The Warping of American Conscience

In my multi-engine airplane there are two of everything. Two engines require much duplication of controls and gauges, but why two compasses? It’s because you’ll catch one of them lying to you sometimes. Because of other attractions and distractions, a generally dependable magnetic compass will sometimes look you squarely in the eye and lie about which way is north. When that happens—when your compass gets out of kilter—you have to ground your airplane, reswing the compass, readjust it, until it tells the truth again.

A man’s conscience is subject to similar deflection, Or a nation’s conscience. And as surely as a bad compass, pointing the wrong way, can lead you into trouble, so can a cockeyed conscience.

Beside your bed is an alarm clock. A dependable, trusted instrument capable of awakening you at six o’clock in the morning—unless you forget to wind it. There is another way you can cancel out its effectiveness—ignore it. If morning after morning you are awakened by the alarm but refuse to heed it, eventually it will cease to alert you. It may not even awaken you. Ignore it long enough and you’ll cease to hear it. In this case the clock is still there and still accurate and still ringing, but you don’t let it bother you anymore.

A man can deafen himself to his conscience the same way. A nation can do the same.

The Meter Is Bent

I find the struggle with my own compass, my own alarm clock, my own conscience, is a constant one.

Man comes into the world equipped with a brain and a conscience. Each must be educated to work properly or it is unreliable.

Manhattan’s mad bomber seemed such a delightful fellow. He liked flowers, had a cheerful disposition, made a pleasing appearance. But somewhere back there the built-in gauge that tells a man the difference between right and wrong got damaged. The needle was bent.

Suddenly what was morally wrong seemed morally right and he went around planting time-bombs in public places. He still had a conscience, but it wasn’t working right. So society disposes of Mr. George Metesky with one uncomplimentary adjective and locks him and his unreliable conscience in a place of confinement.

Yet the needle in the conscience meter is bent, if to a lesser degree, in most of us. We have gradually “adjusted our consciences” to where we are now against burlesque shows in a downtown theater. We say they are “wrong.” Yet we, through TV, feel no conscience anymore as we invite a burlesque show into the family parlor.

Or we say it is all right for the dancing girls to wiggle in all manner of suggestive undulation, but all wrong when a guitar-playing boy does the same thing.

See how unreliable your conscience can be? I am not being smug about this. I could not evaluate it so thoroughly if I did not understand it so personally. I know how a conscience meter can get out of repair.

From The Mount

And each man must regulate, adjust, oil, maintain and service his own conscience to keep it properly in tune with the laws Moses brought down from the mountain.

In national and international affairs, our sometimes contradictory policies result from a “bent needle.” A “compass” that is trying to tell us that north is two different places, and it’s not really.

The Apostle Paul once wrote a letter to the Romans telling them how man was supposed to follow God; not try to make God over into his own image. Yet this is the tendency. And so, “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”

A man can’t make his own rules as he goes along, for then he goes in circles. We cannot make our own morals. We will either return to the Sermon on the Mount or we will destroy ourselves.

The Republic which was born in Philadelphia will have to be born again. If the Republic is to live, it must be fit to live.

This earthly while is a testing time, determining which of us deserves to populate some more perfect place. Americans have been especially favored. But there is another way to say that: We are being singularly tested. More than most, our seven per cent of the earth’s people have been abundantly endowed with the material blessings which invite sloth. Americans, then, must preserve, protect and defend this garden spot or surely they will have failed to measure up to any higher responsibility.

General Charles Lindbergh said, “We have measured success by our products rather than by ourselves. A medium which over-emphasizes short term survival detracts from the humanism essential to long term survival. We must remember that it was not the outer grandeur of the Roman’s but the inner simplicity of the Christians that lived on through the ages.”

Can the decline of American morality be reversed? Can our warped conscience be set straight?

God would have spared Sodom if he could have found ten righteous men. That was all he asked. Ten good men and he’d have spared the city.

Badness, resulting from an unreliable conscience, from misdirected emotions, wrote every black headline in today’s paper. Every one. On the other hand, properly ordered emotions are the basis for love, friendship, kindness, mercy.

We have been figuring religion is just for small children and old ladies. One hundred and three million churchgoers are more than ever before. Half again what attendance was ten years ago. Church attendance has increased far faster than our population has increased.

Yet, at the same time, prison rolls have climbed at the fastest rate in history. How come? How come some ninety-four million get a Sunday morning shower bath and yet so many don’t come clean?

The Republic, born in Philadelphia, can be born again … only … one man at a time!

Richard Lloyd Jones said: “We must begin again.” And the hour is late. So many stand to lose so much.

Jesus said: “Ye must be born again,” and the time is short.

Sigmund Romberg, for the lyric score of New Moon wrote, “Give me ten men, stout-hearted men, who will fight for the right they adore. Give me ten men, stout-hearted men, and I’ll soon give you ten thousand more.”

That’s the way it works. Ten men raise their voices and Jericho falls. Ten righteous men and Sodom and Gormorrah may be spared.

Ten … to inspire ten thousand to lead us … back to the Genesis of American Liberty … back to a reliance on “Divine Providence” and “Sacred Honor.”

We must return to the God of our fathers, for it is to him that we owe all blessings of the past and hope for the future. Then the law of the Lord will again be the respected law of this land. Then we’ll be worth saving.

After World War II, in which he served as Director of News and Information for the Office of War Information in Michigan and Indiana, Paul Harvey’s rise to radio fame was meteoric. He is heard over the ABC network Monday through Friday at 12 noon, CST.

- More from Paul Harvey

The Fate of Protestants in Colombia (Part II)

Clyde W. Taylor

On August 28, 1957, an ostensibly complete report on Colombia was given out by the Most Reverend Philip M. Hannan, Auxiliary Bishop of Washington, after a visit to Colombia. We understand he spent eight days in Bogota and visited the hierarchy there. He reported that Protestant missionaries in Colombia have been victims of political strife rather than religious persecution. He added that some missionaries were unfortunately linked with political parties and had suffered in consequence. But the fact is that no missionary has suffered because of political activity.

We challenge the American hierarchy that issued this statement to give one lone incident of an American missionary involved in Colombian politics and suffering on that account. Colombian Christians, of course have been in politics and are encouraged to take an interest in affairs of their nation. But our missionaries have as a primary rule to avoid all political activity in any country and that includes Colombia.

Another denial of Roman Catholic persecution came after Methodist Bishop Uberti Barbieri of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay spoke before the World Council of Churches meeting in New Haven and requested the Central Committee to take action concerning persecution of Protestants in Latin America. The reply was given August 17 by Father John E. Kelly of the Public Relations Bureau of National Catholic Welfare Conference in Washington. He noted that there have been limitations on Catholic activity in Norway, Denmark and Sweden but ignored the fact that there has been no violence against Catholics there. There have been restrictions but in most cases even these have been removed in recent years. This action by Lutherans of those areas, moreover, has not been condoned by Protestantism at large.

In answering Bishop Barbieri’s charges of persecution, Roman Catholic leaders seem to rely most on an ex-newspaperman who traveled rather widely through Latin America more than ten years ago. This so-called Protestant, Mr. John W. White—who, curiously enough, sells most of his articles to the National Catholic Press—is unrecognized as a Protestant.

The next trip was made by Father Kelly to a Catholic press meeting in Bogota. Father Kelly did travel across Colombia. For example, he visited La Cumbre, talked with the missionaries, saw the burnt walls of the house and heard the reports. He was told that sworn testimony was available to him in the mayor’s office (this data was gathered also by U. S. and Canadian consuls who personally investigated the attack). Yet Father Kelly returned to this country and said there had been no persecution. Against this type of malicious reporting, the facts speak for themselves.

Hope For Improvement

The official release sent out by the Catholic News Service (September, 1957) contains one or two bright spots. We are told that the Roman Catholic Church authorities in Colombia have finally declared that they “recognize the right of non-Catholic Christians” in that South American country “freely to practice their own religion.” We are also pleased that they are going to put into effect some opposition to persecution. We hope they carry out this promise. They also pledge that the “Catholic authorities in Colombia … shall never order, encourage or approve any act of violence against our non-Catholic brethren.” We can heartily say “Amen” to that, if it will be carried out. This statement was issued by the Secretariat for the Defense of the Faith, an agent of the Colombian Catholic bishops. The Secretariat conceded that “in various places, ways and occasions Protestants in Colombia have suffered violence inflicted by Colombian Catholics.” But it denied charges of “Catholic persecution of Protestants in Colombia.”

This illustrates that Roman Catholicism admits no persecution unless the Church orders it. You can destroy 49 churches, confiscate 34 more, murder 89 church leaders for exclusively religious reasons (entirely divorced from politics), frequently on orders of local clergy, and yet this is not persecution! The fact that a hundred thousand Colombians have been killed in the political disturbances since 1947 provides no justification of the fact that evangelical churches have been burned and confiscated and believers murdered because they were preaching the Gospel or possessed a New Testament. Since most persecution of Protestants was on a local basis, does the Roman Catholic Church repudiate such action where its priests were involved, and is the Church willing to discipline those of its hierarchy guilty of this bloody and hateful action? If so, we could suggest as an eligible candidate Father Millan of La Cumbre, who according to sworn testimony was directly involved in arson attempt on the missionaries there a year ago last summer. Moreover, we would ask the hierarchy for specific instances of Protestants who “directly attack and ridicule Catholic beliefs and devotions.” This is one of their frequent accusations, but we do not believe this exists, and have no record of it in the last ten years. They say that Protestant missionaries from small sects entering Colombia since 1948 have caused most of this trouble. This is false, for new Protestant missionaries have been refused entrance into Colombia for ten years. Furthermore, all missions named have been there for many years. The charge of Protestant proselytizing, frequently made, should also be considered in view of the fact that a majority of Colombian Catholics are totally inactive as far as their church is concerned. It may well be that many of these are reached by the Gospel message preached by evangelical missionaries and pastors. The nature of religious freedom allows difference of opinion and change of religious affiliation in accord with personal beliefs.

Right Of Religious Liberty

Evangelical missionaries are not seeking the ill will of the Colombian government or Colombian people. They are only seeking freedom to preach the good news of salvation by simple faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. This right has been fully guaranteed in principle by the Colombian Constitution.

In view of many published denials, we call attention to an editorial in the world-famous daily newspaper of Bogota, El Tiempo, on September 17, 1957:

Freedom of religion is not a gracious concession of the mayor or a donation of the authorities, but a right made sacred by the national Constitution. It is the subject matter of an international commitment, since it forms part of the Charter of Human Rights, which has been signed by Colombia, even though it has not always been observed. The violations of freedom of religion are no more to be excused than the abuse of the other rights of mankind, such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to travel, or freedom of political views. But in communities where a specific religion is greatly in the majority there is a tendency to minimize the importance of guaranteeing the rights of minorities, which, the smaller they may be, the more they are exposed to suffering oppression.…

There are those who have pretended to justify the persecution of Protestants by claiming that they have abused the right of religious liberty by making political proselytes. If this refers to foreign heretics, the provisions of common law should be applied to their case which prohibits them from mixing into the party strife of the Colombians. And if it refers to Colombians, this right of theirs should be respected, for they have not lost it by the failure to practice the religion of the rest. Under no circumstances is the spectacle to be condoned—which has been repeated many a time in this country until quite recently—of the stoning of Protestant churches by mobs organized and egged on by fanatics, irresponsible persons or demagogues who stir up primitive passions for their own selfish purposes. Persecution of religious minorities, carried out with the complicity or under the direction of the very authorities, in the past (but not in the remote past) has been our national shame in the eyes of the world, notwithstanding the pretexts with which there have been attempts to justify it.

We applaud the statement by El Tiempo, one of the papers long silenced by fanatics, and now under the new government free to speak again. In itself the editorial supplies quite an answer to those who deny that there has been such trouble.

In conclusion, we rejoice that the advent of the new government implies a sincere effort to restore the freedom and the culture for which Colombia was distinguished ten years ago, before the political violence was initiated by fanatical elements in Colombia in 1947. The present government has released a number of evangelical Christians, some of whom have been in prison for over two years with no charges preferred against them. The government has suggested that steps may be taken to open churches that were illegally closed in violation of the Constitution. Just recently the Minister of Government has sent out personal letters to the governors of the provinces of Bolivar, Santander, Antioquia, Cauca, Huila, Boyaca, Cundinamarca authorizing them to open the churches that have been illegally closed by the past government. These churches total 34. One large church in the so-called mission territories, that of Barrancabermeja, a church seating some 1,600, was ordered open August 16 by government order. This still leaves over 40 churches closed in mission territories under an agreement signed with the Vatican during the last regime. This same agreement not only closed down all the Protestant churches in approximately 60% of Colombian territory but all Protestant schools, numbering approximately 200. It is hoped that the new government will also observe the Constitutional rights of its people if they desire to have their own places of worship and their own schools in these areas as well. During these last ten years the Colombian government has refused absolutely to allow American missionaries as such to enter the country. The new government has just issued permits for nine teachers and pastors to enter Colombia to assist in the schools and pastoral work there. We congratulate the new government of Colombia on these steps to guarantee personal and national freedom and to restore Colombia to the international respect it deserves. We trust it will not be hindered by religious pressures and intrigue that would only curtail its return to international respect among freedom-loving peoples.

Clyde W. Taylor, M.A., Th.B., D.D., directs the Office of Public Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals in Washington, D. C., where he is the official spokesman of evangelicals to the U. S. and foreign governments. A world traveler, he has personally gathered the materials presented here and is largely responsible for the present hope for improvement in the Colombian situation.

- More from Clyde W. Taylor

Cover Story

What Is Christian Separation?

L. David Cowie

A Christian is under the constant tension of being a citizen of two worlds. Paul said our citizenship is in heaven; yet had practical things to say about earthly rulers and our relationships to them. He counseled the Christians of Corinth not to marry because the persecutions ahead would make family living difficult, yet told another Greek church at Ephesus that wives should reverence their husbands, and husbands should love their wives. He practiced and preached an “other worldliness” in which one finds his satisfaction in the spiritual life, yet he illustrated that life in his letters by many references to the athletic events of his day, indicating a familiarity with them on his part and on the part of his readers.

The whole Christian movement shows this same tension. When our Lord taught about the kingdom of God, his opponents tried to impale him upon the horns of the dilemma of paying or not paying taxes to Rome, whereupon he asked for a coin. He asked whose image was on it, and they answered, “Caesar’s.” Then he who was the express image of God said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.” Keeping a proper relationship between the two has always been difficult for those who bear the family name of Heaven, yet whose Lord prayed, “I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one … as thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:15, 18). Keep this last statement in mind, as we shall endeavor to see some of its significance later.

The Ideal And The Relative

And so the tension has always been with us, caused by the ideal in a relative situation. For example, ideally a Christian would be an absolute pacifist, yet Cornelius the Centurion was not required to give up his soldier’s career to become a Christian. In any generation, war has been against the Christian conscience and yet the very paying of taxes to Caesar’s budget, or to Eisenhower’s, involves the Christian in a substantial support of the machinery of war.

In all of this, what is Christian separation? How can the Christian be in the world and not of it? The tension has found expression in various ways within the body of Christ. There have been those devoted souls who have gone to prison and death because they believed in “friendly persuasion” and would not fight, yet no objective observer would deny the sincere Christian faith of a General Montgomery or a General Sir Wm. Dobbie, or a General Douglas MacArthur. And General Eisenhower as a Christian President prepares for any eventuality, but becomes one of the greatest influences in our generation toward removing the causes of war.

Surely there is sincerity in the sacrifice of a St. Francis of Assisi who, for Christ’s sake, remains unmarried. But it is equally certain that more of the Christian faith has been passed on through Godly homes than through Godly monasteries.

On Worldly Pleasures

But this tension of Christian separation finds most of us run-of-the-mill Christians at the point of our participation in what some have called “worldly pleasures.” Here again there have been extremes in the church of Christ. On the one hand there have been those who have emphasized their “separateness” from the world by extreme asceticism in dress and manner, and a refusal to participate in anything which by their definition was “worldly.” On the other hand, men like Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers of all time, and G. Campbell Morgan, one of the greatest Bible expositors of all time, each smoked “to the glory of God.” (Of course, the relation of smoking and lung cancer was unknown to them.)

Furthermore, many times those who are most rigid in their rules regarding separation are quite un-Christ-like in their attitudes toward people. And the monk finds that worldliness pursues him even in the rigors of his severely simple cell and in the disciplines of his holy orders.

What is Christian separation, then, in the realm of actual living—especially in matters of fellowship and fun? Is everything that gives pleasure wicked? Is it true, as one cynic remarked, that everything that is fun is either sinful, expensive, or fattening? Where can the lines be drawn? Let us lay aside our family or church mores for the moment. Let us set aside our personal prejudices, and examine the bases upon which the question can be decided objectively: What is Christian separation? What are the principles involved?

Specific Commands

First, we know that there are some things which are always right for an individual Christian or for the church of Christ. It is always right to tell the truth, to love God, and to love one’s neighbor. These are specific commands of God, and it is always right to fulfill them.

Second, there are some things that are always wrong for a Christian. It is always wrong to take the name of our Lord in vain, to bear false witness, to sow dissension or a party spirit. There are specific commands of God against such things, and therefore it is always sinful to do them.

However, in between what is commanded as always right and what is forbidden as always wrong there is a “no-man’s land” which is not governed by law, but guided by principle. This is a nonmoral realm where there is no clear command of God, and where the conscience of one sincere Christian may differ from that of another sincere Christian. Shall a Christian go to a show, or play cards, or dance? There is no clear command of God saying “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not.”

It is in this realm that we must be led by the Holy Spirit, not according to specific rules, but according to general principles.

In Romans 14:1–15:6 Paul sets forth those principles as:

1) Do not judge another in this realm (14:1–12). Until one abides by this first principle, he has not the humility to discover God’s will at all. “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?” (v. 4). It is not for us to say that another is either “worldly” or “narrow.” “It is before his own Master that he stands or falls” (v. 4).

2) Do not endanger another (14:13–21). A Christian has liberty in this non-moral realm. But liberty is not license. Christian love limits Christian liberty. “If your brother is being injured by what you eat (or do) you are no longer walking in love” (v. 15). Good judgment is required here, of course, or the narrowest view of the most immature Christian would become the standard for the whole church.

3) Whatever is against your own conscience is sin to you (14:22–23). “He who doubts is condemned, if he eats, because he does not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (v. 23). The Holy Spirit as the direction points, and the conscience as the needle, make the only compass we have in this realm. One must be careful that the needle is not deflected by his own willfulness, or by the conditioning of an unenlightened background.

4) Do everything to the glory of God (15:1–6), “… that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 6). The Christian is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Within that temple should be a perpetual paean of praise to God.

Use Of Proof-Texts

This brings us closer to the answer to the question: What is Christian separation?

At this point, caution is needed in the familiar practice of quoting “proof-texts” one way or another. A limb of Scripture cut off from the tree of its context can become a handy club to use on those who differ with us, but in the process loses its life and its ability to provide fruit and shade for a weary pilgrim. And it does violence to the tree of God’s revelation as a whole. For example, the writer has heard the text, “Come ye out and be ye separate. Touch not the unclean thing” (2 Cor. 6:17) used as an admonition against “things of the world,” or against remaining in a given denomination, or against being a part of the ecumenical church. Actually, the context (2 Cor. 6:14–18) reveals that Paul is referring to the Christian’s relation to the immoral pagan worship of Corinth. It is interesting to note here that in spite of all that was wrong with the Corinthian church, Paul nowhere urges the Christians of Corinth to be “come-outers.”

Another proof-text one hears in connection with Christian separation is “Love not the world, or the things that are in the world” (1 John 2:15). Surely it is an important admonition, but the context (vs. 16–17) reveals John is talking about attitudes within us rather than atmosphere around us. Because the Bible says that the love of money is the root of evil does not indicate that we are to have nothing to do with money.

Life Situations

Thus Biblical truth is best unfolded not in proof-texts, but in life situations. In the New Testament we see two illustrations of separation. First, there was the separation of John the Baptist, which one may designate as physical separation. He lived apart from people, ate different food, and wore different clothes. His only contact with people was to condemn them. Second, there was the separation of Jesus Christ, who, we must admit, was at least as holy as John the Baptist. Yet Christ’s first miracle was turning water into actual wine (better than the host had served) at a wedding feast which lasted several days and which had its share of fun and frolic. Later, He attended a banquet given by Matthew in his honor with some unsavory characters as fellow guests whose language and humor were probably not too sanctified. He did not physically separate himself from them, but his separation was spiritual. He could participate in the activities and the fun, but was not thereby lowered in his spiritual life.

He was what he was, wherever he was. His spiritual life was positive, and contagious, rather than negative and defensive.

Surely Christians are to be followers of Christ, rather than the Baptist. We are to be thermostats, rather than thermometers. We are not to be lowered by the temperature around us, nor kept in a hothouse where the temperature is just right. But we are given the Holy Spirit, so that when we are in contact with the world we draw upon God’s power to raise the temperature of our environment. If we do not have adequate resources for this, then we must resort to physical separation; but this is an evidence of spiritual impotence, rather than spiritual sanctification.

Danger Of Legalism

Remember, we are speaking of the nonmoral realm—the area in which God has given no clear command. Certainly we should not go beyond God in our zeal in these matters, and begin laying down rules for others. Yet it is a strange fact in the Christian church that often evangelicalism in doctrine has been associated with legalism in practice. As soon as an individual Christian or a church moves into the realm of legalism, there is no limit nor consistency possible. The following examples are taken from the experiences of the writer: Shall it be consistent with spirituality to wear a red tie? or lipstick, or jewelry? or to listen to popular music; or see a motion picture? or look at television, or use oblong pieces of pasteboard that have one pattern on them and are called rook cards, but not another pattern and are called bridge cards, although the principle of the two games is the same? Or for a group of young people to play “Birdie on the Perch” because it is called a game, but not the Virginia reel because it is called a “dance,” although both are done with music, and the former has far more physical contact than the latter? Or to go on a hayride, but not a hoe-down, because the first is a ride and the second is a “dance,” although any chaperone will be quick to declare that the ride is far more apt to lead to undesirable consequences than the wholesome activity of folk games.

Questions Of Conscience

Or is it the location of a pastime that makes it sanctified or unsanctified? (Remember, we are still in the realm of questions of conscience—not of morals.) Is the square dance (or folk game) wrong because it is under secular auspices, and held outside of the social hall of a church building? Or does that make it right?

Or is the activity wrong because it is worldly? Then who shall decide what is or is not worldly? Is it worldly to go to a show, but not to go to a basketball or football game? Yet there is often drinking, smoking, and betting going on at such athletic contests. Are those things worldly? Is it worldly to eat Sunday dinner during the summer on one’s own patio? Then does it become worldly when one doesn’t have a patio, so eats in a park—because that becomes a picnic?

It should be obvious by now that to become legalistic in questions of conscience is to become as hopelessly enmeshed in the net of private judgment as the Pharisees of Christ’s day—who interpreted the law of the Sabbath by their own regulations and thus destroyed its spirit. Because of their preconceived prejudices, they missed the meaning of the ministry of the Messiah. (Read carefully John’s Gospel, chapter seven.)

Instead of legalism, God gives his Holy Spirit (John 7:37–39) that we should make all of life an expression of his life. And the fruit of the Spirit is love—against such there is no law (Gal. 5:22, 23).

In other words, the Christian life is the expression of the law of love and humility. It was Pharisaical legalism that put Christ upon the cross and it crucifies him afresh today.

On the other hand, love limits Christian liberty (1 Cor. 8). My liberty as a Christian is not a license to hurt the Body of Christ. Although all things in this nonmoral realm are lawful unto me, not all things are expedient. Christian maturity seeks to build up, rather than destroy the church. But both legalism and license destroy rather than build.

Thus, Christian separation is to be like Christ, who was what he was, wherever he was, and who epitomized attractiveness, understanding, kindness and good fellowship, consistent with a beauty of holiness which made God real in every situation.

L. David Cowie is minister of University Presbyterian Church, Seattle, Washington. He is a member of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.

- More from L. David Cowie

Cover Story

Profile of a Christian Soldier

J. C. Pollock

This month sees the centenary of the death of an English general, Sir Henry Havelock, for whom, when the news reached New York and Boston, flags were flown half-mast on public buildings and on the shipping in the harbours. “A purely voluntary tribute,” commented the New York Times, “paid to his memory by a people to whom he was a stranger, who were in no way interested in his career and to whom even his name was unknown six months since. It was a tribute of respect which even the Duke of Wellington did not command.”

Havelock’s life still has a message for the English-speaking peoples. He had swept to fame for his exploits in stemming the tide of the Indian Mutiny, which was spreading havoc and massacre. At the moment of triumph, when the world was celebrating the relief of Lucknow, he died there on November 24, 1857, at the age of sixty-two. Were this all, General Havelock would have little relevance for today. But it was not simply as a soldier but as a Christian general, a Christian hero, that Britain and America took him to their hearts. For a whole generation Havelock was revered as the pattern on which young men should mould their lives.

Saint And Soldier

Havelock, converted by a brother officer on their voyage to India in 1823, had an outstanding purpose: “It was the great object of my ambition to be surpassed by none in zeal and determination in the path of my duty, because I was resolved to put down the vile calumny that a Christian could not be a meritorious soldier.” In the steamy heat of Burmese jungles, in the excitements and privations of the Afghan and Sikh wars, and in the devastatingly dull years of routine soldiering in a climate which science and medical progress had not yet made bearable, he proved his point. Since Havelock, no one has seriously maintained that “it is impossible,” as a commander-in-chief had once remarked when blocking Havelock’s promotion in earlier days, “to profess to serve God and the Queen, to be at once a ‘saint’ and a soldier.”

Havelock failed to reach high command as early as he deserved because he lacked funds, and the purchase of rank was the contemporary method of promotion. During his long years of subordinate service, however, he contributed more than any other man of his age to the moral and spiritual welfare of servicemen.

For Temperance, Dignity

The prevalent attitude to enlisted men was that of Wellington: “the scum of the earth recruited for drink.” Havelock, “in the very teeth of ridicule and opposition” began a temperance movement. It was so successful in combating drunkenness that it spread throughout India; the fact that in the later nineteenth century the British soldier in India could get coffee rather than rum in the canteen was due to him.

Officers did not treat soldiers as individuals, and considered that they had no responsibility for troops outside parade hours, except to punish crime. They cared nothing for their welfare, and chaplains were almost non-existent. Havelock began Bible readings and evangelistic services for his men. He built chapels and prayer rooms, and it is small wonder that his own company became known as “Havelock’s Saints,” for despite the dire prophecies of his opponents discipline did not suffer, his Colonel testifying that Havelock’s men were the “best behaved in the regiment.” Thus, because of his Christian faith, Havelock was one of the first officers to treat his men as individuals, not mere cogs in the military machine.

His influence went even wider, for in 1833 he petitioned the Commander-in-Chief for freedom of worship to Dissenters. Roman Catholics could be excused from the Church Parade, which was always Church of England, but not Dissenters. As a result of the petition of this then unknown officer, freedom of worship was accorded to all in the British Army, at home and abroad.

When Havelock became famous in the crisis of 1857, hundreds of humble soldiers who had served with him must have told their neighbours of what sort he was. In no other way can be explained the spontaneous acclamation of Havelock as above all else a Christian. Before he died he knew that his plain unvarnished witness, his long endurance in face of disappointment and calumny, had received the reward he most coveted—a national exaltation of Christ.

Henry Havelock should be set beside his contemporaries, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and beside Gordon of Khartoum, as a Christian soldier. He was not however, an eccentric like Gordon or austere and reserved like Jackson.

After his death a spate of biographies appeared on both sides of the Atlantic, fashioning him in pure white marble, a man of forbidding moral perfection. If that had been so he would have little message for the present age, which has no patience with unreality. But Havelock was not an angel but a Christian, a sinner saved by grace—human, and therefore a sinner to the end. His hopes and fears, his tendency to melancholy, his money-worries, his loneliness when parted by the exigencies of service from his wife, daughter of the great missionary Joshua Marshman, are all shown in his private letters which were recently discovered. Through them shines also his faith: “I have Jesus Christ to trust to and his presence to comfort me. Yet in this mortal state we do feel keenly. Pray for me.”

The inscription on Havelock’s grave, still to be seen at Lucknow, proclaims that his character was “the result of the influence of the Holy Spirit on his heart, and a humble reliance on the merits of a crucified Saviour.” Growth in grace continued to the end, and it was the final flowering of his character in circumstances of extreme provocation which at last brought his eldest son, a few days before Havelock’s death when they were serving together, to give his heart to Christ after long years of stubborn resistance.

Havelock’s life, in its excitement and interest, must appeal to young men on both sides of the Atlantic. His is a character that may be extolled as an example, and one which will attract. The vast majority of Christians serve God in ordinary avocations and Havelock’s example will help them to do it.

His secret was the friendship of Christ. And that remains his message. “It is a happy thing beyond description,” he once wrote, “to have a heavenly Father and a powerful Friend in whom to put our trust.”

J. C. Pollock is Editor of The Churchman, a quarterly journal of Anglican theology. He holds the M.A. degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. During World War II he served in the Coldstream Guards. His most recent book, The Road to Glory, published in England by John Murray, is the story of the distinguished Christian general, Havelock of Lucknow, of whom he writes in this article.

- More from J. C. Pollock

Cover Story

Challenge of the Campus

Rudolph Norden

The contemporary upsurge of religious interest has engulfed also the campuses of North American colleges and universities. The favorable response to Billy Graham’s Christian messages by Yale University students has been narrated in a previous issue of Christianity Today. Evangelical campus missions sponsored by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and other witnessing groups are enjoying similar results.

Not to be discounted in less sensational but steadily increasing student participation in denomination-centered worship programs—those of the Canterbury Club for Episcopalians, the Westminster Foundation for Presbyterians, the Lutheran Student Association and Gamma Delta for National Lutheran Council and Missouri Synod students respectively, and others. According to Time (November 21, 1955) the Rev. Frederic Kellogg of Cambridge, Mass., counted only about 35 Harvard students at the Sunday Episcopal services in 1936. Twenty years later 500 attended the Sunday worship. At Memorial Lutheran Chapel in Ames, Iowa, the Rev. Wilbert J. Fields sees more Iowa State College students at average Sunday services than he has names on his list.

The quickening spiritual pulse is sensed by many observers of the campus scene. “I’ve been in the dean’s office for more than 20 years,” says Nicholas McKnight, dean of students at Columbia College, “and never have I seen such a wide interest in religion among the students” (Time, November 21, 1955).

University authorities themselves have taken steps in recent years to give religion a favorable hearing. If not by administrative implementation, they at least give their blessing to such campus-wide observances as Religious Emphasis Week or Church Night during New Student Week. At increasing numbers of state-supported colleges ways and means are found to offer religion credit courses, either by bootlegging them into the curriculum via philosophy departments or by approving the open establishment of chairs of religion. To assist students and campus pastors in their spiritual enterprises, some college administrations have created the office of coordinator of religious activities. Short of being an ordained chaplain, the coordinator lends counsel and aid in giving respectable status to campus religions. The enlightened policy is to recognize all religions on a frank, pluralistic basis. This gives evangelical groups an equal chance to make their unhampered Christian witness.

Greater support to campus ministries comes, and properly so, from the national church bodies themselves. Instead of considering the campus program an adjunct of the nearest parish, denominational headquarters today think more in terms of maintaining fulltime pastorates for college folk. Well they might, for just around the corner lurks the largest student population America has yet seen. The first ripples of the tidal wave of tomorrow’s students are already lapping the coastline. The present college enrollment of three million is but a shadow of things to come.

Optimum use of these unprecedented opportunities is contingent on a realistic appraisal of factors contributing to the crisis of the modern university. The survey will show liabilities along with the assets, opposition as well as opportunity. By honestly facing the facts and reckoning with them, we take the first step in channeling nondescript religious interest into meaningful commitment to the Christian religion.

Encounter With Scientific Humanism

Alongside the search for personal security in religion, there continues the trend to build creeds on secular philosophies. In the early 1950’s the Newman Foundation (Roman Catholic) at a mid-American university issued a manual in which it was stated, “Many people think of the university as a place where atheists and communists swarm like flies, waiting to pounce upon innocent and unsuspecting students. This is a gross exaggeration. One wishes one might say it was absolutely false, but that is not true either.”

The writer goes on to point out that positivism is a militant philosophy rejecting all absolute truths, such as the existence (or relevance) of God and the primary principles of morality rooted in revealed theology. He says that positivists are found in the departments of philosophy, education and social sciences, shaking the accepted beliefs of Catholic students oftener by innuendo and contemptuous comments than by direct assault. That is how a Catholic writer sees the picture.

There are instances of the acclaimed academic mind, pledged to the open pursuit of truth, becoming a mind in captivity to a hard and fast creed, with as many postulates in it as in any creed of the church. It is a creed that demands total commitment, and in many cases a blind faith. There is no open-mindedness about a “liberalism” that arbitrarily and categorically rules our Christian thought. It is a one-way street, and at its terminal a dead-end alley. What we are concerned about is not science itself, but the philosophic constructions put on science and the attitude of secularists and scientific humanists who want to close the doors to the legitimacy of Christian revelation. Roy LeMoine, Director of Religious Life at Iowa State College, has well stated, “The University knows no revealed truth.” It should be pointed out that this, perhaps necessary, principle is in itself a statement of faith.

Biblical, Spiritual Illiteracy

There is a set of retarding circumstances not originating on the campus but dating back to the student’s home and home church in the community from which he comes. Dr. Homer Rainey, formerly president of the University of Texas and of Stephens College, in a recent address pointed to the appalling condition of religious illiteracy. He stated that in former years a speaker could enrich his remarks with quotations and epigrammatic expressions from the Bible. But nowadays, according to Dr. Rainey, such references fall as duds and the speaker flat on his face because the modern generation doesn’t know the Bible. A curious anomaly is here recognized: A widespread interest in religion but a scant knowledge of the Bible.

It is not possible to sidestep all of Wesley Schrader’s critiques in the recent Life article “Our Troubled Sunday Schools.” Writes Mr. Schrader: “A young professor of religion at a girls’ college told me that he was disturbed by the inferior preparation young people are getting in our churches. ‘Students from all over the country enroll in our college,’ he said, ‘and they come to us with virtually no knowledge of the Christian faith. Religiously they are in kindergarten. The sad thing is that, in most cases, these girls have been going to Sunday School since they were in the nursery department.’ ”

This delinquency is not the fault of the university, but of the home and home church with its teaching agencies. The latter having faltered in their sacred task of teaching young people the Word of God, many freshmen come to college entirely innocent of Christian knowledge. Indeed, they are then easy prey to loose morals, indiscriminate acceptance of Christless philosophies, and low-level materialistic views toward their vocation.

There is considerable evidence that suggest that a college education does not alter people’s religious habits fundamentally. The pre-college pattern is pretty well preserved throughout life. In They Went To College, Ernest Havemann and Patricia Salter West point out that 46 per cent of the men reared as Protestants attend church regularly, while for women college graduates of the same category 59 percent attend regularly. The authors conclude, “There seems to be little evidence that college training undercuts religious beliefs” (p. 107). In brief: Religious illiteracy and all its fruits is not the product of the university as much as it is a carry-over from the student’s previous experiences.

An experienced campus pastor, when addressing himself to students, does well to locate the major problems of personal morality and spirituality not in the environment but in the person himself. I have known many Christian students during my ten years at the University of Minnesota who were not at all disturbed by the small but noisy group of budding atheists, agnostics, or what have you. If they wanted to participate in church activities, or could be so induced, they did so without casting lateral looks to see what others were doing. Ultimately, it is up to the individual. What if last Wednesday a professor got in an anti-Christian punch-line; was that a reason why students A, B, and C should sleep in on the following Sunday morning? The professor, who is very witty and probably comments similarly on big business, labor unions, or the Republican Party, should not be blamed for the sleeping propensities of students on Sunday morning.

These Christian students demonstrated that they could be active in church work under their own steam and quite without the parental push. Far from being a place where faith was lost, the campus was for them a community where Christian faith was tested and strengthened, their knowledge increased, the range of their Christian concerns widened, their spiritual insights deepened, while still others found Christ as their personal Saviour.

The Road Ahead

What procedure is indicated, if we would capitalize on present-day campus opportunities? Greater utilization of our most potent means—the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. Militarily speaking, the best defense is offense, positive procedure, growth in Christian faith, and its daily exercise in Christian service. Faith is not something one can put in his vest pocket and keep it there for the duration of college life. That would at best be a dormant faith and one well on its way toward becoming a dead faith. It is better to exercise one’s faith and keep it stimulated through the means of grace.

So it is with Christian knowledge. To peg it at the point where it was at confirmation or graduation from Sunday School is to invite spiritual stagnation. It is through personal and corporate Bible study that a student’s knowledge of the Word is articulated and made relevant to life’s problems.

Students will profit more than they know from taking religion credit courses offered under the sponsorship of their denomination. During the 1955–56 term 1,866 University of Texas students availed themselves of credit courses given under the auspices of the Texas Bible Chair. If 1,800 out of a total enrollment of 16,000 is thought not to be a favorable ratio, it should be remembered that it is a considerable improvement over the 1908 figure. In that year only one U. of T. student took a religion credit course. Similar appreciation is shown on other campuses. Only 20 Princeton students took the first religion course begun in 1939. During the 1955–56 school year 700 Princetonians were enrolled in various religion classes.

There are study projects the student may undertake on his own, such as the reading of books written in the Christian perspective. If David Hume’s essay on miracles is required reading in a humanities course, the Christian student owes it to himself to balance the fare with a reading of C. S. Lewis’ book, Miracles. The last decade has seen the production of a virile Christian literature interacting with all the phases of thought and culture from an evangelical point of view. A sufficient beginning has been made in this direction so that stimulating reading, relevant to psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines, awaits the inquirer.

In my own church body, for example, Ph.D. scholars in philosophy, education, and psychology, one of them the Lutheran head of a Big Ten university psychology department, are working on a project to bring these studies into a Christian framework. Other churches are similarly engaged, particularly the Episcopalians with their Faculty Papers.

Things are looking up for Christian students and staff members at state universities. The challenge of the campus has the potential of a great blessing to Christendom.

Gambling For The Seamless Robe

Shuffling dice to win His robe

Has not ceased today;

Men take His teaching and His law,

But cast His Cross away.

They want His garb without His grief,

His light without His blood;

They want His joy without His pain,

But not the Spirit’s flood.

The seamless robe of deity

They rend with knives of guilt,

Deny His claims but take His gifts,

Betray the Church He built.

They gamble still just what to do

With things they won’t believe;

Deny the Word, destroy the faith

And simple hearts deceive.

ELMER H. NICHOLAS

Rudolph Norden is editorial assistant with the Commission on College and University Work of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, in Chicago. He holds degrees from St. Paul’s College and Concordia Seminary, has done graduate work in philosophy and history at the University of Minnesota, has served as a pastor in Colorado and Nebraska, and as Lutheran campus pastor at the University of Minnesota for 10 years, where he was founder of the University Lutheran Church and Student Center. He is Editor of the Lutheran Campus Pastor and a frequent contributor to other magazines.

- More from Rudolph Norden

Cover Story

How to Bring a Nation under God

Samuel M. Shoemaker

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12)

What should be the relation between a nation and God? It might seem that religion is so personal a matter that one cannot think of any real relation between a great aggregate of people, like a nation, and God. But aggregates of people have a character, an influence, a responsibility which they exercise. The individuals within them contribute largely to this, but the aggregate is more than and different from the sum of the individuals. The Old Testament is the record of God’s dealing with a nation. In it individuals are flashed upon the screen continually; but they are always individuals within the nation. When Christianity appeared, religion became both more personal and more universal in its implications. But we must never forget the profound debt of descent which Christianity owes to Judaism.

Some would attempt to divorce the religious from the national consciousness, on the grounds that when you add the religious to the national loyalty you have a fruitful source of egoistic nationalism, dragging in God for support. This danger is there, of course. It arises the moment the importance of the nation outstrips the importance of God. But there are some things to be said about this.

The first is that the nation, like the family, seems to be an intended unit of human society. There have always been these groupings according to race, or location, or language, or religion. How would you ever read history without individuals, families, and nations? Each of these seems to have a place in the permanent scheme of things.

True Patriotism

I remember a time when I thought that all patriotism was inevitably jingoistic nationalism. I felt the thing to go for was a love and loyalty for all mankind. There is a great truth here, but I had to live a while and learn that we are meant to reach our loyalties to the great aggregate of the world, through the more circumscribed loyalties of family, community and nation. A general concern for humanity without responsibility for one’s own group and nation may turn out to be a vague, amorphous internationalism that may be more sentimental than responsible. If we cannot deal effectively with those smaller units how can we expect to deal effectively with the whole human race?

The second thing is that there is only one thing bigger than the powerful state, and that is God. When the state usurps all power (as lately in Germany, and presently in Russia and the satellite countries), there seems to be no individual, no group, no interest, strong enough to rise up against it. Another power from without may have to effect its deliverance from its dictators. Organized religion may seem very impotent for a time. The Church must work by moral, not material force. The state can do terrible things to the Church’s leaders and people. But, even within the immediate framework, a power is exerted out of all proportion to its physical strength.

Outside Of History

Hitler broke the newspaper editors, he broke the college professors; he never could quite break the Church. That stood athwart him when all else capitulated to him. But God is more than the relatively small power resident in God’s people. God is the Lord and Judge of history. Once let the very thought of him enter the mind of the tyrant, and he will quaver. If he begins realizing that he stands under the judgment of a righteous God, it is more likely to make him modify, or even abandon, his ways than any other thing. For God, if he is at all, stands above and outside of history, while he works in and through history. The belief in God, even tenuously and provisionally held, yet remains the one factor that can put fear into the tyrant’s heart, as it puts hope into the heart of the tyrannized.

It appears, then, that God creates nations, as he creates men. And it appears that nations, like men, truly thrive and go forward, not when they seek their own will, and willed destiny, but when they seek to keep aware of God, mindful of his favour, conscious of his judgment upon all their partial successes, dependent upon him for their life.

There is a sense in which what I have just been saying is a fiction. There never has been a nation that fulfilled these things, unless on rare occasions. When we say that they happen at all, we mean that at times the will of a minority that thinks and feels in this way prevails and becomes public policy. A famous instance was our dealings with China after the Boxer uprising half a century ago. There were doubtless Americans who seethed when President Theodore Roosevelt, at the instigation of Dr. Arthur H. Smith, a famous old missionary in North China, returned the indemnity money asking that a college and scholarships be made of it; but good will prevailed. The act and its consequences were for half a century a symbol of our relations with China.

Strength Of Tradition

It is possible that the strength of a tradition coming down from the past, or the strength of a lively present minority of right-minded people, can infuse into a nation’s thinking and planning elements of Christian morality and concern.

When it comes to our own nation, the stamp of God’s hand is heavy upon us. Our early colonists and settlers fled religious persecution and came here for freedom in the spiritual and political realms. Our founding fathers were not all of them plaster saints, nor all entirely orthodox Christians; but they were men who believed in God and feared him and who wrote their convictions into their deeds and their documents.

Freedom as we know it did not begin with the founding of America—it really began on Sinai when Moses came down from the mountain with Ten Commandments, the first of which was, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” When it became clear that Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, was the God of the whole earth, and then it became clear that he had uniquely manifested himself in Jesus of Nazareth, there began the greatest move towards rightness in human life and human relations that had ever taken place in history. Man found his real nature and stature. He is a creature who belongs to the natural creation, capable of rebellion or of obedience towards God, therefore needing redemption; but when he has accepted that redemption, he is meant to behave like a child of God and to help all other men find their significance in becoming his children also.

Dignity And Conscience

Freedom is a natural consequence of this, but will not long be sustained except in an atmosphere where man knows both his affinity and his accountability to God. His affinity gives him dignity; his accountability gives him conscience. He must be both lifted up, and kept down, by his relation to God. Only such men dare to seek freedom, and only such men know how to use it responsibly.

We badly need to understand the nature of our freedom. For some, freedom is nothing but the protected right to behave as they please; such people help to destroy freedom by the way they misuse it. Some, indeed many in our time, are so aware of the way bad people, and the bad part of the so-called good people, misuse freedom, that instead of reforming and changing the bad in the people they want to take part of the freedom out of freedom. Many young people in our colleges, taught the secular philosophy which is their current sacred cow, seeing the plentiful evils in a nation like ours, want to do away with that system of freedom which allows bad men to go on being bad, and selfish men to be selfish in their exploitation of our capitalistic system, and they want to put such curbs on our freedom that it ceases to be freedom.

Our Greatest Need

What needs changing most is the men themselves. It is not the curbing of freedom from without, but the curbing of sin from within that we really need; for when you have destroyed all your freedom, you still will have sinful men who will go on working some other kind of evil, after they have been reduced to slaves. Dr. Donald J. Cowling has reminded us that the founding fathers did not go for a big military establishment, nor for a great many social benefits for our people; the one thing they went for was liberty as the over-all climate in which everything else should be effected. I suspect that liberty is the greatest political, academic, economic, and spiritual blessing that can ever be granted to a people. You can vote it away by ever-encroaching appeals to security; but when it is gone, you cannot vote it back. Large, sweeping legislative reforms have taken the place, in our modern world, of those personal reforms which begin in individuals but do not end in them.

Freedom as a philosophy, as a passion, as a constituent part of religious faith and conviction—how many Americans are there who understand this? How many just think it means having more refrigerators and television sets and screaming newspapers and radio programs than any other nation has? A nation that has lost its soul that way is in danger soon of losing its life. There is a treason which begins in philosophy, where I think Alger Hiss’s treason began, and many more like him who have not been caught. The low-level, secularist, naturalistic thinking such men do is their first step in betraying their nation and the freedom which is both its greatest blessing and its greatest responsibility. Karl Marx said that “Communism begins where atheism begins.”

Four Steps To Take

What, then, should we seek to persuade America to do if we would see “this nation under God”?

First, this nation must repent. It must repent of all its arrogance, its thunderings about being better than other nations, its loss of God and the terrible consequences in crime, from crooked politicians to dopepeddlers. The way families have let children grow up in this God-blessed land without knowing God except as a word to swear with, children who inherit the greatest blessings any children on earth enjoy without knowing enough to say “Thank You” to God, without understanding the deep wells of religious conviction out of which these blessings have come, is as stupid as it is wicked. There are moral standards in this universe as detectable, as obvious when you see them, as any natural or scientific laws. There is at least a grave question whether the dropping of the atomic bomb in Japan was not a military mistake; its morality was still more doubtful.

America is like a good-hearted, emotional, heedless child—and such a child can do great harm. We are incredibly lacking in mature philosophy and belief and therefore of sustained policy in our national plans. We forget that the role which destiny seems to have handed us can break us as well as make us. The only safe place for America is on our knees, saying, “God, be merciful to us sinners.”

Second, let America return to its houses of worship. It is years since some of our pagan citizens have listened either to the claims of the Gospel, or its moral challenge to their lives. Church-going, for the converted, is the opportunity for the greatest exercise of which man is capable, the worship of Almighty God. Church-going, for the unconverted (whether outside or inside the church), is putting oneself where he can hear needed but convicting truth. It is daring to go where you hear from without what your conscience has already been telling you from within. It is risking a spiritual experience and a conversion. I know the human faults of the Church; but I know also the divine power that still courses through her to human souls.

Third, let America think and act responsibly and unselfishly. It is hard in these days to wean any act, national or personal, from elements of calculation and prudence. We need the infusion into this nation of some more simple integrity and common goodness. The good are sometimes gullible and open to being used by the cleverly evil; but the genuinely good have a wisdom of their own, a shrewdness which is directed, not at self-interest, but at the good of everybody.

We need the courage that speaks out about evil. We need the concern that takes the part of the oppressed. We need the kind of faith that believes that goodness is not the contesting intruder in the universe, but the manifestation of the will of God the Creator.

Fourth, let America seek with all its heart the faith of our fathers from which have come our chief blessings. Free nations must admit the right of any to disbelieve, to accept thanklessly the blessings which believing men have bequeathed to us which come ultimately from God. This liberty is the only way to have an uncoerced truth, a faith that is truly free. But no nation can thrive on neutrality. A wise and wary people will realize that its best leaven are the caring, creative folk who believe in God and therefore try to meet human needs as they arise.

A nation which will not recognize the dependence of freedom upon faith is on its way to ruin. As Dr. Jacques Maritain said, “… the world has done with neutrality. Willingly or unwillingly, states will be obliged to make a choice for or against the Gospel. They will be shaped either by the totalitarian spirit or by the Christian spirit.” Let America heed words like that. Let America ponder the truth of the Psalmist’s words, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

Samuel M. Shoemaker’s gifts range from pen to pulpit. Currently rector of Pittsburgh’s Calvary Episcopal Church, he is author of many books, among them How to Become a Christian and Revive Thy Church Beginning with Me. His contribution above is a revision of an article originally prepared for the magazine Faith at Work.

- More from Samuel M. Shoemaker

Cover Story

Fundamentalism-Modernism: A First Step in the Controversy

Geoffrey W. Bromiley

Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and the wider Christian public, must be grateful to the Editor for his courageous call that the controversy between so-called modernism and fundamentalism should be reassessed. Nothing but harm can result from the ignoring of vital issues. And while unnecessary and virulent controversy is rightly to be deplored, there can be no genuine peace or cooperation so long as there is division on questions of basic importance. On both sides, therefore, it is right and proper that there should be a fresh wrestling with the difference.

Beyond The Breach

At the same time, it will be generally accepted that the debate should be resumed with a view to an outcome which is positive and fruitful. If the only result of a resumption of the controversy were to be hardening in hostility and suspicion, with the consequent strengthening of uncharitable attitudes on both sides, then it would be far better to leave things as they are. The fact has to be recognized that the continuance of this division is not helpful to the witness of the Protestant world, and that if the discussion is reopened it should be very definitely for the purpose of healing the disastrous breach.

But this is the whole difficulty, for compromise is obviously ruled out by the nature of the division. We cannot discuss merely in the hope of bringing opposing views into line, or finding a minimum of common ground on which to take a stand. Nor is it enough merely to attempt a sympathetic understanding. To be sure, a historical understanding is useful, for it enables us to see how it is that others have come to adopt the positions which they now hold. In this way, it helps us to go back to the root of the division, and perhaps to apportion the responsibility. But there can be no way forward merely by sympathetic appreciation of the opposing standpoint. For while sympathy ought naturally to be extended, it should be the kind of sympathy which helps people out of their difficulties rather than confirms them in them.

A Call To Both Sides

In these circumstances, is there really any hope of renewal of discussion issuing not in the strengthening of both sides but rather in the genuine victory of evangelical truth? The answer seems to lie, not in an attempted rapprochement, but in a call to both sides to take seriously the basic principles for which they supposedly and nominally stand. The controversy can be positively resumed, and with some hope of a profitable outcome which will be a victory for truth, if modernists for their part will accept the challenge to be genuinely historical and scientific, and fundamentalists for theirs will accept the challenge to be radically and consistently biblical.

Scientific Procedure

It has always been the cry of those who adopt liberal views that in so doing they are following a historical or scientific procedure. In other words, they are setting aside the presuppositions of the past. They are attaining an objectivity free from traditional assumptions. They are able to make a fresh approach, especially to the biblical documents. They can reassess them in accordance with the facts, i.e., the historical realities of their derivation and nature and setting, and of the development of which they are the record. Tacitly or explicitly, all modernism rests upon this fundamental appeal.

But the question arises whether in the majority of cases it is really historical or scientific in more than a nominal, or at any rate, a negative sense. It does, of course, set aside certain beliefs concerning the Bible, and holds itself free to reject or amend the theological inheritance of the past. But this negative liberation is not by a long way the genuine objectivity required in science, and in two vital respects liberal theologians give evidence that they have a good deal to learn concerning real objectivity, and that if they would find their way to it either independently (as has happened to some extent in the movement of “biblical theology”) or in renewed debate with evangelicals, there can be hope of better things for the Protestant world.

Dominating Assumptions

In the first place, far too many liberals seem to have remained blissfully unaware that in throwing off the biblical or traditional presuppositions they have not attained to a position of neutrality but have merely replaced them by new presuppositions which control their historical and theological study of the Bible. An analysis of the dominating assumptions of modernism is impossible in this brief article. The fact that they are present in all kinds of combinations and with all kinds of emphases and nuances means that it is difficult to sift and sort them in any given case. Rationalism laid a solid foundation in the 17th and 18th centuries. The evolutionary monism of Herder made an important contribution, especially when it was given a quasi-scientific status through the work of Darwin and his school. The subjectivism of Schleiermacher, combining such varied elements as Pietism and Kantian philosophy, provided a vital element which has always been at odds with the professed objectivity. But whatever the combination, the fact remains that the majority of liberals have approached the biblical documents with presuppositions just as powerful as those of any fundamentalist, and the more insidious because often concealed under a mask of objectivity. The challenge to modernists, then, is a challenge to see that much of their work and many of their findings are not historical in the strictest sense, but are controlled or even dominated by these assumptions.

Subjective Factors

Secondly, and in a sense even more seriously, it has not been seen or remembered that true scientific objectivity means a readiness to study and assess the object in and from itself, to allow oneself to be taught by the object. It is no good pretending to be objective if we discard presuppositions only to interpret the object of our study in terms of something else, or indeed make the object something rather different from what it really is. Yet this is what actually happens in so much modernist study. Armed with assumptions which are not in any case biblical, the student does not learn from the object of his enquiry; indeed, it may be questioned whether he even sees it properly. Instead, he comes to the Bible with his own predetermined questions and finds in it the things which he wants, and discards those which he does not. To be genuinely objective, he must be ready to take the Bible as he finds it, to expound it in terms of itself, to let it speak its own message in its own way. Instead of addressing his questions to the Bible, he must be prepared to let the Bible answer its own questions. And for this purpose, he will have to remember that the Bible itself understands itself as a unity as well as a collection, so that even though the investigator may not agree with this view, it must be taken into account if he is to give a genuinely objective account.

In any case, however, it is essential to a truly scientific approach that the object itself should determine the nature of the study and especially of the findings. As already noted, the so-called biblical theology has made an important beginning along these lines. But modernists as a whole must be summoned to take far more genuinely and seriously the scientific objectivity which is nominally intrinsic to their whole position.

Biblical Approach

On the other side, fundamentalists lay vocal claim to the biblical nature of their approach and thinking, their methods and conduct. In other words, they are prepared to take the Bible in terms of itself, and to accept the assumptions on which it speaks. They do not dispute the materials incorporated in the Bible, nor attempt to put them within an alien framework. They maintain their positions only because they are convinced that these are true to the Bible, and they are always ready to put other views (and especially the views of others) to the arbitratment of Scripture. Any attack on the Bible from any source is firmly resisted.

Again, however, the question arises whether many fundamentalists are really quite so biblical as they protest except nominally or negatively. Indeed, a close examination suggests that in far too many fields evangelical thought and activity is in its own way influenced by the very assumptions which underlie the liberal movement, though biblical texts or tags may be found for the detailed outworking. For instance, the subjectivism of Schleiermacher, itself connected with 18th century Pietism, plays an obvious and not specifically biblical role in the emphasis on experience common in so many evangelical circles. Or again, in the principles of Christian organization, action and methods, there is often displayed an elementary failure to be biblical which is no less culpable and dangerous because it is so patently unconscious.

Role Of Investigation

More pertinently, there are two points at which fundamentalists do well to ask themselves whether they are truly biblical, or biblical enough. In respect of the modernist attack on the Bible, it is often not perceived that in the aim to rebut the critical theories there is a danger of accepting the critical assumptions, i.e., of trying to fight modernists on their own ground, instead of genuinely fighting them from the Bible itself. This means that so much of the controversy becomes a detailed discussion in terms of a commonly accepted historicism, the truth and authority of the Bible being linked with the ability to prove the historical reliability of this or that part of the biblical record. Naturally, in face of historical criticism, there is a place for sober investigation and this need not be feared. But it is another matter to make this the crucial battle, when all the time the real need is to see the underlying empiricism on the modernist side and not to accept it but to combat it with a genuinely biblical approach.

Inroads Of Rationalism

But if the historico-critical work of fundamentalists, however conservative, is often conducted on non-biblical assumptions, the same is no less true of a good deal of their equally conservative theology. The fact has to be faced that in the later years of the 17th century there was a considerable infusion of rationalism into the most impeccable of Protestant orthodoxy, and that much evangelical dogmatics, while it is biblical in its materials, is very far from biblical in its basis, structure and method. The challenge to fundamentalists is thus that they should reckon with the possibility that, for all their good intentions, their training and traditions and environment may have conspired to make them a good deal less biblical in basic thinking than they suppose. They have to be ready to see what the points are where they must be taught by the Bible to be genuinely biblical. And for this purpose they must go back again and again to the Bible itself, submitting their own views and those of the evangelical fathers to its searching and purifying scrutiny.

It will be seen, however, that if modernists accept the challenge to be truly scientific, and fundamentalists to be truly biblical, their controversy can be hopeful and fruitful, for they are both summoned to the same task. The modernist is objective as he is taught by the object, i.e., the Bible, and therefore he must be biblical. The fundamentalist is biblical as he allows the Bible to search and correct his teachings instead of molding the Bible into his own pattern, and therefore he must be objective. The fruits of renewed discussion will not be gathered in a day, for nothing is more difficult than to be truly objective and therefore truly biblical in relation to the Bible. It involves an act of intellectual and spiritual humility which comes readily to none of us. We all prefer to be masters rather than scholars in this school. But if we are at least prepared on both sides to live up to our profession, to be radically biblical, then we shall be brought together in a common study of the common object in terms of itself. And as we can see already from the few first-fruits already gathered, the Bible can be relied upon, under the Holy Spirit, to do its own positive and therefore unifying work.

Geoffrey W. Bromiley, rector of St. Thomas’ English Episcopal Church in Edinburgh, Scotland, holds the Ph.D. and D.Litt. degrees from University of Edinburgh. He is a gifted church historian and writer. Among his books is Thomas Cranmer, Theologian, published by Oxford University Press.

- More from Geoffrey W. Bromiley

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: October 28, 1957

G. C. Berkouwer

Two years ago there appeared a book that deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. This is the work of Antanas Maceina issued under the title, Das Geheimnis der Bosheit (The Secret of Evil). In this volume Maceina deals with the antichrist with reference to the Russian writer Solowjew’s tales attempting to account for evil in the world. Because he rejected an eternal dualism between good and evil, he was confronted with the question of the problem of evil in the world, and attempted therefore to supply an answer in his book on the antichrist.

The secret of evil is an expression that goes back to 2 Thessalonians 2, where Paul, in connection with the man of sin, speaks of the hiddenness of iniquity. The expression is used frequently to indicate the strange, mysterious character of evil. Maceina wishes to follow the trail of evil in history. He is gripped especially by the thought that the realm of the antichrist is the world of caricature. This realm wears the mask of the Church—and as one proceeds to follow this through, one goes from one thing to another. In this fashion the antichrist is described as the man of ethics, of morality, of decency and well doing, in short, as philanthropist. Naturally there lies in all of this an element of truth: there is a masquerade. But one must be careful of overstatement, as for instance when Maceina identifies the antichrist as the imitation of the new Jerusalem. According to the biblical message, the example of philanthropy does not fit very well, at least not in the case of believers (who of course also are people). But we acknowledge that there always lies in the antichrist something of the substitute, the disguise, of imitation, of caricature, even in the range of the wonders of the antichrist.

Now there is in this book one element that deserves our special attention. When Maceina speaks of the great falling away, he regards this falling away also as a purifying factor in the life of the Church of Jesus Christ, because in its smaller numbers it continues to strive throughout this trial. And in this connection he warns us against the human tendency to attach too much importance to the matter of numbers, to quantity, for the very reason that it is exactly the power of numbers that is the trademark of the realm of the antichrist. The Kingdom of God pays no attention to quantity, but to quality, and one must therefore protect himself from the temptation of numbers. And he expresses himself in such fashion that he makes clear that quantity is the false disguise of value.

He can, therefore, quite naturally point to all kinds of scriptural passages wherein there is warning against the overevaluation of numbers. These warnings are indeed many, and we think back on the census of David, and the band of Gideon in which there were “too many,” and it is exactly in comparison with these that we read in the Gospels about the “legion” of the power of darkness! Therefore Maceina points us to the dangerous cult or fad of numbers. But it is necessary to point out with emphasis that the Gospel also speaks of the value of “the many”. One can say that the preaching of the Gospel to all people is thus directed to the many. It certainly is not in vain that in the Revelation of John mention is made of the great throng which no one can number and which is gathered from all people and nations and tongues. That is an outlook that rests in the broadness and universality of the Gospel for the entire world. The Gospel seeks out the uttermost parts of the earth and that is exactly the perspective of Pentecost. Also in the many resides the blessing of the Gospel. And when one too quickly and too conveniently brings the great falling away in connection with the purification of the Church, which now in its small numbers can still press through in its striving over against massive forces, then one is certainly embarked upon a romantic path.

True, the Gospel gives us no opportunity to seek after numbers, but it does point us toward the riches of numbers for the Lord. We must not sing hymns of praise for individuals. That can only fall short of the doing justice to the great call of the Church to seek, with the harnessing of all possible power, the many in an uprooted world. Do we not read that Christ has given his life for many? Surely the power of God can in the Church’s times of need bring individuals (the persecuted) under God’s special protection, and one must never fear when numbers grow smaller, and we should never come under the suggestive spell of “legion.” Great numbers are no guarantee of value or truth. However, we must not, in juxtaposition to legion, glorify the few, as if there is an essential value in the few that we should desire small numbers. Much more should we look forward to the time when they shall come from all sides, as in the prophecy of Zechariah, where we read, “Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is the Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.”

The throng which no one can number.… In the middle of this turmoiled world in which we live, we should not become confused about the value of numbers and the many. We cannot let the matter of the total be decisive, and where two or three are gathered in the name of the Lord, there he will be in the midst of them. But our prayer goes forth also to the many. For even though the power of darkness may have estranged the many and used the total to make an impression, we may never forget that the total remains God’s property. The many have their place in the apocalyptic vision. And upon the many focuses our calling, our expectation and our fervent prayers.

This review of live spiritual and moral issues debated in the secular and religious press of the day is prepared successively for CHRISTIANITY TODAY by four evangelical scholars: Professor W. Stanford Reid of Canada, Professor G. C. Berkouwer of the Netherlands, Professor John H. Gerstner of the United States and Dr. Philip E. Hughes of England.

- More from G. C. Berkouwer

Books

Book Briefs: October 28, 1957

F. F. Bruce

Current Viewpoints

Contemporary Evangelical Thought, by Carl F. H. Henry, Ed., et al., Channel Press, New York. $5.00.

In this volume ten American scholars review the position of evangelical thought today in ten fields of study—the Old Testament, the New Testament, theology, ethics, apologetics, education, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, science and religion, and evangelism and preaching. The editor points out in his preface that the writers have set two aims before them—to sketch the evangelical contribution to various fields of study, and also “to clarify present conservative thought on some of the crucial centers of Christian concern.”

It follows that the special interests and convictions of the writers find expression in their surveys; but this really adds to the value of their symposium. Thus Edward J. Young, who writes on the Old Testament, in commenting on the works of the Dutch scholar G. Ch. Aalders, confesses himself as sometimes “troubled by Aalders’ willingness to depart from traditional positions, particularly where such departure does not appear to be necessary.” No doubt, if this chapter had been written by Aalders or one of his pupils, a rather different emphasis might have appeared at this point. Again, those contributors who mention the redoubtable figure of Cornelius Van Til make it plain where they stand in relation to his challenging work; this is particularly true in the chapter entitled “Apologetics,” by Gordon H. Clark, in which we think we can detect the lingering echoes of a 13-year-old dispute. But this personal note is welcome; the writers are themselves involved in the issues with which they deal.

The editor himself writes the chapter on “Science and Religion”; one of the interesting features of this contribution is its shrewd evaluation of Bernard Ramm’s The Christian View of Science and Scripture—a volume which has created quite a stir throughout the English-speaking world.

To the reviewer, the chapters on the Old and New Testaments are of most immediate interest. Dr. Young pays generous tribute to the help which evangelical Old Testament students have received from the teaching of Cyrus H. Gordon and other Jewish scholars. On the other hand, he cannot agree that the modern revival of “biblical theology” among Christian scholars of the liberal wing represents a return to orthodoxy such as evangelicals could wholeheartedly welcome. This is an issue which deserves fuller discussion than the present review permits. Some readers may be surprised to find that the significance of the Qumran texts is not discussed under the Old Testament heading, but in Everett F. Harrison’s chapter on the New Testament. But this is as it should be, and Dr. Harrison’s discussion, though necessarily brief, is sound.

The writers pay attention to work that is being done in other English-speaking lands, and in the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia. The reviewer appreciates the tribute paid to the publications of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, and as a Scot he is delighted to find John Macleod’s Scottish Theology worthily appraised.

The whole volume presents ample evidence of the vitality of evangelical scholarship today.

A few slips have been noted, especially in the initials of authors’ names. John Urquhart’s surname is regularly misspelt “Urquhardt”; and Dr. Graham Scroggie is (unfortunately) twenty years older than he is made out to be on p. 84.

F. F. BRUCE

Macartney Memoir

Salute Thy Soul, by Clarence E. Macartney, Abingdon, 1957. $2.00.

Asking a small-town preacher to review a book by Clarence E. Macartney is akin to asking the football coach of a small Junior High School what he thinks of Michigan State’s offensive pattern. What can he say? Here is the prince of American Presbyterian preachers whose pulpit abilities were tested and blessed in three significant pulpits, in the classroom and on the lecture podium.

Dr. Oswald T. Allis, Macartney’s seminary classmate and friend of many years, has acceded to a deathbed request to see this volume through the press. So that voice which many of us heard in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and which was silenced by death in 1957, continues to speak the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ.

“Salute Thy Soul,” the title of the first sermon as well as of the book, is, as the publishers claim, “Macartney at his best.” Starting from his usual biblical text, he probes the soul in definition, life experience and salvation. The stirring drama, rich illustration, warm evangelism are all here. Other striking sermons in this collection include, “The Soul’s Arabia,” “When Jacob Saw the Wagons” and “The Solitude of Sin.”

I would prefer to describe this volume as “A Collection of Thirteen Sermons on Biblical Texts” rather than try to force all the sermons into the subject of the first. It is difficult to see how the sermons on “What About Angels” and “The Mystery of Christ” fit into the suggested theme except in the broadest possible sense.

Dr. Macartney took to himself the last word he gave his brother Robertson, who was leaving his bedside to preach in a nearby church: “Put all the Bible you can into it.”

FRANK A. LAWRENCE

Botanical Answers

All the Plants of the Bible, by Winifred Walker, Harper. 1957. $4.95.

Winifred Walker, internationally known botanical artist, provides plant lovers with accurate paintings of 114 Bible plants (in full-page black-and-white reproduction) and a wealth of informative comment on the flowers, fruits, trees, shrubs, grains, herbs and vegetables mentioned in Scripture.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Physicians And Faith

Faith and Medicine, by Andre Schlemmer, Tyndale, London. 2s, 6d.

The Limits of Medical Responsibility, by Arnold S. Aldis, Tyndale, London. 6d.

An English surgeon and a French physician, both of them earnest Christians, have produced booklets which, while addressed primarily to members of their own profession, are not without interest and value for others. Mr. Aldis shows how introduction of the National Health Service in Great Britain, the unprecedented advances in the whole field of medicine in recent years, and the partial undermining of Christian faith and Christian ethics combine to necessitate a re-examination of medical responsibilities. For instance, the doctor’s responsibility to the state, which provides his remuneration, ought not to be in conflict with his primary responsibility to the individual patient. Christian doctors must maintain the highest standards, and keep abreast of medical progress and discovery, despite demands that record-keeping and form-filling make upon their time.

Dr. Schlemmer’s work covers more ground, giving clear scriptural teaching on “The Christian Life and the Body,” “Faith and the Care of the Body,” “Faith and Medical Science,” “Reverence for Life and Medical Vocation,” with a particularly useful final chapter on “Instinct, Reason, and Intuition.” Here and there one notes a remarkable identity of emphasis between the two booklets. “Knowledge alone is not enough,” says Mr. Aldis. “What we need is wisdom to use knowledge to the right ends. And wisdom depends not on cleverness, ingenuity, or technology; it depends on goodness and righteousness. This in its turn depends upon godliness and cannot long be divorced from it” (page 16). “It is necessary,” says Dr. Schlemmer, “for medical science to search, in addition to scientific knowledge, for wisdom, and to cultivate it” (page 57). And, like Mr. Aldis, he is convinced that this wisdom “must be derived from a source which is divinely given (i.e. God’s revelation) which is the guide and keeper of our reason as it pursues its search for wisdom.”

FRANK HOUGHTON

Sex And Marriage

The Intimate Life, by Norval Geldenhuys, Eerdmans. 96 pp., $1.50.

Described as “a practical, up-to-date handbook for engaged and newly married couples,” this little volume begins with a discussion of the Christian view of sex as a God-given good. It continues, to cover the importance of choosing the right life-partner, with special emphasis upon spiritual considerations. Then, following a frank chapter on the physical aspects of reproduction and coitus, the author treats of the mental and emotional attitudes that each partner to a marriage should develop towards the other in their life together.

Most of the remainder is devoted to birth-control from the standpoint of the fertile and sterile periods in a woman’s menstrual cycle. Elaborate charts and graphs accompany the clear presentation of this “natural” method of spacing children.

It is a good little book. Issued in a paperback edition, it would better suit ministers who are looking for something to give away.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Whitefield Distorted

George Whitefield, Wayfaring Witness, by Stuart C. Henry, Abingdon. $3.75.

It is regrettable that the first new book on Whitefield to appear in 30 years should leave the reader unable to decide whether the famous evangelist was a man of God or a cheap mountebank. Stating that “A strong case can be made for Whitefield as a devil or a saint” (p. 175), the author seems to feel that he fits somewhere between the two, but just where he does not know. The result is a hazy portrait, drawn in “warped perspective and untrue colour,” the very fault for which he criticizes Whitefield’s previous biographers (p. 175).

This failure to present a clear and true picture does not arise from a lack of source material. On the contrary, Dr. Henry, who is a professor at Southern Methodist University, has done an admirable job of preliminary research; he provides a bibliography of 186 entries and in the course of his text refers to his sources no less than 853 times. The difficulty lies rather in the deficient use of the material. The work of the true historian—the forming of an opinion only on the basis of amassing and analyzing all available evidence on any given phase of the subject—does not characterize this book, but almost every page produces some conclusion hurriedly drawn from fractional and often one-sided evidence; conflicting testimony is frequently ignored, and source material is referred to in a surface, prooftext fashion.

Scores of examples of this faulty practice might be cited. The author makes a case against Whitefield for his part in the “unconverted clergy” controversy in New England (p. 65), yet he completely ignores the extenuating circumstances which would force a revision of his judgment. The same is true of his charges concerning the extremes of emotion which characterized some phases of the revival (p. 64), and of his treatment of Whitefield’s attitude toward slavery. A full knowledge of the doctrinal controversy between Whitefield and Wesley is the sine qua non of understanding the man and his life, yet this book gives it but three fragmentary mentions (pp. 59, 79, 102). By the same process of snap judgment he accuses Whitefield of “an unbecoming pride of ignorance,” and “an arrogant hostility to learning” (p. 96); he stigmatizes him as “a theological cuttlefish” (p. 178), “an odd combination of humility and pride,” and one whose “success intoxicated him till his dying day” (p. 16). Statement after statement might thus be produced, containing the half truth and the untruth.

The book is most notable for what it leaves out. The wretched canards concocted by Unitarians, formalists, deists and atheists in their hatred of the man of God are introduced here, while the many testimonies to his goodness and greatness which came from a host of reliable witnesses among his contemporaries are almost all omitted. More than half of the book is given over to “The Message and How It Was Received,” yet amazing as it seems, that matchless effect of Whitefield’s preaching—the glorious conversion of thousands, and the resultant revival that transformed two nations—has no part in it. As a background to Whitefield’s life it must ever be borne in mind that he was in ill health and deeply in debt throughout almost all of his ministry, yet that is omitted too. There were many evidences of his regard for learning, his deep humility and his gracious love, but the reader looks in vain for them here. The passion to win souls and the fervor and warmth that were the main characteristics of his life, are nowhere found in this cold book. The author reveals no personal sympathy for Whitefield’s evangelicalism, as he reviews his theological position in a rather scoffing fashion.

In this reviewer’s opinion the work is but a sad caricature, which cannot fail to confuse the reader and bring reproach upon the memory of a holy, humble and mighty man of God.

ARNOLD A. DALLIMORE

Filing, Indexing Aid

Practical Study Methods for Student and Pastor, by Donald F. Rossin and Palmer Ruschke, D. F. Rossin Co., Minneapolis, 1956. $5.00.

Under a title that might mislead, here is a key to filing and indexing that makes an often complicated task appear simple. Thirty years’ experience, first in the pastorate and then in the production of filing aids, have given Donald F. Rossin a competence in this field that few could dispute. And the co-author, Palmer Ruschke, as a seminary student successfully adapted and promoted the materials and methods suggested in this book among seminary students and pastors. What we have here is not so much “study” methods as “filing and indexing” methods.

The author contends, and rightly so, that the pressures placed upon the minister today require him to use some sort of system of filing and indexing the materials he must use. It is just physically and mentally impossible to retain it all in one’s mind, and unless it is systematically filed, it is as good as lost. What minister would not warm to the idea of having more time for Bible study, auxiliary reading, family life, prayer and meditation, rest and recreation, service to his denomination and community? The authors make out a pretty convincing case for giving the minister this extra time if he will adopt the system detailed in this book.

First, they suggest a specially prepared loose-leaf pocket memo book that can be carried on one’s person at all times. Here can be kept a record of all addresses, appointments, sermon illustrations that occur to the pastor during the day, expense accounts, prospect lists, cards, etc. Then follows a chapter on the classification of materials read by the minister, using the Dewey decimal system. This is applied first to the storing of pamphlets, tracts, magazine articles, notes, etc., in a filing cabinet. The placement of tabs, use of colors and labeling are all explained. Then the Dewey system is applied to indexing what is read from one’s own library or the public sources. Thus the fruit of what one reads is not lost as memory fades.

The chapter on sermon mechanics is excellent and points the way both to systematic sermon preparation and preservation. Mr. Rossin has prepared a special series of cards and envelopes for use by ministers and explains how to use them. One of the unique features of this book is that the original owner of each copy has the privilege of writing to Minneapolis to receive free samples of the materials suggested. Then he can see for himself whether he and the system could work happily together.

As is to be expected, some suggestions will not meet every minister’s needs. For example, to have “five or ten ghost readers” reading periodicals and submitting reports on their reading gave the reviewer nightmares (p. 135). And he wonders, too, why 50 pages of a 175-page book had to be taken up with a large-print, double-spaced list of the Dewey decimal system classification numbers of every subject related to religion. This could have been easily compressed into one-third the space.

What about the poor harassed preacher who says he doesn’t even have time to get such a system started? This book has the answer. “Make it your hobby for a while.” Not a bad idea, if you don’t mind a hobby in your study.

J. C. HOLBROOK

Worthy Studies

The General Epistle of James, by R. V. G. Tasker, 7s.6d. and The Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, by Leon Morris, 7s.6d., Tyndale Press, London, 1956. Published in U.S.A. by Eerdmans, Grand Rapids. $2.00.

These two volumes are the first numbers to appear of a series of Tyndale New Testament commentaries. Based on the Authorized Version, they are primarily intended for the general Christian reader. They are, however, by no means facile or superficial, but seek to give within their modest compass a thorough exegesis of the books and proper attention to the principal questions of introduction, criticism and text as they arise. They are convenient in size, fitting the pocket (unless its capacity is unusually limited), well bound and attractively printed.

Professor Tasker of the University of London, who is general editor of the series, inaugurates it with a commentary which it is almost an impertinence to praise. He quotes a sermon where this letter was referred to as “a collection of sermon-notes,” and throughout Prof. Tasker’s book one hears the earnest, compelling tones of the preacher whose words are always springing direct from the sacred text. One is irresistibly reminded of John Calvin, who is, indeed, not infrequently quoted. Fair consideration is given to points where the interpretation is disputed and variant readings are treated with the judiciousness that one expects from an eminent textual critic. Prof. Tasker wears his learning lightly and his study is a treasure of its kind.

There are all too few commentaries on the Thessalonian epistles which are both good and moderate in size: so the contribution of Dr. Morris (who is Vice-Principal of Ridley College, Melbourne) is much needed. His commentary is a thoroughly competent, workmanlike affair. In his introduction he sets out the principal views of the origin and date of the epistles and argues convincingly for their authenticity and present order. Even if some detect some lack of economy in words and a certain informality of style in the commentary itself, none can deny (far more important) it is marked by fairness, insight and evangelical warmth.

The Tyndale New Testament commentaries have started auspiciously and one must look forward to future volumes.

A. F. WALLS

• CORRECTION—The review of Theodore O. Wedel’s book, The Pulpit Rediscovers Theology (September 30 issue), incorrectly stated that this book was issued by Westminster Press. It should have credited Seabury Press, Greenwich, Conn., as the publisher.—ED.

- More from F. F. Bruce

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: Exodus

David W. Kerr

No doubt many persons today who have never read the book of Exodus are familiar with the contents of its earlier chapters. Cecil B. DeMille is responsible for acquainting the public with one of the most important phases of biblical history through his production The Ten Commandments. Exodus, as its name indicates, is the story of the “going out” of the people of Israel from Egypt. As such, it is a book of redemption telling how God redeemed the Israelites from bondage to be a people for his own possession.

Analysis of Exodus cannot be based upon the present chapter divisions. After a brief introduction in the first six verses, the book may be divided into seven main sections as follows:

1. The sufferings of Israel in Egypt, 1:7 to 7:7.

2. The ten plagues upon Egypt, 7:8 to 13:16.

3. Deliverance by the power of God, 13:17 to 18:27.

4. The covenant at Mount Sinai, 19:1 to 24:18.

5. Directions for the tabernacle, chaps. 25 to 31.

6. The broken covenant renewed, 32:1 to 35:3.

7. Erection and dedication of the tabernacle, 35:4 to 40:38.

Some Bible students like to find in each book of the Bible a “key” verse which supposedly expresses the theme of the book. One should not suppose that biblical writers presented their themes in single verses, leaving their readers to discover in each case what the verse might be. In the case of Exodus, however, there is a rather general survey of the content and meaning of the book in Ex. 19:4–6:

“Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

Critical Storm Center

Exodus has been a storm center of discussion among critics for various reasons. There is a very prominent element of the miraculous and of what might be called special providence. Obviously the writer regarded many of the events he recorded as being the result of supernatural causes rather than purely natural ones. There were happenings which were above and perhaps even contrary to what may be called the course of nature. A number of modern writings on the subject of biblical history attempt to explain such matters as the crossing of the Red Sea, the bringing of water from the rock, the manna, and even the burning bush in terms of natural phenomena. Unfortunately the result is often to explain them away. A recent example of this is found in the Rand McNally Bible Atlas, by Emil G. Kraeling, a volume which in many other respects is attractive and useful.

In three places in Exodus (cf. 17:14, 24:4, 34:27) Moses is said to have made written records. One of these was a record of a conflict with the Amalekites. The others were records of the laws of the divine covenant. This is the first mention in the Bible of the writing of any portion of the Bible itself. Older literary criticism went so far as to deny that any part of the Pentateuch could be Mosaic. Today the situation is different. Dr. Bernhard W. Anderson has stated that “on the basis of recent studies of the form and content of laws in the Pentateuch, we can affirm with a high degree of probability that the Jewish tradition which traces the law back to Moses has a solid basis in historical fact” (Understanding the Old Testament, 1957, p. 55). To the writer of this article it seems just as unreasonable to suppose that Moses confined his writing to the few fragments of law which some scholars are willing to assign to him as it is to suppose that the Pentateuch as we have it came entirely from him. It is also reasonable to assume that the intimate knowledge of Egyptian customs and conditions displayed in Genesis and Exodus came from one who was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.”

The attitude of literary criticism of Exodus has undergone another important change in the last two generations. Scholars who followed the leadership of Wellhausen maintained that the covenant between Israel and Jehovah (or Yahweh) originated only in the 7th century B. C. at the time of King Josiah. This view was upheld in this country as recently as 1941 and again in 1948 by Robt. Pfeiffer in his Introduction to the Old Testament. Archeological studies, however, have convinced others that the covenant relation marked the actual transition from tribalism to national consciousness under the leadership of Moses. The heart of the covenant, according to G. E. Mendenhall (Biblical Archeologist, vol. XVII, 2, May, 1954) was the Decalogue. It is gratifying that extra-Biblical evidence has been found to confirm the Biblical narrative.

Fruitful Preaching Source

Exodus has always been a fruitful source of preaching material. Several of the prophets draw upon the story of redemption to press home their own demands for reform and for a return to the covenant engagement. The Exodus provides a vital background for much of New Testament teaching. Augustine wrote one of the earlier Christian commentaries on the book. It would be difficult to count the books that have been written in various languages on the Ten Commandments alone, to say nothing of the many thousands of unpublished sermons which have been preached on them.

A noticeable feature of Exodus is its richness of revelation of the divine character. The purpose of God’s redeeming Israel is that they may know that he is Jehovah, the Lord. He is the God of the whole world, superior to the supposed gods of Egypt, who are discountenanced by the various plagues. God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises to the patriarchs and therefore, by implication, to all his covenants, is shown by his activity for his people. He is the God of justice, as indicated by his law. He is the God of compassion, the Father of all mercies, forgiving the iniquity of his penitent folk. He is the God who tabernacles with his people. The covenant name Jehovah (or Yahweh) is in itself a revelation. Whatever may be the theory of the scholar as to when this name first came into use, there is very general agreement that it is intended to convey to Israel a new understanding of their God. The student will find both the older and the more recent literature on this divine name a revealing study.

The Student’S Tools

For Exodus, as for Genesis, there are commentaries whose usefulness is retricted by their devotion to documentary hypotheses. Indeed, some of the most helpful literature is to be found not in commentaries but in other types of books. In the article on Genesis in Christianity Today (Mar. 4, 1957) several of these in the fields of archeology and Bible history were suggested. In the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia will be found discussions of some of the pertinent problems of the Exodus, such as the date and the numbers of the Israelites. Some of this material, however, is outdated by more recent findings in archeology. An older work which is enlightening in its content and devotional in style is Alfred Edersheim’s The Exodus and the Wanderings in the Wilderness.

Among the commentaries there will not be found as many separate works on Exodus as for some other Old Testament writings. Two of the older and more conservative works which commend themselves to the writer’s opinion are the work on Exodus in the Keil and Delitzsch series and that by F. C. Cook in The Speaker’s Bible Commentary. The outstanding modern work is, of course, the Interpreter’s Bible, in which the exegesis is done by J. C. Rylaarsdam and the exposition by J. E. Park. The work contains many conclusions with which the writer of this article cannot agree and it tends to fragmentize Exodus in what seems an unnecessary fashion. Nevertheless, there are many excellent insights into the meaning of the text and a wholesome recognition of the essential theological ideas which the reader should grasp.

For a good presentation of the various names of God found in the Old Testament, most of which are present in Exodus, the reader is advised to consult the recent volume by Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, and the pertinent sections of Geerhardus Vos’ Biblical Theology.

The tabernacle and its services are regarded by the New Testament as foreshadowing the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. This has given rise to the study of typology through most of the period of the Christian church. Vos’ work mentioned above avoids most of the unwholesome extremes to which some writers have gone. A much more extensive study of the symbolism of the tabernacle is that of Patrick Fairbairn in his Typology of the Scriptures.

Exodus stands in close relation to the rest of the Bible. It is the story of the fulfilment of covenant promises made in Genesis. It is the record of deliverance which is celebrated in the Psalms, the historical books and the prophets. The temples of Solomon, of Ezra and of Herod all took their general design from that of the tabernacle described in Exodus. When John states “the Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us,” he reflects the language of Exodus, where God dwelt in the midst of his people. The assertion of Paul, “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us,” takes its meaning from the Passover feast as described in Exodus 12. The apostle Peter in 1 Peter 2:9 uses the precise words of Exodus 19:6 to describe the Christian church as the Israel of God. A great deal of the Epistle to the Hebrews is taken up with showing that the “ordinances of divine service” and the “earthly sanctuary” of the Old Testament were intended to foreshadow the saving work of Jesus Christ. He who is well acquainted with the Book of Exodus will have a deeper insight into the grace of God which brings salvation.

DAVID W. KERR

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