steadfast taper shines the same.

The flower of flame sways in the air.Wine-fingers snatch and try to snuffThe stalk His careful hands protect.The light shines through; it is enough.

His candle shines on me in love.(Protective circle in the gloom.)And through the dreadful night I knowThat He is with me in the room.

Throughout the weary waiting-timeThe liquid flame shines thin and pure,When tiredness dims my faith, I lookAnd see His light, and I am sure.

Ideas

Vision of Sovereignty a Remedy for Tensions

A Christianity Today Editorial

We are prone to forget that God sees all time and eternity at once.

PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek / Shutterstock

The uncertainties and conflicts of national and international tensions are in themselves no excuse for the pessimist or the cynic in Christian circles. Nor are they a legitimate excuse for man to lay impatient hands on the ark of the universe to steady it. We are prone to forget that God sees all time and eternity at once.

We need a new vision of the sovereign God, of a sovereignty which is universal, unlimited and immutable. Neither chance, the follies of man, nor the malice of Satan can determine the sequence of events and their issues. God has not abdicated; He is on His throne and He still causes the wrath of man to praise Him. He is aware of world disorder and He has provided its cure. To the Church He has committed the Gospel and it is still the power of salvation to all who believe. To understand the content of that Gospel and to make that content known is the impelling duty of the individual Christian and of the Church.

Ideas

Evangelism and the Sacred Book

A Christianity Today Editorial

Contributor

Karl Barth and Billy Graham are both rescuing the Bible from Liberalism. But their views on Scripture differ dramatically.

The names of Karl Barth and of Billy Graham ought not, perhaps, to be mentioned in the same sentence, unless one is prepared to stay for the afternoon.

Their gifts and callings are diverse—the one a skilled theologian, the other a skilled evangelist. Their influence is equally dissimilar, that of the one mainly academic, and of the other mainly popular. Barth is today doubtless at the very apex of his career, while Graham’s star very probably is still rising.

Nonetheless, both names are indelibly inscribed upon the role of distinguished Christian leaders in the twentieth century. In some respects, moreover, their ministries reflect superficial points of contact. Barth has had an impact upon theological thought throughout much of the Western world through the translation of his writings; Graham has had an evangelistic access to the Orient as well as to the Continent through the translation of his preaching. Even to contrast their ministries in terms of the technical versus the simple is to exaggerate their basic differences. Barth’s influence has extended beyond the classroom to the pew, and Graham’s call to decision among university students has been as effective as among the less sophisticated. Barth has delivered a series of Gifford Lectures; Graham has fulfilled a week’s preaching mission at Cambridge. And what theologian today does not covet a broad ministry to the market place? Is not the New Testament ideal (we do not imply the flawlessness of Barth’s theology nor of Graham’s evangelism) the theologian-evangelist, whom the apostle Paul supremely exemplifies?

However varied their talents and influences, both Barth and Graham have come to symbolize a religious springtime after the long, cold winter of Liberalism. They stand as giants of our generation protesting against the liberal reduction of the Bible to the category of sacred literature generally. The Hebrew-Christian Scriptures differ uniquely from all other religious writings in their witness to special revelation; they cannot, therefore, be classified under general divine revelation. In stressing this fact, the “theology of the Word of God” and the evangelism of “the Bible says” are in formal agreement, and share in the rebellion against the classic liberal distrust of the special revelation claim that is everywhere implicit in the Bible.

Yet whoever sees no essential difference between the views of the Bible represented by Barth and the theology of crisis, on the one hand, and by Graham and the theology of the evangelicals, on the other, stands in need of theological lenses.

The difference is understated when the one position is lampooned as returning to the “precritical” and “prescientific” view which disregards “the new knowledge of the Bible.” To explain the difference by saying that the evangelical view waves aside those indubitable gains which objective scientific criticism can bring is an oversimplification. There will be convenient occasions to speak of such gains without concealing the sad predicament of twentieth-century biblical scholarship.

Mr. Graham has not, indeed, centered his preaching, nor his writing, in the perspectives of modern higher criticism. Wisely enough, he has left the discussion of critical problems to those whose lives have been dedicated to criticism. And, be it plainly admitted, the critics today face herculean problems, which call for more than expert skill. They bear the burdensome task of letting their profession down easily from a growing series of discredited verdicts—among them the impossibility of Mosaic writings, the nonhistoricity of the Hittites, the priority of the prophets over the Law, the non-supernatural Jesus, the Greek rather than Hebrew background of the New Testament, the second-century dating of John’s Gospel, and so forth. They now find scholarship as imposing as that of Dr. William F. Albright in support of the thesis that the composition of no New Testament book need be dated later than A.D. 80, that is, after the lifetime of contemporaries of Jesus of Nazareth. The reconciliation of competitive critical theories is no easy task, and it is no wonder a mere evangelist would prefer to bequeath its exacting requirements to the specialists. For what so often has been proclaimed, with evangelistic fervor, as an assured result of critical science, has turned out all too often to be a transient dogma of a biased critic.

The Church may rejoice that an emphasis on the New Testament evangel is finding its way once again into pulpits from which it was long absent. In this proclamation of the evangel there is often a considerable similarity between those who hold the high view of the Bible and those who shy away from it. Whoever preaches the Gospel must lean heavily on the warnings of Jesus about sin and its connection with the wrath of God and the judgment to come, no less than upon His assurances of the gracious forgiveness and the welcome awaiting sinners who come to the Father “in Christ’s name.” The omission of either of these elements is destructive of the Gospel. But the Gospel is far more definite than this; the simplest New Testament statement of it includes the substitutionary death of Christ for sinners and His bodily resurrection (1 Cor. 15:1-4). It is at this point of the sharper definition of the Gospel that the difference between evangelical and sub-evangelical preaching comes more clearly into view.

The danger in a pragmatic age is that the success of evangelism may institute an era of respect for evangelism in which the evangel itself is foggy and mist-thin. Much of this resurgent emphasis today is hesitantly biblical in mood. It is especially uncomfortable in the presence of the well-worn Graham formula: “The Bible says.” In fact, in some places, the twentieth-century phenomenon of an evangelist without an evangel has appeared in the aftermath of a Graham campaign.

A half-hearted confidence in the reliability and authority of Scripture faces the opportunities of evangelism with self-defeating uncertainties. Shall the evangelist preach the wrath of God? The apostles did. The propitiatory atonement? The apostles did. The final doom of the wicked? The apostles did. The formula “the Bible says” covers all the articles of faith. If we are to hear only what a given evangelist or theologian tolerates, however impassioned his intonation of whatever Scripture escapes his censorship, the fact that the Bible appropriates certain of his theses is no more significant than its repudiation of certain others. The public exhortation on Sunday to heed what “the Bible says” in a given passage does not mean much in the mouth of a professor who on Wednesday is confiding to divinity students that they had best disregard what it says in the next verse. The same verdict holds for the evangelist who strikes one note in the invitation and another in the ministerial meeting.

This leads us on to an important difference between the modern “theology of the Word of God” and the evangelism of the Bible. The Graham article in this issue employs the phrase “biblical authority.” It does not rush to draw a line between what God says and what the Bible says. It does not locate what God says in the misty flats above the Bible, above its written propositions and words. It picks up, with life-and-death urgency, the confident identification of special divine revelation with a specific message, and in this characteristic it stands in the company of prophets and apostles and of the Lord Jesus. The hearers of the Sermon on the Mount were reminded that they would be judged by specific principles and words: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man…” (Matt. 7: 24). It is in the course of precisely this identification that lightning strikes from heaven in Graham meetings.

Doubtless some will think that Mr. Graham sketches the picture in too broad strokes. Others will rally to his side, proclaiming the high view of the Bible to be not alone a key factor in evangelism but a watershed of theological conviction. However his readers may divide, nobody has a profounder right than Mr. Graham to a hearing on the subject of the authority of the Bible in evangelistic preaching. He has earned that right theoretically, by his devout study of the Word, and pragmatically, by his passionate proclamation of it to an age of theological unbelief, in which he has unsheathed the Book once again as a two-edged sword. His ministry supplies the theological enterprise with a graphic reminder that the mysteries of higher criticism are unnecessary for grasping the essence of the biblical message—as devout Christians in apostolic and in Reformation times did—and also that the simple believer often stands closer to the heart of the Gospel than the sophisticated critic. This is not because Christianity is against scholarship, but because scholarship often places itself in needless opposition to Christianity. Those who have invested much of a lifetime propounding now-discredited theories supply eloquent witness that the essence of the Gospel did not first become available through some new and modern gnosis, but can be confidently located in what was plainly accessible to the earliest century of faith.

By a true intuition, shaped by confidence in the plenary inspiration of the Bible, the evangelical movement and Mr. Graham cling fast to the Gospel, and to what most of the new theology still misses, namely, that Jesus of Nazareth is the high point of special divine revelation, and that the Christian revelation disallows the relegation of Scripture to a twilight zone in which its authoritative note disappears.

Cover Story

The Primary Task of the Church

Addison H. Leitch

Why bringing men and women into a saving relationship to God through Jesus Christ beats any other emphasis.

Glen Scott / Flickr

The Church can be understood best at two points in its history: at the time reflected in the book of Acts and the Epistles, and at the time of the Reformation.

It is more difficult for us to project ourselves into the experience of the early Church because of our inability to duplicate certain advantages they had, namely, the immediate experience and authority of those who had known our Lord in the flesh and the unique outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We are closer to the experience of Luther and the other Reformers because their Christian experience was partially the result of the mediation of the Bible, the history and customs of the medieval church community, and the drag of all the accretions of the human upon the divine institution. An examination of Luther’s experience as a member of the church is helpful, therefore, as a starting place for our own understanding.

The Bible invoked against Rome

In the providence of God, Luther, a devoted and disciplined monk of the Augustinian Order, was called upon to lecture from the Bible. Also in the providence of God, he was led to lecture from three sources, all of which forced him to decision over against Rome. He lectured on the Psalms, Galatians, and Romans; and both in the study and in the classroom the logic of his material led him eventually to see that he was justified by faith alone, that Christ was the only Mediator between him and his God, and that neither he nor his salvation needed the trappings and ceremonies of the Romanist hierarchy. Luther’s experience was highly individualistic. He found himself in a saving relationship to God through Jesus Christ, and this experience of salvation with its accompanying assurance was not the result of nor had it been nurtured by any external organization”. It was over against such an organization that Luther had now to say, “Here I stand.”

The Church basically spiritual

But an individual standing alone is not a church, and Luther knew it. Who or what then was the Church? How could it be created? Where was it to be found? If a man could break away from the Church because what was then called the Church was not the Church, just where is the body of which Christ is the Head? Pioneering his way through such problems, Luther came to see at last that there must be others who were “in Christ” as he was. Therefore, those in Christ were in one another. Communion with God through Christ meant communion with one another. What later Bucer was first to term “the invisible Church” was the only church of which Luther could call himself a member. This “invisible Church” was henceforce inescapable in Luther’s understanding. In spite of the fact that Luther was forced by later circumstances to say something authoritative about the “visible church,” and in spite of the fact that Calvin also found it necessary to expand his description of the visible church to over one hundred pages in the Institutio, the Reformers could never define the Church in such a way as to eliminate this basic necessity in the believer’s experience of oneness with the living God through Christ. There was no church anywhere without a core of those who had experienced Christ, who were one with Him and therefore one in Him.

Primary task to win the lost

In the Reformed tradition, therefore, it is the primary task of the Church to bring men and women into this saving relationship with Jesus Christ. No part of our program, no emphasis on liturgy or philanthropy, and no delight in our rapid numerical growth have any meaning apart from this primary emphasis. The interesting and amazing complexity of our church life today has no meaning unless and until this is done. The primary task of the church is to make Christians out of people. And a man is a Christian when he has accepted Christ as his Saviour, when he is in a saving relationship to God through Christ; anything else and anything less is vain and futile “religious” exercise. Professor Paul Vieth of Yale, in his approach to Christian education, says that the task of Christian education “is to confront with and control by” the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is true. First, a man is confronted by Christ and His Gospel, he is forced to decision by this encounter, he becomes by this commitment a new man in Christ; he becomes thereby a living unit in the body, a building block in the construction, a part of the Body of Christ.

Ministry of Word and Spirit

Luther further discovered for us that this new relationship with God and with one another was mediated through the Scriptures which in turn were applied to us by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. For the Scriptures to be taught, therefore, the “invisible Church” had to become visible. It had to take form. It had to meet at a certain place and at a certain time; there had to be organization so that things would be done decently and in order. Certain notae of the church appeared— the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments—and then the “right” preaching of the Word and the “right” administration of the sacraments. Men were to be brought to Christ by the audible word and by the visible word. The emphasis on preaching in the Reformed tradition is firmly set in the necessity of the Word and the Spirit as the only means of bringing men to Christ. The Reformers believed in the power of the Word, in the ministry of the Spirit. The task of the preacher is to set the Word before the people. Fundamentally we are to let the Word speak, expound it, interpret it, bear witness regarding its power in our lives and the lives of others. What we have lost sight of most, I suppose, in our day, is that this Word itself has power. Sow the seed, get it out; in the providence of God that Word shall not return void.

The visible church, therefore, becomes a means, and only a means, of getting the Word out. It soon happened in Luther’s day, as in our own, that there were at least three kinds of people in any given congregation: those still unconverted by the Word, those ready only for milk, those ready for meat. The church had to be organized, and needs to be organized now, of course, to answer all these needs. Many evangelists, rightly concerned for conversion, fail to see that after certain people have been roundly and soundly converted, it is time to move on to something else. There must be the clear confrontation with the Gospel calling for life decision and commitment, but there must also be building up in the faith. We are to convert sinners and also edify saints. It is Vieth again saying “confront with” and then “control by” the Gospel.

World task of the Church

In obedience to the Great Commission the Church must also move out from its own center of operations to ever wider areas of operation. No group, however small or however pure they may think themselves to be, can be released from the pressing requirements of world mission. This again means organization and planning- some teachers, some evangelists.

If we analyze our situation, we can see what this means in the growth and complexity of the church.

It is vain to believe that all this organization has meaning apart from the primary task of evangelization; but it is naive to believe that the work of evangelization can be carried out without care in organization. Whatever the drag of organization and the temptation to lose the primary task of the Church in the wheels and gears of a great denominational enterprise, we do not understand the necessities of our task unless we see the unfortunate necessity of visible organization. The cry for the simple Gospel, or the cry for the simple program of the Great Teacher and His handful of followers, is easily understood as a yearning of the heart, but it is a misunderstanding of what our task will constantly require of us. The early Church was still very young when it had to have a Council at Jerusalem. Paul never mentions his expense account, but he had one. And there must have been some kind of certified accountancy for the collection for the saints in Jerusalem.

Simple Gospel, complex organization

The primary task of the church is to bring men and women into a saving relationship to God through Jesus Christ. Now see what happens. A man in communion with Christ finds himself in a communion; those in Christ are in one another. Out of this communion, because men are physical as well as spiritual, there arises a community, a visible group of people gathered around one center of commitment and loyalty. It is a part of the requirements of this visible group that they evangelize others and in time bring them into this same fellowship. The community grows, it breaks up into congregations, there are synods and assemblies, there are programs of mission and philanthropy; there are building programs, financial drives, magazines and editorial policies, theological seminaries and boards of trustees.

It is deadly for a church to grow from the outside in; but when it grows spiritually and dynamically from the inside out, all these externals are necessities, not unfortunate excrescences on the living organism. The simple Gospel makes a complex organization; it is a part of the task of the Church to keep all these physical expressions under the power of the Spirit.

The Gospel and social activity

When the communion becomes a community, necessities laid on the Church become almost endless. At the time of my theological training there was much talk about the personal gospel as against the social gospel. Now we know what we should have immediately recognized then, that there is only one Gospel, but that it includes both sides.

There is no salvation by way of the social gospel, but only in the individual’s call to Christ. But there is no such thing as an asocial Christian. His commitment to Christ immediately and by necessity has social implications. The salvation of the man is the salvation of the whole man, and the whole man is a man engaged in business or trade; he is an employer or an employee; he is an economic man, a political man.

What can be said of individuals must also be said of congregations of individuals. Commitment to Christ means that a man is changed in all his relationships; a church made up of committed members has something to say also to the total life of men. Only men saved by grace can work to save society, but men saved by grace cannot escape the necessity of working redemptively upon society.

It is surprising how easily we can see the place of the church community in terms of social reform in some directions but not in others. The Church stands usually against liquor and the liquor “interests,” that is, the business of liquor. The church community is always against organized vice, against narcotics. In the past the Church as such took a stand against slavery and felt called upon to speak out against child labor even when such speaking hurt profits. We accept these victories over injustice in former days as assumptions of the position of the Church in our own day; it is harder to see in our contemporary scene just what it is that the Church is called upon to do.

Sins of contemporary society

Nevertheless we have tasks in relation to the sins of contemporary society. We must not confuse our difficulty in knowing just what to do with the necessity to do something, to take a position, to bear our witness. Evangelicals commonly draw back from such responsibilities because the primary task for them is the preaching of the Gospel of salvation. Very well. Now what are these saved people to do in the society in which they live? If the church community can support their efforts by speaking out on organized vice, why cannot the organized church community speak out for the moral obligations of capital on the one hand and labor on the other? Although it is not within the province of the Church to determine what may constitute “just wages,” it should expect them to be paid. The Church may be unqualified to determine what comprises “feather bedding,” but it should expect labor as well as capital to deal honestly and justly.

It helps to think of it this way: If through the instrumentality of my preaching on a Sunday morning a man is led to conversion, what shall I tell him that his new Christianity involves when he calls upon me in my study on Monday morning? I can’t tell him everything, I am sure. But I can challenge him with the position of the Church on his marital relationships, his use of liquor, what he does with his leisure time. I cannot advise him on political parties, but I can discuss good citizenship. I can talk to him about his “calling” in his daily task, but can I tell him anything about whether he is right or wrong to continue to pay dues in his labor union? These are touchy questions because they are contemporary ones. But questions of right and wrong are of the stuff of life in any day, and the Church bears its witness today. There is no such thing as a social gospel; conversely, there is no such thing as an asocial Christian. A man is to be confronted with and then controlled by the Gospel in every relationship. The Church should be ready to help the members of the Christian community in all such relationships. Calvin’s church in Geneva, for example, set up controls in the markets and established a weaving industry for the unemployed.

Christian impact on culture

Saved men should also have an impact on culture. Great periods in the history of the church have meant great art and architecture, great music, new laws, educational institutions, in short, a new way of life. Whether we will or not, a dominant religion will create a way of life; the question is, which religion? Will it be Secularism? or Materialism? or the dialectic of Communism? The Christianity of the Puritans poured into American life what Van Wyck Brooks was led to call The Flowering of New England. The iron core of Calvinism is still felt by way of the children of Convenanters, Beggars, and Hugenots, and the end is not yet. How we dress, our manner of speech, the pictures we like, the television programs we allow, the places we spend our leisure and how we spend it there; all these are expressions of the reality of what is supposed to happen first and happen truly: a man’s commitment to Christ. He is a “new creature,” and “Behold, all things are become new.” A different culture has always been the necessary corollary of essential Christianity. We should expect Christianity to make a difference in all life around us; the leaven leavens the whole loaf. We see this taking place on the foreign mission field; can we understand our total mission here at home?

The primary task of the Church, therefore, is to bring men into a saving relationship to God through Christ. This is done by Word and Spirit. Men thus saved must be given the nourishment to grow in Christ; this is Christian education. Such men in communion form the communities which make constant redemptive impact on the world around them. Thus the things of heaven are brought to bear upon the things of earth and the day is hastened when “every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess” Christ’s Lordship.

Addison H. Leitch, Ph.D., Litt.D., is president of Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary.

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