Theology

Bible Book of the Month: Genesis

David W. Kerr

The average church-goer does not hear many sermons from Genesis these days. Writers of Sunday School materials seem to handle the earlier chapters rather gingerly where these cannot be avoided altogether. The opinion is expressed in many quarters that the older parts of this first book of the Bible are interesting fables of a bygone era.

Literary criticism of the kind which separates the books of the Old Testament into supposedly earlier documents began first with Genesis. The majority of the commentaries which have been written since 1825 have dealt in some way with this divisive type of criticism. Many commentaries openly advocate the documentary theories and to the extent that they do so they often cease to be commentaries on the actual meaning of the text. Most graduates of the better seminaries since 1875 have been acquainted with the views of Julius Wellhausen, who declared that large sections of Genesis are completely fictional.

The Importance Of Genesis

The effects of a rationalistic handling of Gensis have been felt in every part of biblical studies including that of the New Testament. A surprisingly large amount of New Testament teaching is built upon the foundation laid in Genesis. Luke’s genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ traces the Saviour human ancestry back to Adam through the patriarchs listed in Genesis. The principle of justification by faith is the life and experience of Abraham, who believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, Genesis 15:6. The doctrine of human sin as set forth in Romans 5 may not be understood apart from Genesis 3. The paradise which is regained in Revelation 21, 22, with its tree of life for the healing of the nations, is obviously the eternal counterpart of that which was lost in the Genesis narrative. One’s understanding of the whole biblical revelation will undoubtedly be colored by his understanding of Genesis.

The Structure Of Genesis

The style of Genesis indicates even to the casual student that the book as we have it comes from one hand. There is, for one thing, the unusual structure of the book. After the account of the creation which is given in the first chapter, there appears in Genesis 2:4 an expression which introduces the remaining parts of the book. It is said, “These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created.” There are nine other sections given over to “generations.” There are the generations of Adam, of Noah, of the sons of Noah, of Shem, of Terah, of Ishmael, Isaac, Esau and Jacob.

The structure of the book is progressive. The writer carefully traces the rise of the nation of Israel, the covenant people of God in his day. He shows how God kept alive the knowledge of himself in the great apostasy before the flood and the ignorance after it. With the calling of Abraham in chapter 12 there began the selective process by which God chose a people for his own possession. An individual, a son of idolatrous parents, is called to be a child of God. Yet the choosing of the individual is to result in universal blessing for the promise is, “Through thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Whenever it is necessary for the writer to go beyond the limits of God’s chosen line as he does, for example, when he traces the families of Cain, Ham, Japheth, Ishmael and Esau, he returns abruptly to the children of God. He is like a navigator on a river who may for a short time explore its tributaries, but who returns to follow the main stream to its mouth.

The book of Genesis is plainly supernatural in its viewpoint although there are certainly fewer miracles recorded in it than in the gospel accounts. The objections which may be brought against the supernatural elements in Genesis may be brought with almost equal force against all that is miraculous in the Christian faith, including the casting out of evil spirits by our Lord Jesus Christ or even his resurrection.

Those who are convinced that God was working in all the events of past ages to introduce his plan of redemption will find that there is growth in the Messianic hope and promise in Genesis. The seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head, 3:15. The promise here might refer to any human being. Yet the line of blessing is narrowed among the descendants of Noah to the family of Shem, 9:26, 27. The calling of Abraham and later the blessing of Jacob narrowed the line still further. In Genesis 49:10 the tribe of Judah is selected as the one through which the purpose and kingdom of God will be wrought.

Aids To The Study Of Genesis

There are several commentaries on Genesis which will prove rather sterile since they devote their pages to a documentary analysis rather than an effort to elicit the message of the book. The best helps to the pastor and teacher are those works which recognize that Genesis was written for a theological purpose. The Interpreter’s Bible in its first volume contains a commentary on Genesis. Although the exegesis is marred, in this writer’s opinion, by documentary divisions, there are many useful insights into the meaning of the text. Several of the introductory articles in the volume will be found helpful although the position of some writers is a refinement of that of Julius Wellhausen and is highly subjective at many points. The text is divided into exegesis and exposition. The latter is sometimes rather imaginative. The writer, Walter Russell Bowie, shows a vast acquaintance with literary material which may serve for purposes of illustration.

One of the most valuable of recent commentaries is that of H. C. Leupold, An Exposition of Genesis (1953). Leupold gives a verse-by-verse interpretation of the text but he attempts to deal with a number of archeological problems as well. An older commentary which has recently been made available through reprinting is that of Robert S. Candlish, Commentary on Genesis. Candlish does not give a thorough exegesis but rather devotes himself to an exposition and application of whole passages. His work is really in the nature of a biblical theology of Genesis which is a distinct advantage in our day. Not the least valuable aspect of this commentary is the fact that it relates Genesis to the rest of biblical revelation. Other reprints which rank high in scholarship are available to the pastor who is willing to dust off his Hebrew Bible. Among these are the commentary by Franz Delitzsch in the famous Keil and Delitzsch series and that of Otto Zockler in the Schaff-Lange series. The student who has had no instruction in Hebrew will find such commentaries a bit more cumbersome than others but still very helpful. An up-to-date, one-volume work on the whole Bible is The New Bible Commentary (1953). It is uniformly conservative but necessarily brief.

No student of the Old Testament should rely upon commentaries alone. Genesis is largely historical. The movements of the patriarchs and the peculiarities of their culture may best be understood with the use of a good atlas and a Bible dictionary. Several excellent volumes are obtainable. The Westminster Historical Atlas has been revised as recently as 1956. As a companion volume the Westminster Bible Dictionary is not as complete as the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia or the recently revised Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, but it is somewhat more convenient. J. Howard Kitchen is the author of a fine historical geography of the Holy Land entitled Holy Fields (1955).

Finally, it would be foolish to ignore the bearing of archeology upon our understanding of Genesis. The number of books on this subject is almost endless. Two come to mind as being particularly readable and helpful. These are Light from the Ancient Past (1946) by Jack Finegan and Archeology and Bible History by Joseph Free. The latter is well-known in evangelical circles in America. The former contains some conclusions which are influenced by an attitude toward the Bible with which some readers will not agree, but it is well-documented and has a moderate approach.

Anyone who comes to the book of Genesis expecting to find in it a revelation of the timeless purpose of God’s grace will see the book open before him in many surprising ways. He will draw from it treasures new and old, to enrich his own life and experience as well as those of his hearers.

Ideas

On Meeting Changing Issues

On Meeting Changing Issues

A clear and effective witness for Christ in the name of evangelical Christianity will evidence a number of things. It will, of course, largely be positive and constructive rather than negative and destructive. For we have something to offer as well as something to protect and defend.

But even when evangelical Christianity witnesses positively and constructively, it will ever be conscious of the clamoring voices of competing theologies. And its witness will reflect the fact that it realizes it has competitors for the hearts of men. Evangelical Christianity will, therefore, be wisely apologetic. It will often be aggressive. And it will remain on guard against attack. To do all this and win converts in a revolutionary world is not easy. It requires the scriptural wisdom of serpents—and more.

But this wisdom has not always been evident in the witness of evangelical Christianity. There have been times when we lost more friends than we won. And we have not always been granted even that measure of civilized respect which our competitors seem willing to accord each other in the world of scholarship and learning. Too often our best reception has been an amused indulgence like that which a sophisticated city-slicker might grant his country cousin gawking at his first sight of an escalator. When evangelical Christianity has been given a hearing it has been an audience like that which the bored directors of a large corporation might grant some small stockholder who has claimed his legal prerogative of speaking at the annual board meeting.

Now we are not altogether blameless for the lack of respect which we have been accorded in many circles. For one thing, we have been a little aloof ourselves. We often have drawn our dignity about us like a garment and, in the exercise of our calling, we have stalked ahead heedless of the competing clamor like a proud great Dane frostily ignoring the yapping of mongrel terriers at his heels. But with even more embarrassing consequences, we have occasionally undertaken to do battle for our honor, without first making sure we were meeting our opponents on even terms. We have jousted with weapons unsuited to the style of combat, or we have made ourselves a spectacle by undertaking to do battle against opponents that were not even there. And we have been justly received with the regard due a Don Quixote.

Evangelical Christianity represents, generally speaking, theological stability. Our competitors, on the other hand, are noted for their adaptability and changeableness. Most of them seldom stand for the same essentials for long. As a matter of fact, a principal plank in their theological platforms is their theory of the impermanence of theological systems. The overall problem which results from this difference is that we, who expect an issue to stand still until it is resolved, must adapt our witness to an opposition for whom issues are seldom long the same, with the often disastrous consequences mentioned above.

Now the positive witness of evangelical Christianity to the Truth of God must always remain essentially the same, of course, for the Gospel is eternal in its verities. But it must also adapt itself to the contemporary situation in a manner suited to the occasion. That is, the negative aspects of that positive witness must change with the prevailing nature of the conflict. That aspect of our witness which meets conflicting views must always be shifting and adjusting to meet new and changing ideas: for human schemes and interpretations change with the prevailing winds. We are always in danger of assuming that because our conclusions are permanent, those of our competitors are likewise permanent.

Nor can we afford to treat the opposition with the unconcern which we think his views often deserve, defining the issue on our own terms in order to keep them more easily within reach. For if it is our purpose to speak convincingly to those who disagree with us, we must speak to their understanding of the problem, not to ours.

Thus we are always in danger of being denied a hearing, not only because the human heart is sinful, but also because we may be exercised about something which the other side does not recognize as an issue or no longer considers an issue, having modified its views or passed on to something else. This is a real problem, even though we may rightly recognize in the new issue or viewpoint the essential fallacies of the old.

So the lack of respect with which the evangelical Christian is often met may be due to his failure or disinclination to recognize and to keep abreast of the world on the other side of the fence. “Progressive” theologies can differ from each other widely, without losing their fundamental regard for each other. But the evangelical is met with contempt. Recognizing other reasons, we are also convinced that a part of the reason is that the evangelical often does not command the respect of his opponents by speaking coherently to the point.

But what of specific examples? There are many. Take the issue of “liberalism,” for one. Liberalism, in some respects, is a dead issue. Most informed “liberals,” as a matter of fact, no longer consider themselves “liberals.” They point to the fact that the former optimistic view of the nature of man, of the capacity of man for self-improvement and of an inevitable utopia, have been surrendered by most serious thinkers. They speak of “liberals” with the zeal of an evangelical, for their theology has returned to a “new” orthodoxy, to a new “realism.” Those theologians who once preached the innate goodness of man now affirm the reality of original sin. Those who once denied to man any savior but himself now proclaim our need to walk with the Living Christ. And those who stopped with some vague affirmation of life after death now declare that only the Resurrection can adequately explain God’s sovereignty over death.

This does not mean that the liberal has turned orthodox. Not at all. It simply means that the issues have changed. Now the question is: What does “original” mean? And “living”? And the “resurrection”? The unbeliever is still an unbeliever. But the evangelical who continues to blast all “liberals” with the same fervent heat as of yore stands to lose his audience except for those who, like himself, have failed to perceive the shifting emphasis of the opposition.

Of course this brings up the question of terminology, which is always a difficult one. The proper terms can help or defeat a campaign. But in this field the opposition seems always to have the upper hand. His language is respectable. Ours is usually outdated. “Heretic” is now a word in universal ill repute. (“Fundamentalist” has become a word of reproach and many resent the snide implications that have become associated with a term which once signified courage and integrity.) “Modernists” was badly chosen in the beginning, but is still half-heartedly used. Unfortunately, it implies something intrinsically bad about the word “modern,” which is wholly respectable in other usage. The word “progressive” may be a good one and recent political connections have given it the flavor of radicalism and reactionism—to coin one. “Radical theology” has a very satisfactory sound. Perhaps it will do.

But there is another area which comes to mind, in which modern realistic (pardon us, radical) theology and evangelical Christianity fail to meet on fair terms. This is the area of the social application of religion, and here it is not a matter of terminology. It seems to be a matter of interest. The opposition has almost made good its claim to exclusive jurisdiction within the area of social concern. He has well-nigh convinced the world that love of neighbor in a true fellowship of reconciliation is found in him alone. The evangelical, for whom “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” means the same thing, has not been able—or has not cared—to translate his theology into down-to-earth, practical Christian ethics. And the radical triumphantly carries the field.

Our faith has historically been an informed one as well as a reformed one. If we are to have a maximum effect for Christ in the world, our witness must be intelligently informed about competing theologies as well as about its own. And it must get down to earth in the marketplace and at the crossroads of life.

Spiritual-Moral Unity Wanes In United Nations

A new form of world power politics is finding its forum within the councils of the United Nations, and its implications for international morality are grave. For several generations the so-called “great powers” exercised their will through imperialistic and colonial policies. Where this was enlightened and constructive it unquestionably served a useful purpose, developing backward peoples to the point where personal expression and self-determination made policies of exploitation impossible.

But now, using the United Nations as both a forum and a fulcrum, the smaller nations have themselves developed a form of power politics that threatens to project future international relationships on an entirely new concept. The Afro-Asian bloc now dominates the United Nations under the leadership of neutralist India. In the tug of opinion, a double-standard of international morality has arisen. The United Nations has been contemplating sanctions against Israel while declining to employ them against Russia. This state of affairs requires an urgent and sober reappraisal of America’s hitherto unqualified enthusiasm for the United Nations.

The veto power exercised by Russia 79 different times has again and again made a mockery of the United Nations as a court of consistent usefulness.

Christians everywhere need to take account of their stewardship as citizens, and to express their concern and exercise their influence. What gives American Christians the greatest cause for uncertainty is the fact that the control of that organization now rests in the hands of nations totally lacking in the moral and spirtual concepts basic in the Judeo-Christian heritage.

Six years ago President Eisenhower is reported to have written a friend: “I want to make it clear that I am not an ‘internationalist’ in the sense that I am willing to trust America’s welfare to an international congress of just any kind.”

We hope the President holds the same viewpoint today. We believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans do.

Confusing Reports On Church In Red China

A break-through has been achieved in the effort to establishes relations between churches in the Free World and churches in Communist China, and the results are very confusing. The contact has been made by an eight-man Anglican delegation that spent seven weeks in Red China. The delegation was led by Dr. Howard W. K. Mowll, Archbishop of Sydney and Primate of the Church of England in Australia, a vice-president of Inter-Varsity Fellowship. Originally one of the “Cambridge Seven” who went as missionaries to China, he was for some years Bishop of West China. The delegation included another churchman of conservative theological views, Canon H. M. Arrowsmith, Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Canon Arrowsmith’s report, in which Archbishop Mowll concurs, speaks of impressive social and economic reforms (improved living standards, absence of civil war, a stable and reliable government, a new motivation for progress and a measure of moral reformation) through the communist regime. He contends, moreover, that claims of religious freedom by leaders in the Three-Self Reform Church (the government-approved national church) are to be received as trustworthy. “It is open to people to treat these statements as insincere and … for the consumption of the visitors. But I am convinced that these tributes were genuine.… It is better to err on the side of being naive and trusting than to treat our fellow Christians with cynicism and mistrust.” Even Clause 88 affirming that “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief,” must not, we are assured, be taken as excluding “full religious activity as distinct from belief,” since the Consituation assures freedom of speech, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.

Because of the social reforms in China, Canon Arrowsmith remarks that some leaders are prone to speak of “elements which impart to communism the quality of a twentieth-century Christian heresy.” And he adds: “If I may make a personal confession, it is that I went to China fully expecting to find that the Church had come to terms with the government. This is clearly not true. It rather seems that the State has come to terms with the Church.… I am an unblushing admirer of the Church in China today.”

In another dramatic turn of events, rumor from China indicates that Pastor Wang Ming-tao, imprisoned in August, 1955, after 30 years of faithful ministry as an evangelical preacher and writer, was released after signing a confession that he had engaged in anti-government political activities. Wang is rumored to be giving the Three-Self Reform Church full support. All reports are fragmentary, however, and charges and countercharges of brainwashing and deception prevail.

What are the Western churches to believe? Doubtless mistrust of communism runs deeps, and the worst possible view of events is easily taken. Even Canon Arrowsmith, replying to an Eternity magazine inquiry, admits “another side of the picture”: frightening regimentation and persistent indoctrination, collective conformity prone to damage personality, censorship of press and radio. China’s youth are virtually absent from church. Christian scholarship is distressingly low.

Canon Arrowsmith’s added words on Church-State relationships in China are more important. He thinks it not “necessarily and uniformly wrong” that Chinese Christian leaders are cooperating with their government, in view of the New Testament emphasis on loyalty to the “powers that be.” Canon Arrowsmith does not think the Three-Self movement holds “any quality of political capitulation.… The Three-Self Movement is not wrong.… I do not think that it is loyal at the cost of a disloyalty to the Christian principle.… Christian leaders in particular regard themselves as being free to criticize the government. But the Church also seems to me to be eager to exercise a certain creative influence upon the processes of government and the principles upon which they are based.” Christians are “not necessarily called upon to agree with the communists in their philosophical assumptions.” While the government requires church loyalty to the new regime, Canon Arrowsmith points out, the Church may criticize within that loyalty.

In Eternity the Canon speaks more guardedly of “a high degree of religious freedom.” Evangelistic and expository preaching within the churches is unimpeded. Although noting “a shameful record” of “severity, cruelty and persecution” during two years of the communist regime, Canon Arrowsmith thinks no Christian has been persecuted by communists during the past five years for religious reasons. He states: “I am assured by Christian leaders (I met thirteen Bishops and the leaders of the Baptist Church of Christ in China, Methodists, C.I.M., Salvation Army, Little Flock S.D.A., etc.), that in recent years there has been no known case of a persecution of the Christians purely on religious grounds.” Yet the Canon admits that “open-air preaching and public evangelism outside the churches is discouraged,” and that the present religious policy is probably a matter of government whim, though not capriciously so (not likely to be altered tomorrow). Canon Arrowsmith would even assure us that, while the government has dissociated itself from Christianity, nonetheless “the State has come to terms with the Church in China.” ^PIt would be premature to evaluate the foregoing developments dogmatically. The reports of the Australian delegates are to be qualified by the fact that their informants came mainly from a limited circle of churchmen representing the Three-Self Reform movement, and hence may reflect subtleties of communist propaganda. But aside from this, the report deals unsatisfactorily with two central issues, the relation of Church and State, and that of religious freedom. Canon Arrowsmith confuses religious tolerance—or suspension of religious worship and propaganda upon the will of the State for its temporary or permanent survival—with religious freedom, which denies the State’s right to interfere with religious belief and activity. Nor does he indicate how the Christian conscience can pledge genuine loyalty to a State whose foundations are anti-God, identifying the right with the will of the State alone—even when such a State allows Christians to criticize the State within this assumption. Where these issues are not clarified, most evangelical observers fear that an atheistic state, instead of coming to terms with the Church, is dictating highly subtle terms under which the Church in China may survive.

Joint Moscow-Peking Threat Calls For Christian Realism

There has been an ominously mild reaction in America to the joint statement from Moscow and Peking with reference to threatened intervention in the Middle East. The general world situation and internal difficulties made such a stand almost inevitable and its execution a strong possibility.

The free world is in grave danger of being led astray by a feeling of false optimism. Heartened by the continued resistance of patriots in Hungary, with stories of heroism and devotion continuing to come from that tragic little country; unrest in Poland; uneasiness among students, even in Russia itself; revocation of communist ruthlessness with attendant revulsion of former fellow travellers; too many have been encouraged to believe that communism will become extinct.

That communism, with its terrors and suppressions, may have within it the seeds of its own destruction does not mean that this much hoped for event is in the immediate offing. Just the opposite is a strong probability. Here we have desperation and the potential for a large scale war in the hands of those who control Moscow and Peking. History shows that such a combination has often led to acts of folly.

No longer are her European satellites Moscow’s trusted vassals. However, China’s leaders remain consistent partners and command a reservoir of trained or available man power unequalled anywhere else in the world.

While Krushchev and others associated with him may hesitate to start a full scale war in the West the unpleasant truth faces us that they most certainly would welcome a resumption of hostilities in the Far East. This places South Korea, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, one or all, in danger of aggression. An explosion there, engineered from Peking, would cause such diversions in the West that Russia might well use the occasion to take over the oil-rich Middle East and in so doing trigger World War III.

Terrible potentialities confront the West. Nuclear warfare and its horrible consequences deter men who love and want peace. To the criminally inclined such possibilities have no restraining effect, particularly if they see that the long-range course of events may portend their ultimate undoing.

The great danger gives added responsibility to the thinking and reactions of Christians, particularly in America where now is centered so much potential power and world leadership.

Partisan politics should be no determining factor. World containment on the basis of utopian ideals is out of question. We live in an age of international lawlessness and anarchy. We have temporized with communism and communist nations to the extent of dealing with them as though led by responsible and honourable people.

We maintain firm convictions that Christians need to pray on the one hand and act with realism and decision on the other. That we in America have been spared the physical ravages of war until now does not mean that we are less deserving of God’s judgment, nor that such an eventuality may not be tragically near. Our future can well rest with our decisions of the present.

Peace does not result from man’s desire. Peace results from men and nations ordering their affairs in line with God’s holy and righteous will. The spreading licentiousness and intemperance and lawlessness in America demands judgment.

God has affirmed in his word that righteousness exalts a nation and sin drags it down. Whether the salt and light of true Christian living in America are quantitatively and qualitatively adequate to save us is known to God alone. But of this we are confident—a genuine wave of nation-wide repentance and turning to God for forgiveness and mercy and to His Son for cleansing is our one great hope.

Such a spiritual rebirth is imperative and with it a willingess to determine our internal and external policies on the basis of righteousness and not expediency. Christian principles not only are consistent with but actually demand preparations to restrain evils that are inescapable in a world society.

To that end we believe Christians should work and pray for the preaching and teaching and living of the gospel message on the one hand while with the other they maintain the weapons necessary to deter evil men and nations and the will to exercise those means if necessary.

We are not sure how the prophetic words, “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them,” will be fulfilled. Of this we are sure; today there is neither peace nor safety and it is a time for Christians to work and pray.

Oversimplifying The Remedy For The World’S Woes

The evils and sorrows that afflict the earth have called forth many suggested cures. A simple remedy offered frequently by evangelicals is the proclamation of Christ and him crucified. This has been termed by some an oversimplification of the answers to world problems. Such criticism has justification since the Scriptures clearly indicate that more is required than simply preaching the atonement. Application of the Gospel to the various evils and problems of society must be made.

Paul informed the Corinthian Christians that he determined not to know anything among them, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. By this the Apostle indicated what was basic and fundamental to his theology and message. However, in his letter to the Corinthians he makes careful application of the Gospel to individual, ecclesiastical and social life. He warns the individual of strife and lust. He admonishes the church on Christian liberty, idolatry, worship and love, and discusses social questions of marriage and poverty.

The Gospel affects all the powers and capacities of the individual and extends to all relations and conditions of human life. The Gospel does not leave the convert kneeling at the altar; it follows him into every avenue of life. The Gospel speaks to the church on doctrine, worship and government. The Gospel has a message for the sciences, the arts, and every social institution. The Bible does not deal with the individual in isolation from society.

The evangelical has often hobbled the Gospel un-biblically. He has not shown that a Christian is a new moral creation destined to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. He should humbly accept criticism for his neglect and endeavor to rear a superstructure of social justice and righteousness upon the foundation Christ Jesus. He must work out his salvation in its various relationships with fear and trembling.

The evangelical, however, rightly discerns that nothing short of supernatural faith in Jesus provides an effectual remedy for the disease of sin. His basic message must always be Christ and him crucified. Only this message delivers from sin and, attended by the Holy Spirit, carries the necessary power to cleanse the world from evil and error.

Eutychus and His Kin: March 4, 1957

SAINT OF THE SALES-PITCH

Presumably St. Bernardino of Siena is in no position to decline his election as arch-huckster. When the Sacred Congregation of Rites at the Vatican named him patron saint of advertisers recently (see Time, Feb. 4), they appeared confident that he would be gratified by his new duties.

But how would you like this assignment?

For a Life-like appraisal of this development, I suggest a photographic essay on a New York office building. These men are the new Bernardino clients: advertising executives.

Two of them are gloating over a new mesh undershirt they have promoted from coast to coast. On such occasions a patron saint doubtless has to note on their accounts the candles and cigars they burn in gratitude.

Across the page sprawls another group in the throes of a profound decision. One clutches his forehead. Another stares unseeingly over an ash-tray. The third lifts a tense face heavenward with closed eyes. This is no doubt the very situation in which the saint is most frequently invoked. The decision to be guided? Is the sales-pitch the men are hearing on the tape recorder one that will sell bouillon cubes?

What has a fifteenth century saint done to deserve this? Is there any assurance he will not prefer Purgatory and return the advertising game to the former sponsor, Mammon? No, the Rites people have the evidence. He aided a playing card manufacturer by suggesting he switch to cards with the Christian symbol IHS, then plugged their sale in his sermons.

As a solution to secularism, this is at least a cut above bingo at St. Peter’s Parish.

Evangelicals should not smile, however, at the silliness of a patron saint of advertising till they have more to say about how Christian calling is to be fulfilled in a Manhattan office.

EUTYCHUS

EVANGELISM IN SCOTLAND

Rev. Tom Allan’s excellent review of evangelism in Scotland was of particular interest to many of us here and we are grateful for it. In no spirit of criticism but rather in the interest of accuracy … it seems regrettable that Mr. Allan makes no reference, other than by implication, to the evangelistic opportunities presented in our new housing areas. Probably the greatest advance in Scotland in the past 20 years has been made in the new estates. Not only are churches crowded by thousands who did not previously attend a place of worship, but there also we find a sincere and refreshing attitude toward religion. As two-thirds of our population will have to be re-housed, the Church’s great chance in this field cannot be ignored.

JAMES CURRIE

St. James (Pollok) Parish Church

Glasgow, Scotland

ECUMENICAL PROPOSALS

The recent proposal by ecumenical churchmen for a visit by Western churchmen to the Chinese Christian churches demands some serious consideration. This proposal is not simply an isolated event; it is one of a series of political programs periodically sponsored by the leaders of the World Council of Churches. The last such political proposal I recall was the fight to have church leaders from communist Eastern Europe admitted to the United States to attend the World Council of Churches assembly in Evanston. A review of this proposal and the agitation that brought it to victory ought to put us in a sound position to judge the latest political proposal.

If you recall, the State Department was adamant to issue visas to the Eastern European churchmen on the grounds that they were pro-communist agents, and their presence in the U.S. was inimical to the best interests of the United States. Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam of the Methodists Church and Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, called on Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on November 18, 1953, and formally requested that eleven delegates from Communist Czechoslovakia and Communist Hungary be admitted to attend the Evanston assembly as delegates representing their respective churches. The State Department relented to World Council pressure, reluctantly admitting these eleven delegates.

To the best of my knowledge, three groups remained adamant in their hostility to the extension of full-Christian fellowship to these Communist-sponsored delegates. Congressman Bentley of Michigan was the most important political leader who insisted that the State Department should not have relaxed its ban. He said the admission of these Red-delegates did not serve the legitimate interests of either the U.S. Government or the Christian churches. He carefully set forth his reasons in the July 22, 1954, Congressional Record. A House sub-committee continued to show its hostility by holding hearings while the Evanston meetings were in progress. They called several witnesses: The Rev. Lazio Vatai, a Protestant pastor who fled Hungary in 1947; Dr. Juraj Slovik, former Czech ambassador to the United States; a former member of the Hungarian parliament; and probably others. These witnesses testified on the basis of personal experience that there was no religious freedom in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and that the communist-delegates were apologists and spokesmen for the Red regime and did not serve the churches or the people they were supposed to represent. Mr. Vatai testified with almost prophetic insight: “If passports were issued to all who asked for them, Hungary would be a country without people.”

Exiles from these countries picketed some Evanston meetings in an effort to gain voice for their position. Members of the Alliance of Czechoslovakian Exiles in Chicago carried placards denouncing Hromadka as “traitor to Christianity” and “friend of the Red Henchmen.”

… The World Council turned a deaf ear to both these sources of information. They preferred to get their information from pro-communist spokesmen and to formulate policy which would not antagonize these same spokesmen. Why did the World Council of Churches refuse to put any confidence in the Christian clergyman Vatai, preferring instead Hromadka, Peters and others? What makes Mr. Vatai’s right hand of Christian fellowship any less desirable than another Hungarian? What is the reason for the World Council’s hostility to the information the House Committee for Un-American Activities and the refugee groups supplied? Why does the World Council prefer to make common alliance with communist governments against the U.S. State Department? Mr. Vatai insisted that there was a deep cleavage within Hungary, with the people and their church on one side and the communist government on the other. He said that the communist-appointed church leaders had betrayed the interests of the churches and the people and were in fact shameless collaborators. The World Council leaders studiously ignored this information as they tried to build an all-inclusive World Christian Fellowship that indiscriminately embraced sincere Christians and those who used Christianity to serve communist causes.

There was a third group that was equally unrelenting in its opposition to the World Council program, the fundamentalist International Council of Christian Churches led by Dr. Carl McIntire of Collingswood, N.J. He charged, as he has consistently, that the World Council was betraying the Christian cause when it sought such Christian co-existence and linked its political irresponsibility to its theological indifference.

Thus there were three small groups that stubbornly resisted the World Council policy toward Eastern Europe. They still opposed even after the State Department had relented to the pressure of ecclesiastical politicians and when Red collaborators were in fact, already in the country.…

Then came the amazing revolt in Hungary. In spite of all the past efforts of communist leaders and pro-communist Christian leaders to conceal it, the revolt revealed a great dichotomy between the peasants and workers and their communist rulers. It was evident to even the most stubborn communist apologist that the people were desperate, or they would not attempt a revolution that could not possibly succeed. Only desperation makes men fight tanks with bare hands. The revolt of the Hungarian people proves conclusively that the truth lay with the House committee-refugee Christian-fundamentalist minority, and not with the lying communist spokesmen and the World Council. Bromley,’t Hooft and other World Council leaders are exposed as seriously ill-informed and dangerously naive about real conditions in communist countries. Is their ignorance by chance or by design?

Let us put a spot-light on the Hungarian revolt and see what happened. One of the communist delegates to Evanston, Bishop Janos Peter of the Hungarian Reformed Church had a very difficult time. In the brief period of anarchy before Soviet troops restored communist control the Hungarian Reformed Church summoned an emergency synod. They forced Peter and other proregime clergymen to resign their church positions, charging that they were the worst kind of Stalinists. Peter was forced out of his bishopric and virtually out of the church. His communist friends came to the rescue, and the Kadar government appointed him head of the Cultural Relations Institute. Nomination to the government post is regarded in Budapest as definitely ruling out his return to the episcopal office (see New York Times, Jan. 2, 1957).

This puts us in a very curious situation. Hungarian Christians in a moment of freedom repudiated Bishop Peter as a communist collaborator and a betrayer of the church. Yet he is the same person the World Council accepts in the name of Christian fellowship as a spokesmen and representative for the Hungarian Reformed Church. This puts the refugee Hungarian pastor Vatai and the Hungarian people on the one side and the World Council, Soviet tanks, the Kadar regime and Bishop Janos Peter on the other. How do you think Hungarian peasants feel about this World Council of Churches? What chance does World-Council Christianity stand when Hungary is finally free again?

This painful and unpleasant Hungarian review would not have been necessary if the World Council had learned anything from its sad experiences. But now Dr. MacKay proposes exactly the same type of alliance with regard to China. American Christian leaders are to establish relations with the communist-appointed leaders of the Christian churches in China.

The World Council must first learn whether the same dichotomy between workers-peasants and communist rulers exists in Communist China that existed in Hungary. Have the communist-appointed leaders of the Chinese churches ever betrayed the legitimate interests of their constituents, as did Bishop Janos Peter, to serve the communist government? This problem can be studied. There are Christian refugees in this country to testify as truthfully as did the Hungarian Christian Vatai. Episcopal Bishop Quentin Huang would be worth listening to. There are missionaries who have lived in communist China; they should be consulted. And there are still the same fundamentalist Christians. One of them, Samuel Boyle of Hongkong, cannot be ignored with impunity.

Unless the World Council can exhibit more wisdom and less haste with regard to China than it did with regard to Hungary, it is headed for a similar disaster. If the same kind of reckless, pro-leftist political leadership prevails in the future as it has in the past, Protestant Christianity will eventually die discredited with the communist bed-fellow it chose, when people are finally free.

PAUL B. DENLINGER

Seattle, Wash.

• An Episcopal priest, the Rev. Mr. Denlinger served as a missionary in China from 1946–50, and is now a graduate teaching assistant in the Chinese and Russian Institute of the University of Washington.—ED.

ANOTHER SIDE OF THE DESK

I was disappointed in “The Glass-Top Desk” by Kermit Eby. Just what is Mr. Eby disturbed about? That the churches have gone “plush,” or that the laborers and labor unions have done so?… There is a painful amount of misinformation about the Peabody Seating Company of North Manchester.… The accusations made are, to put it mildly, unkind and unjust. He says that the company is paternalistic: “A relationship between company and the employed involving care and control suggestive of those followed by a father.” This is bad? Or does it suggest a family relationship which involves a companionship and comraderie making for cordiality? He says the employees are in “pitiful” condition. As a matter of fact approximately seven out of every ten of these people own their own homes; most of them drive nice new automobiles and own television sets. We remember, too, that some years ago Mr. Peabody distributed more than a hundred thousand dollars in bonus recognition of the faithfulness and loyalty of his men.…

The strike called against the local company was not the result of a controversy over wages or hours, but was a part of the effort of organizers to force a closed shop upon this community. The idea is absurd on the face of it. Peabody’s is a community enterprise. Men who own farms or have other work which may, at times, release them for part time work in the factory have found a ready welcome in this factory. There has been cordial cooperation with the local college and many of the students put in part-time working to pay their way through school. (In fact, Mr. Eby’s own son was one of these part-time employees.) These should belong to the union?

As for the glass-topped desk, perhaps it was not as expensive as the leather-top which Mr. Eby loved, and certainly such a desk is more sanitary! Perhaps the church he condemns for air-conditioning rather than to employ a fulltime director of education needed the air conditioning to compete with Sunday golf.…

It seems to me the article did a marked disservice to a company manned by employers of unquestioned integrity and completely loyal to their community and to their churches.…

FRED R. CONKLING

North Manchester, Ind.

Cover Story

Reminiscences and a Prophecy

William K. Harrison

The recent undesired war in Korea, the prolonged armistice negotiations that brought the actual fighting to an end and the unfinished nature of the Armistice and of the Korean situation, appear to me to have significance to Christians. These Korean matters seem to be symptoms of trends in world affairs which, if continued, may eventually produce conditions of great interest to students of the prophetic Scriptures.

Communist Aggression The Issue

In that war, men of the United States and fifteen other countries fought Chinese and Korean communists who were goaded and supported by the communist rulers of Soviet Russia. The immediate issue was the question of who would control Korea. The real issue was communist imperialism and lawless aggression. The war was localized in Korea but the issues and consequences were world wide. The fighting resulted in a stalemate. Neither side could win without extending the war to other areas and intensifying the operations, which, as some believed, might have engulfed civilization in a third terrible world war. Thus, with neither side willing to take this risk, there was little reason to continue fighting. Accordingly the effort to gain an advantage was transferred to the field of armistice negotiations. In the end the fighting ceased, the Republic of Korea was still intact, but the real issues were not resolved.

The Urge For Superiority

These issues could not and cannot be settled, because of the nature of the communist rulers. Communist character and methods became known to me through personal experience during the armistice negotiations. That experience was neither gratifying nor interesting, but it was enlightening. My pleasantest memories include the earnest efforts of our armistice team, their friendly camaraderie in camp, the not-so-hopeful hand waves of the men of the 25th Infantry and 1st Marine Divisions as I flew in a small helicopter over the front line trenches to Panmunjom, the friendly, honest attitude of representatives of the American press and the almost childish determination of the communists to appear superior even in the simplest things. For example, if we had a small United Nations flag on the conference table they had to have a North Korean flag too, but on a higher stick. When our soldiers decorated their part of the site a bit, the communists decorated their part too, but more so. One of the enemy’s reporters, Winnington of the communist London Daily Worker, underscored communist atheism by referring to me as a “pious Baptist.” At least, he did see some dissimilarity between us.

As to the communists themselves, I found them untrustworthy in the ultimate degree. They were insulting, formal, rough or whatever attitude seemed to be useful at the moment, but never sincere except when something happened to surprise or startle them. No doubt everyone who reads this is familiar with the cruelties practiced on civilians, refugees and prisoners of war, both in Korea and in Indo-China. Sadistic cruelty is one of the ordinary traits of communists. There is, too, their well-known determination to control the minds of men through so-called “brain washing.

Since I wrote the preceding paragraphs, the world has had an amazing demonstration of the unspeakable cruelty of Russian rulers and their soldiers in Hungary, a country whose sole offense is that it desires liberty from Soviet oppression. At the same time that those poor people were being slaughtered by Russian guns and bayonets the Soviet government was continuing to do all in its powers to foment unrest, subversion and fighting among countries of the Near and Middle East.

The Issues Are Clear

It seems to me that no one who calls himself Christian can ever again fail to see in these events the only possible moral end of communist philosophy. In the past I have at times noted statements by men of some prominence in Protestant circles, in which they professed to see in communism and its adherents, intentions and objectives not foreign to Christian ethical principles and the hope of society. As far as I could discover, those writers had assumed Christianity to be a gospel of human social achievement. At the same time they rejected or ignored the simple New Testament Gospel of individual men’s salvation from sin and reconciliation to God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God who provided redemption by his substitutionary death on the cross. To any but the most naive, the communist mask has now been torn away beyond recovery. Communism or other materialistic philosophy no longer affords an escape from Christ and New Testament truth. Today, as for nineteen centuries, the crucial question before every man is “What think ye of Christ, whose son is he?” (Matt 22:42). For me that question has been settled unalterably for a long time. In company with millions of others, I am thankful to God that I can say with the Apostle Paul, “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day” (2 Tim 1:12).

The foregoing implication of the present world situation is of primary importance, but there is another trend which should arouse Christians to a more diligent and penetrating study of God’s word, the Bible.

Complex Status Of Society

Anyone who has read some history realizes that the criminal procedures of communists are not new but have always been prevalent in the world. Even their blatant atheism merely serves to set up a man-made religion, that of the materialistic, totalitarian state. Aside from the Gospel, there is no known way of eliminating the sinful nature of man or of preventing criminals from becoming heads of states. What is new is the complex status in which society finds itself as illustrated by the Korean war and its aftermath. By means of modern communication and transportation the natives of the world are closely bound together. The industrial age needs the movement of materials from one area to others far distant and in different countries. The nations are so interrelated and interdependent that trouble or confusion in one area has a direct and immediate effect in other parts of the world. This impact, combined with speed of communications and the emphasis on public information and propaganda, results in a continuing state of excitement, uncertainty and confusion. This unrest in the minds of men is changed to fear by the aggressive policies of governments and the deadly weapons that are increasingly available to destroy great masses of people in a very short time.

It does not take a seer to see something of the probable future effect of such God-rejecting rulers on a society which is daily becoming more complex in its relationships. It seems clear that man can no longer think of himself as the master of his own destiny. Some naive or ambitious men might so consider themselves but the mass of men increasingly appear to believe themselves helpless in the midst of forces that they are powerless to control. As such helplessness becomes more apparent to men, they will discover the need for someone to save them from themselves. They must turn to someone, either to God or to some human leader. They reject God: therefore, they will welcome a Man, putting security above freedom.

Rise Of The Tyrants

The process of nations combining and surrendering their sovereignty to such a dictator seems most likely to occur first among countries which have highly industrialized civilizations, which have a common great fear, and which, by combination of strength and unity of action, think they have a reasonable chance to resist or overcome that which causes their fear. These conditions are found today among the nations of western and southern Europe and in Turkey, which must live in close proximity to the great threat imposed by the imperialistic military power of the Soviet Union with its allies and satellites. The shape of such a developing embryo of anti-Soviet federation under a single ruler is already in evidence among those countries.

The hope in the hearts of men who bow to a great dictator will be peace. Yet since men are sinners, peace will depend upon the balance of power. The hope that such a peace can endure is illusory. The war that might result when the balance becomes unequal might well be a great world war of a destructive nature never before known to man. A prize sought by that war would probably be the Near and Middle East, one of the critical economic and strategic areas of the world today and in the foreseeable future. Right in the vortex of the conflict would be the land of Israel and the Jewish nation.

The possible developments described above appear to me to have a noticeable similarity to biblical prophecies concerning the end of the age and the second advent of Christ as they have been understood by one school of thought, to which I subscribe. There have been many, and there still are many, who have taken all references to a coming superman, or the Antichrist, as being of spiritual and not actual interpretation.

But there is developing before our eyes a philosophy that can lay the ground work for just such a development. The one-world concept, the United Nations, the frantic desire for any collective organization or arrangement to prevent war—all could result in men surrendering their freedoms, even their national integrity, to a brilliant and able leader who seemed to offer peace and prosperity to a disrupted world.

A Dimly Lighted Theater

Trends in the world today are enlightening. The similarity cannot be ignored. Little time and change would be needed for all the pieces of the human drama to fall into place so that with little warning the world surrounding the Jews and their land might find itself in exactly the arrangement that many Bible students see in the great age and prophecies.

Of course, one cannot say that we are close to the end of the age nor can we set any date. God graciously may further delay the fall of his wrath on men. Nevertheless, one cannot help feeling as though he were in a dimly lighted theater watching the preparation of the stage for the play that will shortly begin. Although we realize that the coming of the Lord may not yet be at hand, can we afford to neglect study of Advent prophecy and of the signs that appear so closely to follow that prophecy (Matt. 12:26)? It seems to the writer that now is the time for every believer in Christ to be looking expectantly for that blessed hope, the glorious coming of the Lord and in that expectancy to hold forth unceasingly to the world the Word of Life.

The Rev. W. Graham Scroggie, D.D., 80 years old yesterday, moved from his ministry in Charlotte Chapel (Baptist), Edinburgh, from 1916–33, to a world-wide traveling ministry from 1933–37, and then became Minister of Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, London, from 1938–41. He is author of many works, among them Know Your Bible in four volumes.

Cover Story

Faith and Reason (Part II)

Gordon H. Clark

There is a second result of the sharp distinction between the intellect, the will and the emotions, coupled with a view of religion that makes it essentially emotional. It disparages the intellect, and is basically anti-intellectual. It discredits creeds and theology. Its propounders often contrast faith in a person with faith in a creed, and in more or less explicit language they teach that it makes little difference what a man believes, if only he has faith in Christ.

However, in Hebrews 11:6 we have seen that faith in God is impossible without a creed. The first article of this necessary creed is that God exists. And how obvious! Can a man come to God if he believes that God does not exist? To turn an illustration back upon its originators, can you sit in a chair which you believe does not exist?

There is also a second article to this creed which must be believed before one comes to God. If a man believes that God exists merely as some impersonal force, he will not come. Therefore, he must further believe that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. This of course implies that God is personal. What an extensive theology we are getting! And how intellectual we have already become, for we are now using the logical form of implication!

Faith Requires A Creed

Someone may here object that faith in God is not precisely saving faith in Christ: the devils believe in God, in one God, but they do not diligently seek him. Let it be so. The first point was that faith requires a creed. It was not said that the creed as so far elaborated was sufficient for salvation. It is necessary, but not sufficient. And its necessity is emphasized because of the fundamentalist-modernist strictures on creeds and intellect.

Now, faith in Christ as well as faith in God requires intellectual assent to theological propositions. Suppose I ask you to lend me a sum of money and to trust me to repay it. On the pleasant assumption that you have the money and do not immediately need it (this is an intellectual belief too), will you make the loan without believing certain propositions about me? Suppose you have heard that I am dishonest? Suppose you believe I will “skip out” on you? Could you, with these beliefs, say that intellectual assent is trivial and that you will trust me all the same? Not many people are so stupid in business affairs. This stupidity is reserved for nonintellectual, emotional religion. It is said of religion that the heart is important but not the head. But if this were true, we could trust Christ for salvation without believing that he is trustworthy, without believing that he can save, without believing that his blood cleanses from all sin. We would need no creed, no statement of the Atonement, no historical information about Jesus; we would need only a comfortable feeling around the heart.

Although there have been mystics and assorted anti-intellectuals in every age, the main current of Christianity has always been intellectualistic. Creeds or statements of belief have not been abandoned. There has always been some recognition of the primacy of the intellect.

At any rate the Protestant, especially the Reformed, position is clear. Calvin (Institutes, Book I, ch. XV, Sec. 6–8), after he summarizes some philosophical analyses of the soul’s faculties and indicates that they are plausible but far from certain, particularly because the philosophers ignored the depravity of human nature due to sin, proposes a twofold, not a threefold, division of the soul: understanding and will. Understanding, he says, discriminates between objects; the will chooses what the understanding pronounces good. The understanding is the guide and governor of the soul; the will always respects its authority and waits for its judgment. And there is no power in the soul other than these two. Charles Hodge, also speaking of man before the fall (Systematic Theology, Vol. II, p. 99), says, “His reason was subject to God; his will was subject to his reason.”

And finally, J. Gresham Machen (What Is Faith? p. 26; cf. pp. 49, 51) states that “it will be one chief purpose of the present little book to defend the primacy of the intellect.” Later he adds: “That does not mean that we finite creatures can find out God by our own searching; but it does mean that God has made us capable of receiving the information which he chooses to give.… So our reason is certainly insufficient to tell us about God unless he reveals himself; but it is capable (or would be capable if it were not clouded by sin) of receiving revelation when once it is given” (ibid., p. 51).

A Protestant Position

The proper Protestant position might be summarized somewhat as follows. An act of will, that is, the activity of a person in choosing something, and an act of intellect, that is, the activity of a person in believing something, if they are regarded solely as the clanking of so much mental machinery, are neither one superior to the other. Their differences in value, merit or superiority depend entirely on their objects. In making a purchase it is the object bought that makes the activity worthwhile or foolish. So it is the object chosen and the proposition believed that give value to the will and the intellect. Now, in the case of will, we may choose to eat ice cream or we may choose to believe in the Republican party; but in the case of intellect, by definition, the object is always a truth or an alleged truth.

It may be granted that the single act of will by which we choose to worship God is of superior value to the single intellectual action of believing in the Republican party. But inasmuch as the proper object of intellectual action is always the truth (though often we sinfully believe lies), whereas food, recreation and sleep are perfectly proper objects of choice, it may be concluded that in its nature the intellectual act is superior to the volitional act.

The Priority Of Truth

The primacy of the intellect therefore could well be called the primacy of truth. This does not mean, as Machen has already said, that we can discover the truth about God apart from revelation; nor does it mean that man in his mind is immune to the effects of sin; but it does mean that man’s mind is not totally destroyed by sin and that even yet it is constitutionally capable of receiving, understanding and believing information that God reveals.

Neither is the claim here made that the intellect invariably dominates the will. Calvin indeed said that it is the office of the will to choose what the understanding shall have pronounced to be good and that the will always respects its authority (Institutes, Book I, ch. xv, Sec. 7). But Calvin did not discuss voluntary assent to the truth. In such cases the will leads and the intellect follows. And a study of the history of philosophy may well indicate that this is far more frequent than ordinarily supposed.

The primacy of the intellect, then, is not a power automatically exercised over our volition. Such a representation tends to violate the unity of the person. Rather, the primacy of the intellect, or, better, the primacy of truth, means that our voluntary actions ought to be conformed to truth. If it is true that worshipping God is good, we ought to worship him. This way of putting the matter extends as well to the voluntary choice of belief. We may choose to believe a truth, or we may choose to believe a lie. Both types of choice actually occur. But the primacy of truth means that we ought to believe the truth and we ought not to believe the lie.

In conclusion, now, the implication of this primacy for Christianity will be drawn by means of one example and one generalization.

A minister of fundamentalist persuasion and evangelistic zeal asserted that there is little hope of understanding the Bible. Theology is abstruse and doubtful. However, God has given his people the power of discerning the hearts of men, and with this power a minister can decide who should and who should not be admitted to church membership. In the confused and confusing discussion that followed, Romans 10:9–10 made its appearance. At first, in the rapid exchange of ideas, the minister was inclined to agree that anyone satisfying the conditions of that passage was a saved person. But when it was pointed out to him that belief in Christ’s resurrection was a belief about history, an intellectual acceptance of an historical proposition, he quickly corrected himself and denied that belief in Christ’s resurrection entails salvation. Salvation, he asserted, is not a matter of belief at all.

The generalization that was to follow this example must be introduced with a reference to modernism and neo-orthodoxy. For although these forms of religion have scant sympathy for fundamentalism, yet all three forms of religion are in a strange but substantial agreement. The agreement consists in their anti-intellectualism. If the two modern forms allow any intellectual expression at all, if they make any room for doctrine, they regard it sometimes as a tentative formulation which in a later age may be replaced by its contradiction. Thus the exponents of modernism have condescendingly granted that the Nicene Creed was well and good, and even true enough, for the fourth century, and that the Westminster Confession satisfied the needs of the seventeenth; but the twentieth century cannot accept these outmoded formulas. And the neo-orthodox claim that the Nicene Creed, the Westminster Confession and the formally contradictory writings of Fosdick or Brunner as well are all merely symbolic, metaphorical, mythological expressions of a single ineffable experience. Being ineffable, it cannot be expressed in words. Since therefore all words are equally futile, it makes little difference what words we use symbolically in our attempt to express the inexpressible.

But this is not Christianity. Christianity includes the primacy of the intellect and the sovereign claims of truth. There is no distinction between the head and the heart, no depretiation of intellectual belief. Christianity cannot exist without the truth of certain definite historical propositions.

To deny the truth of such propositions or to call them symbols of some mystic experience is not Christianity. On the contrary, by faith we understand that God created the universe; by faith we assent to the proposition that God is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him; by faith we know that Jesus rose from the dead. If these propositions are not true, and if truth has no claim upon our acceptance, let us not hypocritically say that Christianity is worth propagating.

Cover Story

Living 55 Years with the Bible

W. Graham Scroggie

The title of this article has been chosen for me, so I must ask the readers to allow the personal note. This is not a general article on Bible study, but a testimony to what I have found in such study during fifty-five years.

Not An Anthology

I am glad I recognized early that the Bible is not an anthology of devout sayings but sublime literature. The form in which it has been presented and the way in which it has been printed have done more than we can say to give a wrong impression of what it is.

What have chapters and verses to do with literature? Can one imagine Paradise Lost, or Hamlet, or Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey or Dante’s Divina Commedia being divided into 1189 chapters, and 31,193 verses? Yet this is what has happened to the Bible, and it has given the impression that it is a collection of texts for comment and discussion.

In addition, the Bible is usually printed in two columns, with gutters of texts in the margins, making the whole thing appear repellent. This disservice of medieval commentators is profoundly to be regretted, and strenuously to be disregarded.

The Bible Is Literature

I cannot tell what I owe to the discovery—also early—that the Bible is literature. All literary forms lie buried under the chapter and verse anomaly; but when these are ignored, and the books are read as wholes—repeatedly read—we shall find it necessary to distinguish various forms of literature which God has been pleased to employ to communicate his revelation. Unless and until these literary distinctions are recognized, we are sure to go astray in our interpretation.

Genesis is narrative; Leviticus is ritual; Deuteronomy is oratory; Ruth is idyll; the Samuels, Kings and Chronicles are history; Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes are wisdom; the Psalms are poetry of various forms—lyrics, odes, elegies, hymns; the Prophecies are oracles, discourses, messages; the Gospels are memorabilia; the Epistles are pastoral intercourse and epistolary treatises; and the book of the Revelation is apocalypse.

It must surely be recognized that all these literary productions cannot be interpreted in the same way. Vision is not history; poetry is not prose; and narrative is not apocalypse. Luke 4:16 must be taken literally, but Psalm 18:10 must not. The book of the Revelation cannot be interpreted in the same way as the book of Genesis. In approaching a passage for discourse, we must discover first of all what is its literary classification and seek its meaning accordingly.

Revelation And Inspiration

Something must be said about revelation and inspiration because they are of vital importance to the Bible student, preacher and teacher. In the first place they must be clearly distinguished; then, we should endeavor to understand their relation to one another; and finally, we should see in what sense each applies to the Scriptures.

When we speak of the Bible as revelation, two things are implied. First, in it are revelations which God vouchsafed to men, at different times, by dream, vision and theophany. By revelation, in this sense, is meant an impartation of knowledge which man could not have come by in any other way; as, for example, the creation, the prediction of future events and the nature and purpose of God.

In this sense of the word the Bible is not all revelation but contains revelation. It would be enriching to make a list of such strictly divine revelations.

But, in the next place, it is true to say that the Bible is a divine revelation, though not everything in it is divine. The Lord definitely repudiates the speeches of Job’s three friends (42:7, 8), and these ocupy many chapters in that book; and the Scriptures contain words of the devil, of heathen and of unbelievers, as well as mistakes of the saints. Yet, the Bible viewed as a whole is a divine revelation. Throughout the Scriptures organic unity and religious progress are clearly evident. This must be regarded as supernatural when we take into account the variety of the writings, their subjects and the length of time it took to complete them. If in any other book were collected history, poetry, drama, biography, philosophy and letters, no one would expect to find either unity or progress; indeed, such a volume would not be worth printing; yet in the Bible we find these things, and they constitute a structural and religious unity. No line of criticism can destroy this fact. The history of Israel in the Old Testament and of the Christian Church in the New Testament is clearly a revelation of a divine progressive purpose, made in life and fixed in literature.

Inspiration A Complex Theme

The subject of inspiration is more difficult to define, if, indeed, it can be defined at all. I fear that the matter of inspiration of the Scriptures has been made a test of orthodoxy more than one’s views of revelation, though, of course, but for revelation there could have been no inspiration, so far as the Bible is concerned. Many are dogmatic in affirming verbal inspiration who seem unconcerned about what inspiration is; but the form that inspiration takes must always be secondary to the fact and nature of inspiration itself.

The many views that have been, and are, held on this subject sufficiently indicate how complex it is. Two things, however, must be admitted by all: first, that the Bible is human as well as divine; and second, that inspiration must be predicated of all the Scriptures, and not of some of them only.

I have said that there could not have been inspiration unless there had been revelation, but there could have been revelation without inspiration, for revelation was made before there was any record of it, and all that was revealed has not been recorded. By inspiration, then, revelation has been made permanent in an authentic and authoritative record.

By inspiration the writers of the Scriptures were not made pens but penmen, and their natural characteristics were used and not removed. The personal characteristics of Isaiah, and Paul, and James, and John are patent in their writings, but the characteristics were under the control of the Holy Spirit.

In considering inspiration it should be kept in mind that much which the Bible records was available to the writers without divine communication—matters biographical, historical and geographical. Also, it is clear that they consulted written sources, some of which have been lost (Num. 21:14, 15, 17, 18; 2 Sam. 1:18).

But these facts do not negate the claim to inspiration, for the action of the Spirit must be considered as relating to selection of material, and accuracy of record.

It should also be observed that all the writings in the Bible are not of equal value—compare Jonah and John’s Gospel, Canticles and Romans,—but all are necessary for the completion of the biblical revelation.

Versions Of The Bible

There are various versions of the Bible, but I call attention now to two only—the Authorized and the Revised [Dr. Scroggie’s references are to the revision of 1881—Ed.]. This is not the place to go into innumerable details relative to these two versions, but I would urge my younger brethren in the Christian ministry carefully and constantly to study both.

The literary excellence of the A.V. is not open to challenge; neither is the greater accuracy of the R.V. Neither version is immune from criticism, and it is hoped that a completely new translation—not a revision of older revisions—will, ere long, be forthcoming.

Doubtless the A.V. will continue to be the people’s Bible, but the preacher and teacher must familiarize himself with both versions. I once preached from Acts 8:37, on the Deity of Christ, and later was humiliated to find that there is no textual authority for the verse.

Advantages of the R.V. are to be seen in the following respects:

The uniform translation of a Greek word, wherever it is possible. In 1 John 2:24meno is translated “abide,” “remain,” and “continue,” for no good reason. The R.V. has “abide.”

The more exact translation of the Greek tenses. Illustrations of this are: “The boat was now filling” (Mark 4:37). “The nets were breaking” (Luke 5:6). “I strove to make them blaspheme” (Acts 26:11). “Our lamps are going out” (Matt. 15:8). “I am already being offered” (2 Tim. 4:6). “Was not our heart burning” (Luke 24:32). “The stem began to break up” (Acts 27:41). “During supper” (John 13:2). These illustrations show how important for the understanding of the Scriptures are correct translations of the tenses. The number of such is innumerable.

The introduction or omission of the definite article. Illustrations of its introduction are: “The virgin” (Matt. 1:23). “The mountain” (Matt. 5:1). “The synagogue” (Luke 7:5). “The way of escape” (1 Cor. 10:13). “The Amen” (1 Cor. 14:16). “The great tribulation” (Rev. 7:14). Illustrations of its omission are: “A babe” (Luke 2:12). “And soldiers also” (Luke 3:14). “A son of peace” (Luke 19:6). “Was speaking with a woman” (John 4:27). “An impotent man” (Acts 4:9). “A door of faith” (Acts 14:27). “To an unknown god” (Acts 17:23). “A root” (1 Tim. 6:10). These and other instances “throw emphasis on the character of the subject instead of the concrete subject itself” (Westcott).

The improvement of archaic words. “Weapons” for “artillery” (1 Sam. 20:40). “The flax was in bloom” (Exod. 9:31). “Brigandines” is translated “coats of mail” (Jer. 46:4). “Goods” for “carriage” (Judg. 18:21). In Philippians 3:20 “conversation” is “citizenship”; and in 1 Peter 3:1 it is “manner of life.” “Daysman” is “umpire” in Job 9:33. Other illustrations will be found in 1 Samuel 5:6, Acts 28:13, Matthew 20:11, Psalm 4:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:15. It must be clear to any reader that these changes are illuminating.

To mark the use of the prepositions in the New Testament is of vital importance. The significance of these is often lost in the A.V. In Matthew 28:19 baptism is to be “into (eis), not “in” (en) the name. In Romans 6:23 “the free gift of God is eternal life ‘in,’ not ‘through,’ Christ Jesus our Lord” (en, not dia). In Acts 13:39 “in him” should be read instead of “by him” (en, not dia). Also in 1 Peter 5:10 and in 1 Corinthians 1:4 it is “in,” not “by” Christ Jesus. The prepositions in 1 Corinthians 12:8, 9 should be marked. The word of wisdom is given “through” (dia) the Spirit. The word of knowledge is given “according to” (kata) the same spirit; and faith is given “in” (en) the same Spirit. In 1 John 3:3 the R.V. makes clear what the A.V. confuses. According to the latter, the hope is “in” the individual, but in the R.V. we read, “every one that hath this hope ‘set on’ (epi) him (Christ).”

These are but a few illustrations of the importance of the R.V. in respect of greater accuracy than the A.V.; but the R.V. is not always correct, and is sometimes pedantic.

Use Of Translations

Translations, of which there are many, are not the same as versions. There are translations in Great Britain by Alford, Conybeare and Howson, Darby, The Twentieth Century New Testament, Weymouth, Moffatt, Knox, Williams, Phillips; and in America, a translation of the whole Bible by Smith and Goodspeed, and the Revised Standard Version of 1946, which is a revision of the American Standard Version of 1901.

The problem in any translation is twofold: to be faithful to the original sources, and yet to present those sources in the idiom of the language of the translation.

I have found it interesting and profitable to read all available translations, though I have never regarded it as wise to use the modern translations in reading the pulpit lessons.

Interpretation And Application

Another matter on which I have strong convictions relates to interpretation and application. All Scripture—or most of it—can be applied to our diversified circumstances and needs, but such application is rarely interpretation.

“Every Scripture is inspired of God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness; that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16,17). That great passage warrants and defines the present application of the Scriptures to us all.

But application must be safeguarded, or we shall be applying what does not apply. During the Great War many Christians claimed the promises of Psalm 91:3–8, but they were not protected from the German bombs. The kinds of blessings vouchsafed to the Christian are not material and physical, as they were to Israel. On the other hand, such a passage as Judges 14:14 is eminently applicable, because blessings often come out of the things that are against us. If we destroy the destroyer we find deliverance.

But the interpretation of Scripture is a very different and exacting pursuit. Not a little preaching is much more imposition than exposition. An expositor must be a student, and must be subject to the rules which govern interpretation. If these rules are disregarded, and all such matters as time, place, form, and circumstances are neglected, one can prove anything from the Scriptures.

Unless we have regard for the context of a passage, we are almost bound to fall into error. Innumerable sermons have been preached on Christ’s redeeming passion from Isaiah 63:3: “I have trodden the winepress alone”; but the plain fact is that it has nothing whatever to do with Christ’s death, as the rest of the verse shows (cf. Rev. 14:19,20). There are plenty of texts in the Bible on the Cross without taking a sentence entirely out of its context and applying it to that. Another passage which is often wrongly interpreted is Colossians 2:21: “Touch not; taste not; handle not.” Temperance enthusiasts have claimed that here the use of alcohol is forbidden. But not only has the passage no reference whatever to temperance, but “touch not; taste not; handle not” is condemned: “why, as though living in the world are ye subject to (such) ordinances? (as) …” If context has nothing to do with exposition the preacher might as well descant on the obiter dicta of Shakespeare, Milton, Dante or anyone else.

Another principle of interpretation is in the fact that all that Scripture has to say on any given subject is the truth about that subject. Proof texts often prove nothing. Scripture must be compared with Scripture (cf. 1 Cor. 2:13). On the subject of faith and works, Paul and James are not at variance, for they are looking at the same subject from opposite standpoints. Paul says that Abraham was justified by faith (Rom. 4:9); James says that he was justified by works (ch. 2:21), but the one is referring to the root, and the other to the fruit of his relation to God. Faith makes works possible, and works make faith evident.

True interpretation must regard the Scriptures grammatically. We have already illustrated this in what has been said about the tenses, articles, pronouns, and prepositions in the R.V.

There must be careful study of the meaning of words. Sin is described by many words, each having its own significance—iniquity, trespass, guilt, transgression, lawlessness, and so forth. We should study the difference between the Grave, Hades, Gehenna, and Topheth. There are five words for servant; two for love; three for know; two for life; two for new; two for another; six for preach; three for wash; four for master; four for child; and two for basket. These illustrations will indicate how important it is, for the understanding of the Bible, to study its words.

Much of the language of Scripture is figurative, and this is most important for interpretation. We must recognize the vast difference between such statements as: “In the morning, a great while before day, Jesus rose up and departed into a desert place, and there prayed,” and “Judah is a lion’s whelp,” or “I am the vine.” We must be careful and conscientious in our study of allegories, types, parables, metaphors, fables and symbols. These can easily be wrongly understood and fancy can easily make havoc of truth. Not every illustration is a type, but typical teaching is warranted by Scripture (1 Cor. 10:1–11; John 1:14, R.V., 3:14). Parables are not the source of doctrine, but they may illustrate it. Generally speaking, each parable has one great lesson to convey, and all its details should not be pressed as interpretation.

Great care should be taken in the study of prophecy. We must distinguish between forthtelling and foretelling. All prophecy is not predictive. The prophet spoke first of all to his own generation, but in doing so he often spoke beyond his knowledge and to generations to come (cf. 1 Peter 1:10–12). The prophets were preachers, but they were also seers. Not a few predictions have already been fulfilled, and many remain to be fulfilled. In the study of prophecy, sanity is essential.

The theological student who, on leaving college, puts his Hebrew and Greek on the shelf is crippling his usefulness as an expositor, because no version or translation of the Scriptures makes a knowledge of the original language unnecessary. It is of great advantage to be able to compare the Hebrew of the Old Testament with the Septuagint, and to discern the use of each of them in the New Testament. The bearing of this upon interpretation must be obvious.

Although, I fear, my reflections are already too long, I must refer to one more thing, perhaps the most formative in my more than fifty years of study. What I refer to is the discovery that the books make a Book; that all the writings are part of one revelation. This is a proof of divine inspiration second to none.

The sixty-six books of the Bible span 1500 years in the writing. They came from many authors, who wrote in different places, on various subjects, and in many styles; yet, when gathered together finally in the fourth century A.D. they are seen to constitute a sublime whole, an unfolding drama of redemption. This drama has a prologue, Genesis 1:1–11:9; an interlude, between the two Testaments; and an epilogue, the book of the Revelation.

Between the prologue and the interlude is Act 1, Genesis 11:10—Malachi 4; and between the interlude and the epilogue is Act II, Matthew to Jude. Act I is a divine Covenant of Law embodied in the history and literature of a Semitic race; and Act II is a divine Covenant of Grace embodied in the history and literature of the Christian Church.

In Act I are three scenes: the Hebrew family, the Israelitish nation and the Jewish Church.

In Act II are two scenes: the introduction of Christianity into the world by Jesus the Messiah, and the progress of Christianity in the world to the close of the first century A.D. If you arrange these details in chart form you will see how marvellous is this biblical synthesis. This has been the basis of all my Bible work for forty-five years at least.

In the ways here indicated I have lived with the Bible for fifty-five years, and in my eightieth year I am gathering together in three volumes the final results. If what I have said puts some of my brethren in the way of fruitful Bible study I shall be grateful.

Professor of Biblical History and Literature at University of Sheffield, England, F. F. Bruce is author of a number of significant works, not least of them a contribution to the literature of the subject of his present article, under the title Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Other books from his pen are The Book of Acts, The Acts of the Apostles, The Spreading Flame, and Are the New Testament Documents Reliable?

Cover Story

Modern Scribes on the Judean Scrolls

F. F. Bruce

There was a time when the only books in English which could be recommended to the general reader who wished to know something about the Dead Sea Scrolls were Professor H. H. Rowley’s fine study, The Zadokite Fragments and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1952) and translations of two books by the French scholar A. Dupont-Sommer—The Dead Sea Scrolls (1952) and The Jewish Sect of Qumran and the Essenes (1954). Professor Rowley’s book did not appear until the author had taken time to digest the material offered by the new discoveries and its relation to material already known; the result was a mature contribution to the literature of the subject, marked by his well-known qualities of sound learning, good judgment and bibliographical comprehensiveness. Although his study must be amplified and perhaps modified here and there in the light of subsequent discoveries, it is a work of abiding value.

Professor Dupont-Sommer’s books were also marked by high scholarship, but judicial qualities were not so much in evidence in them as in Professor Rowley’s book. In fact, Professor Dupont-Sommer’s second volume represents in part a “phased withdrawal” from positions taken up too lightly in its predecessor—in particular, his suggestion that the Servant Songs of Isaiah 42–53 reflected the actual experiences of the Qumran Teacher of Righteousness, who (as he was inclined to think) suffered martyrdom shortly before the Roman conquest of Judea in 63 B.C., and his conclusion that Jesus “appears in many respects as an astonishing reincarnation of the Teacher of Righteousness.” Even so, we must bear in mind that the cause of learning has often been promoted by scholars who were prepared to take a risk and expose their brain-waves to the pitiless criticism of others. And this has certainly been the upshot of the discussion of Professor Dupont-Sommer’s provisional suggestions.

Apart from these, there were a few shorter studies. In 1950 Professor G. R. Driver delivered a lecture to the Friends of Dr. Williams’ Library, which was published by the Oxford University Press the following year under the title The Hebrew Scrolls. In this paper Professor Driver issued a warning against what he considered the over-hasty publication of dogmatic statements about the date and provenience of the scrolls; he maintained that other possibilities should be kept in mind, and expressed his own preference for a dating between A.D. 200 and 500. While further evidence appears to confirm the view that the scrolls belong to the period before A.D. 70, Professor Driver’s warning was wise and timely. In 1954 Dr. W. J. Martin, head of the Semitic department in Liverpool, delivered the sixth Campbell Morgan Memorial Lecture in Westminster Chapel, London; it was published as a pamphlet entitled The Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah, and presented an excellent survey of the significance of the complete Isaiah manuscript found in the first Qumran cave.

Current Literature

But more recently books on the scrolls have been appearing in rapid succession. There is quite clearly a large public appetite for them on both sides of the Atlantic. One work which did much to whet this appetite was Edmund Wilson’s book, The Scrolls from the Dead Sea (1955). Mr. Wilson is a distinguished literary critic, and his book (expanded from a long and informative article which appeared in The New Yorker of May 14, 1955) provides a vivid account of the exploration of the caves and the discovery of the manuscripts, with vigorous pen-portraits of such personalities as Father Roland de Vaux and the Syrian Archbishop Athanasius Yeshue Samuel. When he comes to the interpretation of the discoveries, he shows a clear preference for the views of Professor Dupont-Sommer, but agrees that the criticism of scholarly theories is best left to scholars. He imagines that the subject is boycotted by New Testament specialists—a curious notion to entertain, although he is not alone in entertaining it. In fact, New Testament specialists, when they foregather, evince even greater excitement about the scrolls than their Old Testament colleagues do. In Great Britain and Europe, New Testament scholars of the calibre of Matthew Black, Oscar Cullmann, Bo Reicke and K. G. Kuhn have made important contributions to the study and understanding of the scrolls, and articles on the subject appear regularly in the leading New Testament Journals. Mr. Wilson has, moreover, a suspicion that scholars who are committed to the Christian or the Jewish faith (especially the clergy) are beset by inhibitions which make it difficult for them to appraise the significance of the scrolls with equanimity. The present writer, as a lay teacher of biblical studies in a secular university, thinks that this suspicion is quite unfounded; those who give expression to it might be displeased if it were mildly suggested that secular humanists may be influenced in their thinking by their own inhibitions.

In spite of these weaknesses, however, Mr. Wilson’s book has very real merits. The same can scarcely be said of The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls by A. Powell Davies (1956). Mr. Davies, formerly an English Methodist, is now pastor of a Unitarian church in Washington, D.C. His personal position in Gospel studies is suggested by the inclusion of a portrait of Dr. Albert Schweitzer among the illustrations in his book, although he says that the new discoveries have proved Dr. Schweitzer wrong in his belief that “the Baptist and Jesus are not … borne upon the current of a general eschatological movement.” We can now view their ministry in the context of the eschatological movement of Qumran. But this is not the same thing as saying that the Qumran movement was the current upon which John the Baptist and our Lord were borne. If John did have an earlier association with Qumran, it was a new and genuinely prophetic impulse that sent him out with his baptismal preaching of repentance in preparation for the advent of the Coming One. We should not, however, hold Mr. Davies responsible for the publisher’s blurb which describes the scrolls as “the greatest challenge to Christian dogma since Darwin’s theory of evolution.”

Uniqueness Of Christ

In reply to tendencies such as these Father Geoffrey Graystone, a Roman Catholic priest of the Marist order, has written a short and modest study entitled The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Originality of Jesus (1956). He probably underestimates the possible contacts between Qumran and the New Testament, but he concludes, quite rightly: “The perusal of the scrolls side by side with the gospels and the New Testament does but bring into greater relief the uniquenesss of Christ and the transcendence of the religion which he founded.” True; but Christians must bear in mind that the uniqueness and originality of Christ reside primarily in his person and work, whereas parallels to his sayings are forthcoming both before and after his time. Whatever affinities may be traced between the biblical interpretation current in the Qumran community and that which the early Church inherited from her founder, we can best indicate the real distinctiveness of Christianity by asking if anyone has ever found peace with God through the death of the Teacher of righteousness, as millions have found it through the death of Christ.

A Reliable Account

It is a pleasure to turn to a book which is not concerned with presenting a special point of view but which gives a reliable account of the discovery of the scrolls and of their contents and significance. This is The Dead Sea Scrolls, by Millar Burrows (1955). Of all the books on the subject which have appeared thus far, this book by Professor Burrows is the one which can be most confidently recommended to the general reader. It contains as an appendix a useful translation of some of the most important Qumran texts and has a serviceable bibliography. Unfortunately, it has no index, and this is a sad omission even for the general reader.

Mr. John M. Allegro of Manchester University, one of the international team of scholars who is engaged in piecing together and editing the fragmentary documents in the Palestine Archaeological Museum, had hit the headlines with a series of controversial broadcasts on this subject before the publication of his Pelican book The Dead Sea Scrolls (1956). This is a most readable book, which does full justice to the genuine romance both in the discovery and acquisition of the scrolls, and in their decipherment and interpretation. Mr. Allegro has been severely criticized for running too far ahead of the evidence, especially in his impressive picture of the crucifixion of the Teacher of righteousness at the hands of Alexander Jannaeus—a picture for which the documentary support is so slender as to be unsubstantial. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that Mr. Allegro has deserved well of all students of the Qumran literature by making available some important texts from the fourth cave in recent issues of the Palestine Exploration Quarterly and the Journal of Biblical Literature. He is probably right in identifying the Teacher’s enemy, the “wicked priest,” with Alexander Jannaeus, king of Judea from 103 to 76 B.C., but it must be said that none of the documents thus far published gives us any information of the manner of the Teacher’s death, or “gathering in,” as it was called.

Professor Charles T. Fritsch of Princeton Theological Seminary has reconstructed the life and history of the sect from which these documents came in The Qumran Community (1956). He identifies the community with a branch of the Essenes. There is archaeological evidence that the community headquarters were abandoned for thirty years or thereby in the time of Herod the Great (37–4 B.C.). Dr. Fritsch relates this evidence with the evidence from the Zadokite Documents which is commonly interpreted in terms of a migration of the community to the neighborhood of Damascus. The Zadokite Documents first came to light in two mutilated manuscripts discovered in the genizah or store-room of the synagogue in Old Cairo towards the end of last century; further fragments have now been found in the Qumran caves, and it is plain that the community of which we already knew something from the Zadokite Documents was identical with the Qumran community. A reference should be made here to the splendid edition of The Zadokite Documents, in the Hebrew text with English translation and notes, by Dr. Chaim Rabin (1954).

A translation of a wide selection of the Qumran texts has been prepared by Dr. Theodor H. Gaster—The Dead Sea Scriptures (1956). While the translation is rather free, the English is powerful and elegant. Dr. Gaster adds a few notes expressive of his own views, which whet our appetite for a full-length study of the significance of Qumran which he hopes to publish in due course.

Dr. Hugh J. Schonfield, already well known as historian of Jewish Christianity and translator of the New Testament, has ventilated some original views on the Qumran texts in Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1956). He propounds an unusual chronological order in dating the documents and the stages of the community’s resident at Qumran; he makes use of the rabbinical cipher called atbash as a key to unlock some of the conundrums found in the texts, and he suggests that the reason for storing the manuscripts in the caves shortly before A.D. 70 was not so much to protect them from the Romans as to make sure that the elect in the coming age of fulfilment might have access to books which would provide them with all necessary enlightenment for the days through which they were to pass.

This survey should not end without an appreciative reference to the indefatigable efforts of Dr. Solomon Zeitlin to convince his fellow-scholars that they are all following a false trail in using texts which he believes to be medieval for the reconstruction of a phase of Jewish life and belief in the closing decades of the Second Temple. He has done this for several years now in successive numbers of the Jewish Quarterly Review, and his main arguments have been published in a monograph, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Modern Scholarship (1956). Dr. Zeitlin has convinced few of us, but he has certainly played the part of a Socratic gadfly, stinging us into alertness lest we reach false conclusions through faulty arguments based on insufficient evidence. Herein he deserves our sincere gratitude, for in the study of the Qumran texts as in even more important matters it is best to practise the Pauline injunction: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

END

Preacher In The Red

EVERYTHING BUT THE GROOM

In a former pastorate, Widow A, member of my church and very attractive, was reported to be receiving the attentions of a very fine and sturdy widower from a nearby city, whose calls were growing in frequency. At last, my friend reported, “Mr. B’s car is parked in front of Mrs. A’s home almost every day now. The case seems to be growing very warm. You’ll probably get a call before long.”

Within two or three days after that warning, my study phone rang early one morning, and Mrs. A, in a particularly happy voice, asked if I might come to her home at once. Of course, I was able! Being accustomed to preparing myself for contingencies, I slipped into my pocket the items necessary for a wedding, and was on my way.

The merry widow, her face wreathed in smiles, ushered me into the living room, where a strong and sturdy masculine figure rose from the davenport. She asked, “Do you know this gentleman?” Unfortunate me! I mentioned the name of widower B. The lady gasped, mentioned her visitor’s name and rushed to the kitchen. It was her own cousin, a minister under whose preaching I had sat in my college student days, his heavy and flowing mustache shaved off! Widow A and Widower B were married within two weeks, but I was not asked to officiate.—CHARLES R. MURRAY, Minister, Presbyterian-Christian Church, Tishomingo, Okla.

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

From his colorful role in Korea, where he served as senior U.N. truce delegate at Panmunjom, Lt. Gen. William K. Harrison went to the Canal Zone as commander in chief of the Caribbean Command, U.S. Armed Forces. A distinguished Christian soldier, now 61, he retired from his military career this February, and plans to devote his efforts to the Evangelical Welfare Agency, a service organization of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Cover Story

Was St. Patrick a Protestant?

Michael W. Dewar

“St. Patrick” is symbolic in the United States of Irish Roman Catholicism and all it stands for. But the Protestants of Ireland, usually called “Scotch Irish,” take a very different view. The national apostle and founder of Irish Christianity is claimed by Irish Protestants as well as by Roman Catholics. His grave lies in British Ulster, and the chief Protestant church in Republican Dublin is named after him. So it is not easy to answer the question, was St. Patrick a Protestant?, with a plain “yes” or “no.”

Who Was He?

First of all, who was Patrick? He was not, at any rate, an Irishman living in a Christian home somewhere in the sister isle of Great Britain. It was too early to call him “English,” but he was undoubtedly “British.” In his teens he was captured by Irish pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland. His father, Calpurnius, was a deacon, and his grandfather, Potitus, was an elder in the church. This alone should prove that he was not a Roman Catholic, since so much is made of an unmarried clergy in the Church of Rome. Patrick spent the long days herding hogs on the slopes of Slemish, in the heart of the North Irish County Antrim. In spite of his “parsonage upbringing,” he was not a Christian. But prayer brought him peace with God among those Ulster hills. Later God provided Patrick with a way of escape to what is now France, where he learned to read and write. He became mighty in the Scriptures, quoting Paul’s Epistle to the Romans no less than thirty times.

Returning Good For Evil

Thus armed, he returned to conquer Ireland for Christ, and to make slaves for the Kingdom of God out of those who had sold him as a swineherd. By so doing he would surely heap coals of fire upon their heads, as the Apostle of the Gentiles bids us do. Thus he became the Apostle of the Irish.

Three of his Writings have come down to us and show what manner of man he was. The Confession and the Epistle are full of Christian belief, the commonly held creed of the undivided church of his day—neither “Unreformed” nor “Reformed,” as we know the words, but truly “catholic.” They reflect no emphasis on the Virgin Mary, with whom St. Patrick’s name is so often linked in popular thought. They certainly know nothing of the Pope or of Rome, whose writ did not run in Ireland for seven hundred years after Patrick’s death! The Church of England received its “rebaptism” from Rome in A.D. 597, the very year of the death of Columba, one of Patrick’s great Scotch-Irish disciples, who had already evangelized much of Scotland and England. Patrick had returned to Ireland on his great missionary adventure as long before as A.D. 432. The only “confession” that he knows is “I, Patrick, a sinner.”

The Breastplate, reminding us of the second item in the Christian’s armour in Ephesians VI, comes ringing down the ages as a hymn of triumph in Christ, full of evangelical assurance and certainty:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me.

So it leads on to its last tremendous declaration of faith: “Salvation is of Christ the Lord!” How wonderfully like John Calvin he wrote and how differently from the doggerel ditties usually associated with the 17th of March, such as:

Hail, Holy St. Patrick

Sweet Saint of Our Isle!

It is because most of the Irish people, apart from a large majority of them in the North and a small minority in the South, have departed from the “faith of their fathers” that this remotest island in the West is no longer the “island of saints and scholars” that the influence of Patrick made it. Irish missionaries were carrying the Gospel to the remotest parts of Europe when the schools of Ireland were producing treasures of the Bible as the shadows of the Dark Ages descended upon the Continent.

Far beyond our ocean girdle

Faithful sons the Gospel taught.

Men of distant climes and nations

At their lips the tiding sought,

Where midst Alpine snowy splendour

Sleeping lake in shadow lies,

Where the vine and olive flourish

’Neath the blue Italian skies.

The Hill Of Tara

But let us return to the green hills and rainy mists of the land which Patrick made peculiarly his own. A glance at the map of the missionary journeys of St. Patrick is as fascinating as that of the wanderings of St. Paul, and perhaps more so for those of us who live where we can follow in Patrick’s footsteps every day! The old story of how Patrick used the beacon fire of the heathen Irish upon the Hill of Tara in the Irish Midlands to light a Gospel fire throughout the realms of the High King of Ireland is well known. But most of his missionary movements read like a travel talk of Northern Ireland. It is surely one of the ironies of Irish church history, and an indication of the strength of the Patrick tradition in Protestant Ulster, that nearly all the scenes of the Patrick story are laid in those six counties where the British writ still runs!

The high, round hill of Slemish still overlooks the prosperous Presbyterian town of Ballymena, famous for its output of enterprising Scotch-Irish settlers to the States and Canada. It was there that Patrick found his Damascus Road.

Skirting the shores of Belfast Lough we enter kindly County Down with its fishing grounds and rich cornlands. There, among its little hills, is the St. Patrick Memorial Church at Saul. An annual open-air service at Tara recalls the coming of Patrick to the South, while the name Saul (old Irish for “a barn”) reminds us that like evangelists of other days he did not despise the humblest preaching house. Not far away is Downpatrick Cathedral, Mother Church of the Diocese of Down, where the Protestant Dean will proudly show visitors a simple gravestone inscribed “Patric.”

But it is among the apple orchards of Armagh, white in spring and ruddy in autumn, that we must seek the center of the Patrick country. In that little city, set on a hill, two cathedrals lift their spires and towers to the sky. Both are named for the intrepid missionary whom both faiths claim as their founder. But, while the Roman Catholic cathedral is only eighty years old, the Church of Ireland (Episcopal) Cathedral occupies a spot which has been hallowed by Christian worship for centuries. Thus the Church of Ireland can well claim the title deeds, the “family portraits” as it were, of St. Patrick.

Dublin And Belfast

So we leave the Emerald Isle among its misty mountains, with St. Patrick’s Episcopal Cathedral in Dublin, the Southern and largely Roman Catholic capital, proclaiming the existence of its dwindling minority. Northward, Belfast, with its industries and its Orange Lodges, proclaims in its motto “What shall we give in return for so much?” the unshakable determination of the Ulstermen to be true to the Trinitarian Faith planted by Patrick among the shamrocks of the Emerald Isle. Meanwhile, let us pray that the four millions of Roman Catholics who pay lip service to St. Patrick will seek the truth about their hero, and about his hero whose “unsearchable riches” he proclaimed to their forefathers in his writings not only “with his lips but with his life.”

Catholic Christian

As we leave Ireland and the Irish, we are left pondering the perennial “Irish question”: Was Patrick a Protestant or a Roman Catholic? To those who ask that question there is no short answer. But those who are prepared to think and to compare the simplicity of his teachings with the present-day accretions of Rome will have little difficulty in coming to the conclusion that he was truly catholic and truly Christian. To say more than that would be an anachronism. To make him a “Reformer before the Reformation” would be to use the language of more than a thousand years later. To say that he was a Christian and a Catholic is to say all.

Ages pass, yet with St. Patrick

Firm we hold the faith of God;

With his “Breastplate” armed we follow

Where the Saints and Martyrs trod.

Lift thy banner, Church of Erin,

To thine ancient Faith we cling.

Thou art built on truth eternal

Jesus Christ our Lord and King.

The Rev. Michael W. Dewar, M.A., late History Exhibitioner and First Prizeman at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, is one of the younger clergymen in the Church of Ireland. When Christianity Today asked whether he would prepare an article on St. Patrick, he replied: “No Irish Episcopal clergyman can refuse to speak for ‘the National Apostle’ and try to salvage him from the hands of the ‘opposition’!” Mr. Dewar saw World War II service as a soldier in G2 of SHAEF. Today he ministers in Scarva, County Down, Northern Ireland, as rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church.

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: February 18, 1957

William A. Mueller

Christianity Today February 18, 1957

The Southland continues to be perturbed over racial desegregation problems. We read of violence and resistance to the Supreme Court decision of May, 1954. What are Southern Baptists, the largest and most influential Christian body in the South, doing about the situation?

It is a fact that a number of Southern Baptist pastors have been ousted from their churches because of their loyalty to King Jesus and their defense of constituted rights for all Americans. The Rev. Paul Turner, pastor of First Baptist Church in Clinton, Tenn., made the headlines due to his courageous stand for righteousness in race relations.

The Alabama Baptist (Dec. 20, 1956) copies from RNS a detailed account of the Rev. Mr. Turner’s defense of Negro children’s basic rights. This same journal prints an editorial from the Chilton County News in the same issue:

In this day of race problems, would all races accept Him, no matter which He chose to be born into? He is the King of all races and yet, would we listen to His Word if He were anything but Anglo-Saxon?

More likely than not, this editorial continues, were Jesus to appear again, he would not come as a “dynamic business, political, or religious figure,” but would “make His appearance where He was least expected.”

“Few things are more dangerous than the germs of racial prejudice,” writes The Baptist Reflector of Tennessee (Sept. 20, 1956). Christians, it is argued, have a new spirit. They are therefore concerned that all men are treated with fairness. T. B. Matson, professor in Southwestern Baptist Seminary, Texas, writing in the same journal, speaks of the substitution of orthodoxy for basic morality and practical Christian living. “Some of the most unscrupulous, dishonest, immoral preachers are loudest in proclaiming their orthodoxy.” Alas, such can also be the worst purveyor of prejudice and hate in race relations!

Pastor Sterling Price of University Baptist Church in Abilene, Texas, spoke to 3000 persons at the Baptist Training Union conference at Wichita Falls with prophetic force when he said:

The Christian churches are failing to take decisive action on such social issues as racial discrimination, labor relations and work opportunities.

Thus reports The California Baptist (Dec. 13, 1956).

The Christmas 1956 editorial of the Florida Baptist Witness stabs us wide awake with these questions: “Are we as concerned for the Mexican in San Antonio as for the one in Mexico City, for the Chinese in Miami as for the one in Hong Kong, for the Indian on the Seminole reservation as for the one in South America, … for the Negro in Jacksonville as for the one in Nigeria …?”

President W. R. White of Baylor University in the Baptist Standard of Texas (Nov. 10, 1956) speaks of the issue of racial integration as the greatest problem confronting Southern Baptists since the days of slavery. “It threatens to sever the fellowship of Southern Baptists in twain.” Dr. White senses the urgency of the situation. He counsels moderation, warns against the hotheads on both sides of the controversy, but considers adjustment imperative for several reasons: world opinion is against treating any human being as less than human; Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, the U. S. Constitution, the Judeo-Christian concept of God compels us to act; our far-flung missionary endeavors face the shadow of unfavorable reaction; as communistic agitation and Catholic attempts to lure the Negro away from our ranks, these dangers and imperatives compel us to be “Christian in principle, spirit and attitudes.”

Professor Stewart A. Newman of Southeastern Baptist Seminary at Wake Forest, N. C., in his The Christian’s Obligation to All Races lays bare the tragic race issue in these sobering words:

The extent of this contradiction of our ideals with our attitude and conduct toward other races is illustrated by the reaction of new converts who recently came to America from our mission fields in Africa. Young people who were the product of our Southern Baptist evangelistic and educational work in Africa were unprepared for the disillusionment which they suffered when brought by our missionaries to this Christian land. They were caught up in such a maelstrom of bickering and prejudice, race antagonisms and discriminations as to be ostracized from the Christian fellowship which was the source of their greatest blessing.

This tract bears the imprint of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. J. B. Matson’s Integration and John Hass Jones’ The Unity of Humanity speak with equal vigor and clarity on the issue under discussion and are being widely distributed among Southern Baptists. In due time they will bear fruit, but the going will be hard in the days immediately ahead.

Christianity and Crisis (Dec. 24, 1956) admits—and this is encouraging to all right-minded people in the South—that “vast progress has already been made in the direction of public acceptance of the Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution, though, to be sure, defiance and outbreaks of violence are what makes headlines.” While the editor, E. T. J., considers the Supreme Court decision of 1954 “a great moral judgment,” he nevertheless realistically states that “evils that have a tragic character are not expunged by recourse to law.” John C. Bennett of Union Theological Seminary, commenting in the same journal (Oct. 29, 1956) on Billy Graham’s stand on desegregation of our public schools in Life, calls it a “truly prophetic statement about the racial problem.” Bennett believes that “there is no other Christian leader in America who can do so much as Billy Graham to open the eyes of believing Christians to the implications of their faith in this area.”

There are other hopeful signs on the horizon of Southern Baptists in this matter of race relations. Their five theological seminaries with their more than 5000 students have been interracial for more than five years. During the recent Thanksgiving season two international house parties with more than 300 nationals from Latin and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe met in Mississippi and Tennessee for fellowship and discussion of crucial issues facing the life of mankind today.

Other Christian communions in the South are equally concerned about the issue. On the whole, “it seems Christians are more favorable to the abolition of the caste system than secular opinion in the same communities, and Catholics are often more energetic than Protestants, and preachers more positive and articulate on the race issue than laymen.” Thus states W. E. Garrison of Houston University in a recent issue of the Virginia Baptist journal, The Religious Herald.

Books

Book Briefs: February 18, 1957

Life Against Nature

The Nun’s Story, by Kathryn Hulme. Little-Atlantic, Boston. $4.00.

Riding high on the nation’s best-seller lists in this fall and winter of election, war and rebellion is The Nun’s Story, Kathryn Hulme’s novelistic biography of a Belgian nurse who became a nun, served her order for 16 years at home and in the Congo and returned to “the world” at the end of World War II.

The book’s right to be a best-seller is obvious: it caters to the well-known American preoccupations with medicine and hospital life, with psychiatry, with the bizarre and mysterious continent of Africa, with the secrets of the cloister, and with the Resistance movements during the Nazi occupation. For Sister Luke, the heroine, did not lead a life of quiet retirement. During her novitiate she finished her nurse’s training and received a diploma in psychiatry in institutions run by her Order. Her first months out from under the wing of the mother-house where she was trained were in a rigorous government course in tropical medicine. The proving ground where she demonstrated the ability and stability to undertake missionary work was a large mental hospital for women which the Order operated.

Finally she reached Africa, the land of her dreams, but instead of being allowed to do evangelistic work among the natives was detained as a supervisory nurse in the European hospital in a large city in the Congo. Just before the outbreak of World War II, she made an emergency trip to Europe, accompanying a mental patient, and was caught in the hostilities. From her nursing post in the tuberculosis wing of a hospital she aided the fight of her countrymen against the Nazis after their armies had surrendered. In this struggle she realized openly what had been implicitly true all along, that she was more nurse than nun, and that her Christian conscience often contradicted the rule of life she had sworn to follow. The story ends the morning she shed her habit, and dressed in a lay nurse’s uniform supplied by the Order, stepped forth into a strange world to make her own way.

The elements of a “sure-fire hit” are here, but above them all are religion and the religious life. The Nun’s Story is being read in search of an answer to the spiritual needs of today by the same people who followed Thomas Merton to the Seven Storey Mountain, who seek to “understand” such diverse characters as Albert Schweitzer and Billy Graham, or who eagerly looked for Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift From The Sea. The answer given by The Nuns Story is not simple or unequivocal. In spite of her departure from the Order, Sister Luke remains a devout Catholic, and no where does she deny the validity of a Rule—for those who subscribe to it.

From the first days of her postulancy to the days of war, a battle raged between Sister Luke and the religious life. She and “it” might he described as the two protagonists of this book.

Gabrielle Van der Mal, the girl who became Sister Luke, was the lively young daughter of a famous surgeon. She had medicine in her blood, had learned to use a microscope when she learned to read. She was devoutly religious, and though her father had prevented her marriage to the man she loved, entered the Order from a sincere devotion and desire to serve Christ as a missionary in the Congo, a land that had captured her imagination.

Alongside Sister Luke is the Life to which she is dedicated. The making of a nun is given in brilliant detail, from the hundred bare cubicles which the novice marvels can hold such diverse women and not show it, to the perfect worship in the motherhouse chapel which must not be disturbed even when a Sister faints, to the silent meals in the refectory and to the “recreation” in the sunny garden where the sisters sit in a large circle and talk—but only of items of general interest. Through Sister Luke’s eyes as a novitiate we see these women living by a Rule which forbids mirrors (or even highly polished shoes), which provides a small flagellant made of light chains with hooks at the end of each (but orders moderation when it gives them), and which gives the older sisters permission to talk to the novices when their hair is clipped (to prevent nervous giggles at the sight of one another’s bald heads). With her we learn the rules governing the minutiae of daily life—eating, sleeping, walking, speaking, praying, travel, clothes, letters. Each small rule, we learn, is to further the community toward its goal of “constant conversation with God.”

The striking demands made in God’s name are for detachment, charity, obedience—and perfection in the keeping of the Rule. On the road to detachment from “the world” the nun leaves behind belongings, pictures, even a room of her own in the dormitory. The call of a bell stops her in the middle of a word or in the middle of a helpless child’s meal to turn to prayer. The road to charity leads through humility, service, and selflessness. Obedience is won through public confession of faults—and the older sisters help a younger one if her memory seems lacking. The goal of perfection involves continuous self-searching for faults—as well as a voice that is neither too loud nor too low, and promptness that is neither late nor early. The battle between Sister Luke and the religious life rages around one principle—obedience. The first trial came when a superior suggested that it might be a great gift to God if Sister Luke were purposely to fail her examination in tropical medicine, in order to restore the self-esteem of an older sister who feared she might fail. After days of self-searching and prayer she found that she could not throw away her training and prospects for service in such a way. In the Congo, gradually she turned from nun to nurse, apparently feeling that God needed her more in the hospital than in the sisterhood. Back at home, under the stress of war, she turned more and more to the Underground and to the spiritual needs of her patients as having priority over the rules of the Order. Sister Luke could not be a good nun; her conscience protested.

Whatever one’s religious background, this book leaves in the mind admiration and appreciation—of the life as well as of Sister Luke. The nuns who follow this Rule are fine people, sincere in their desire to serve God. There are a minimum of neurotic or misplaced inhabitants of the Order—a smaller percentage than one would find in “the world.” The grandeur of their goals shames those of us who with deadened consciences settle for less. In Sister Luke, in spite of her “failure”, we find a Christian heroine, for she tried, and her courage was spiritual as well as moral and physical. The great traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience when we see them lived before us strike at our hearts and show up our softness, self-indulgence, weakness of will, sloth, and our lack of any intention to put God first. The rigorous life of the cloister and the accomplishments of the sisters make us aware of the dissipation of our energies into so much that is not ‘ “of faith.”

And yet there is much about the so-called “religious life” that gives one pause. One to whom the Orders are strange, whose tradition does not include a veneration of them as a higher way of life, cannot but be struck by the conflicts inherent in this life. Obedience and charity are at war when a nurse takes away the cup of milk at a child’s lip so that she may pray. The “grand silence” Sister Luke found kept her from ever talking to her patients of their souls’ needs in the one time of day when they relaxed and “opened up.” The humility and charity in failing the medical tests would have been achieved at the cost of a lie. The detachment from the world includes detachment from the other nuns as well—and the heart cries out against such a studied denial of nature. Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus and wept, yet the sisterhood may not mourn its martyrs. What is the glory of “a life against nature?” (Mother Emmanuel’s description to the novices.)

The age we live in is in many ways an age of anarchy. Standards are changing in many areas of life, as governments are changing around the world. Our enthusiasms, our passions are muddied and impure. We Americans particularly are doing our best to sell our spiritual birthright for something we call “the American way of life,” but which in another day might be called gluttony or greed. The tenor of our times is to seek comfort and content. Our slang farewell bids fair to become our national creed: “Take it easy!”

Is it any wonder that from the midst of a self-indulgent, materialistic society like ours the cloister looks like heaven, or at least a haven? Its battles exist, but they look easier perhaps than the everyday decisions facing Christians. If I have given away everything it is no longer painful to decide between keeping up with the Joneses and my obligations as a Christian steward. If I bind myself to mass and prayers seven times a day, I am no longer plagued with the proper use of time. Is it any wonder that to one whose conscience pricks the cool, quiet, holy life of discipline and charity—and withdrawal—calls? Is it a surprise to find Trappist monks in our popular magazines—and Sister Luke sponsored as a Book of the Month? Or that untold numbers of women read Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s extremely tentative searchings for some kind of inner life?

But withdrawal can never be the answer for all of us—and as Protestants we even say for any of us. The life which the Gospel imparts is to be shared. Jesus was no ascetic—in fact he made rather a point of being the opposite. Neither did he show two ways of life-one for the mass of his followers and one for the special few with higher aspirations.

The New Testament denies a “life against nature.” It hallows all of life, all its relationships, all its duties and obligations, all its tasks. There is one call to all-in the words of Paul, “Follow after love.” How can we compute the value of an ordinary life—outwardly unrestricted by a special rule, unhampered by petty laws, in which the love of Christ is released? Which is greater, the denial of self within the bounds of a community, or the forgetfulness of self of an ordinary man, living an ordinary life, beset by the problems of all mankind, yet who gives the cup of water, the coat along with the cloak, or goes the second mile? We see Christ in a dedicated nun indeed, but is He not more evident in the life of a mother or house-wife who has made of her work an offering to God?

The disciplines of life which the convent brings to our attention are all there in the New Testament. Sister Luke and her world speak to our hearts because they have the strength too many of us lack. Set times of prayer are not a monopoly of any one group—they may he found recommended by such diverse Protestants as William Law and Frank Lauhach. Some of the disciplines should be part of our daily lives if we are aware of our need of “constant conversation with God.” Some of them have their place on special occasions, in times of preparation for future service, or for short periods of special need. Paul says husbands and wives may stay apart for prayer and fasting. Jesus spent some time in fasting, some whole nights in prayer; neither was made an absolute. For our discipline, our gifts, our virtues themselves, are all subservient to one principle: “The greatest of these is love.” Sister Luke said her conscience asked questions; love can tell us when to pray and when to work. It told Hudson Taylor on one occasion to get up from his knees where he was asking God to supply the needs of a family in want and give them the money in his pocket. “Love never faileth.”

Sister Luke can teach us the importance of singleness of heart—we who live so close to Mammon. She can teach us not to be afraid of differences which may be the result of following Christ—if a nun can forget all the inconveniences and peculiarities of her life in serving others, can we not bear to do without something our television sets declare we need, to be perhaps a little shabby, or to forego the neighborhood cocktail parties or poker games—for His sake?

We can love Sister Luke, and admire her for what she is—and at the same time remember the words of Paul: “I show you a more excellent way.”

PRUDENCE TODD MOFFETT

Defensive Tone

American Catholicism by John Tracey Ellis. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1956. Cloth $3.00, paper $1.75.

The Right Reverend John Tracy Ellis, Professor of Church History at the Catholic University of America, editor of the Catholic Historical Review and author of a number of works on English and American Catholicism is certainly the right man to write this volume for The Chicago History of American Series. He has produced a succinct and scholarly piece of work for both historian and general reader.

It is not possible in the space available for this review to give anything more than a very brief statement of the contents of the work; but probably the four chapter headings summarize it most effectively. I. The Church in Colonial America, 1492–1790; II. Catholics as Citizens, 1790–1852; III. Civil War and Immigration, 1852–1908; IV. Recent American Catholicism.

Dr. Ellis traces clearly and interestingly the history of the rise and expansion of the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S.A. He cannot of course go into great detail, but his work does form a good, readable introduction.

The most important criticism which one could make of the work, however, is that a defensive tone dominates the work. There is a continual stress upon the “maltreatment” meted out to Roman Catholics both in Britain and in America.

No doubt Professor Ellis has some reason for complaint, but he never mentions that Roman Catholics in America were much better off than Protestants in Roman Catholic countries. For instance he fails to say that while Roman Catholics were at least permitted to live in Maryland, albeit under certain restrictions, Protestants were absolutely banned from New France and from the Spanish Empire.

Coupled with this he has ignored the reasons for American anti-Roman Catholic movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has apparently failed to understand the influence which the anti-liberal actions of Pius IX and of the Roman church in Spain, Bolivia and other countries have had upon American Protestant thinking.

To pass these examples of Roman Catholic persecution off as having no more relation to American Catholicism than Afrikaander racial polices have to American Calvinists is a little misleading (p. 158). After all the anti-Protestant actions in Roman Catholic countries seem to be based upon that church’s doctrine and law. (cf. A. G. Cicognani, Canon Law, Philadelphia, 1935, pp. 120 ff.) It is because of this that many Americans fear the possibility of the Roman church gaining political power.

Yet, despite this weakness, the book should be of great use to those who are concerned with the contemporary American religious picture. It is well produced and has an excellent list of suggested readings.

W. STANFORD REID

Useful Instruction

Personal Evangelism, by J. C. Macaulay and Robert H. Belton. Moody Press, Chicago. $3.25.

The instructors in evangelism at Moody Bible Institute have prepared a textbook on personal evangelism that should find wide acceptance both in and out of the classroom. These men write out of passion for the souls of the lost, and both of them bring to the task a broad background of experience in this field. The result is a book which lends itself well to class use but which will be stimulating and helpful to the individual reader as well.

The book begins with a careful definition of evangelism and then treats the message of evangelism. This latter section shows that man’s need of salvation lies in his guilt, depravity, alienation and judgment, and then clearly demonstrates how perfectly the Gospel of Christ meets each aspect of man’s need. The authors’ conclusion here is “We need no new Gospel, no new evangelism but a mighty increase of sane, sound, Spirit-filled evangelism” (p. 28).

The presentation of the various forms of evangelism takes in some of the most recent developments in this field and shows how each new form has its place in God’s plan. The counsel given by the authors as to the way of approaching various types of people is most practical, and to this reviewer, the section on dealing with Roman Catholics was especially valuable. Almost any Christian, however experienced in personal work, would be helped and encouraged by reading these pages.

The book is characterized by a wealth of illustration, much of it drawn from the experience of the authors, and by an evident familiarity with the books which have become classics in this field. A helpful bibliography is appended, and a list of questions is given at the close of each chapter.

HORACE L. FENTON, JR.

The Red Dean

Christians and Communism, by the Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. Putnam. 10s, 6d.

Britain’s “Red Dean” states his views in this book, and sees Communism as an ally of Christianity. To do this, he has to concentrate on the field of moral ideals. Thus the Marxist slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” is a commendable aim for the Christian. Ideas of brotherhood and of human rights may be found in the two systems. Moreover, the Christian approves the banning of suggestive papers, films and advertisements, as also do the Russians.

The Dean baits his hook attractively, but the hook is what worries the Christian. Ideas of brotherhood and human rights sound hollow in the face of happenings in Hungary and elsewhere. The kindly Communist provisions for old people presuppose that one is allowed to grow old before being “removed.” And at heart the Christian finds the basis of Communism in hopeless antagonism to Christianity, in spite of what the Dean says. Thus, “Ultimate reality, says the Marxist, is a substance, a stuff, a something objective, existing outside us and our mind, though including our minds. The basis of reality is substance, not just idea; substance, as in the Christian Creed” (p. 125). Here is a subtle misuse of the term “Substance” in the Nicene Creed. Are Christianity and Communism brothers because both are monistic, even though the ground of one is the personal God and the ground of the other is matter?

What shall we say of matter and spirit? “Jesus was materialistic in His attitude to the world” (p. 28). Yet He taught the essential need for faith in himself and of spiritual rebirth. “Jesus was not hated for his attitude to God. He was violently hated for his attitude to man” (p. 47). Yet scholars have shown a high proportion of parallels between the moral teachings of Jesus and those of the rabbis. Jesus stood his trial on a charge of blasphemy, and reasserted his own identity with the Son of Man of prophecy.

J. STAFFORD WRIGHT

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