The horizon is the apparent junction of land and sky. It is the place at any given point of the earth beyond which the human eye cannot see. As one ascends in the air the distance to the horizon increases, but the horizon is always there. Even in the amazing new photographs relayed from our satellites, photographs that include both the South and North Poles, the horizon is visible.

Generally human vision extends in a straight line; man’s eye, unaided, cannot look around a corner. Light is radiated in straight lines. It is diffused according to the geometrical laws of reflection, and man’s vision is limited by these same laws.

Scientists have developed an amazing process by which they can bend light so that it can be transmitted around curves or corners as desired. Called “laser” or “maser,” these light waves are used to activate the molecules in crystals, such as rubies, so that they remain in almost parallel lines and can be beamed in circles or in other ways.

The writer has seen the utilization of this new form of light in diagnostic instruments in which the cold, clear light beamed into one end of a cable came out the other end, even though the cable was tied in several knots. The potential uses of laser in the medical field seem almost unlimited: for diagnosis, the treatment of localized cancer, the welding back of detached retinas, and other uses yet to be perfected.

Because they are parallel, controlled laser rays can be sent to the moon and then diffused over the moon’s surface for an area no more than half a mile wide. Radio and television broadcasts can also be transmitted over laser beams. And the “death ray,” so often described in science fiction, is inherent in this new discovery and is a potentially destructive weapon for use in warfare.

The writer is neither capable nor desirous of making this page a place for scientific discussion, but in laser there are analogies to spiritual things that merit our consideration.

Through the ages man has been able to see beyond the horizon of human existence, on into eternity. Today, however, humanistic and existential philosophies are so clouding our vision that we need to reorient ourselves to the possibilities that are ours because of the divine revelation.

Jesus Christ is the divine laser—the Light that is able to shine into hearts and minds in this present life and give vision on beyond the horizon into eternity. This ability is claimed for him in the familiar words, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4, 5, RSV). Our Lord himself said: “I am the light of the world: he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

Jesus can bring immediate light into blinded hearts and minds. This spiritual light—the divine laser—means 20/20 spiritual vision such as that given to Moses, of whom we read: “He endured as seeing him who is invisible” (Heb. 11:27b).

This world’s greatest problem is spiritual blindness, a darkness so total that nothing less than Christ himself can penetrate its recesses and bring light. One of the most spectacular types of surgery is that for cataract. One moment the patient cannot see; the next he can distinguish and describe objects. In the spiritual realm the transformation of a sin-blinded soul into one who sees and identifies the Light is a work of the Holy Spirit.

Paul speaks of the experience of the Jews in this way: “But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.… But when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed” (2 Cor. 3:14, 16).

Today the world desperately needs to know and believe in the divine laser: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God” (2 Cor. 4:3, 4).

It is the Gospel that enables man to see time and eternity in their proper perspective: “We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).

In Second Kings we read the story of Elisha surrounded by the Syrian host at Dothan. The young man with him saw the enemy and was terrified. But Elisha saw more. He prayed, and the young man was then able to see the mountain “full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”

How prone we are to see Satan’s hosts and work and to fail to realize that God’s presence and power are real and greater than all who would oppose him. Nowhere can we sense the reality of spiritual insight more than in chapter eleven of Hebrews. Of these heroes of faith we read: “These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar …” (v. 13). Simeon had this same Spirit-derived vision when he prayed: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation” (Luke 2:29, 30).

To the Church has been given the glorious task of preaching the Gospel, which brings light and understanding to those willing to believe. Surely Satan must chortle when he sees so many shifting their interest to purely secular and material concerns! This neglecting of the eternal emphasis of the Cross and resurrection of Christ adds to the darkness and confusion of an already blinded world.

Without Christ, man’s vision is limited to this world. Without him men are spiritually blind, unable to see or understand the things that have to do with eternity.

The Church has a glorious message if only she will preach it. Men are living in a dying world and need the message of salvation beyond the grave. As J. B. Phillips so aptly translates Hebrews 6:18: “So that … we who are refugees from this dying world might have a source of strength, and might grasp the hope that he holds out to us.”

This “hope” centers in the “anchor for our souls, fixed in the very certainty of God himself in Heaven” (Heb. 6:19, Phillips), and it is the message which needs to be shouted from the housetops.

Christians need to be reminded that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come” (Heb. 13:14). And Christians should remind those who do not know Christ that by him and him alone can they see beyond the grave into that glorious eternity that he has prepared for all those who love him.

The teaching of the Bible about the Holy Spirit is found not only in the New Testament but also in the Old Testament. The second verse of the Bible speaks of the Spirit of God as active at the beginning. “The Spirit of God,” that verse says, “moved upon the face of the waters.” We think also, of course, of the work of the Spirit in empowering the prophets when they came forward with a message from God. In some places the Spirit appears as the giver of some special qualification; the Spirit also appears as determining a holy life.

In the New Testament books that clear teaching is certainly present. At first sight, indeed, it might not seem to be so abundant as we might expect it to be. The deity of the Holy Spirit is everywhere perfectly plain, but the distinct personality of the Holy Spirit does not seem to lie so clearly on the surface. Hence it is not surprising that in discussions of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit the question that is chiefly discussed is different from the question that is discussed with regard to Christ.

With regard to Christ, the distinct personality of the One who is presented is everywhere perfectly clear, and therefore argument is quite unnecessary about that. The question that needs discussion about Christ is the deity of the One spoken of. Christ appears to a superficial observer not as God but as a man. What needs to be done is to show that he is both God and man.

But with regard to the Holy Spirit it is just the other way around. The deity of the Holy Spirit is everywhere perfectly clear; but what seems at first sight paradoxical, what seems to require discussion, is the true personality of the Spirit. It is clear that the Spirit of God is God; but it might seem at first sight very strange that the Spirit of God should be a distinct person within the Godhead.

However—strange though that is—the Bible makes perfectly clear that it is true. A careful reading of the Bible shows that the true personality of the Holy Spirit, though not often made the subject of direct exposition, really underlies and gives meaning to everything that the Bible says about the Spirit of God.

For one thing, the great Trinitarian passages in the Bible really imply the personality of the Spirit. When, for example, our Lord in the “Great Commission” at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew commands the apostles to make disciples of all the nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” can he possibly mean that although the Father and the Son are persons, the Holy Ghost is a mere impersonal aspect of the being of the Father or of the Son? The perfect coordination of the three—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—would seem to make such an interpretation extremely unnatural.

But the passage where the personality of the Holy Spirit is most clearly and gloriously set forth is found in the intimate discourses of our Lord with his apostles, as those discourses are recorded in the Gospel according to John. Here our Lord speaks of the Holy Spirit as “another Comforter,” or rather (by what is probably a better translation of the word) “another Advocate.” The Holy Spirit, then, is in one sense “another” as over against Jesus; indeed in John 16:7 Jesus says that his, Jesus’, departure means the Spirit’s coming. “It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”

The Holy Spirit appears very clearly in this precious passage as a true person. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, not as a mere emanation or a mere force, but as a person who stands in a truly personal relationship with the two other persons in the Godhead. Again and again in this wonderful passage the personal relationship between all three persons of the Trinity is set forth. In one verse at least, our Lord uses the first person plural in speaking of himself and God the Father. “If a man love me,” he says, “he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” Here Jesus of Nazareth, a man who walked upon this earth, joins himself with God the Father in a fellowship in which one person joins himself with another. “We will come.”

The Bible never allows us to forget the primary truth that there is but one God. That truth is pressed home in the Old Testament, but it is pressed home just as insistently in the New. When the New Testament teaches that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three persons, it teaches with equal insistence that these three persons are one God. The New Testament writers never seem to be conscious that one of these two great truths could by any chance be regarded as in contradiction with the other. They are never for one moment conscious of any danger lest when they present the deity and the personality of the Son and of the Spirit they may lead men away from the unity of God. So in the Gospel of John Jesus says, “I and the Father are one”; yet in that same Gospel he says, about the Father and himself, “We will come”; and in that same Gospel he says, “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter.” One God, three persons, each person God—so the Bible presents, in majestic harmony, what God has graciously revealed to us of the mysteries of his being.—J.G.M.

The “imitation of Christ” is an ancient and honorable goal in Christian literature and piety. Yet it can hardly be said to command allegiance in contemporary church life. This seems to result not so much from a willful intention of today’s churchman to abandon his heritage as from his membership in a generation whose theology has little or no place for imitating Christ.

This is true, despite appearances to the contrary, of the folk theology by which many are nurtured. On the surface, folk theology cordially endorses the imitation. But its endorsement carries neither conviction nor power, because it substitutes sentiment for understanding. And worse yet, even the sentimental power of the imitation is severely limited, since according to folk theology imitating Christ appeals or applies only to “saints”—a word that in this view refers not to all believers, as in the New Testament, but to especially religious persons. So the popular shrine of devotion to the imitation has upon closer inspection a sandy foundation and a hollow center.

Nor do matters stand otherwise in professional theology. To be sure, “in the steps of the Master” expressed a popular sentiment in the era of liberalism. But liberals were inclined to see in Jesus merely a model for proper gentlemen. Not surprisingly, therefore, when theologians reacted against this parody they over-reacted. Neo-orthodoxy exalted transcendence and the hiddenness of revelation. Complementing these themes, literary critics decried the search for knowledge of “the historical Jesus.” Finally, the form critics decreed such knowledge neither possible nor desirable, thus reducing the imitation to incomprehensible insignificance. And through it all orthodoxy proved singularly impotent. Its champions too often made the imitation of Christ appear irrelevant by a wooden literalism or else impossible by a dogmatic theorizing that removed Jesus from the human sphere as effectively as form criticism ever did.

So there is no room in the inn of contemporary theology, either lay or professional, for that venerable pilgrim, the imitator of Christ.

A Single Beacon

Against this background it may be instructive to mark the outlook of the authors of the New Testament epistles, for these first teachers of the Church reveal a shockingly simple viewpoint toward questions of Christian behavior. Whether giving counsel on churchly relations or on social involvement, whether advocating individual integrity or family stability, they steer by a single beacon—the example of Christ! They appeal explicitly to the Lord’s example on no fewer than seventeen occasions, not to mention the numerous times where the same appeal gains tacit expression.

More impressive than the frequency of the appeal, though, is the underlying assumption of its sufficiency. These writers find authority in Christ’s example, deeming it an adequate basis for entreating Christians to practice a forgiving spirit (Col. 3:13), unity in humility (Phil. 2:1–8), mutual subjection in Christ (Eph. 5:21–33), or personal fidelity (1 Pet. 3:13–18). They also discover inspiration in the example of Christ, recognizing in it a sustaining force that enables believers to suffer for righteousness (1 Pet. 4:1, 2), to endure persecution (Heb. 12:1–3), and to stand firm (1 Tim. 6:11–14). Further, the example of Christ represents for them a standard (1 John 2:6). Although not admitting of legalistic application, this standard nevertheless includes particular implications, since it calls for submission to authority (1 Pet. 2:18–21), genuine acceptance of “undesirables” (Rom. 15:1–3, 7), and avoidance of fawning favoritism (James 2:1). Putting all this together, we conclude that the New Testament writers assigned to the example of Christ a unique role in shaping Christian behavior.

What of us, then? Shall we “return to the New Testament,” restoring to church life through our teaching and preaching a plain and compelling appeal for behavior based on the example of Christ? The answer can be only, Yes! At least, this seems to be the inescapable conclusion for any group adhering to biblical authority.

But can we do this without yielding again either to the Scylla of literalism or to the Charybdis of liberalism? The epistles themselves supply an affirmative answer to the question. The way to forestall both dangers, they show, is to hold steadily to the Cross-character of the imitation. It is adherence to just this principle that keeps the epistolary appeals from becoming trivial or maudlin. Observe, for example, how the Cross pervades Paul’s elegantly simple summary of our Lord’s career in Second Corinthians 8:9; see, too, what dignity and depth it imparts to an otherwise commonplace request for funds. Moreover, to anchor the imitation in the Cross gives it firm theological moorings. On one side, the Cross constantly reminds us of the qualitative distinction between the actions of “good” men and the action of One who “gave his life a ransom for many.” Thereby we are reminded also of our own derivative and dependent role as followers of Christ. We are recipients of grace, not its originators; channels of grace, not its dispensers. So the Cross prepares us, on the other side, to recognize the imitation as the work of the Holy Spirit from beginning to end. Of ourselves we have not the resources to accept, let alone fulfill, our calling. The Holy Spirit imparts that new life from which the imitation blossoms. He alone makes real our identification with Christ’s death on the Cross by which the imitation is nourished. He alone empowers our witness to the leading of men out of death into life. And, coming full circle, the Holy Spirit creates the very capacity in us to acknowledge our need and to seek the grace by which we live.

Now it is easy to imagine several benefits that the Church might gain if it did restore the imitation, with the theological setting in which the epistles place it, to its rightful position in preaching and teaching. Not the least of these benefits would be the new entrance it would give us into the Gospels. P. T. Forsyth urged long ago that in reading the Gospels we should take the authors of the epistles as our masters. What he had in mind primarily was their habit of viewing Jesus’ life through a Cross-lens, with the weighty theological implications that this necessarily includes. And if we do adopt their guiding principle, we shall indeed reclaim the pertinence of the Gospels for Christian decision and action. Herein, surely, must lie the true direction for any new “quest of the historical Jesus.” No one has yet improved upon the epistolary principle that the Cross is the key which unlocks the treasures of the Gospels for preaching and teaching. Is it too much to claim that whatever in gospel research does not help forward this goal is frivolous and that whatever contradicts it is culpable?

By approaching the Gospels through the epistles—from the rear, as it were—we should be enabled, first, to hear and see the Gospel ourselves in unexpected, though familiar, places. We should hear the Gospel where previously we heard what we thought were only rules to be obeyed, as in the Sermon on the Mount, or only the musings of a sentimental humanist, as in Christ’s blessing the children. We should see the Gospel where previously we could see only human failure—as in Gethsemane, for example, or in our Lord’s prediction of the disciples’ desertion. Behind all the words and deeds of Jesus we should recognize, instead of a good and kindly man, the form of a Servant and the outline of a Cross.

Filling Out The Pattern

But there is more. Having learned to see the Gospel on every page of the Gospels, we should then find light for our own journey by filling out the pattern of the imitation from these same records. Would it not be a strange turn of events if the Master’s steps left no imprint for the disciple to perceive? if only the Lord’s death, and not his life, created a pattern for the imitation? Yet modern researchers tend to adopt just this attitude toward the records. Biblical scholars have produced detailed explications of the Cross-motif (sometimes disguised as “eschatology”) in the parables and other sayings, in the narratives, and in the structure of the Gospels. But they have been reluctant to admit any relation between these materials and the imitation. We may understand their reticence, if only because we share their fear of reviving the mockeries of fifty years ago. But is such reticence fully justified? Let us acknowledge the need for rigorous exegesis and balanced judgment. Let us affirm, too, that the imitation is begun in grace and empowered by the Spirit. But is there then no further room for us to gather specific, concrete guidance from the example of Christ? Surely there is!

Consider, for example, the records of our Lord’s personal encounters. To be sure, they do not yield direct instructions. But they do indicate attitudes and actions consonant with the Cross. Shall we not learn from them? When we ponder our Lord’s question-and-answer interviews during Passion Week—and this one illustration must suffice—we assuredly shall not rest content with the popular interpretation of these episodes as a kind of intellectual game in which Jesus nimbly sidesteps the tricksters and then confounds them with his own most clever riddle. But on the other hand, does their portrayal of the desperate urgency with which he sought to the last to penetrate the dullness and blindness of men mean nothing for our living? Does our lack of Jesus’ unerring insight and perfect obedience mean that we can learn nothing from his example of the skills we require to minister in his name?

In Jesus’ name! Given its rich biblical content, that phrase sums up the matter. The imitation is rooted in the Cross (“… call his name Jesus, for he shall save …”); it is participation in bringing to others the ministry of the Cross by the power of the Spirit; it is “walking as that one walked” and still walks in the gospel records. Can we make a place for this imitation—if not in the inn, at least in the stable?

DON’T LOOK NOW

It is a well-known fact, accepted by all hands, that if you read a medical book seriously you end up with a slight touch of hypochondria. Even worse is the experience of taking a college course in abnormal psychology. All kinds of nervous tics ensue.

What brought this to mind was reading for about the fiftieth time in two months some feature article on “What Is Wrong with American Youth?” Plenty, I suppose. But right now it seems to be a good thing for magazines and newspapers to cash in on, and I very much suspect that sometimes it is the cash rather than their interest in youth that leads them to such a spate of articles.

An even more disturbing thing is to contemplate what these articles do to the young people themselves. I knew a man who read the Kinsey Report and worried because he hadn’t worked his way up to average yet! Is not one of the contributing factors to “what’s wrong with youth” the articles they read about all the wrongs they hadn’t thought about yet? There is a sneaky kind of journalism (and some of the best magazines in the country are not above it) by which writers point the finger in alarm at some awful situation in order to take a picture of the awful situation in order, in turn, to sell a magazine. To sum up, I am not sure the motives are all clean.

Closely aligned with this is the solid rise among high school and college students of almost endless habits of introspection and analysis. People who work on college campuses are inundated by students who want “counsel” because they have already been taught in high school to need this sort of coaching. An analysis of some of the counseling that is done might be a traumatic experience for all of us.

The heart of the Gospel is that the lines of interest go out instead of in. The Church still has hold of the problem by the right end if it can get young people to quit thinking of their own troubles because they are committed to the help of others.

PROTESTANT INDEX

Thank you for your forthright editorial, “Read, Minister, Read!” (Feb. 12 issue).

In a suburban Chicago home I was recently told by a local Protestant minister that there was no need to read contemporary literature, and that, in fact, a person’s faith might be swayed by reading books that dare to question and explore Christianity. After condemning a long list of notable Christian authors, he admitted to having read none of their writings. In a drastic oversimplification, he dramatically waved his Bible and pronounced, “The Bible is the only book I need to read.” How I wish I had his address so that I could send him a copy of your excellent admonition!

In my current search for a new church home, I have found that the Chicago minister is one of many who are not “students of life,” as you so aptly put it. I hope that many pastors will put to practice your timely advice.

Atlanta, Ga.

[The editorial] came at a time when from despair and failure, with mountains of unread journals, books, magazines, I was on the point of canceling subscriptions right and left … horror of horrors … CHRISTIANITY TODAY included.

You have calmed my spirits, put the will to read back into me, and showed me that it is a worthwhile fight.…

First Baptist Church

New Haven, Conn.

CHURCHILL’S HIGH VIEW

In your editorial comments on Sir Winston Churchill (Feb. 12 issue) you say: “About reconciling the biblical narrative with modern scientific and historical knowledge he was oddly pragmatic: what matters is the benefits of receiving a message that cheers your heart, fortifies your soul, and promises reunion with loved ones ‘in a world of larger opportunities and wider sympathies.’ ”

Stanley E. Anderson, in Our Dependable Bible (Baker Book House, 1960), writes: “Winston Churchill’s opinion of Moses is quoted by Halley on page 147: ‘We regret with scorn all those learned and labored myths that Moses was but a legendary figure upon whom the priesthood and the people hung their essential social, moral and religious ordinances. We believe that the most scientific view, the most up-to-date and rational conception, will find its fullest satisfaction in taking the Bible story literally. We may be sure that all these things happened just as they are set out according to Holy Writ. We may believe that they happened to people not so very different from ourselves, and that the impressions those people received were faithfully recorded, and have been transmitted across the centuries with far more accuracy than many of the telegraphed accounts we read of goings on of today. In the words of a forgotten work of Mr. Gladstone, we rest with assurance upon “The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.” Let men of science and learning expand their knowledge and probe with their researches every detail of the records which have been preserved to us from those dim ages. All they will do is to fortify the grand simplicity and essential accuracy of those recorded truths which have so far lighted the pilgrimage of man.’ ”

Some years ago I had that quotation, perhaps in the twentieth edition of Halley’s Pocket Bible Handbook, which is the edition to which Anderson apparently refers.

The Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer

Peekskill, N. Y.

NO ANSWER, BUT A POSITION

I am certain that I do not know the answer to Viet Nam, but I am equally certain that I do not think that what we have been doing there is accomplishing anything for the United States.

Mt. Sterling, Ky.

MAN’S ANTIQUITY AND FALL

In the January 15 issue the editorial statement is made that “Christian anthropologists are by no means agreed on an interpretation of the data, but those who insist that Homo sapiens is hundreds of thousands of years old make little effort to correlate this conclusion with an insistence on objective historical factuality in respect to the fall of the first man, Adam, and its implications for the entire race.”

In the Christian Life article “The Creation of Man” (May, 1956), the emphasis on this point was intended to be clear-cut and basic to what followed. The factuality of a first man, Adam, and the reality of his fall with its implications were underlined by reference to the New Testament comparisons of Adam with Christ. It was pointed out that “three historic doctrines pivot on Adam: the first man, Adam, was created perfect; in Adam, man sinned; as a result, all men today need redemption through Jesus Christ.”

Then the chapter on prehistoric man in the volume Evolution and Christian Thought Today, edited by Russell L. Mixter (Eerdmans, 1959), pages 185, 186, carries clear reference to the fact that this doctrine and its implications are essential to the creationist position:

Theologically, the fundamental doctrines of the original perfection and subsequent fall of man and his consequent need of redemption; the role of the Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Son of God in dying on the cross to pay the penalty for the fall, for all who will accept Him, are seriously jeopardized by a first man having descended organically from prehuman parents.

In that chapter it was also pointed out that even the Roman Catholic theistic evolutionary position, which also allows hundreds of thousands of years for man’s antiquity, also holds inviolable the factuality of the original perfection and subsequent fall of the first man.

Another Christian anthropologist, Donald R. Wilson, in his paper, “How Early Is Man?” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Sept. 14, 1962, issue), taking the position that “it certainly is necessary to think of man’s origin in terms of tens of thousands of years and with very high probability in terms of hundreds of thousands,” quotes William Henry Green and B. B. Warfield to the same effect, as I and others have elsewhere.

Certainly if theologians of the orthodoxy of Green and Warfield saw no contradiction between such an antiquity of man and the factuality of the fall and its implications, there should be no reason to think that Christian anthropologists today need to make more than a tacit assumption that there is no dilemma, no paradox, no inconsistency at all in such a position.

In my view, it is one of the strengths of the position on the antiquity of man held by Wilson and me (not to mention other Christian anthropologists like Stipe, Smalley, Taylor, Ellenberger, Nickerson, Reyburn, and others) that almost without exception we are doctrinally “fundamentalists,” who, with Warfield, Green, and a long line of conservative theologians, whether we agree on the details or not, find no contradiction in an antiquity of man of hundreds of thousands of years and the orthodox interpretation of the fall of Adam.

Fundamentalists of today have too often raised the antiquity of man (notice I do not refer here to the creation vs. the evolution of man) to “doctrinal” status, as if there were some scriptural basis for one view or another.

It is the inordinate maintenance of this position in the face of both conservative theological and modern scientific opinion to the contrary that causes the “tension … in evangelical circles” rather than “the inordinate pressures of contemporary scientific theory about the antiquity of man.”

I’m sure that we Christian anthropologists would be willing to study with an open mind any serious, scholarly attempt to invalidate, overthrow, or supersede the classic works in this area upon which our position partially rests, such as William Henry Green’s “Primeval Chronology” (Bibliotheca Sacra, 1890) or B. B. Warfield’s “On the Antiquity and Unity of Human Race” (Princeton Theological Review, 1911).

It seems to me that those who oppose an antiquity of man of hundreds of thousands of years must take these and other such materials into account.…

JAMES O. BUSWELL, III

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

THE TROUBLE WITH LABELS

I have never considered myself as “neo-orthodox.” I have described my position in terms of “orthodoxy as a growing tradition” and “a new Reformation theology.” My basic concern has been to defend the orthodox Christian faith, as expressed in the Reformation, and to reinterpret this faith for the needs of our particular age as Luther, Calvin, and Wesley did for the needs of their ages. In The Case for a New Reformation Theology I emphasized that the movement for which I spoke was a “mood and trend” in theology that did include some of the many divergent figures so often referred to as “neo-orthodox” but that also included many who are called neoliberal or conservative.

If I had been one of the ministers approached in the 1957 survey to which your article (“Reflections on American Theology,” Jan. 1 issue) refers, I probably would have had to designate myself as “conservative” since apparently the only alternatives were fundamentalist, liberal (equated “with classic rationalistic modernism”), and neo-orthodox (identified “with the theology of Barth and Brunner”).

Although I acknowledge a debt to Barth and Brunner, I have never accepted their positions completely.

Professor of Systematic Theology

Garrett Theological Seminary

Evanston, Ill.

The strongest influence on my theology is that of biblical theology. On the Old Testament, men like Eichrodt and Rowley will suffice to indicate the type of biblical theology. On New Testament theology I would be nearest to the thinking of Oscar Cullmann and those in general who share his position. Beyond the Bible I have more sympathy for patristic theology than for Reformation theology. I believe that many of the views of Luther and Calvin have led us into disastrous conclusions. For this reason I am nearer to classic Anglicanism than to Lutheranism or Calvinism. Gore and Temple have left an indelible mark on my mind, and two years at Oxford University only deepened this appreciation. In brief, the Atonement, the Incarnation, and the Trinity lie at the very heart of my basic belief. I trust that a careful reading of two recent books which I have published will sustain this impression. They are Christ and the Church and The Hope of Glory, both published by Eerdmans.

On the question of propositional revelation I am not sure whether we would agree or not. Revelation to me is basically the self-disclosure of God in creation, history, and personal experience, especially the experience of prayer and worship. I would not want to deny that truthful statements can be made about this personal disclosure, but revelation and response are intensely personal in my thinking. For this reason I am more in sympathy with Christian mysticism than I am with Christian rationalism.

A careful reading of John Baillie’s The Sense of the Presence of God will indicate what I have in mind when I speak of Christian mysticism. Pagan mysticism is not my point.…

Professor of Christian Theology

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, Ky.

TO CORRECT THE RECORD

Re “In Canada, A Climate of Ecumenicity” (News, Dec. 4 issue): I did not say to anyone nor write at any time “that Canadian Baptist scholars agree that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are myths,” nor do I personally agree at any point with the myth theory of biblical interpretation.

President

The Baptist Federation of Canada

Islington, Ont.

FULLER DEFINITION

The concern for the “purity of the visible church” evidenced in some of the recent letters appears inadequate as a characterization of biblical Christianity, unless carefully defined.

Permit me to suggest that by “purity of the visible church” evangelicals mean two things: (1) an intellectual acceptance of Jesus as Saviour (“substitutionary atonement”) and Lord, and (2) the experience of the “new birth.” Christ defined this latter as loving God with all one’s heart and loving one’s fellow man as himself. We need to emphasize that this does not simply mean loving what we understand to be the “truth,” as did certain Pharisees, but loving people, even those with whom we disagree.

A Christian, then, is one through whom the Holy Spirit so loves that he will disagree with tears, so careful lest he bring reproach on the Saviour or offend a brother in Christ. His concern will not be to discredit another, but to gently point to the life of love which is available in Jesus Christ. This is the pure Church for which the evangelical—or for that matter the Christian—would pray.

Assistant Professor of History

Morris Harvey College

Charleston, W. Va.

Which one of your children would you exchange for a robot? Suppose it were possible today to produce a perfect facsimile of the human body. Would you want to trade?

Visualize a robot that is an exact copy of your child. Because he (or it) is a robot, he rises exactly at the preset time, brushes his teeth, eats a tidy breakfast, hurries to the school bus, efficiently digests all that his teachers tell him, and returns home clean and unscarred. He is perfectly obedient. Under his shirt is a panel containing electronic controls. To activate the “child” you need only set a number of dials and throw some switches; and to program him for the entire day is also simple: you just thread the appropriate tape in the tapedeck.

Who wants a robot for a child? We prefer a thousand times the not-so-perfect children we now have. They may have contrary notions, and their development may sometimes seem tortuously slow. They may now and then frighten us. But they are our own children and we’ll keep them. They are real; they are humans, not robots. And by the grace of God they may some day be men.

In creating, God faced this same choice. Children or robots? Should he make a creature with a mind of his own and the ability to choose for himself? Or should he crown his creation with an elaborate robot? Of robots he had enough. There were the creatures already crowding the air and the seas and covering the face of the earth—robots all. They were completely programmed; the switches had all been thrown, the dials set, the magnetic tape of their instincts recorded and put in place. They would learn more, as an IBM learns. And they would act as a computer acts—by conditioned response.

And so “God created man in his own image; in theimage of God created he him.” The divine daring gave life to a creature that was intelligent, pure, yet self-determining. The divine greatness created within its own territory, yet outside its perfect control, a free agent. You choose your own child rather than a robot—your own child, an individual with a will of his own—because you are made in the image of God. This was his choice, and so it also is yours.

This freedom with which man was created is a basic and necessary part of the “goodness” that delighted God as he contemplated his finished work. Had man been less than free, had Adam been created unable to sin, he would not have been a good man. The best of the animals, perhaps, but infinitely distant from humanity. For freedom is fundamental to human goodness. It is absolutely necessary for the creature made in God’s image.

The child whom God made was therefore innocent in two ways. He was innocent in the common meaning of the term—he was guiltless, and of a perfectly pure heart. But he was also innocent in the sense that he was naïve or unsophisticated. His purity was not the tried and confirmed righteousness of the mature man but the purity of the still-sheltered child. In order to realize the image of God, he had to make his own choice. To “become as one of us,” he had to “know good and evil” (Gen. 3:22).

For the holiness of God is an active holiness. It is not that he has no awareness of evil and no choice concerning it but that he, by a majestic free act, puts away evil. It is not that evil can never come near him (Job 1) but that, recognizing it and knowing it for what it is, he forces it away, eventually to destroy it. God’s goodness, in other words, is a positive goodness, an intelligent and selective goodness. And so also must be the goodness of the creature made in his image. Adam had to be a child who could swiftly grow and develop. He could not be an iron-headed and heartless robot that came forth finished from the workshop with depreciation already begun, nor a beautifully crafted doll “with smooth bands of contractile plastic articulating his fingers, with plastic face and muted eyes.” He had to be human, with a will and an opportunity to exercise it.

And so the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The franchise would have been meaningless without a polling place. It needn’t have been a tree. It could have been a forbidden Stream of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Or a forbidden word or a forbidden motion. Or the test-object could have been something commanded. But there had to be, if man was to be man, a Something of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The working concept is not tree but knowledge. Good was clearly known as the will of God, and evil was clearly known as that which contradicts the will of God. And there—at the tree which God appointed—in the presence of clearly differentiated (equal and opposite) alternatives, Adam had to make his choice. If he chose good, the difference between good and evil would be indelibly impressed upon his mind; he would be confirmed in the knowledge of good and evil, always thereafter choosing the good with its sure pleasure and putting away the abhorrent evil. And if he chose evil, then too he would always have a sense of good and evil. But the distinction between them would be increasingly muddled, and evil would be his master.

And so indeed it happened. At the tree Adam chose another will in place of his Creator’s. He said of the other will, “This is good,” and of God’s will, “This is evil.” And so, forever, he and his descendants were bound to confuse good and evil. Calling each by the other’s name, they have trampled holy things in the dust upon the authority of goodness and have defended vice in the name of virtue.

Why? No one knows. The choice was Adam’s to make. And any reason furnished for why the choice had to go as it did is only another form of denial that the choice was actually free.

But it was man’s choice. Adam did it. And God, whose Word we trust and in whose Son we believe—this God is shown to be, not a bungler who let his perfect model fall from its shelf nor a schemer who pitches men into darkness, but rather a generous Father who gave to men so much liberty that in the abuse of it they could damn themselves. “Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar.”

Understanding these things, Adam’s children may raise their eyes from where their ancestor fell to where the Second Adam now stands. For the Second Adam also faced a choice. In the wilderness, Satan pointed him to the Stones of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Jesus refused the temptation. And similarly he refused the Heroic Leap and the Demonic Genuflection. And finally he refused the easy retreat from Gethsemane. Again and again he confirmed the good choice for himself and all his seed. Let God be praised for such perfect repair of man’s damage. And let him be thanked that in his Son every believing child can still be raised to that state to which he first called Adam—and beyond: “unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

Among the more pathetically amusing traits man has exhibited over the period of his recorded history is his untiring effort to blame somebody or something else for his predicament. That he is in a predicament he never seems seriously to have doubted; but that the mess is not his fault he has vociferously insisted. “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me …,” said Adam, pointing accusingly in the earliest recorded version of a defensive ploy now equally automatic among children and adults. Many debates in the council chambers of the world, including the United Nations, are elaborations of this instinct to divert the blame—“He started it.”

Speaking more broadly, it may be said that natural man’s view of himself ranges from this of innocent bystander (“There came out this calf,” said Aaron with well-simulated wonder when the wrath of Moses was unveiled) to that of lord of creation. When the going is rough, as it usually is, he adopts the former posture; when he feels perky and the sun is bright, he cries “Glory to man in the highest,” with Swinburne. In sum, if it is bad, “he” did it; if it is good, hurray for me.

The one view man cannot adopt without divine prodding and much assistance is that of the Bible: “All we like sheep have gone astray” (Isa. 53:6). “But they refused to hearken.… Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets …” (Zech. 7:11, 12). “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things” (Rom. 2:1).

The most popular version of the “don’t blame me” syndrome today may be found in two tightly clutched beliefs: first, man has not “fallen” from any higher previous condition; and second, man’s problems are entirely due to ignorance (which is not his fault), not to evil.

The first of these views runs counter to the uniform conviction of every known ancient culture—that man has, owing to some primal disaster, fallen from high estate. The “Golden Age” was believed to have been in the past, not to be in the future. The alternative view came late. Indeed, as Harvard Professor Crane Brinton has reminded us in his preface to The Portable Age of Reason, “They [the men of the eighteenth century] had begun to believe in progress—a word that before 1700 meant in both French and English no more than a physical moving, as when a royal personage made a progress through the realm.”

Sin—An Error In The Sum?

The second of the two beliefs—that man’s predicament is the consequence of innocent ignorance, not culpable evil—is one of the proudest achievements of that same Age of Reason and involves several corollary and necessary beliefs: that man is by nature good, and hence perfectible; that reason supplied with enough information is capable of reaching, and will always reach, the ultimate truth; that the truth, once known, will always be believed and acted on; and that (in the words of William Godwin) “vice is error.” “Sin,” in short, is the mistake in the sum at the bottom of a column of figures. Add the column correctly and the “sin” disappears.

One rather odd feature of these dogmas is that though they depend heavily on a philosophy of science now outmoded, they are uttered in our time as if they were quite up to date and compatible with “modern sensibility.” Whatever nostalgia some of us may have for Newtonian physics, the consensus among scientists seems to be that it is no longer valid in the larger dimensions of reality; and yet the chief originators of the doctrines of progress through knowledge and of human perfectibility rested their faith on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophies of science.

Over and over again in the writings of the prophets of perfectibility we read the assertion that total reality, once sufficient information about it is acquired, will be totally understandable by the average intelligence. “Every truth of this kind is comprehensible by all understandings,” wrote Claude Adrien Helvetius in his A Treatise on Man in 1773.

And observe the Marquis of Condorcet staring into the crystal ball in 1794: “Since,” he wrote, “as the number of known facts increases, the human mind learns how to classify them and to subsume them under more general facts …; since, as more relations between various objects become known, man is able to present them in such a way that it is possible to grasp a greater number of them with the same degree of intellectual ability, …” so the day will arrive, he asserts, when all the most profound truths of the universe will be known and universally comprehended. Conduct, then based on perfect information, will be perfect, because men are always as good as they know how to be.

Today it is difficult to imagine a more stumbling prophecy. Instead of becoming more unified, more “rational,” more understandable, more available to the average intellect, scientific knowledge has become more esoteric, more fragmented, and more impossible of comprehension save by the very few. And appallingly, somewhere along the line it has picked up the very un-Newtonian burden of the irrational, the indeterminate, the unthinkable.

It was a beautiful dream. How encouraging to have believed that once the Encyclopédie, which was founded by Denis Diderot and contained every fact about everything, was published, man could “with almost complete assurance” predict everything and hence control everything.

True, even the encyclopedists had a few qualms about the nature of the ultimate victory over death. “It is reasonable to hope,” wrote Condorcet, “that all … diseases may … disappear as their distant causes are discovered.… Certainly man will not become immortal; but will not the interval between the first breath that he draws and the time when … he expires increase indefinitely?… We are bound to believe that the average length of human life will forever increase.” An oddly self-defeating prediction—at least to modern materialist existentialists, who assert that the inevitable extinction of every human life, no matter how long deferred, irrefutably demonstrates the Absurdity of human existence.

My chief aim, however, is not to rehearse this rather obvious portion of the history of ideas but to point out certain interesting irrationalities in the way the dogma of human perfectibility is preached by its contemporary adherents. As a matter of fact, the chief points I wish to make all appeared in a recent address by an eminent educator who said, as if the idea were not a rather quaint one based on outmoded science but a new one conceived at least partly by him: “Man’s difficulties, it seems to me, are the consequence of his ignorance, not of something the theologians used to call ‘evil.’ ”

The Doubling And Redoubling

The first rational tangle in his talk came with the predictable assertion about the doubling and redoubling of man’s “knowledge.” In recorded human history, so that rubric runs, knowledge first doubled (from what? presumably zero?) in 1750. It doubled again in 1900, again in 1950, and again in 1960. It is expected to double again by 1965, and about every two hours on the hour after that.

The seeming sanctity lent by this pretense of statistical evidence is impressive to the unthinking listener. But a moment’s thought will reveal the statement to be pure speculation. Note only two of many basic difficulties. First, no man knows all that the world has previously known. We are constantly amazed to learn that the ancients knew things that a generation ago it was not known they knew. Thus no man can measure the relative increase. When you don’t know what you are talking about, you cannot say it doubled. Furthermore, there is no definition of the word “knowledge” as used in the dogma. “Information,” presumably, would be a better word; for what seems to be meant is a body of qualified data, not knowledge, which is significantly qualitative, not quantitative. The distinction is vital, for we all realize that we “know” (comprehend) little about lots of things on which we have incalculable masses of information—electricity, gravity, the ultimate nature of the universe or of man; but we know a good deal about many things on which we have little information (quantified data)—the power of love, the appeal of beauty, the nature of happiness, the imperatives of the moral nature.

As the talk progressed, a second rational difficulty gaped: if man’s only problem is ignorance; and if knowledge is the cure of ignorance; and if knowledge is doubling and redoubling at incredible rates—why is not man’s demonstrable well-being now proportionately upgraded? Where is evidence of that vastly increased betterment in the human condition that should follow knowledge as the thermometer follows the temperature? (One finds himself as unimpressed as when he is told that “90 per cent of all scientists who ever lived are living today,” which is almost analagous to saying that more people born in the twentieth century are alive today than all people born in previous centuries.)

There is a third difficulty, usually implicit, that normally appears in these utterances. We are told that with every discovery in science, more areas of our ignorance, previously unsuspected, are opened up than are illuminated by the new knowledge. The speaker to whom I have referred said, seemingly without awareness of the conflict with his main thesis, that scientists now believe there is no end to the quest for new knowledge. It would seem to follow, therefore, that man’s cause of misery, ignorance, is forever incapable of solution. We are left moaning with Housman: “The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity and shall not fail.”

Search For The Center Of Meaning

A fourth built-in futility of the information-will-save-us view is the unusability of much of the incredible amount of information that has been stocked up. Most of it, according to Sir Julian Huxley, is “lying around unused,” and much of it is unusable because it is so esoteric that few brains are capable of seeing basic relations. “If the situation is not to lead to chaos, despair, or escapism,” writes Sir Julian in The Humanist Frame (quoted in the Graduate Journal for Fall, 1964), “man must reunify his life within the framework of a satisfactory idea-system.” Agreed; but “satisfactory idea-systems” cannot emerge from the kind of computered mountains of quantified information referred to rejoicingly as man’s “fantastic growth of knowledge.” One does not even begin from there. “What seems lacking,” runs an editorial in the same journal, “is something not altogether tangible—the critical values that give compelling meaning and a sense of direction to human life.” No electronic retrieval system will ever be capable of giving the kind of knowledge needed to find the motionless center of meaning from which alone a purposeful direction of life can be charted.

Amid such illogicalities and internal contradictions, the dogma of salvation through knowledge is preached today to the faithful. Often the capping argument is added near the end: “We’ve tried Christianity for two thousand years. It has failed. Now let us try knowledge.” It would appear that if anything about the past two thousand years is obvious, it is that the world has not been run in strict obedience to Christ’s teachings. But when Christian principles have been tried, even with very imperfect obedience, the alleviation of human misery has been immediate and dramatic. In our present daily life, we are much more the beneficiary—in freedom, law, moral principles, justice, compassion, love—of Christianity than of modern technology. Indeed, “knowledge” (qualified data) has nothing really significant to say about any of these values; yet these values are what make life worth living.

Happily, when we weary of the tons of marvelous but irrelevant information that are the pride of our age, we can still turn to the Bible and there come to know the essential things. First, that the Lord, the Creator of all things, is. (Note that in the Book of Ezekiel alone there are over forty instances of the phrase, “… shall know that I am the Lord,” or its equivalent.) No pile of statistics can ever reach this knowledge, any more than Babel could reach heaven.

Second, we come to know what we are—creatures of the Lord, made in his image for his glory and our happiness, but fallen, “a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts” (Isa. 65:2). And, most transcendently, we come to know who the Saviour is, who came to seek and to save that which is lost. “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25).

Of these truths it might be said what T. S. Eliot once said about his own works: “I doubt whether what I am saying can convey very much to anyone for whom the doctrine of original sin is not a very real and tremendous thing.” Clio, the muse of history, might say the same thing; for these truths, though unpalatable to natural man, are not offensive to human reason or to the student of human history. In fact, to try to understand history without allowing for the reality of evil is to make man’s past a conundrum, a tissue of contradictions. The intellectual journey of a brilliantly endowed man like the late Dr. C. E. M. Joad illustrates this. As professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of London, he was characterized by Time magazine in 1948 as “an annoying, church-baiting agnostic” and in 1953 as “brilliantly voluble, … variously known as a socialist, pacifist, patriot, agnostic, and advocate of free love.” No other man was so learnedly conversant with every modern theory of human moral no-responsibility. “Sin,” he later wrote, “I dismissed as the incidental accompaniment of man’s imperfect development.”

But as the years went by, Joad grew less and less sure that such a dismissal was in accord with reason, history, and modern knowledge; and he later wrote: “I have come lately to disbelieve all this. I see now that evil is endemic in man, and that the Christian doctrine of original sin expresses a deep and essential insight into human nature.” But he also found light in the darkness: “The more I knew of it, Christianity seemed to offer … consolation, strengthening, and assistance.… Once I had come as far as this, there was nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by going the whole way. What better hope was offered than by the Christian doctrine that God sent His Son into the world to save sinners?”

What, indeed?

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

In the interpretation of history the point of view from which sources are selected, presented, and evaluated is all-important. Writers of textbooks are as much conditioned by their own outlook as everyone else. Herbert Butterfield has stated the matter clearly in his book, Christianity and History: “There exists in most historical writing,” he says, “… an appearance of definitiveness and finality which is an optical illusion.…” “On the decisive question of … the interpretation one would give to the whole human story, it would be unwise to surrender one’s judgment to a scholar, any more than one would expect a scholar by reason of his technical accomplishments to be more skilled than other people in making love or choosing a wife.” “Our final interpretation of history … is our decision about religion, about our total attitude to things, and about the way we will appropriate life.”

The role of a Christian student in this academic world resembles in some respects that of Daniel in Babylon. Daniel had to enter deeply into the life of his time. He had to be concerned with national and international problems and to make judgments about them. And because his own life and hopes as a child of God were different from those of people around him, he could assess the position of Babylon with an objectivity impossible to Babylonians. Having the light of God’s revelation, he could point out the true meaning of events as the unbelieving wise men, however great their ability or experience, were powerless to do. (It is significant that in the visions and interpretations given Daniel, the cyclical rise and fall of successive empires, which was all the old pagan historians also saw, gives place to the Kingdom of the God of heaven that alone reveals a linear development and the real significance in history.) Entrusted with divine revelation Daniel, God’s prophet, had to speak for him to Israel and to the pagan world.

Is this not also the duty of the Christian scholar today? Though he does not have the exceptional visions of the prophet, he has the greater revelation of New Testament fulfillment (Matt. 13:17; Luke 7:28). Moreover, since Pentecost, every Christian has been called to prophetic witness (Acts 2:17, 18). Thus one can begin to understand the startling claim in Psalm 119:99, “I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation.” The position of the Christian is somewhat similarly described in First Corinthians: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man” (2:14, 15).

On Guard Against Arrogance

At this point a word of caution is in order. The Christian must be on guard lest his additional light tempt him to an arrogance that would spoil his witness (1 Pet. 5:3). After all, this light is not the result of any achievement or ability of his own; it is a gift of grace. Neither does it entitle him to feel that the studies of unbelieving scholars are to be ignored or that he can afford to be more slipshod in his work than they. He must rather be quick to consider the meaning of whatever truth they discover and to put his best efforts into his own work—the more so because he has a key to interpret what is being unfolded that unbelievers lack.

This is not to say that the Christian “has all the answers,” so that for him no unsolved problems remain. Even the Apostle Paul had to say, “We know in part.…” Dare we expect or claim more? But what is significant for an age that grows increasingly skeptical about everything is that he could say about the things that matter most, “We know.…”

The Christian historian must give an interpretation of the course of events that will differ markedly from that of an unbeliever. In the concrete situations of study, teaching, or writing, he has the difficult task of determining just what that interpretation is and how it differs from those given by others. In the academic sphere, as in others, faith that does not lead to works will turn out to be mere self-deception. Let us therefore consider some aspects of a Christian interpretation of history.

It is axiomatic that in any serious historical study one must attempt to go to sources. This practice is doubly desirable for the Christian scholar, for often he will find himself much more able to understand the thinking and actions of our Christian forebears than many a modern interpreter who sees them through the astigmatism of materialistic, humanistic, or other anti-Christian prejudices.

Reviewing The Puritans

The Puritan colonists in New England, for example, have often been portrayed as long-faced pessimists warped by an inhuman Calvinist theology. A little acquaintance with some of those old Puritans through their writings tells a different story. Anyone who reads the diary of Samuel Sewell, in which he records the ups and downs of his courtship of the Widow Winthrop, finds himself both amused and fascinated by these exceedingly human Calvinists whose difference from their modern maligners lies mainly in the seriousness with which they took their Christian faith. The Christian appreciates the efforts of such scholars as Perry Miller to rehabilitate the Puritans. And on reading William Bradford’s Of the Plymouth Plantation, the Christian is impressed with the careful record of the Pilgrims’ venture of faith and feels profound sympathy with Bradford’s aim in writing: “That the children may see with what difficulties their fathers wrestled and how God brought them along notwithstanding their weaknesses and also to help others in similar experiences.”

While we appreciate the scholarly research of some well-known historians, we must be sharply critical of certain assumptions their works reveal. Charles Beard’s The Economic Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, for instance, is an attempt to explain that document as the selfish effort of a group of property-owners to protect their own interests. Although the reader cannot help commending Beard for his extensive research, he must at the same time observe that Beard deliberately refrained from taking into account many other factors that entered into the formulation of the Constitution. As a study of one factor, his work has value; as an explanation of the whole document, it is a caricature.

One of the most influential American historians in the first half of this century was Frederick Jackson Turner. He propounded the thesis that American history can be largely explained by a consideration of frontier conditions and the free land that kept attracting settlers farther and farther westward. Yet the tremendous influence that he and those who followed his lead, such as Walter P. Webb, attributed to material factors in determining human life and action ought to be challenged by the Christian. Perhaps many people do act on the assumption that a man’s life consists “in the abundance of things which he possesses”; but a Christian can hardly accept this attitude as universal or normal. Although man may forget or deny that he was created in the image of God, that does not make him merely a food-eating and land-grabbing animal.

Certain interpretations of European history also call for criticism. Consider just two of the many historians of the French Revolution. In his Twelve Who Ruled, R. R. Palmer reveals not only a close acquaintance with the leading figures of the revolution but also his view of human nature. He says: “The best justification of Robespierre in the present author’s opinion is not to inveigh against all the Revolutionists except Robespierre and his closest associates, but to recognize that the Revolution itself was an ugly thing, making men not essentially bad conduct themselves in a deplorable manner.” This is just the old assumption of the natural man about himself, an assumption that says: “Men are good; circumstances make them bad!” The Christian needs to expose this for the error it is.

There is also Alfred Cobban’s analysis of the financial crisis in the old regime that helped bring on revolution (A History of Modern France, Vol. I). When he points out that those who had power insisted that the successive finance ministers prolong deficit financing rather than curtail expenses and raise taxes and in so doing pushed the nation into bankruptcy, the Christian must reply that this is not merely a matter of economics. When people refuse to pay their bills or tolerate equitable taxes, they reveal their moral degeneracy.

There is an urgent need for Christian vision in the interpretation of history in countless classrooms. A few years ago a college student asked my opinion of some comments his Christian professor had made on the Council of Nicaea. The professor had said that the council was much less important than Christians had often been led to believe. Under the authority of an emperor still half pagan, and dominated by men more politicians than Christian theologians, it simply did not begin to deserve the respect with which Christians had been taught to regard it. The student wanted to know if this were true. I answered that there was a good deal of truth in the claim. But I also asked whether the professor had pointed out that from this crooked political maneuvering emerged Athanasius. This remarkable man was forty-six years a bishop, five times exiled, and a fugitive for about twenty years. In spite of all of the political and ecclesiastical authorities who were won over to the heresy of denial of the deity of Christ and who threatened his life times without number, Athanasius refused so resolutely to compromise this all-important truth that the saying, “Athanasius against the world,” has sounded through the ages. Even the skeptic Gibbon was moved to write some of his most eloquent prose in praise of this church father. And despite all political chicanery, Athanasius’s confession of Christ’s deity was vindicated as the teaching of the Church. But the student had not been told this story.

There is urgent need for Christians to enter the field of history as scholars and teachers. Guided by deep and prayerful study of the Bible and prepared with a mastery of their areas of study, they need to stop repeating what their textbooks and professors have been telling them and work toward developing their own Christian critique of what they have been taught about the past. But they ought not to be content with mere criticism; they need, as their insights grow, to attempt to make positive contributions in teaching and in writing.

Books that present evangelical Christian interpretations are needed in every part of historical study. The Roman Catholics have a Christopher Dawson who in his Progress and Religion writes discerningly of the waning faith in the idea of progress, although his work is marked by the Roman Catholic effort to synthesize old Greek and Christian motifs and by the warning that civilization must return to the true church or perish. Or there is Karl Lowith who, in his Meaning and History, ably investigates the thinking of several leading philosophers of history, yet fails to give a satisfactory biblical perspective principally because of his neo-orthodox presuppositions. The same fault is glaringly apparent in John McIntyre’s less significant The Christian Doctrine of History. Can his view that “the fragmentariness [of history] is as real for God as it is for us” satisfy an evangelical Christian, when the Word of God states so plainly that he “worketh all things after the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11)?

One of the most exciting discussions of the meaning of history is Herbert Butterfield’s Christianity and History, from which I quoted previously. His frank reckoning with the influence of sin in the long record of humanity is unusual and refreshing. Unfortunately, his view of Providence that operates only in a general or limiting way like “helping a small boy to ride a bicycle” is hardly biblical. He sees the remarkable insights of the Hebrew prophets into the events of their times as “the work of a few select souls” instead of as the revelation of God which they said it was, and his lack of a biblical eschatology cannot but leave the Christian student disappointed.

One looks almost in vain for modern books that present a genuine Christian interpretation of history as a whole, and satisfying treatments of limited areas are also far too rare. We urgently need men who, guided by God’s Word and Spirit, will see and speak to the Church and the world of what God is doing in human history. May more evangelical Christians see this need and dedicate themselves to this field of Christian academic witness.

No words of Scripture are more familiar to the Christian than those describing the institution of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, as they are variously recorded in the New Testament. Matthew, for example, writes: “And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (26:26–28).

The occasion was that Passover feast our Lord so desired to keep with his disciples before he suffered. But the teaching the words contained was not new. A year had passed since the feeding of the five thousand. At that time Jesus had sought most earnestly to point his hearers to the deeper meaning of that mighty work. When they likened the bread received then to the manna, the bread from heaven with which their fathers had been fed in the wilderness, he pointed out that the manna fed only their bodies. They ate of that bread for forty years, but died there in the wilderness for their disobedience and unbelief. “I am,” said Jesus, “the living bread which came down from heaven.” And he added, “If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51). Then we read that “the Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52). It was a strange, even horrible and horrifying doctrine. Yet Jesus repeated it in the most impressive terms: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (John 6:53). No statement could be stronger than this. What did it mean?

By his words about the manna Jesus pointed out two things: the close connection between the two Testaments, and the great superiority of the New. This appears clearly in the emphatic words: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat.…” Let us look first at the resemblance. When Jesus spoke of the eating of his flesh, he was—like John the Baptist, who had said of Jesus, “Behold, the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and like Isaiah, who also had used the figure of the lamb in describing the work of the Suffering Servant—referring his hearers to the ritual of the Passover and also to the sacrifice of the peace offering. At the Passover feast, each household of Israel was to eat of the lamb which had been slain and whose blood was sprinkled at the door of the house. Similarly, when the peace offering was presented, after the Lord’s portion and the priest’s portion had been removed the offerer and his family and friends were to partake of the remainder. In both rites there was the solemn reminder of the forgiveness of sins through the shedding of blood, and also and especially the fact of union and communion with the God of Israel who had ordained these feasts. It was through the shedding of the blood and the partaking of the sacrifice that the believing and obedient Israelite partook of the joy of his Lord. And if these Jews had pondered Jesus’ words in the light of those Old Testament institutions that were so familiar to them, they might have gained at least some intimation of the true meaning of what he said. For he was pointing forward to the Last Supper and to Calvary. It was in them that the types of the Old Testament were to find their true and glorious fulfillment. To eat of his flesh was in Old Testament symbolism to enjoy the benefits of the redemption they received from him.

But now we come to something quite different that seems utterly out of harmony with the types and shadows of the Old Testament. It is the words, “… and drink his blood.” Throughout the whole Old Testament, from Noah (Gen. 9:4) to Malachi (Mal. 4:4), eating with the blood is strictly prohibited. This is most emphatically stated in Leviticus: “And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (17:10, 11). This was the Law, and there is probably no requirement of the Mosaic law that has been more strictly observed by the Jews unto this present day than this. Every Jewish butchershop today with its “kosher” sign is a witness to it. Yet Jesus said to the Jews, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (italics added). How are we to understand this seemingly amazing reversal of the law as required by One who has declared that he came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it?

It would be strange that what seems to be so remarkable a change in the New Testament teaching should be made without warning or explanation. This can only mean that the reason will be apparent to us, if we will only seek it. It is not enough to say that the “drinking” commanded in the New Testament is only figurative. What is unlawful in actuality should also be unlawful even as symbol. To “eat the flesh” as used of the partaking of the bread of the Holy Supper is entirely appropriate as a fulfillment of the Old Testament ritual of sacrifice. To “drink the blood” is exactly the reverse of appropriate.

The solution to the problem is apparently to be found in the two different meanings of the word “blood” as it is used in the Old Testament. Basically “blood” means life; the life is in the blood of the one through whose veins it flows. But in the Old Testament ritual of sacrifice, it is the blood that makes atonement for the life of another. Therefore the blood speaks especially of atonement for sin and is sacred. It is the type of the precious blood of Christ, the blood shed once for all on the Cross. The atoning work is done. The blood of bulls and of goats shed on Jewish altars for centuries has had its antitypical fulfillment at Calvary. It is finished, never to be repeated. Consequently, when the believer comes to the Lord’s table, he does not come to an altar of sacrifice to secure forgiveness through the repetition of the sufferings of Christ—that is the tragic error in the Romish sacrament of the Mass; rather, he comes as one who has been forgiven, whose sins have been washed away, to partake of this Christian feast of remembrance, of communion, of union with the risen and all glorious Lord, and of anticipation of his Coming. And the highest expression of this union is found in the new life that the believer has in him. Hence the Apostle declares, “When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4). Christ our life! Since therefore, as the Old Testament tells us, the life is in the blood, the blood of Christ as symbolized by the cup becomes the most precious sign of the Christian’s union with Christ and of the fact that Christ is truly in him as the hope of glory. And that something forbidden in the Old Testament becomes a most precious symbol in the New indicates how far the reality set forth in the New Testament transcends the types and shadows of the Old.

Perhaps the text of Scripture that most clearly illustrates the truth we are considering is this: “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Rom. 5:10). So for the Christian the “blood of Christ” that is the life of Christ speaks both of atonement and of sanctification, of death and of life, of the passive and of the active obedience of Christ.

Paul the apostle laid no claim to eloquence. But he had one rule to measure sermons: when Christ was preached, he rejoiced (Phil. 1:18). Paul lived Christ, and he preached Christ. “I determined,” he said, “not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

When that apostolic single-mindedness is lost, the soul goes out of preaching. Sermons must be more than relevant: they must be Christian. Even biblical learning is not enough if the scholar can only ask from the pulpit, “Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?” (Acts 8:34).

Christ rebuked as fools those who were slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets had spoken. As he interpreted from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself, he set their hearts on fire.

The minister’s task is to preach the Word of the Lord so as to reveal the Lord of the Word.

Preaching The Word Of The Lord

Those who take one-sided approaches to the Bible do not see it as the Word of the Lord, filled with movement and power. Some approach the Bible as an inspirational sourcebook, a golden casket where gems of truth are stored. Indeed, they might prefer a box of golden text cards, free of non-inspirational genealogies and grisly murders.

Others come looking for maxims of morality. Proverbs are much to their taste, as are lives of the saints. But again come the difficulties: not only the sins of the saints and their dubious deeds, but victories that do not seem to be at all exemplary to us—Samuel hewing Agag to pieces before the Lord, for example, or Samson pulling down the galleries of the temple of Dagon.

Still others come to the Bible with more orderly minds. They are seeking for proof texts to demonstrate the system of doctrine the Bible contains. Their one regret is that the Bible seems so disorganized. A Bible dictionary is much more convenient. Now that the theological results of God’s long work of revelation can be tabulated, a handy summary of doctrine is far more useful a text than Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—especially Leviticus!

It is not what those who take these approaches see that is at fault. It is what they miss. The Bible is full of golden texts of inspiration, maxims of morality, outlines of sound doctrine. Yet the Word of the Lord is not structured by any one of these motifs. What does determine the form of the Bible is its nature as the Word of the Lord. The testimony of Jesus explains both the structure of the Scripture and its content. It could be said that what distinguishes the Bible is its historical form; yet it is not history that determines the Word of God. To the contrary, the Word of God determines history. The power of God’s word of promise accounts for the historical form of the Bible, and that word centers on the coming Lord.

Our verbal smog obscures the concept of the power of God’s Word. Words are cheap. Thousands of them are unread on the newspaper in which we wrap the garbage, and we numbly ignore the ceaseless open-ended chatter of modern broadcasting. The Bible does not look at words in that way. Even a man’s word should be faithful and meaningful, for God will call him to account for every idle word. And what of the word of God? God speaks with sovereign, creative power: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.… For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast” (Ps. 33:6, 9).

God’s word of promise is his word of power spoken in the future tense. God intervenes in the garden to confront Satan’s serpent: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). God’s word does not merely predict the triumph of redemption. It determines it: “For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

Because a span of time intervenes between the word of promise and the deed of realization, the word itself gains new importance. The span is the time of faith, and the word of God is accounted sure by those who do not see the fulfillment. The call of Abraham is a call of promise to a pilgrimage of faith, and Abraham is repeatedly proved with respect to his trust in the word of God. Abraham is called to believe not only without evidence but even against evidence. The word of promise becomes impossible, so that for both Abraham and Sarah it is laughable. Sarah to have a son—at her age! Why cannot the Lord be reasonable—“O that Ishmael might live before thee!” (Gen. 17:18).

To the laughter of Sarah’s unbelief, the angel of the Lord replies, “Is any word too wonderful for the Lord?” (Gen. 18:14). That assurance was repeated to Mary when the ultimate miracle fulfilled the primal promise (Luke 1:37). God names the child of the promise “Laughter,” for the laugh of unbelief is turned to the laugh of joyful faith. So did Abraham rejoice to see Christ’s day, and he saw it and was glad (John 8:56).

The word of God’s promise, while yet unfulfilled, sets the fixed goal that gives meaning to history. Man is called by God’s promise to wait and labor in the hope of faith. History is more than the cycles of nature or a journey through the empty wilderness to death. It is the time during which God watches over his word to perform it (Jer. 1:11, 12). To this day the secularized culture of the West carries a dynamic concept of history borrowed from the hope of God’s promise.

The span of promise requires the written Word of God. God will remember his word of promise, and he summons his people to bear witness to its reality. The words of God’s covenant are written with his finger on tablets of stone after the pattern of ancient royal treaties. God goes on record in a written memorial by which his faithfulness as Lord and Israel’s unfaithfulness as servant will be judged (Ex. 32:15, 16; 34:27–29; Deut. 31:24–26).

God’s word of promise fixes seasons of redemptive history. Had God spoken only the final promise, the lamp of faith would surely have flickered out during the long ages of delay. But God granted provisional fulfillments to point to the final reality. Isaac was given to Abraham long before the true Beloved Son came; David entered Jerusalem long before the Heir of the promise ascended God’s holy hill.

Yet the manifold promises of God are yea and amen in one Man. Their variety is not chaotic but organic. The seasons of redemption unfold toward the fullness of time. The sabbatical system of the sacred calendar moved from the seventh day to the seventh month, the seventh year, and finally, after seven sevens, to the fiftieth year of Jubilee; so also God promised to usher in the acceptable year of the Lord, the jubilee of his salvation (Isa. 61:2; Lev. 25; Luke 4:18, 19). The prophets transfigure the language of promise as they speak of God’s work in the latter days. So total will be his restoration that it will become a renewal of heaven and earth as God reveals all the treasures of his will (Jer. 33:2; Isa. 40:5; 55:11). Such blessings can come only as God himself comes to dwell with his people. The promise of God points to the presence of God. God who came down on Sinai in promise will come to Bethlehem in fulfillment.

Preaching The Lord Of The Word

We are pointed therefore by the whole structure of the Word of the Lord to him who is the Lord of the Word.

The Lord will come. He appears amidst the rejoicing of his creation to set up his kingdom on earth (Ps. 46:5–10; 98:7–9). In a second exodus he leads forth his sheep as their Redeemer-Shepherd-King (Isa. 10:26; 35:1–10; 40:3, 10, 11) and summons the nations to his salvation.

For this work of salvation, God must be the Saviour. Only the work of God can fulfill the word of God. He has promised too much for Moses or Joshua, David or Elijah to perform. “The Lord Jehovah will come as a mighty one …” (Isa. 40:5, 10). Only God’s power can deliver and only his mercy can redeem. There are dread indications in the Old Testament that God redeems his sinful people at his own expense. God takes the awe-filled oath of the covenant (Gen. 15), provides the sacrifice when the offering of the son of the promise is demanded (Gen. 22), and stands upon the rock that is smitten (Ex. 17). Salvation is of the Lord.

If the Lord comes, the Servant of the Lord must also come. The covenant has two sides: the Lord must come to renew the covenant, the Servant must come to fulfill the covenant. The task of Israel’s calling will be filled by one called from the womb to be God’s Servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to be a light to the Gentiles, God’s salvation to the end of the earth (Isa. 49:1–6). As the obedient Son and the righteous sufferer, he will make atonement for the sins of “the many” (Isa. 53). He is the divine Messiah, Immanuel, God with us.

The full and free way in which the New Testament attributes the realization of these promises to the coming of Jesus Christ as Lord and Servant should open our eyes to the scope of the witness of Scripture to him. He is Lord, God the only-begotten (John 1:18), the Divine Word become flesh (v. 14). It is he that will save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21), for he is the Saviour (Luke 2:11). His words and deeds realize the Jubilee; they reveal the authority of the Lord. His miracles of cleansing are signs of the removal of the covenant curse (Ex. 15:26; Deut. 28:60; 32:39; Lev. 14; Luke 17:14), and of the healing of salvation (Isa. 57:15–19). The confession of Thomas sums up the witness of the apostles: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Even in suffering he is king (John 18:37; 19:19), and the lifting up of the cross begins an exaltation that carries him to the throne of glory (John 12:31–33) in resurrection triumph. He is the Servant, too, yet not in contradiction of his Lordship, for he is a royal Servant, whose sufferings are self-chosen with sovereign dignity and who conquers through death. The glorified Servant (Acts 3:13) is the glorious Lord (Heb. 1:5–8). The Lord of the Covenant has come to his people; the Servant of the Covenant has ascended to his Father.

Do we need to be reminded of how totally the New Testament centers on Christ? Begin to read any book in it, from the first (“the book of the generation of Jesus Christ …,” Matt. 1:1) to the last (“the Revelation of Jesus Christ …,” Rev. 1:1). The New Testament emphatically claims that this same centrality of Christ applies to the Old Testament. Jesus’ interpretation after the resurrection expounded “in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Peter affirms that Christ’s coming was promised by Moses and that “all the prophets from Samuel and them that followed after, as many as have spoken, they also told of these days” (Acts 3:24). Paul’s preaching was that “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures” and has “been raised on the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3, 4).

Where is Christ to be found in the Old Testament? Not merely in the relatively few passages that explicitly speak of the coming Messiah but in the whole Old Testament message. The Old Testament is about the covenant Lord and his mercies to his people. Christ is the Lord of the covenant, gathering his people in the latter days. The Old Testament is about Israel; but Christ is the true Israel, the son called out of Egypt, the Remnant shoot out of the roots of David (Isa. 49:3–7; 10:34–11:1). The Old Testament is about Moses and the prophets, Aaron and the priests, David and the kings. Christ is the true Anointed, the Prophet like unto Moses, the Priest after the royal order of Melchisedec, David’s Son and Lord.

What is revealed in the Gospel is what was promised in the Old Testament Scriptures (Rom. 1:1–3). The great “now” of salvation is the realization of the fullness of times (2 Cor. 6:2; 2 Tim. 1:10; Col. 1:26; Gal. 4:4). Only when we see the inner connection leading to the climax of redemptive history can we appreciate the New Testament’s use of the Old. Whether it is Matthew’s reference to Christ in the text, “out of Egypt did I call my Son” (Matt. 2:15, cf. Hos. 11:1); or the allusion to Scripture given by John in describing Christ’s thirst on the cross (John 19:28, cf. Ps. 69:21); or Paul’s application of “my people” to the Gentiles (Rom. 9:25, cf. Hos. 2:23); or the remarkable application of the Psalms to Christ in the first chapter of Hebrews—all the understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures is grounded in the organic unity of the revelation of him who knew the end from the beginning and set the seasons in his own authority until the appointed time.

To perceive this focus of the Scriptures on Christ as the Lord and the Servant is not to yield to impoverishment but to gain enrichment. Precisely in Christ does the trinitarian revelation reach its glorious fullness, for in him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Apart from Christ, the Father’s glory cannot be seen (John 14:9). Will you look away from Jesus Christ to see the Father? Or will you find the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ?

In Christ we have the Spirit too. The Spirit of God is also the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9). The Spirit is sent in Christ’s name (John 14:26); he reveals the things of Christ (John 16:13–15); and in him Christ is present (John 14:18, 23; Rom. 8:9, 10). The Spirit is not a poor substitute for the presence of the risen Christ but a full and glorious form of his presence. The disciples were taught to desire his going away, so that the Spirit might come (John 16:7).

Christocentric preaching, then, is also trinitarian preaching. It is no accident that the revelation of the Trinity is manifested as Christ is manifested. The hour that comes and now is when the Father is worshiped in the Spirit is the hour when Jesus Christ declares, “I that speak unto thee am he” (John 4:26).

To preach the Word of the Lord and the Lord of the Word is one task. There is one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all; the unity of our one faith is in the knowledge of the Son of God (Eph. 4:4–16). To judge that the Bible speaks sometimes of God, sometimes of God’s people, and therefore only sometimes of Christ is to leave out of account the fullness of him that filleth all in all. When we declare that all the Scriptures witness to Christ, we are neither adopting a partial perspective nor imposing the conviction of faith on an alien Old Testament religion. We are confessing the Word of the Lord.

The Word of the Lord describes Samson not as an ancient superman but as a judge of Israel whom the Spirit used as a single champion to deliver the people of God. His role anticipates the work of Christ; in spite of his quenching of the Spirit he manifests the Redeemer who is bound and delivered to the enemy but who triumphs even in death. The zeal of Samuel in executing Agag at God’s command anticipates the zeal of the last Judge, who cleansed the temple with a scourge but himself bore the scourging to cleanse forever the people of God, and who will come again bearing the sword of eternal judgment.

Where the Lord is present in judgment or salvation, there the presence of the Lord Incarnate is anticipated; where the servant is manifested in obedience or disobedience, there the calling of the true Servant is foreshadowed; where words of promise and acts of redemption reveal God’s saving plan, there the consummation of revelation and redemption is prepared for.

Until you have seen a text illumined not only from without but from within by the light of Christ, you are not yet ready to proclaim it to the Church or the world. This preaching hems you in to Christ’s fullness, limits you to all the riches of the wisdom of God, narrows your thought to the mind of Christ, and restricts your vision to one light of the eye, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Concede wider ranges to those who want to wander in trackless places; let them be conformed to the passing patterns of preaching, non-preaching, or anti-preaching. But determine with Paul to preach Christ. No more, no less.

To many Christians the baptism of Jesus seems almost as much of an enigma as it did to the Baptist. It serves as a precedent for our own baptism. It also forms an introduction to Christ’s ministry. And it is linked with a special endowment of the Spirit. But beyond this it seems inappropriate to speak of his baptism as one of repentance for the remission of sins. Does not Jesus forgive sin rather than confess it? Should he not be the baptizer rather than the baptized? Why then does his ministry begin with a baptism?

The answer is important, for it involves an understanding of the ministry itself as well as of the initiatory act. Indeed, Jesus himself is aware of this, for we remember that he speaks of the baptism that he has yet to accomplish. The baptism stands like a prophetic sign at the beginning of the ministry, showing us what kind of work it is that Jesus is to do. And conversely, the ministry itself sheds light upon the baptism. If the latter seems out of place, the reason is that we do not understand the former. Our failure to see the significance of Jesus’ baptism means we shall probably miss the real point and meaning of his ministry.

We learn from the baptism, first, that the ministry of Jesus is not just a good-will mission of healing, teaching, and friendly intercourse. It is a ministry of self-identification with sinners. In a sense this is true already in Bethlehem, where the Word is made flesh. But at Jordan Jesus consciously takes his place among the throngs that crowd down to the water and confess their sins. Or rather, he takes their place, so that the baptism of John finds its focus and fulfillment when Jesus is baptized, and the crowds give way to this one person who has no sin of his own but bears the sin of the world. In short, the baptism of Jesus shows us that he has entered upon a ministry of substitutionary sin-bearing in which he is not ashamed to be one with us, and to take our place, and to do for us in that place what we cannot do for ourselves—bearing the judgment of sin yet rising to eternal life.

Secondly, we learn from this baptism that the ministry of Jesus is one not merely of life but of a life fulfilled in death and resurrection. He is not just among us and one with us in an act of instruction or even vicarious penitence. Bearing the sin of others in an act of obedience for others, he goes down into the waters in death and rises again to newness of life. His true baptism is a death and resurrection, the movement of Good Friday and Easter Day. In this death and resurrection he comes under not only the judgment but also the saving grace of God for our sake and in our place. In this death and resurrection he dies the death of the old man of sin and brings in the new man created unto righteousness and true holiness. His ministry is to be one of self-giving for the sinners with whom he identifies himself, in order that they should not die in themselves and therefore eternally, but die in him and rise in him to the new and everlasting life of righteousness and sonship. Thus the baptism of Jesus shows us that the ministry upon which he has entered is one of substitutionary death and resurrection. The old life is judged and done away; a new life graciously and powerfully replaces it.

Thirdly, we see that the baptism of Jesus has the approval of the Father and is the obedient fulfilling of his eternal counsel. His reading of the Old Testament is not in error. He is pursuing no independent or mistaken way. He may be misunderstood by his contemporaries, regarded as mad by his mother and brethren, incomprehensible to John and to his disciples; but in the substitutionary action proclaimed in his baptism he enjoys the testimony of the Father in the voice from heaven. This is the work that God planned from eternity in and with the Son. This is the work that the Son has come into the world to do. From the earthly standpoint, it begins indeed with his birth. But at his baptism he enters upon its conscious fulfillment. And the voice from heaven tells both him and us that, even though he passes under the righteous judgment of God on sin, he does so in obedient fulfillment of the divine purpose of grace and, therefore, with the loving acceptance of the Father.

Fourthly, we are aware from this act that Jesus, on his way of obedient self-giving in our place, enjoys the empowering of the Holy Spirit. Reconciliation of man with God is the work of the whole Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And therefore at this high point when he takes up before our eyes his substitutionary course to carry it to fulfillment at the Cross, it is fitting that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost should all be active. Conceived of the Spirit in his human life, the Son can now go out empowered by the Spirit to teach in the Spirit, heal in the Spirit, offer himself by the Spirit, and be raised in the life-giving power of the Spirit. He is not thrown back upon purely human resources to do this great work of reconciliation, nor does he proudly rely upon human power in isolation from God. He moves forward with this special endowment, humbly drawing his strength from God and therefore having the quiet endurance that can take him through Gethsemane to Gabbatha, Golgotha, and the Garden tomb.

Fifthly, we are given a fresh understanding of the testing and temptation that immediately follow his baptism. Jesus now is subjected to attempts to divert him from the way of service upon which he has entered. Surely there are less difficult and drastic methods of fulfilling his messianic calling. Surely he can enjoy some of the benefits of his special position and powers. There are more convincing and spectacular means of winning applause and allegiance that can make the Cross unnecessary.

To be a benevolent despot crowned with worldly fame and invested with worldly prerogatives is certainly more appealing than to take the road of self-denial, fasting, exhaustive service, agony, and dying in the place of sinners. Surely this latter cannot be the right way, or the necessary way, or the only way. Surely there are other meanings to baptism, if he must be baptized, and therefore to the divine will unfolded in the Old Testament, and to divine approval and divine endowment. But no! “Get thee behind me, Satan.” The road has been entered, and there can be no turning back. The prophetic baptism of Jordan must be fulfilled in the true baptism of the Cross. Every other suggestion, whether directly from the devil or mediately through the disciples, is a temptation to deviation from the way of obedience that is the via dolorosa—yet even as such the way of grace and triumph.

Finally, we learn from the baptism of Jesus something of the meaning of our own baptism as a baptism into Christ and his saving work. It is what Christ has done. It speaks to us of what he has done once for all and all-sufficiently for us in his true baptism. But in so doing it calls for our responsive and corresponding movement. As Christ has identified himself with us, we are to accept this and therefore our identification with him. As he has died and risen again in our stead, we are to accept this and therefore to deny ourselves, to renounce the old life, and to be by faith the new men that we are in him. As he has the approval of the Father and the empowering of the Spirit, we are to accept the same, to know that we are accepted in the Beloved, to cry “Abba, Father,” and to be born and live by the Spirit and his outpouring. As he resisted temptation for us, we are likewise to resist every tempting byway in Christian life and service, and resolutely set ourselves to follow the narrow way that for us, too, will be the way of humility and obedience—the way of the Cross.