Bible Text of the Month: Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1).

In the first page of this sacred book a child may learn more in an hour than all the philosophers in the world learned without it in a thousand years.—ANDREW FULLER.

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God; so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.—HEBREWS 11:3.

The fact of the creation is regarded in the Bible as a fact revealed; and as such it is commended to our faith. Thus the scriptural method on this subject is exactly the reverse of what is called the natural. It is not to ascend from nature up to nature’s God, but to descend, if we may so speak, from God to God’s nature, or his works of nature; not to hear the creation speaking of the Creator, but to hear the Creator speaking of the creation.—R. S. CANDLISH.

As the Old Testament begins with a historical narrative, so also the New, and indeed the two volumes with a Biblos geneseos (Matt. 1:1); and further, the account of the creation of “the heavens and the earth” in the first page of Genesis has its counterpart in the notice of “the new heavens and the new earth” with which the Apocalypse and the canon of Scripture concludes—the first creation having for its object the first Adam, the new creation taking its rise from the second Adam. This is the great principle which gives coherence not only to Genesis but to the whole biblical history.—DONALD MACDONALD.

God The Creator

He that did the creative work is said to be God, Elohim. This Hebrew name is to be derived from a root found in the Arabic meaning “to fear” or “to reverence.” It, therefore, conceives of God as the one who by His nature and His works rouses man’s fear and reverence. It is used 2,570 times.—H. C. LEUPOLD.

The foundation of this vast fabric is laid in an adequate cause—Elohim, the Almighty. Nothing else would bear it. Man, if he attempt to find an adequate cause for what is, to the overlooking of God, shall but weary himself with very vanity.—ANDREW FULLER.

So great a revelation had never been made to man, for it disclosed the existence of the One eternal, holy, just and good God—a God of wisdom and order, as well as purity and truth, and implied his right to our absolute obedience and love, as the work of his hands. There remained only another self-disclosure, of still greater condescension, when he declared himself to mankind in the person of his incarnate Son.—GEIKIE.

At the very first verse and word of Genesis, it clearly steps over that impure sink of dualism beyond which the entire heathen and philosophical view of the world could never go. It does this by contrasting God in his eternal self-perfection to the creation which arose with time. The doctrine of the creation is the first act of revelation and of faith in the history of the kingdom of God.—J. P. LANGE.

There is something peculiarly striking in the manner in which the Holy Ghost opens this sublime book. He introduces us at once to God, in the essential fullness of his Being, and the solitariness of his acting. All prefatory matter is omitted. It is to God we are brought. We hear him, as it were, breaking earth’s silence, and shining in upon earth’s darkness, for the purpose of developing a sphere in which he might display his eternal power and Godhead.—C. H. MACKINTOSH.

Act Of Creation

The verb describing God’s initial work is “created” (bara). This verb is correctly defined as expressing the origination of something great, new and “epoch-making,” as only God can do it, whether it be in the realm of the physical or of the spiritual.… Consequently, this passage teaches creatio ex nihilo, “creation out of nothing,” a doctrine otherwise also clearly taught by the Scriptures (Rom. 4:17; Heb. 11:3, cf. also Ps. 33:6, 9; Amos 4:13). The verb is never used of other than divine activity.—H. C. LEUPOLD.

Created—It occurs in this chapter only on three occasions, the first creation of matter in the first verse, the first introduction of life in the fifth day, and the creation of man in the sixth day. Bara is thus reserved for marking the first introduction of each of the three great spheres of existence—the world of matter, the world of life, and the world spiritual, represented by man in this visible economy—all three of which, though profoundly distinct in essence, are intimately associated, and together constitute all the universe known to us.—GUYOT.

To imagine so small a thing as a bee, or fly, a grain of corn, or an atom of dust, to be made of nothing, would stupify any creature in the consideration of it; much more to behold the heavens with all the troop of stars, the earth with all its embroidery, and the sea with all her inhabitants of fish, and man, the noblest creature of all, to arise out of the womb of mere emptiness.—STEPHEN CHARNOCK.

The account given by Moses relates not to the whole creation, but merely to what it immediately concerns us to know. God made the angels; but nothing is said of them. The moon is called one of the greater lights, not as to what it is in itself, but what it is to us. The Scriptures are written, not to gratify curiosity, but to nourish faith. They do not stop to tell you how, nor to answer a number of questions which might be asked; but to tell you so much as is necessary, and no more.—ANDREW FULLER.

In the visible world it is easy to observe, (1) great variety; several sorts of beings vastly differing in their nature and constitution from each other. “Lord, how manifold are thy works,” and all good! (2) Great beauty; the azure sky and verdant earth are charming to the eye of the curious spectator, much more the ornaments of both. How transcendent then must the beauty of the Creator be! (3) Great exactness and accuracy; to those that with the help of microscopes narrowly look into the works of nature, they appear far more fine than any works of art. (4) Great power; it is not a lump of dead and inactive matter, but there is virtue more or less in every creature; the earth itself has a magnetic power. (5) Great order; a mutual dependence of being, and exact harmony of motions, and an admirable chain and connection of causes.

—MATTHEW HENRY.

Comfort And Praise

All must have remarked, in reading the devotional parts of the Bible, such as the book of Psalms, how constantly the psalmist comforts and strengthens himself, and animates himself in the face of his enemies by this consideration, that his help comes from the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth.—R. S. CANDLISH.

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.—REVELATION 4:11.

The Man Who Loved His Critics

A. Dallimore

There are many features of one of the greatest lives of Christian history—that of George Whitefield (1714–1770)—which posterity has largely overlooked. That he was a matchless orator and soul-winner is known to all, but such matters as his leadership of the vast international revival movement, his twelve years in evangelism in America, the degree of his learning, the lasting effect of his work on all the great denominations, and most especially, the consideration that the American Revolution and Constitution were mainly moulded in the fires of “The Great Awakening”—these significant achievements have received but scant attention. But important as are these aspects of a colossal career, still more valuable to us will be to make acquaintance with him as a man of God and see him afresh as, in an age of cruelty and religious bitterness, he maintained unflinchingly his own strong convictions, yet lived among men always in gracious kindness. He was ever the peacemaker among the controversialists and the Mr. Great Heart with tender care for all; a reacquaintance with this Whitefield, the Apostle of Love, will serve us well.

Humble Amid Popularity

If ever a man triumphed over temptations that attend popularity, it was Whitefield. When a youth of only twenty-two he preached every day, and often twice a day, in the largest churches of London to crowds no church could hold. When a year later he launched out into the open air he could draw thousands any hour of the day, any day in the week, anywhere in England! In the London parks he needed but to take his stand on a table or a stone wall, and people flocked around—ten thousand, twenty thousand, and sometimes even forty, sixty or eighty thousand. There were times when he lost all attempt at estimating their number and simply noticed how many acres they covered. Possessed with what was probably the greatest voice any human ever had, he moved these vast audiences at will and, impossible as it seems, made them all hear, except when the sound of their weeping drowned out his voice. The poor and ignorant were there and they understood him as he talked in simple, tender tones about the sinner’s Saviour. The mob was there and he beat down their cries and made them listen. The rich and learned were there and many a titled personage laid a coronet at the Master’s feet.

Whitefield was idolized above all measure. People pressed upon him as he walked the streets, or ran simply to touch his garment. They thronged his lodgings as he ate and came seeking him through the hours of the night. People everywhere talked of him, newspapers were full of him and on two continents they called him, “Ye Wonder of Ye Age.”

The Siren Call Of Fame

Deep, dark danger lurks in popularity and many a lesser man has been ruined by but a fraction of the adulation Whitefield received. He too heard the subtle siren call of fame as it offered him everything but the one thing he wanted most—the approval of his God. With characteristic greatness of soul he turned a deaf ear to all proffered gain and good will of earth. His own words tell it well:

Had it not been for my compassionate High Priest, popularity might have destroyed me. I used to plead with him to take me by the hand and lead me through this fiery furnace. He heard my request and gave me to see the vanity of all commendations but his own!

“The vanity of all commendations but his own!” In these youthful words of triumph over all concern for earthly acclaim, we see the real George Whitefield. Here is a man at twenty-three, dead to the opinions of humankind—their praise or blame, their applause or censure—and alive, gloriously alive to a higher approbation. He sought then, already early in his career, as he continued unswervingly throughout life’s hurried day, to show himself approved only unto God.

Meek Beneath Opposition

Yet along with admiration of his multitude of friends he was faced with hatred of an equal multitude of foes. As soon as Whitefield burst forth in his mighty evangelism evil men and the principalities and powers of darkness seemed suddenly to turn all their forces upon him. Hating the revival, its message, its methods and its results, they looked for a focal point on which to concentrate their rage. They found it, not so much in the astute and professorial Wesley, but in the colorful, irrepressible, magnetic Whitefield. In ways that we can hardly credit today every lying scheme that malice could devise to blacken his character and weaken his testimony was employed against him. Isaac Taylor sums it up saying,

Among those who by their flagitious crimes have most deeply sinned against society, it would be difficult to find a wretch upon whose guilty pate has been showered so much rancorous abuse as, year by year, was heaped upon the head of the love-fraught, self-denying and gentle-natured Whitefield.

It was very early in his ministry that he first saw himself villified in print. He was doubtless wounded by the cruel attack, but essayed no retaliation and made no reply. Instead he simply stood with bowed head and uttered the words, “Thou wilt answer for me, Lord!” This became his fixed practice and times without number, as the storm of malice beat unrelentingly upon him throughout his life, he uttered the same phrase, often aloud, “Thou wilt answer for me, Lord!” How beautifully his friend Cowper wrote of him:

He loved the world that hated him; the tear

That fell upon his Bible was sincere;

Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife,

His only answer was—a blameless life.

And he who forged, and he who threw the dart,

Had each a brother’s interest in his heart.

(Leuconomos)

In the course of his wide travels Whitefield became associated with hundreds of other ministers. In all his dealings with these brethren there was no thought or hint of his own importance, but rather of that of the other man. Utterly careless as to what denomination anyone belonged, or whether he was a big city preacher or little country pastor, as long as he was born-again, Whitefield saw in him a challenge. With gracious words of encouragement, and sometimes a deserved rebuke, he sought to inspire and move him to become as earnest for souls as he was himself. Scores of preachers all over Britain and America lighted their torch at the Whitefield flame and herein lay the basic secret of the continuation and spread of the revival. In turn, it goes without saying that the evangelist who, so powerful and so famous, walked thus in simplicity and humility among his brethren was the object of their boundless affection and undying love.

Ill Treated By Good Men

But alas! it was not invariably so, and some of the crudest blows he bore were from ministers—good, earnest Bible-believing ministers. Many examples might be cited but one especially will illustrate the point:

He was only twenty-six when he went to Scotland, burdened with cares, terribly in debt for his orphanage and broken in health. In face of the great campaign in Edinburgh he needed and merited united assistance of all God’s people there. Instead he was confronted with a church rent by bitter quarrels. A group known as the Seceeders had long protested against the growing laxity in doctrine and practice within the Kirk. They had finally withdrawn and formed the Associate Presbytery, a rival organization from which they maintained a continuous warfare with their former brethren. Within the church were two other groups: the Moderates (much akin to the Modernists of today), and the Evangelicals who could not go along with the Seceeders because of their bitterness of spirit and so remained in the church to live and pray and work for revival.

Target Of Misguided Wrath

Both Seceeders and Evangelicals saw in the flaming young evangelist the answer to their problems and both entreated him to come to Scotland. His intention was to work among both groups, but the Seceeders, while they welcomed him as an angel of light as long as they thought he would remain with them, demanded that he have no fellowship with any of the men in the Kirk, “their enemies.” He sat down with the nine venerable gentlemen of the Associate Presbytery at their headquarters, as they attempted to shackle him with their particular brand of “contending for the faith” in blind, selfish partisanship and as they laid down the law that he must preach for them and them only. But he shocked the dour Scotsmen as he sternly replied that he would not now or at any time be limited by anyone as to where and with whom he preached. He told them plainly, “If a Jew, or a Mohammedan, or the Pope himself would lend me his pulpit, I would gladly proclaim the righteousness of Jesus Christ therein!”

Thereafter he preached among the Evangelicals, and with what vast results! Teeming congregations heard him twice a day in Edinburgh’s largest park. Prayer meetings sprung up spontaneously throughout the city and in many places throughout Scotland. Untold numbers were brought to a saving knowledge of Christ; the tides of unbelief that had sorely threatened the Kirk rolled back. It was the commencement of a whole new age of evangelicalism that ushered Scotland into the greatest century of spiritual power she has ever known, with boundless results that only the eternal morning will make known—all this stemmed from the Whitefield campaign in Scotland!

But what of the Seceeders, while this manifest blessing of God was upon his labors among the people of the Kirk? Stung with bitter realization that God had owned his ministry among their foes, they turned in wrath upon the man they had so lately extolled. They vented their rage in a 75-page booklet with the enormous title,

A Warning Against Countenancing the Ministrations of Mr. George Whitefield, Wherein is shown that he is no Minister of Jesus Christ; that his call and coining to Scotland are Scandalous; that his practice is disorderly; that his whole doctrine is and his success must be diabolical, so that people ought to avoid him from duty to God, to the church, to themselves, to Posterity and to him!

When few paid heed to their bitter fulminations, they found it necessary to call a nationwide public fast in which “they solemnly engaged to strengthen one another’s hands to entirpate Popery, Arminianism, Tritheism, Sabeianism, and George Whitefieldism,” and when this ponderous attempt extirpated nothing, they again resorted to the press and produced another fiery booklet:

The Declaration, Protestantion and Testimony of the Suffering Remnant of the anti-Popish, anti-Lutheran, anti-Prelatic, anti-Whitefieldian, anti-Erastian, anti-Sectarian true Church of Scotland.

A lesser man than Whitefield would have ignored these wrathful men in haughty silence and let the evident blessing of God on his labors serve as sufficient rebuke. But let it be remembered that the Seceeders were not a band of ignorant fanatics; they were men of ability and learning, and some of their number were among the ablest pulpiteers of the land. Above all, they were earnest for their God in their mistaken way. Whitefield felt a kinship with them in their defense of the faith and longed to see them joined in cooperation with the Evangelicals within the church. Thus he arranged two or three interviews with them, in which he bluntly told them they were but building a Babel which soon would fall about their ears. He begged them to cease their strife with all such of their brethren who were true to God’s Book and to work together in the positive prosecution of the great work. But all his entreaties went unheeded and, choosing to continue in their bitterness, they soon turned from fighting Whitefield and the Kirk to fighting one another.

A Peacemaker Among Controversialists

Posterity has remembered much of the controversy between the Calvinists and the Arminians of early Methodism, but it has failed to notice Whitefield’s passionate and unselfish attempts as peacemaker in the long dispute. John Wesley began the controversy with his sermon on free grace. It was a scathing denunciation of what he supposed was Calvinism and he called into use every talent of his brilliant mind—sarcasm, ridicule, exaggeration and plain abuse are there in high style. It was an explosive utterance that could not fail to inflame men’s passions and divide God’s work. To make matters worse, Wesley intended to carry the controversy far and wide by putting the sermon in print.

Ever since his conversion Whitefield had held strongly to Calvinistic views and found these confirmed in his wide reading of the Reformers and Puritans. He could not and would not compromise his deep convictions one iota. Yet he dreaded the results of Wesley’s sermon if it should be published, and wrote him:

Dear Honoured Sir: If you have any regard for the peace of the church, keep in your sermon on predestination. Oh! my heart in the midst of my body is melted like wax! The Lord direct us all! Honoured Sir, indeed I desire you all the success you could wish for! May you increase, though I decrease! Oh! wresde, wrestle in prayer that not the least alienation of affection may be between you and me.

This gracious attempt kept the wild dogs of controversy in check for but a short while, and as soon as Whitefield left for America, John Wesley published the sermon. He sought moreover to dispute the matter with Whitefield and wrote him a number of letters, to which Whitefield replied over and over again by entreating his friend to be at peace. The following is an excerpt from one of his replies, a beautiful example of his loving and humble spirit that may well serve as a model in many present-day discords:

My honoured friend and brother; for once hearken to a child who is willing to wash your feet. I beseech you, by the mercies of God, if you would have my love confirmed toward you, write no more to me about the misrepresentations wherein we differ.

The doctrine of election and final perseverance of those who are truly in Christ, I am ten thousand times more convinced of, if possible, than when I saw you last. You think otherwise—then why should we dispute? Will it not in the end destroy brotherly love, and take from us that cordial union and sweetness of soul which I pray God may always subsist between us? How glad would the enemies of the Lord be to see us divided! How many would rejoice should I join and make a party against you! And in one word, how would the cause of our common Master suffer every way by our railing disputes!… provoke me to it as much as you wish, I hope never to enter the lists of controversy with you.

Even these earnest endeavors at maintaining peace were fruitless. Controversy soon separated Arminian from Calvinist throughout England as cruel charges and countercharges were hurled by many men, all to the hindrance and disgrace of the revival. Whitefield exerted all his influence to keep the strife in check and largely succeeded throughout the remaining thirty years of his life. But immediately following his death it burst forth in renewed and shameful fury as men on both sides forgot his gracious example and brought the revival to a close by their godless strife.

And so lived the apostle of love, in sickness and poverty almost all his days, but in burning zeal for his God and quenchless love for men. He wept for souls as he prayed in private and wept for them again as he preached in public. It mattered not to him that Wesley should receive the earthly glory with regard to the great revival while he was discredited and forgotten. Nor would he have cared that his tomb on American soil should be overlooked and neglected by a people who ought to have cherished his memory. (Whitefield is buried beneath the pulpit of the Presbyterian church of Newburyport, Mass.) He lived above all such temporal concerns and only for his Master’s glory and his own accounting on the judgment morning. Well did Sir James Stephens, the renowned Cambridge professor, say:

If ever philanthropy burned in the human heart with pure and intense flame, it was in the heart of George Whitefield.… He had no preferences but in favor of the ignorant, the miserable and the poor. In their cause he shrank from no privation and declined neither insult nor hostility. To such wrongs he opposed the weapons of an all-enduring meekness and a love that would not be repulsed. The springs of his benevolence were inexhaustible and could not choose but flow.

END

The Rev. A. Dallimore, B.Th., is pastor of the Cottam Baptist Church, Cottam, Ontario, Canada. He was for some years editor of The Union Baptist and writes a monthly column for its successor, The Fellowship Baptist. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Seminary of Toronto, and for some years has been doing research on the life of Whitefield in preparation for a new biography to be called, George Whitefield and the Eighteenth Century Revival.

Theology

Vital Emphases Discussions in Contemporary of the Church

G. C. Berkouwer, Richard C. Halverson, W. Boyd Hunt and more

“in seeking unity …

let us not neglect uniqueness …”

G. C. BERKOUWER

When we in our day consider the place of the Church of Jesus Christ in the world, we are inevitably impelled to focus attention on the question of our symposium, whether there are special accents in the New Testament which in the struggle of the Church in our day are being forgotten or neglected. It is plain that we must always be kept aware of such a possibility. In this short article I wish to approach the problem from the angle of a concrete and acute danger, namely that men today in the midst of the strong pressure toward unity of the Church do not pay sufficient attention to the relation between the “unity” and the “uniqueness” of the Church. In these two words we do not in any sense have a dilemma, between which we are forced to choose. But the danger lies herein, that in seeking unity with all our might, we do not give sufficient attention to the “uniqueness” of the Church. And it is clear that the neglect of this uniqueness of the Church threatens and makes an issue of the drive for unity.

That there can be no question of a dilemma is made clear immediately by the fact that in the New Testament strong emphasis is placed upon the unity of the Church. In the high-priestly prayer of Christ in John 17 such unity is central. This unity is even seen in the light of the unity of Christ and the Father, that they “may be one as we are one” (John 17:11; 22) and the prayer of Christ goes out to the Father, “that they all may be one … that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21). This unity therefore stands in the light of the analogy of the unity between the Father and the Son and in connection with the believing of the world. But also in other places this unity is central: One faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of all who call on him (Eph. 4:4 f), the unity of belief (Eph. 4:13), the whole body (Eph. 4:16). It is the koinonia, the fellowship of all similar to the period following Pentecost, persevering in the communion and in the breaking of bread (Acts 2:42). This unity is essential and central, because it mirrors in the world the unity and the love prevailing between the Father and the Son. It is never secondary, but belongs to the being and the reality of the Church on earth. Whoever is satisfied with the partitionment of the Church in a broken-up world and who explains everything in the light of psychological, sociological and other factors, has not understood the sense of the New Testament. All variations in the New Testament Church fall within the circle of the one body of Christ: together with all the redeemed … (Eph. 3:18)

Whoever then also on the ground of the New Testament cries out from the heart to seek for unity, and who with Calvin would travel to the ocean’s end to do something for unity, does nothing more than what obviously belongs to the being of the Church and what must appear as an immanent dynamic of the reality of the body of Christ.

It is exactly in this connection that a grave danger arises. We live in a tom and fragmented world and everywhere we hear a cry for unity and togetherness. To achieve unity, no doubt we can expect, so it is argued, that a certain measure of compromise will have to be entered into—the possibilities having been considered—but that certainly, somehow in this compromise unity and fellowship will become visible. Many are under the impression that there is only one alternative left to us: unity or destruction.

In the middle of this cry for unity and integration, amidst a threatened and anxious world, we hear also the cry for the unity of the Church. Must it not set itself up as an example to the world to demonstrate what is real unity and fellowship? The answer to this question can be sounded so positively that people want to push through to unity in every possible manner, because the time is short. Unity becomes a watchword in relation to the tearing apart of the world and involved with our weakness over against the forces that threaten us, so that men want to force a human construction of unity: now or never!

In this understandable drive toward unity it is possible that unity becomes separated from the uniqueness of the Church. We come into a parallel between the unity of the world and the unity of the Church. Men will thereby come to compromise in favor of unity, and the term acquires only numerical meaning. Men separate “unity” from “uniqueness” and through this fall into the danger of losing what belongs to the message of the New Testament, that this unity concerns the unity of this Church, of the body of Christ, wherein there can be no discussion of compromise but only of fellowship in faith and love. Whoever seeks this unity let him consider the being of the Church, her foundation, her hope and expectation, her calling in the world, her single-voiced witness, wherein the world may not for one instant be in doubt concerning the content of the witness of the Church. The unity of the Church means not that there is only one Church, but that this Church is one, this Church of Jesus Christ.

There are many unities in the world, but the unity of the Church is completely unique, absolutely perfect through her tie to the Head of the Church, and only out of this uniqueness can the Church fulfill her great calling in the world. The whole struggle for ecumenicity is centered around the connection between the unity and uniqueness of the Church. This uniqueness is not a fabricated uniqueness, but it is reality out of the center, out of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the Church knows nothing else than Jesus Christ and him crucified. The “togetherness” of fellowship is determined entirely by the gathering together of the love of Christ. That is also the great task in the Church of our times, that she is not called to unity in general, but that she is called to this unity, this responsibility; that the world may believe.…

An introverted church—even though it be unified—is fruitless in the world. It is in its unity not directed toward the world, but only toward itself. In the New Testament we see plainly that the Church that is conscious of its unity and of its uniqueness directs itself naturally toward the world. She who has been called out of darkness to the marvellous light, witnesses of this light to the world. She herself knows of the grace which has had to conquer many dark depths and therefore she testifies out of her mysteries to the overwhelming power of the gospel of grace in the world. If the Church loses this uniqueness, she is also no more an offense to the world, no more as a flock of sheep in the middle of the wolves, according to the Word of Christ. The Church will never be attacked by the world because of her “unity” but above all and ever again because of her unique witness that is not according to men and that will always be a sign which shall be spoken against (Luke 2:34).

In this “uniqueness” there is no concern for special qualities of people or of believers who wish to be “different” from others! But it concerns that uniqueness of the Church that belongs to her being and wherein the old man—in the world and also in the Church!—is denied for his preservation. And there is nothing that the world needs more than the signs of the unity and the uniqueness of the Church. The uniqueness shall then be strengthened out of a single-voiced witness and so there shall come the fulfilment of the prophecy of Zechariah (8:23): “in those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, we will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.”

So then is the unity in the uniqueness a powerful witness in the world. That the world may believe in the mystery of the coming of Jesus Christ and in the unique witness concerning him, the light will then break, also over a broken world. In her word and in her works then shall the Church of Jesus Christ be a living example to the world as to what the unity of the Father and the Son means over against the lack of unity which is diabolical and is from him who confuses all things and sets forth the works of darkness—until the coming of the peace that shall redeem the world, which Isaiah saw coming in the future and wherein unity shall have come to full reality, “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). Out of the knowledge of the Lord shall the demon of division find his end in destruction, and of this the Church in her unity and in her unique message is the great sign for the world.

“the empire-changing force

that rocked the world”

A remarkable compound of circumstances offers the Church its supreme opportunity. Man’s need for redemption is no greater, but it is more apparent. In an era of cosmic frustration accentuated by the monotonous failure and futility of man’s schemes, thoughtful men reluctantly admit the bankruptcy of human ingenuity. Quiet desperation holds the world in shock while its very survival is threatened by the consummate progress of man’s genius and the only peace is a “truce of terror,” an “immoral deadlock.” Men do not need Christ more, but they are probably more aware (and less articulate) of their need than ever before.

Meanwhile two contradictions beg to be resolved. One, unprecedented church membership and religious interest accompanied by a phenomenal increase in secularism and crime; two, elaborate discussion of ecumenicity accompanied by increased institutionalism. What will bridge the gap between authentic Christianity and mere religious interest and between ecumenicity and institutionalism? The answer is an infusion of the vigorous, empire-changing force that rocked the world to its foundations in the first century.

Thoughtful reading in Acts engenders nostalgia for the flourishing faith of the New Testament Church. Is it possible to recapture the climate of Acts 2:46–47? “And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.”

Dr. Luke reported that the Apostolic Church “continued steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42). It is neither accidental nor incidental that this is a matter of sacred record. One feels intuitively that this brief statement preserved by the Spirit is the clue to New Testament faith. This simple program generated the spontaneity, love and holiness—the power that turned the world upside down. This was the distilled essence of discipleship.

The deepest, highest, broadest expression of authentic Christianity is implicit in “fellowship.” It was the heart and core of unity in the first century—the key to a dynamic witness (“Lo how they love one another”). Fellowship is the inescapable sign of the Spirit’s rule in hearts and conversely, its absence may be taken as evidence that the Spirit is “grieved” or “quenched.” Whatever traditions have been added in the accumulative process of centuries, no subsequent program could be a worthy substitute. Fellowship is the hall-mark of authenticity!

Picture the unreserved excitement of a first-century Christian community as they breathlessly gathered to hear the latest word from Peter or Paul. Think of the questions, the prodding of the messenger, the earnest discussion, the joy, the prayer that would ensue. Imagine how they would reminisce, how the “eye-witnesses” would be urged to recount their experiences with Jesus. They never tired hearing these unspeakably precious accounts. And as persecution bore in, driving them underground, how hungrily they would grasp every opportunity to be together to share priceless memories or the latest apostolic word.

Here lay the secret of the unity, the power, the witness of the Church. No difficulty, suffering or threat would be allowed to deprive them of fellowship. It was paramount, not because a council decided it should be done, but because this was the way the Spirit of God moved them. It was not the result of formal deliberation by “officials” but the spontaneous effect of the Spirit magnetizing them with a love that transcended everything and bound them, with all their differences, in unbroken togetherness.

“Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). This makes fellowship unique—infinitely more than merely getting together for its own sake. It is vertical as well as horizontal, divine as well as human. The one condition is togetherness in his name. His presence is not limtied to holy places or practices or particular organizations. Wherever two or three gather in his name he is there. It is the tendency to regiment his presence to “properly ordained” institutions that is partially responsible for the rift in his Church—one reason we hear more about ecumenicity and see less of it than perhaps in any former generation.

Mere institutionalism is the foe of fellowship, of ecumenicity, of the Christian witness. God is a God of order and his work should be conducted “decently and in order.” This will involve organization, but the Holy Spirit is the Administrator of the divine order and he will not sanction organization that divides brethren. Institutionalism is competitive and defensive, provoking the feeling that what prospers one work does so at the expense of others, making it impossible for Christians to rejoice in any and all work that is done effectively for Christ. Unless a work is under “acceptable auspices” (what is the criterion for this?) no matter how fruitful it may be, it is suspect, coming under the censure of traditional institutions. And this is as true of the so-called independents as of the denominations today. Until ecumenicity includes “all who in every place call on the name of the Lord” it remains a caricature.

There is justification for optimism however. The Billy Graham Crusades draw together clergy and laity without reference to institutional lines. Not all groups are included by any means, but those not included bear the responsibility for their exclusion. Even more encouraging is the spontaneous birth of fellowship groups all over America. It is not an organized movement. The groups are independent of each other, in fact not particularly aware of each other, but they bear striking likeness to the New Testament fellowship. They cannot be labeled and are not the so-called “come-outer” or splinter type. They are not pre-occupied with criticism of the denominations. Actually the members are usually loyal to their own churches and represent almost every denomination. Counting on the presence of Christ, they meet to study the Bible, share Christian experience and pray. The more familiar one becomes with these groups the more he feels their affinity with the spontaneous, dynamic faith recorded in Acts.

Furthermore, one of the brightest hopes that the revival of religious interest may explode into genuine spiritual awakening, is their earnest concern with the “Apostles’ doctrine.” Abysmal ignorance of the Bible is probably the greatest single reason why the current religious revival has not been truly Christian. An awakened interest in religion cannot be kindled into true spiritual revival except it be nourished on the Word of God!

The Church has come a long way in two millenniums, but she has not outgrown her need of fellowship. Details may be added, but fellowship ought to be at the heart of the program. Neglect it, and it will break out spontaneously wherever the Spirit finds receptive, hungry hearts. If not allowed to happen within rigid framework of institutionalized order, it will spawn without in homes, offices, plants and schools. If the organized church is wise, she will not disregard this movement or criticize it. She will learn from it, encourage it, embrace it, promote it.

Without repudiating any of the great traditions that bind us to the Church in every age, let us not lose the greatest tradition uniting us with those of the first century whose blood became the seed of the Church in all subsequent generations. “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3).

“voluntary and not regimented,

spiritual and not mechanical”

W. BOYD HUNT

Of the figures of speech Paul uses for the Church, none has so captivated the twentieth-century mind as the metaphor of the body. Doubtless this is due in part to the widespread influence of philosophies of organism, associated with such names as Bergson and Whitehead. But whatever the reason, others of Paul’s metaphors, such as building and bride, have received but scant attention. Even Paul’s basic concept of the Church as a fellowship in the Holy Spirit has had by comparison a negligible influence.

To be sure, the detailed investigation of the rich variations and subtle nuances in Paul’s references to the Church as a body is a rewarding study. Entire volumes have been devoted to the subject, such as Ernest Best’s remarkable contribution, One Body in Christ. For the present, however, technical distinctions must be laid aside, and it must suffice to take body as simply synonymous with Church. The theme of this symposium, “The Body Christ Heads,” is then understood to raise the question of the nature of the Church in current thought in the light of the biblical revelation.

In general, contemporary opinions as to the nature of the Church fall into two types. Some writers stress the Church as the inclusive agency of salvation. Others stress the fellowship of responsible believers as an exclusive community of saints.

According to the one type the Church is visible and universal and stands in organic relation to Christ. At times the Church is even identified with the actual ressurrection body of Christ. More often, however, interpreters are less mystical and prefer instead to speak of the Church as the continuing incarnation (an atonement?) of Christ. Invariably this type of thinking is sacramental: the life of the head of the body is mediated to the members in some special way through the clergy; infants are baptized into membership in the body; life in the body is sustained by participation in the Lord’s Supper.

According to the other type the Church in the present order is a local and voluntary fellowship of baptized believers, banded together in the Holy Spirit to find and to do the will of Christ their head. While in the earlier view a centralized organization of the universal, visible body of believers is not only conceivable but is the actual end sought, in this view each local church is independent and democratic, looking immediately to Christ for direction. Any general organization is for promotional and cooperative purposes only. Larger bodies are in no sense ecclesiastical in nature or function. Though sometimes called the sect type, this is really the least sectarian. Its adherents have been the last to persecute nonconformists.

Once these two types become clearly defined, the means each adopts to further its conception of the Church in the present order is self-evident. One tries to accomplish this end by organizational and sacramental means, the other by spiritual and ethical. In the latter view, the oneness of believers in Christ is actual in God’s sight, but this actuality finds visible expression only as Christ, as the Saviour and Lord of the body, brings believers together voluntarily and spontaneously in the Holy Spirit. Organizational manipulations are rejected as attempted shortcuts for the long arduous road to a unity morally conditioned.

When we ask which of these two types is the true one, the answer is obvious if the New Testament is held to be the final authority. But strangely enough this is seldom the case. J. Robert Nelson in The Realm of Redemption, an invaluable study of contemporary ecclesiological thought, reminds us that few of today’s church leaders look to the New Testament for the model of church form and order. Nelson himself wonders why anyone would think a first-century pattern could be relevant to the changed conditions of the twentieth century.

But is all we find in the New Testament simply a product of the first century? Or is this a unique inspiration raising the New Testament to a dimension of contemporaneousness and constituting it in principle an enduring authority, even in matters of form and order?

It is possible, of course, to appeal to the New Testament in such a way as to beg the real question. This is done when the authority of Scripture is invoked as though its message lent itself to infallible interpretation, which it never quite does. The New Testament is always more than its interpretations. The message abides, but creeds, confessions and theologies are subject to continuous revision. The essential quality of biblical revelation is that of the one who inspired it—Spirit.

But if the New Testament as illumined by the Holy Spirit in experience is taken as the final authority, then whatever contradicts this norm must be rejected. Thus we are confronted by such questions as: Where in the New Testament is a visible, universal, organized Church? Where in the New Testament is anything but a functional distinction between the clergy and laity? Where in the New Testament is infant baptism? Where in the New Testament is salvation a sacramental matter involving an organic relation to the Church instead of a personal commitment to Jesus Christ?

If the Church in the New Testament is primarily a spiritual fellowship of baptized believers, if organization is functional and not essential to salvation, if the cohesiveness of believers is voluntary, cooperative, democratic and ultimately local, if believers are answerable directly to the Lord Jesus Christ both as individuals and as the fellowship of the local church—then should not this be the pattern for today? How can we justify, other than by the appeal to the superiority of tradition over Scripture, departures from this norm?

No one, it is hoped, would deny that believers everywhere have an obligation to oneness. In God’s sight they are already one in Christ, in whom there is neither bond nor free, male nor female, white nor black. Such distinctions have been made forever irrelevant in the fellowship of the Spirit. But in experience this oneness is a spiritual cohesiveness deeply moral in quality. It is the expression of maturity of life in the Spirit. It cannot be realized on any other basis.

The New Testament materials are instructive here. Often the early Christians voluntarily disagreed, much the same as different denominations disagree today, nor did this disagreement destroy their obligation to oneness. To the extent that the particular believers involved were spiritually mature, to that extent we may assume they disagreed in love, preferring rather to agree. But each was convinced that he must be true to his own understanding of the mind of Christ. Actually this was the only way the body of Christ could be genuinely built up in experience, since in this present order no man’s understanding is infallible and therefore each needs the check and balance of the other. Apart from the unique quality of inspiration entering into the production of the New Testament itself, no Christian or group of Christians, even in the apostolic age, had a guaranteed corner on God. Even Peter had to be corrected by Paul.

Take for instance the new church at Antioch (Acts, chaps. 11 and 13). Antioch was impelled directly by the Spirit to launch the first missionary journey under Barnabas and Saul. Later, when the original church at Jerusalem objected, messengers from Antioch were sent to seek to justify its departure from Jerusalem’s pattern. Acts (chap. 15) shows that a measure of accord between the two churches was reached, but there is little evidence that Jerusalem ever shared with Antioch in the Gentile mission movement. Yet notice that in the providence of God Antioch did not wait on Jerusalem. Obedience to the Spirit was more priceless than unity at the awful cost of compromise.

Of course this trust in the local congregation under the Holy Spirit is a radical thing, just as the believer’s liberty in the Holy Spirit is a radical thing—requiring that each is competent to interpret the Bible for himself. But it is glorious in its potentiality. Surely it is self-evident that the higher organizational unity is voluntary and not regimented, spiritual and not mechanical, cooperative (from the bottom up) and not ecclesiastically imposed (from the top down). What greater challenge could there be than the realization of the cohesiveness issuing spontaneously and freely from spiritual maturity? A unitedness achieved by any lesser means must surely be less than the best.

So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:19–22 ASV).

“the apostolic emphasis

… is unity of doctrine”

J. THEODORE MUELLER

Perhaps no more perplexing problem faces Christendom today than that of church union. Not all denominations pursue this objective from the same point of view or for the same reason. As Prof. Martin Franzmann points out in Religion in Life (Spring, 1957), some approach the problem of unity from the viewpoint of “a club, loosely organized and broadly inclusive,” while others seek unity as a “standard about which men may rally” (p. 213). Thus the matter of unity, though one of “basic simplicity,” becomes one of “practical complexity and difficulty” (p. 207). Nevertheless, all concerned Christians desire to see the Church united in both its Christian profession and its practical application of that profession to life.

The question suggests the consideration of New Testament emphases that are vital for Christian union. We find some of these summed up in a practical, hortatory way in the second and third chapters of Revelation, where the Holy Spirit speaks to the churches in clear and soul-searching words. Christians may do well to consider these emphases in their study of the unity question.

There is in these two dynamic chapters no stress whatever on outward church organization as it is being urged in many areas of Christendom today. The seven representative churches of Asia, humanly speaking, were greatly in need of such organization, for they were troubled by spiritual foes in many ways. But nowhere does the Holy Spirit suggest any group organization of these churches as a means of offense or defense. Every congregation is addressed as an independent unit and is exhorted both to preserve the doctrine delivered to it by the apostolic proclamation and to reject all errors opposing that doctrine. That, too, is the method of St. Paul, who consistently admonishes the local churches to preserve the apostolic doctrine and practice together with their sister churches. “We have no such custom, neither the churches of God” (1 Cor. 11:16). “As in all churches of the saints, let your women keep silence in the churches” (1 Cor. 14:34). The apostolic emphasis is always on unity of doctrine and practice, but never on external church organization. Church organizations, of course, are not forbidden, but they presuppose unity in faith and life.

Again and again there resounds in the letters addressed to the seven churches in Asia the meaningful refrain: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” The Church is to hear and to obey the divine Word. It is not to argue or to deny it. Much less is it to surrender the divine truth to errorists or to change the Gospel of Christ into a human philosophy by which the cross of Christ is emptied of its saving content (1 Cor. 1:18). Today the Spirit speaks to the churches only in the Holy Scriptures, for “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). The churches are to teach till the end of time all things that Christ has commanded them (Matt. 28:20). Unless Christians are ready to abide by God’s inspired Word as set forth in the Holy Scriptures, listening to it as authoritatively binding upon conscience, church unity in its New Testament sense cannot be accomplished.

To the troubled church in Smyrna the divine Spirit says: “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (2:11). The church in Smyrna faced persecution, tribulation and poverty; it was, therefore, admonished to be faithful to the Lord, “the first and the last, which was dead and is alive” (v. 8). To the loyal church at Philadelphia the Spirit says: “Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (3:11). It is only if the churches are faithful to him that is “holy and true and has the key of David,” who “openeth and no man shutteth; who shutteth and no man openeth,” that they can be truly united in Christ, the divine-human Redeemer of the world. Outside the Christ of the Bible and his Word there is no unity that is pleasing to God. “Hear ye him” (Matt. 17:5).

The Holy Spirit in Revelation 2 and 3 praises and rebukes. He praises the churches that hate the deeds of the Nicolaitanes (2:6) and do not deny Christ’s name (3:8), but faithfully keep the Word of his patience (3:10). He rebukes the congregations that hold the doctrine of Balaam (2:14) and suffer the woman Jezebel and her fornication (2:20, 21). Wherever anti-Christian spirits and errors are tolerated there can be no church unity in the sense of the Spirit of God. The Church must say an absolute yes to every Word of Christ as taught in the Holy Scriptures. In the same breath it must say a decisive and final no to everything that is anti-Christian in doctrine and practice. That is the prerequisite of true church union. There may be lawful cooperation among differing denominations in externals, though also here a caution is in place. But unless the churches fully agree in matters of doctrine and practice they are not truly united in the sense of that unity which the Lord demands. It is true, there is the spiritual unity of the “communion of saints,” that is, of all true believers in Christ. But this Christ-centered unity of the Una Sancta should lead all Christians to an ever greater agreement in doctrine and life. They should always strive for it in obedience to the divine Word. It is God’s will that “ye all speak the same thing, and there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Cor. 1:10). Where that unity cannot be achieved, true believers, bound by their honest convictions, will follow the course of denominational separation, though never failing to speak the truth in love that all may grow up into him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ (Eph. 4:25).

The church to which the Holy Spirit in Revelation administered the severest reproof was that of Laodicea. It was a church that was neither hot nor cold and so egregiously indifferent to truth and error. It neither insisted upon adherence to the divine truth, nor did it rebuke those who taught error. Since it was lukewarm, it was so offensive to the Lord that he threatened to spew it out of his mouth. Has this condemnation perhaps befallen large areas of the Church today? Is not perhaps the lukewarmness, the spiritual indifference to truth and error in large parts of present-day Christendom, the impelling cause of the high pressure methods exerted upon all denominations to bring them within church organizations where truth and error are being taught side by side? That, we believe, should be a matter of conscientious consideration to all who love the Word of God. Let them carefully study God’s inspired letters to the seven churches and heed the emphases of his Holy Spirit for the Church’s salvation.

We Quote:

FRED P. CORSON

Bishop, The Methodist Church

Let the Church know the world it is to serve, but let the Church go forth to serve in the consciousness of its own nature, its authority, its mission and its power.… Wesley found his doctrine of the Church in the Bible. Cutting through human traditions he saw the Church of the first century as “a congregation of faithful men in which the pure word is preached and the sacraments duly administered according to Christ’s ordinances.” … The Church misjudges its constituency when it assumes that standards of truth are no longer looked for nor responded to. The Church defeats itself when it exchanges its divine revelation for a materialistic relativism and seeks to be heard by its facility in spiritualizing current opinion. Where there have been recent notable stirrings of religious interest they have been produced by proclamation of truth and not by a forum on its alternatives and relative merits.… We must revive the language of revealed truth. Granting man the power to decide, the Church must open for him the Book which Protestantism holds as the rule and guide to man’s faith and practice.—In “The Episcopal Address” of the Bishops of the Methodist Church to the General Conference, 1956.

ARTHUR J. MOORE

Bishop, The Methodist Church

It is evident that for preachers and people alike the urgency of soul which characterized our fathers must be recovered. We must speak again of the ghastly reality of sin, the atonement of Christ, of justification by faith, of the eternal profit of goodness, and of the everlasting loss to those who will not have Christ. Our gospel must be suited to the anguish of these times. But we will not help the seeking man to find God by underestimating his need for redemption or by declaring that the cross is only an example of how a good man could bear pain. Here is our chance to renew the springs of religious life and thereby to lift the level of moral and spiritual life perceptibly higher than it has been.—In Together, May, 1957.

“the Bible … is authoritative

for the evangelical”

HAROLD JOHN OCKENGA

I am a Congregationalism a pastor of a Congregational church and a member of the Suffolk West Association of Congregational and Christian Churches. I believe in the Congregational form of church government, which grants autonomy to the local congregations but unites these congregations in fellowship in associations of churches, local, national and international. Congregationalism has demonstrated its genius for unity with diversity of conviction and practice. Now, in the name of unity all this is being destroyed.

On June 25, 1957, the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church formed the United Church of Christ. The constitution for the new church, a statement of faith, and the coordination of boards and agencies of the two churches will be worked out in detail by committees appointed by the Uniting General Synod. The result will be an authoritarian church with new government, creed, central control of boards, agencies, institutions and congregations, but no doctrinal harmony. In an association where the vast preponderance of ministers are liberal, such centralized control will be unendurable for an evangelical minister and for an evangelical church. In the name of unity another division must eventuate. At least Park Street Church and its pastors will remain Congregational and evangelical.

Does this mean that I have no passion for the unity of the body of Christ, no desire for fellowship with the saints, no concern for obedience to the headship of Christ? Exactly the opposite is true! But I refuse to sell my integrity and liberty for a man-made unity. This underscores the challenge to Christians to restudy the New Testament, to discover and adopt the biblical basis or principles of unity.

At the outset an evangelical Christian will derive his source of instruction on unity from propositional revelation which presents the minimal prerequisites for the fellowship of believers. This biblical revelation is creedal concerning God, man, sin, redemption, judgment and life. An evangelical is committed to this body of biblical propositions as the irreducible minimum of doctrinal requirements for fellowship. The Bible, not some exigency, is authoritative for the evangelical. What then does the Bible teach?

The Bible teaches that the Church is one: one body in which there are many members (1 Cor. 12:12; Eph. 4:16); one bride betrothed to Jesus Christ in mystical union (Eph. 5:24–27); one house which is the temple of God (Eph. 2:21, 22; 1 Peter 2:4–8); one communion in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 10:16, 17; 12:13). Into this organism enters every repentant, believing soul who is “born of God,” “born of the Spirit,” “born of the Word,” “born again.” Immediately there begins a sharing of life, of status, of destiny by all such. The relationship is primarily to Christ the head, the bridegroom, the cornerstone, the elder brother, the baptizer with the Spirit, but also it is to every person holding like relationship and position. Inescapably correlative to the former is the latter. Hence, all Christians are united in Christ.

Christ is the only redeemer of God’s elect. “He loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify it and cleanse it, with the washing of water by the word” (Eph. 5:25, 26). There is a unity of the saved of all ages, whether Adam, Abraham, David, Paul or you. The only way to God is through Jesus Christ (John 14:6; Acts 4:12). To whatsoever form of the Gospel (Gal. 3:8) men may respond they are brought to God through Christ and a relationship to him (Rom. 3:25, 26). Hence, they are united to one another by the covenant of redemption and are called “the children of Abraham” (Gal. 3:7, 29).

Christ prayed for the oneness of these redeemed (John 17:21). The prayer itself states the nature of the unity as spiritual: “As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee.” Such unity had not yet occurred in the history of redemption. Christ had promised to build his Church (Matt. 16:18). At Pentecost he founded his Church by baptizing the living believers into his spiritual body, the Church (1 Cor. 12:13; Acts 2:1–4). The redeemed of pre-Pentecostal eras were united in this body as a result of Calvary, thus becoming one. The high-priestly prayer of Christ for unity was answered at Pentecost—and at Calvary.

For Calvary alone was the ground or basis of Christian unity. By that sufficient and efficacious sacrifice the sins which were covered by Old Testament sacrifices were taken away (Rom. 3:26; Heb. 9:12–14). From this evangelicals demand faith in the death of Christ for our sins and the resurrection of Christ for our justification (1 Cor. 15:1–3) as the prerequisite of spiritual unity in the body of Christ. That Christ died is an historical fact. That Christ “died for our sins” is doctrine, and is also a fact. The acceptance of such doctrine is essential to salvation (1 Cor. 15:2) and to participation in the body of Christ. The evangelical declares that this spiritual unity already exists and that the manifestation of that unity depends upon the right exegesis of the Bible and obedience to its authority. Let Christians restudy the Word on questions that divide, with a predisposition to obedience regardless of how that obedience may cut across vested interests, personal affiliations or organizational lines. A realignment of Christian forces must be made today. Old lines of warfare and conflict are infiltrated and vacillating. The new unity will be of those committed to the biblical Christ as Lord and head of the Church. This will mean expression by division from those who preach “another gospel which is not another” and who worship “another Christ.”

If Christ is the head of the Church, we Christians must seek to think about the Church as he thought, to feel about the Church as he felt and to act concerning the Church as he acted. Christ loved the Church. Does deep, passionate, moving love of the one Church impel us? Christ gave himself for the Church. Will we deny ourselves, sacrifice for and serve the Church, even until death? Christ cleansed and purified the Church. Are we actively engaged in promoting the purity of the Church?

Let us translate this into the figure of a symphony. For too long we have resembled the pre-concert individualistic tuning of our instruments in discordant confusion. Too long each has been singing his own little song, forgetting about the other fellow. The world audience is tiring of this confusion and has no pleasure in it. Is it not time for the Great Conductor to tap his baton, for silence to ensue, and then for all emotion, life and action to be directed in glorious harmony under his leadership? In the proportion that we acknowledge his mystical presence and headship, we Christians will have unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.

“outward conformity common

… in a totalitarian age”

W. STANFORD REID

Probably that which is most characteristic of midcentury Protestantism is its stress upon the importance of ecclesiastical unity. Denominational divisions are frequently referred to as “the shame of the Church,” and every effort is made to bring about a “New Testament unity.” There is, however, also another emphasis in the New Testament, and that is on the “pluriformity” of the Church, a concept which arises out of its doctrine of unity. The trouble today is often that because one’s interpretation of the Church’s unity is in error, one forgets also its pluriformity.

To the New Testament the basic principle of Christian unity is Christ himself. The stress is at all times and everywhere upon the centrality of his divine-human person and his fulfillment of the office of Prophet, Priest and King. The Lord Jesus repeatedly stated that he was the heart of his own teaching, so that faith in and love towards him meant unity with him. This doctrine was likewise stressed by the Apostles in their teaching. The fundamental requirement for anyone to be a Christian was that he should believe in and serve Christ (Acts 8:37; 16:37; Rom. 4:24, 25; Gal. 2:16).

Such faith and love towards Christ meant that the Christian was effectually bound to him as part of his mystical body, the Church (1 Cor. 12). He is so bound by the inworking power and activity of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love who joins together all the people of God (1 Cor. 12:13, 14). Thus all Christians have the unity of one fellowship with the Father (1 John 1:3). This is summed up in Paul’s words to the Ephesians: “one hope and one Spirit, as you are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all who is over all, and through all, and in you all” (4:4 f).

Such would appear to be the unity for which Christ prayed his great high-priestly prayer recorded in John 17. He did not assume that the Son would be absorbed into the Father, nor did he ask that all Christians would be absorbed into one undifferentiated mass. Rather he prayed that the unity of Christians might be similar to that of the Father and the Son. Thus the oneness desired both by the Lord and his Apostles was that which comes from an agreement of heart and mind, and which manifests itself in true fellowship. That is why John could declare, “hereby we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14). Christian unity then, according to the New Testament, is not a matter primarily of organization but of the “communion of the saints.”

Such a concept of unity prevented any attempt to establish a rigid uniformity. The New Testament continually reiterates that men are both different, possessing various gifts and capacities (1 Cor. 12), and that they are also sinners. Both uniformity and perfection, therefore, are impossible of attainment in this world. Consequently there does not seem to have been a striving for that outward conformity which is so common in our own totalitarian age.

The “modern” monolithic attitude appeared once during Christ’s ministry when his disciples complained of the man who was casting out demons in the Lord’s name, but was not following with them. Christ’s reply was that they were not to forbid him for, since he spoke in Christ’s name he must be a follower, although he was not of the apostolic group. In this connection Dean Alford’s comment is very much to the point:

“… all those who, notwithstanding outward differences of communion and government, believe in and preach Jesus Christ without bitterly and uncharitably opposing each other, are hereby declared to be helpers forward of each other’s work” (The Greek Testament, 6th ed., 1868, on Mk. 9:38 f).

Such liberal point of view seems to have been carried on by the Apostles who had apparently learned their lesson from their earlier experience. This comes out clearly in their dealings with the differences between the Jewish and Gentile sections of the Church. The Jewish Christians apparently demanded that the Gentiles must conform to all the law of Moses. But to this the Apostles, as can be seen in Acts 15 and Galatians 1 and 2, opposed the freedom of the Gospel. They insisted that the primary criterion of an individual’s Christianity was unity with Christ by faith and obedience. When that had been established, the members of the Church were to treat each other with charity, allowing each other to follow the dictates of conscience enlightened by the Spirit speaking through the Scriptures. Thus they did not require the Jews to give up all their ceremonies, nor did they require the Gentiles to conform to Jewish ritual.

From this it would appear that the Apostolic approach was much more liberal than that of many Christians since their day, because more truly dependent upon the Spirit of God. It was the Spirit who was to give unity, not the legislation or compulsion of man. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17). It is only in this liberty that ecclesiastical pluriformity, and therefore, true Christian unity, may advance.

“… organic rather than organizational”

SAMUEL M. SHOEMAKER

There seems to me no better way to approach this all-important question than to consult J. B. Phillips’ preface to his translation of the Acts called The Young Church in Action. He appears to understand in a remarkable way the flavor and power of the early Church. Consider these two sentences: “… these early Christians were led by the Spirit to the main task of bringing people to God through Christ and were not permitted to enjoy fascinating sidetracks,” and, “… members of the fellowship of the early Church appear to have been the necessary agents between men seeking God and God himself.”

This evangelistic passion must have been their second enthusiasm. Their first enthusiasm surely was the great fact and event of the Person in whom they lived, Jesus Christ crucified and risen. This was the all-embracing reality which overshadowed everything else. Even our deepest experiences of him today seem pale by comparison, too much modified by our present outlook, our own temperaments, or the brands of Christianity to which we have been exposed. We seem unable to recapture the pristine glory of that early age.

When we look for reasons for this, we can only come up with the thought that the difference between them and us lies in their self-forgetful and intense awareness that they had been redeemed by Jesus, and that he was alive in their midst. This represents for us, not a “neglected emphasis,” for evangelical Christianity is always proclaiming him and his divineness and his resurrection and his continued presence; but we seem to see here rather something given and supernatural which no human “emphasis” can possibly recall. Perhaps we have too much faith in the “truth” proclaimed, and too little faith in him and his energizing Holy Spirit. The “experience” of Christ and the Holy Spirit was what made them different, yet we cannot pursue this “experience” for itself. We can only receive and proclaim the truth and pray for the presence of the Holy Spirit in our innermost hearts to be the motive force of all our living, changing us and our procedures all the time.

Yet it soon became their “main task” to “bring people to God through Christ.” I suspect they needed no evangelistic urging to do this, and that they could no more keep from doing it than a spring can keep from pouring forth water. I wonder whether any suggestion of techniques for doing this was ever given them, though I have always suspected that such a story as our Lord’s dealing with the woman at the well may have been recalled to them by him precisely for teaching purposes. (Whence came that story anyway, if not directly from him? It seems dubious that the woman would have rehearsed it all in detail.) Their witness must have been really a witness of the whole Christian community, “forced through the channels of a single heart,” as Myers says. Their oneness in Christ was a given and organic thing.

What did they say when they witnessed? Did it all concern him and his risen-ness, or did they recount also the wonderful things that had happened, e.g to St. Paul, or mix their direct witness to their risen Lord with some of the story of what had happened to themselves through him? If so, they gave us, I think, a lead on the way we need to witness today. It has always been necessary to witness more about events than about ideas—the great event of Christ, and the lesser but to each of us tremendous event of Christ’s coming to us.

Dr. Phillips speaks also of the “days before (the Church) ever became fat and short of breath through prosperity, or muscle-bound by over-organization.” The Church was then a group of close-knit friends in Christ, meeting in somebody’s house for their prayers and holy communion, having to make their living in the same world as pagans, but actually centered in Christ and in “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” What must it have been like for one of them to meet another for the first time and realize the amazing bond that already bound them? There can have been no “church work” as we understand it, only much carrying of one another’s burdens and much concern for incoming new believers. Worship, fellowship, and direct spiritual service—nothing else—what wonder they had such power! And can we expect to recapture anything of what they knew unless we realize that the real core of the Church is not a set of interlocking organizations, but a great many interpersonal relationships, people bound together in what they do because they are first bound together in him in whom they believe? The early Church was organic rather than organizational. Someone calls our contemporary religion “committeeized Christianity.” Of course we have to have some organization and we hope the organic will permeate the organizational. But it will not, I fear, unless we do more to put it first. People are terribly rifted and lonely in our churches. We must find better ways to create personal and small-group relationships and spend more of our time “bringing people to God through Christ.”

Much is said today of worship and much experimentation of a liturgical kind is going on. This may serve good ends if it is matched by personal dedication and group interpersonal exchange. There must have been an intentness and simplicity about the worship of the early Church that contrasts sharply with our stately, pompous, often sentimental and unreal efforts at worship. One imagines them “lost in wonder, love and praise” for their Lord. Unless a deeper experience of our Lord, a costlier dedication of ourselves to him, and a truer insight into the nature of Christian fellowship and some beginnings of experience of it go into our worship—and unless we come away from it more really burdened for the total need of mankind with specific responsibility accepted by ourselves—it is difficult to see how our worship can ever approach what worship must have been in that early company, so reverent (as we must imagine) in its Holy Communion, so free in its congregational expression of joyous faith!

But I think we must say two things about our natural tendency to look back to the early Church for inspiration: First, I doubt whether it was always and in all things as unified, sanctified and powerful as we think it to have been; and second, the Holy Spirit is alive today. He has never been withdrawn from his Church. He might even have far greater and better things for us than he had for them at the first, if only we would wait on him, pray to him, try to keep in step with him in his present revelation to us. Whitsunday as one day, with appropriate theological and liturgical reminders, is no substitute for a Church that lives in the Holy Spirit as a fish lives in water, or as we live in air. I do not believe any of us knows the real need of the world or of the Church, nor how it is to be met; but Christ knows both. It is my own belief that if we all imbibed the truth and sought with all our hearts the experience that is set forth in Chapter 4 of Bishop Newbegin’s The Household of God, the chapter called “The Community of the Holy Spirit,” we might put ourselves in the way of the fresh “opening” and awakening that he may will for us, if only he can get us quiet and obedient and loving and forgiving enough to receive it.

END

We Quote:

JAMES S. STEWART

Professor of New Testament, University of Edinburgh

“The fact is, belief in missions and belief in Christ stand and fall together. To say ‘I believe that God so loved the world that in Christ He gave everything He had, gave His very self’, to use such words not lightly or conventionally but in spirit and in truth, means that the one who uses them binds himself irrevocably to make self-giving the controlling principle of life: and this is the very essence of mission. To put it otherwise, the concern for world evangelisation is not something tacked on to a man’s personal Christianity, which he may take or leave as he chooses: it is rooted indefeasibly in the character of the God who has come to us in Jesus … To accept Christ is to enlist under a missionary banner.”—In Thine is the Kingdom, p. 14 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957).

Cover Story

The Body Christ Heads: A Symposium

G. C. Berkouwer, Richard C. Halverson, W. Boyd Hunt and more

A Symposium

Our generation is unsurpassed for voluble discussion and debate over the relevant principles of the unity of the Church and of the theology of Christian worship.

Such preoccupation was foreign to First Century Christianity. The early followers of Jesus Christ manifested unquestioned union in Christ and unquestioned confidence in the great verities of special revelation. Already operative with one accord in Christ, they required no organizational directives for an undivided union.

Contemporary ecumenical inquiry unveils a striking departure from this apostolic setting. Today’s professing Church is a vast arena of debate: the nature of the Church; the theology of revelation; even the person and work of Jesus Christ comprise this grievous spectacle of ambiguity. Each participant assumes withal his indisputable inclusion in the body Christ heads. This Twentieth Century approach to the problems of Christian fellowship too often exposes, sadly enough, a spiritual community unsure of its moorings, uncertain of its destiny.

Many Protestant churchmen are looking now toward Oberlin, Ohio. Here from September 3–10 a North American Faith and Order study conference of the World Council of Churches will weigh “The Nature of the Unity We Seek.” The sessions will consider not only organizational structures and cultural pressures, but also will wrestle over faithfulness to the eternal Gospel, including the strategic problem of doctrinal agreement and variance.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY has requested seven of its contributing editors, of different denominational affiliations, to discuss neglected emphases in contemporary discussions of the church as a stimulating addition to current reflection on “The Body Christ Heads.”

Contributors

G. C. BERKOUWER is a Dutch Reformed scholar, serving at Free University of Amsterdam as Professor of Systematic Theology. Next to Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, Dr. Berkouwer’s Studies in Dogmatics, now in process of translation, is the most extensive theological effort of our time. His most recent book, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, is a constructive evangelical critique. In the present symposium, Dr. Berkouwer measures current discussions of the Church.

RICHARD C. HALVERSON is a minister of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. He has served since May, 1956, as Associate Executive Director of International Christian Leadership with headquarters in Washington, D. C. He was for nine years Minister of Leadership and Education at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, and is author of the volume Christian Maturity.

W. BOYD HUNT is a Southern Baptist minister. Since 1953 he has been Professor of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, after serving as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Houston from 1946–53. He was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Southwide Executive Commission from 1947–1953 and in 1951 made a round-the-world mission tour.

J. THEODORE MUELLER is a Lutheran scholar who served Concordia Seminary (Missouri Lutheran) for a generation as Professor of Systematic Theology and Exegesis. He began lectures at Concordia in 1920 and now, in his 72nd year, continues on modified service.

HAROLD JOHN OCKENGA is a Congregational minister who has occupied the historic Park Street Church pulpit in Boston since 1936. He was founder and first president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and is currently chairman of the board of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Gordon Divinity School. His writings include Protestant Preaching in Lent and The Church in God.

W. STANFORD REID is a minister of the Church of Canada, and is Associate Professor of History in McGill University, Montreal. He has served on many committees of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and was Convener of the Commission on Estate Admission of the Church in 1955–56. He is author of The Church of Scotland in Lower Canada, Economic History of Great Britain, and Problems in Western Intellectual History Since 1500.

SAMUEL M. SHOEMAKER is rector of Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh. Before coming to Pittsburgh in 1953, he served for 27 years as rector of Calvary Episcopal Church, New York City. He is author of many books, among them Revive Thy Church Beginning with Me, How to Become a Christian, By the Power of God, and The Experiment of Faith.

FRANK E. GAEBELEIN, who contributes to this issue the guest editorial on “The Sacred Life of the Church,” is a minister of the Reformed Episcopal Church. For many years he has been Headmaster of The Stony Brook School. Among his eleven books are Christian Education in a Democracy and The Pattern of God’s Truth: Problems of Integration in Christian Education.

Review of Current Religious Thought: July 22, 1957

Philip Edgecumbe Hughes

An event of some note in the contemporary religious history of Great Britain has been the recent publication of the Report on the Relations between Anglican and Presbyterian Churches. This Report is the outcome of “Conversations” held between representatives of the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Episcopal Church in Scotland and the Presbyterian Church of England. Of the many interesting features of this Report, the signatories to which claim to have made “no more than an exploratory survey,” not the least remarkable is that it is unanimous. Those taking part in these conversations accepted as a presupposition “the conviction that our Lord’s will for his Church is full unity, and that such unity must involve in the end not only agreement as to the truth in Christ, but also a ministry or ministries universally recognized, freedom to interchange ministries, and fulness of sacramental communion throughout Christendom”. This we regard as wholly admirable.

Unity is seen not as a contingent feature of the church’s life, but as “of the essence of it”; whereas disunity is deplored as “a deeply damaging contradiction between message and life”. Further, the Report says that it was common ground among the delegates “that every step towards unity would be a step also towards a more powerful and persuasive evangelism.”

The Church of South India is held up as an example which shows that “unity between Episcopalians and Presbyterians is a practical possibility and not merely a dream of theorists”. But is envisaged that “modifications in the two church systems” are likely to be necessary if unity is to become a reality. Also, in moving forward to “the church that is to be”, mistakes and conflicts of the past must be forgotten.

The perusal of this Report leaves no doubt in the mind that the crucial question around which the conversations revolved was that of Episcopacy. Thus we are informed that “from the Anglican side it was clear that full intercommunion and unity could not be realized apart from Episcopacy”. Despite divergencies in the concept of what constitutes an episcopate, however, “the question of Episcopacy did not prove (as it had sometimes done in the past) an obstacle to discussion but rather a means of its movement along fresh lines”. These “fresh lines” led to the concept of presiding “Bishops-in-presbytery”, who would initially be consecrated by prayer with the laying on of hands both by Anglican bishops and by the Presbytery acting through appointed representatives. In this way, it is maintained, there would be an acceptance of the “historic episcopate” by the Presbyterian Churches and the continuity of the “Apostolic succession” would be safeguarded. The presbytery, it is declared, would still retain “its full and essential place” in the life and government of Presbyterianism, “except that a permanent Bishop-in-Presbytery would take the place of the changing Moderator” and that decisions on doctrinal and constitutional matters “might well have to require” the consent of Presbyterian bishops. In the Episcopalian Churches, on the other hand, lay persons would be solemnly “set apart” to form “an office akin to the Presbyterian eldership,” and lay people would be given “appropriate participation in the government of the church at all levels.”

What it all boils down to is this, that in return for the acceptance by Presbyterianism of Episcopacy, without which full communion would be impossible, “even if”—and this should be carefully noted—“even if otherwise agreement had been reached as to doctrine and practice,” Anglicanism would give the laity more of a say in the affairs of the church. This may be regarded by some as a rather poor quid pro quo, even when it is realized that the healing of a breach may mean one side making greater concessions than the other. The issue of unity, in a word, has been permitted to become, in the first place, an issue of order reflecting the narrow view of Episcopacy as the essential apostolic ministry which is characteristic of Anglo-Catholicism.

It must be emphasized, however, that this is not the view of historic Anglicanism, in which faith, agreement on doctrine, has always been given precedence over considerations of order. Thus, though the Church of England is an episcopal Church believing fully that the threefold ministry is agreeable to Holy Scripture, its Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion do not so much as mention Episcopacy as a necessary mark of church and ministry. The Lord’s Table was always open to members of other reformed churches. And, what is more, in the past considerable numbers of ministers with no more than Presbyterian orders were admitted to full ministry in the Church of England without being required to submit to episcopal re-ordination. The rise of Anglo-Catholicism has unfortunately obscured these facts and set up barriers between the Church of England and other Churches which had been unknown since the Reformation.

One of the most commendable aspects of the Report is that it does not fall into the trap of equating unity with uniformity. The end in view is not one single “Church of Great Britain,” but rather a “Church of England” and a “Church of Scotland,” each enjoying its own freedom of life and worship and both participating in “fullness of sacramental communion” which would involve “fully authorized interchange of communicants and mutual recognition of ministries.”

If this goal is achieved it will be a very great and notable gain. But, we must repeat, it is the truth that sets free and removes barriers, not a particular form of order which is in fact a form of uniformity. On turning to the New Testament one cannot escape the conviction that there is a simpler and better way than that proposed in this Report. If it is true, as the Report says, that the validity of Presbyterian orders is not brought into question and that theirs is a “ministry of the Word and Sacrament which has been used and blessed by the Spirit of God,” then the way is even now open for the practice of full intercommunion and mutual recognition of ministries.

It is surely time that Angelicanism returned to its historic position and “fenced” the Lord’s Table (not the Anglo-Catholic altar) against the unbeliever and the notorious evil liver, as has been the practice of historic Presbyterianism, instead of “fencing” it against nonepiscopalians. This can be done now, and not only with reference to Presbyterianism. The effect of such action would bring untold blessing to the Church, simply because it would at last be possible for those who are Christ’s, irrespective of their denominational associations, to unite at the one place where above all there should be love, faith and gratitude, and at the same time it would be a witness such that the onlooking world could not gainsay.

Books

Book Briefs: July 22, 1957

R. Allan Killen

Christianity Today July 22, 1957

Tillich Soteriology

Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, by Paul Tillich, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1957. $4.50.

This is decidedly the most readable book that Paul Tillich has yet published, due partly to the subject matter—the fall, sin, Christ and salvation—and partly to the fact that Tillich has found helpers who thoroughly understand and appreciate his views and who have ironed out his attempts to express himself in English. Tillich came to America at the age of 47 in 1933 and in spite of twenty-five years here does not have the same mastery of English as he does of his native language.

In his explanation of the fall Tillich speaks of man as first existing as essential being in the mind of God in a state of “dreaming innocence.” He denies that there ever was any state of conscious innocence or any golden age. As man exerted himself to come into existence he sinned—expressed unbelief, exerted pride and concupiscence—became estranged or separated from God and fell. In this fall he changed from the condition of essential being to that of existential being.

Tillich claims that man-kind is responsible for the fall even though it occurred before man came into consciousness. He draws an analogy from childhood to support his point and says, “the child upon growing into maturity affirms the state of estrangement in acts of freedom which imply responsibility and guilt” (p. 44). Such an explanation however, clearly fails to answer Rheinhold Niebuhr’s implication in The Theology of Paul Tillich that responsibility cannot be predicated of a fall which did not happen in history, nor his charge that this makes sin an ontological necessity in contrast to the Biblical view which makes it an historically responsible act (pp. 219, 222).

This second volume contains a full explanation of Tillich’s exegesis of Genesis 3 and shows how he forces the biblical account of the fall into the mould of his ontological system by what we can call half-way demythologization and which he calls “deliteralization” (p. 152).

From his view of original sin and a prehistorical fall Tillich proceeds on to a description of sin. He sees it as entailing unbelief, pride and concupiscence and adds to this the idea that certain polar tensions, present but always conquered in God—namely freedom and destiny, dynamics and form, individualization and participation—are in conflict in man. In spite of all this, plus a goodly admixture of the Kierkegaardian concept of Angst, Tillich fails to express the biblical view of sin in that he overlooks that it is, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, “Any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.” For Tillich there cannot be any law as a revelation of the character of God because eternal verities and absolute truth are excluded by his definition of God as The Infinite and The Absolute. He has accepted the same definition of God as Mansel and Hamilton (Cf. Chas. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, pp. 346–365) and must therefore insist that the Ten Commandments, and the words, commands and deeds of Jesus are only of relative value and do not hold for us. Any absolute, even absolute truth, would make God relative (Cf. Vol. I, p. 134).

Evil receives a necessary ontological existence in Tillich insofar as God is made dynamic by Non-Being (The Courage to Be, p. 179) and becomes an unavoidable necessity for creation insofar as it occurs in the state of “dreaming innocence” in the transition of man from potentiality to actuality (p. 44).

In his ontological view Tillich maintains the creation itself fell with man—he makes no clear distinction between material being and spiritual being insofar as both partake of the power of being—and sees the creation therefore as falling with man under the curse of sin. “Creation is good in its essential character. If actualized it falls into universal estrangement” (p. 44). The doctrine of creation and fall coincide (Cf. Vol. I, p. 255). Creation, including man and the material, is good as potential essential being, but is fallen and evil as actualized existential being.

At one point Tillich drops into the complete pantheism of Hegel and Schleiermacher as he writes concerning creation that “… God is eternally creative, that through himself he creates the world and through the world himself” (p. 147).

It is to be carefully noted that in this volume, as in volume I, Tillich never speaks of Christ as one who is divine and God in his own right, but rather as one who attained the place of “the Christ,” one who becomes “the Christ” by an act of absolute surrender which was consummated in the Cross, followed by a victory which was signified in the kerygma of the resurrection. The resurrection of Christ is not physical (p. 155), nor spiritual (p. 156), nor merely psychological (p. 156) but is an ecstatic experience by the early Christians of the concrete picture of Jesus of Nazareth, in which he became united in their minds with the reality of the New Birth in such way that he had, for them, the character of a spiritual presence (p. 157).

It is regrettable that in this volume—and surely it should have appeared under his discussion of the person of Christ—there is no clear statement of what Tillich means by his term “God-Manhood.”

The references to “God-Manhood” are not listed anywhere in the index and yet the term is found in this volume on such pages as p. 124, 127, 146, 159, and 169. Carefully studied, and looked upon metaphysically, the concept means that essential being in the mind of God (and man only existed potentially there, cf. p. 33) was taken into union with the second principle in God or the Logos (a principle and not a person) and then became united with a common man, Jesus of Nazareth, to form “Jesus who is the Christ.” Tillich rejects the Virgin Birth as an historical fact in the life of Jesus (p. 160). Looked at physically the concept “God-man” means that Jesus became “Jesus who is the Christ” by surrendering everything of self and becoming absolutely transparent to the Logos or the divine.

References to the two natures of Christ are entirely missing in the index, though the subject is dwelt upon at length on pages 42 f. and 147–48. On page 147 Tillich confines the term “divine nature” to his concept of God as beyond essence and existence and denies implicitly that Christ could have such a nature in that it is “that which makes God into God.” He therefore considers that it is questionable that the term can be applied to Christ in any meaningful way.

When he comes to the doctrine of salvation Tillich insists that God is reconciled concerning sin, from eternity past, apart from the Cross of Christ. He states that “the message of Christianity is that God … is eternally reconciled” (p. 169). “He does not need to be reconciled to man, but he asks man to be reconciled to him” (p. 93). Tillich insists that Christ is only the “ultimate criterion” or norm of every healing and saving process, and that it cannot be insisted that there is no saving power apart from him Cp. 167–8). So far as Tillich’s theory of the appearance of the New Being under the conditions of existence is concerned, any other man could have been the Savior of mankind if he had completely surrendered himself and all he was to God and had become absolutely transparent to the divine.

R. ALLAN KILLEN

Sermonic Substance

God Has the Answer, by H. Orton Wiley, Beacon Hill Press. $1.50.

If more preachers waited until they reached the high plateau of spiritual maturity attained by this author before attempting to publish their sermons far less paper, printer’s ink and people’s time and money would be wasted on trivial books. Whether or not this volume of eight sermons deserves to be called a great book, the discerning reader will recognize that the spiritual vigor and godly enthusiasm of the author could only belong to one who has long walked in intimate fellowship with God.

In the preface Dr. Wiley admits of a love for the study of Bible symbolism and of having from the beginning of his ministry cultivated the expository method of preaching. That he has gone a long way in attaining these noble objectives is quite evident. If more ministers could be prevailed upon to follow the example of this man of God far fewer church people would “be tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine.” These are not light sermons that lend themselves readily to the use of men not given to solid study. Rather—here is sermonic substance in abundance for the use of careful and conscientious students ever in search of better materials with which to enrich the spiritual diet of their flocks.

While the author indulges in the use of a few too many scholastic words and phrases common to the pedagogue and often emphasizes the view of sanctification peculiar to his own denomination these practices detract but slightly from the underlying value of the sermons. The happy combination of practical with scientific knowledge in the study and application of biblical symbolism furnishes the reader with a profusion of fresh truth for use in expository preaching and teaching. This book deserves wide distribution and study especially among ministers.

ERIC EDWIN PAULSON

True Perspective

The Typology of Scripture by Patrick Fairbairn. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1956.

He who deals at length with types and symbols without becoming an extremist is an exception to the rule. Patrick Fairbairn is the exception. Like the geologist who walks the Grand Canyon floor, he studies his subject at close range, but like the same scientist flying high above the Arizona wonder, he sees parts in their relationship to the whole and achieves true perspective.

There were typology students before Fairbairn’s day, and there have been many since, but his work stands out head and shoulders above that of all others. It rests upon sound interpretative principles and reasoned theological conclusions. The comparatively recent hermeneutical handbooks of Ramm and Berkhoff touch upon the Old Testament shadows which become living realities in the new dispensation, yet they no more than skim the surface. Fairbairn’s study has depth and possesses enduring qualities.

A type, says Fairbairn, necessitates a “resemblance in form or spirit” with “what answers to it under the Gospel,” but not just any similarity. The resemblance must be one designed of God “to prepare for the better things of the Gospel” (p. 46).

The author enunciates principles, analyzes individual passages and places them in the total setting of Scripture, and defends his exegesis against that of alternative interpretations. The student of Scripture who would understand the ceremonial institutions of the Old Testament or biblical prophecy, in whatever aspect, must not be a stranger to this Zondervan reprint.

BURTON L. GODDARD

World And Life View

The Basic Ideas of Calvinism, by H. Henry Meeter. Grand Rapids International, Grand Rapids. Fourth edition revised. $1.50 and $3.50.

Ordinarily, these days, you can learn a lot about a book just by noting its publisher and its friends. This book comes out of Grand Rapids. That usually means a point of view faithful to the historic reformed tradition. And this book is highly praised by such men as Louis Berkhof, H. H. Kuyper, H. J. Kuiper, J. R. Richardson and F. E. Mayer. To these, this reviewer can be expected to add very little.

Any book with a title such as this, however, needs defining, for Calvinism means many things to many people. Dr. Meeter does not set out to analyze Calvin’s own writings, nor is he interested in the pure theology of the Reformer. His interest is to present the social and political—especially the political—implications of Calvinism as it today is recognized as a world and life view. He writes much in the spirit of Dakin’s Calvinism.

This book is actually a treatise in political science. Three-fourths of it is devoted to Calvinism and culture, to the calvinistic view of the State, of civil liberty, of international law, of war. The first part lays the groundwork for the author’s principal concern by treating very briefly, but well, of Calvinism’s fundamental principle (the Sovereignty of God), its main theological points, its view of Revelation. Then, using Calvinism’s doctrine of Common Grace as a springboard, he launches into the political realm. As a matter of fact, the author confesses his disinterest in Calvinism as a religion, declaring that readers who want information along this line should turn to other authors.

If there is anything wrong with this book, it is at the point of the author’s understanding of Calvin’s doctrine of Common Grace. His view of this doctrine looms large in importance because, after all, the book is about human behavior, or the effect of Common Grace in human relations. Meeter believes that a Calvinist must view the natural man as totally depraved, with every constructive or beneficial work the result of common grace.

He understands this Common Grace as a sort of superimposed (not native) endowment which acts altogether as a restraining influence, by preventing his normal, altogether evil tendencies from dominating. This is an altogether negative approach to man’s constructive behavior which results from Meeter’s understanding of the doctrine of total depravity, an understanding which fails to take into account Calvin’s pointed references to the image of God as marred but not wholly destroyed in man. The distinction is important. Meeter’s view (that the imago dei is wholly destroyed) necessarily colors his writing. Were he altogether consistent, he would say that there can be no native love between a human father and son except by Common Grace, which acts as a restraining influence to control the parent’s natural inclination to strangle the boy.

But it is a good book.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

New Translation

The Authentic New Testament, edited and translated from the Greek by Hugh J. Schonfield. Maps and Illustrations by J. F. Horrabin. Dennis Dobson, London, 1956. 25s.

Recent archaeological discoveries in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea have aroused considerable interest among all who are concerned with Christian origins. Mr. Schonfield wants us to treat the documents of the New Testament with the same breathless excitement.

To enable us to do this he has produced a new translation in which, as he says in his preface, one can “approach these records as if they had recently been recovered from a cave in Palestine or from beneath the sands of Egypt” and thus “look at everything freshly and ask oneself, and try to answer, all kinds of exciting questions.”

Our translator, therefore, as an accomplished Rabbinic and Semitic scholar, has paid full attention to the essentially Jewish background to these writings and, taking into consideration the individual styles and viewpoints of the different authors, has endeavoured to give, in our own modern idiom, what he calls an “authentic New Testament,” i. e. one which should strike people today in much the same way as it struck its first readers many centuries ago. By “authentic” he does not mean to assert that his version is the only correct one, but that it does, as far as possible in a translation, give an accurate reflexion of the period in which the documents were written.

This involves the purging out of all “ecclesiastical bias” and the avoidance of all words and phrases which have, in the course of time, come to acquire a more or less stereotyped, technical meaning, a meaning which may be somewhat different from that of the original one. Thus he speaks of “immersion” not “baptism”, of “envoys” not “apostles”, of “exoneration” not “justification” and of “the community” not “the church”. This is salutary, but it is questionable whether, at this late date, such words as these can be entirely divested of the ideas and associations which have gathered around them with the growth of Christian thought and experience. This raises the whole question as to how far the Scriptures can be read without bias, and to what extent we are to be expected to project ourselves into the ideas and outlook of the latter part of the first century of our era before we can really understand them.

Mr. Schonfield speaks as a scholar and a Jew. He is concerned to show that Christianity fits closely into its Jewish environment and that there is much common ground between the two movements. This is an approach for which we may be grateful, for it represents a very different attitude to the New Testament on the part of Jewish people from that which has been in vogue all down the centuries (an attitude for which the Christian Church itself is largely to blame). We therefore welcome Mr. Schonfield’s version as an instance of the drawing together of Jews and Christians for the mutual enrichment of both parties. We are grateful too for the superb way in which this version has been set out. Chapter and verse divisions have been replaced by more intelligible paragraphing.

The individual books, each provided with a brief introduction, are rearranged with Acts following immediately after Luke’s Gospel and the Johannine literature placed together at the end, to give only two examples. The four letters or fragments of letters believed by some to lie behind our 1 and 2 Corinthians are clearly indicated here. But your reviewer is not too happy about the dating of some of the books which seems to be based on ideas of 19th century liberalism.

The translation itself however is extremely well done. It ought to fulfill the author’s earnest desire “to persuade some, no matter what their creed or convictions may be, that the New Testament is well worth reading.”

But there is more to it than that. At the close of his general introduction Mr. Schonfield quotes the words of the Christian scholar, George Sale, who, in presenting his English version of the Mohammedan scriptures, wrote: “I have endeavoured to do the original impartial justice; not having, to the best of my knowledge, represented it, in any one instance, either better or worse than it really is.” Which reminds us that the really authentic New Testament is not any “ecclesiastical” version, nor even the version of H. J. Schonfield, but that which “is written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God; not in tables of stone, but in the fleshly tables of the heart.”

L. E. H. STEPHENS-HODGE

Christian Reformed

“… I Will Build My Church”, by Thea B. Van Halsema. Grand Rapids International Publications, $2.95.

It was while she was serving on the Program Committee for the Christian Reformed Centennial of this year that Mrs. Van Halsema, known already to readers for her articles for young people, became interested in preparing this volume. With her background as daughter of Dr. Clarence Bouma; her training at Grand Rapids Christian High School, Calvin College and Western Reserve University; her experience with people as a social service case worker; her interest in children as a mother of four; and her present concern for the church as the wife of one of its ministers—it is doubted that anyone could be better fitted for this task.

“… I Will Build My Church” was written to present to the young people of the Christian Reformed Church a picture of their own church and a picture of the Church of Christ as God has been building it ever since Calvary. It was written to thrill them with their past and inspire them for a greater future.

In addition to significant historical material the author presents details that provide human interest for the young reader. In a few bold strokes the historical figures become flesh and blood. Our respect for the hardy Christians who founded the church and weathered the early years is heightened with Mrs. Van Halsema’s presentation. She frankly admits failings of the church and at the same time helps those of us who are on the outside to understand such things as its exclusiveness in the past, while encouraging us with its declared purpose to reach out more to those also who are neighbors. The book concludes in this vein:

“Speak, says God to the church called Christian Reformed. Speak for me to the people of America. Go on speaking far away in Africa and the Orient, but speak now also to the neighbors whose homes are next to your own. And while you speak and work, hold fast to the truth, which is my Word.

“So I will be with you and bless you, and make you to be a blessing. Through you also I will build my church.”

Young people outside the Christian Reformed Church should read the section that deals with general church history. It would provide an excellent introduction for those to whom Augustine, Luther and Calvin are but names. The rest of the book, too, would be splendid for the young person’s general education and insight into the beliefs and history of another communion, However, some parts are necessarily pretty well peppered with dates and details which limit its appeal largely to readers within the Christian Reformed Church.

This is a fine piece of book manship, greatly enhanced by the virile and striking black and white drawings by the successful young illustrator and author, Dirk Gringhuis.

NORMA R. ELLIS

Christian Martyr

Nicholas Ridley, by Jasper Ridley. Longmans, London. 25s.

What possible interest can the life-story of an English bishop of the 16th century have for readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY in the U. S. A.? Never were the lessons it teaches more relevant than they are today.

It is a classic illustration of the danger to the Gospel when the church departs from the Bible; of the inevitable reformation which is needed when Holy Scripture is restored; of the vital importance of ensuring that the outward expression of worship should be consistent with scriptural doctrine. Ridley’s story is well told by a descendant who betrays no enthusiasm for his ancestor though he arouses it in his readers. Ridley’s progress from being a practising Roman Catholic to that of a convinced Protestant begins with his introduction to the Bible which he seized and devoured (he learned by heart all the Epistles in Erasmus’ Greek Testament). He was led first to reject the papal supremacy, then slowly and perhaps reluctantly to accept the reformed doctrines and finally to abandon the ritual and practices associated with Roman teaching. The new teaching was given the people in the English Prayer Book and later enshrined in the Articles.

But suddenly the progress of the Reformation was arrested by the death of Edward VI and the accession of Mary. Everything went into reverse. It was not enough that the new doctrines and practices be banned and the old restored; the Reformers must denounce the new faith and declare their allegiance to the old. It was a tremendous test for Ridley and his fellows. The alternatives were, as he put it, “Turn or burn.” He decided to bum, but not before he had proved in open debate the superiority both of his scholarship over that of his enemies and of the scriptural doctrines over those of Rome. At the stake he told the people that he was more honoured at the prospect of martyrdom in Christ’s quarrel than ever he had been by his elevation to the Sees of Rochester and London, or by his selection as Bishop of Durham. Through the clumsiness of his executioners his death was far more horrible than it need have been. In his agony he cried “I cannot burn,” but as his fellow-sufferer Latimer assured him he lit a candle which by God’s grace should never be put out. It is because it is in danger of being put out today that the lessons of the book should be read, marked and learned.

T. G. MOHAN

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: Second Epistle to the Corinthians

Philip Edgecumbh Hughes

St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians may without exaggeration be described as one of the richest of all the writings of the New Testament. Its pervading theme of the complete sufficiency of God’s grace in the face of trials and afflictions of every kind is one that is peculiarly appropriate for our own times. And yet it is a strangely neglected epistle. The reason for this neglect is difficult to ascertain, unless it may be that the human mind has a subconscious and quite illogical tendency to rate what is known as a second epistle as being of only secondary importance. In point of fact, there would be some justification for speaking of I Corinthians as the second epistle (and II Corinthians as the third), since it is evident from 1 Corinthians 5:9 that St. Paul had written a still earlier letter to the Corinthians which is now lost. Be that as it may, II Corinthians is certainly not inferior to I Corinthians in the splendour of its perspectives of divine truth. Its “rediscovery” today could hardly fail to be an ennobling and fortifying experience for the church of Christ.

Structure Of Epistle

The opening salutation (in which St. Paul associates the name of Timothy with his own) shows that this epistle was written not only to the church at Corinth, but to all the Christians in the province of Achaia in Southern Greece. The epistle falls into three main sections: (1) chapters 1 to 7, in which the Apostle provides an explanation of his relations with the Corinthians, a defence of his own personal integrity in these relations and an appeal to them to reciprocate the confidence and the love which he entertains towards them; (2) chapters 8 and 9, in which he exhorts the Corinthians to give liberally for the relief of the poverty-stricken Christians at Jerusalem and makes arrangements for them to have their collection in readiness when he comes to receive it and to convey it to their fellow-believers in the mother-church; (3) chapters 10 to 13, in which St. Paul vindicates his apostolic authority with a view to silencing the slanders uttered against him by certain ill-disposed persons.

Wealth Of Contents

But to summarize the structure of the epistle in this manner is to fail to give any adequate idea of the wealth of its contents. Chapters 3 to 6, for example, set before us a succession of noble themes, memorably presented. There is, to begin with, the impressive comparison of the glory of the law ministered by Moses with the surpassing and abiding glory of the new covenant ministered by Christ (3:1–4:6). This leads to the reminder that the Christian has the treasure of the knowledge of God’s glory in the frail earthen vessel of the human frame, together with the assurance that, however much the outward man may suffer and decay, the inward man is renewed day by day and that the weight of affliction borne in this brief pilgrimage is immeasurably surpassed by the eternal weight of glory which is the Christian’s inheritance (4:7–18).

St. Paul then passes on to speak of the death of the body and the intermediate state. This present mortal body is like a temporary tent, which is dissolved at death. Even though to be absent from the body (as the result of death) means a period of “nakedness” and incompletion, yet it also means, for the Christian, to be at home with Christ. And when Christ comes again all Christians, whether still in the body or not, will be clothed upon with the permanent abode of the resurrection body. Man will not enter the heavenly state as a disembodied spirit but in the full splendour of his redeemed humanity; for Christ saves the whole man, body as well as soul (5:1–10). There follows one of the great classical passages concerning God’s soverign grace in reconciling man to himself through Christ’s atoning and substitutionary death. The passage concludes with what is perhaps the most perfect brief statement in the New Testament of the theology of our redemption, namely, that “God made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (5:14–21).

6:4–10 is another memorable section, admired for its beauty by Augustine, Erasmus and many others, which describes the serene and transcendent spirit of the faithful follower of Christ in the midst of trials and afflictions of every kind—“as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things”. Could there be a more sublime paradox than that of the new man in Christ? Mention may also be made in this connection of the Apostle’s enumeration in the eleventh chapter (verses 16–33) of some of the many severe hardships and persecutions he had suffered in the course of his missionary labours. He, if anybody, knew what it meant to be “always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifested in our mortal flesh” (4:11).

Theme

What is the theme which pervades the whole of this remarkable epistle? It is perfectly stated in the never-to-be-forgotten words of the glorified Lord to his servant: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness”; and in the Apostle’s exultant response: “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me; wherefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (12:9–10). Alas, how little do we know of this dynamic apostolic spirit today! Human weakness and divine power have not changed; but we have allowed the comforts and securities offered by twentieth-century civilization and the complacencies of denominational allegiance to bind us to this earth, with the result that we are at home here and now, and are puzzled to think (if we ever do think about it) how it will be possible for us to be at home with the Lord hereafter (cf. 5:8).

Unity

Something must be said about the unity of II Corinthians. Many scholars in modern times have propounded the view that one or more sections of the epistle as we now have it cannot have belonged to the original document, and must therefore, as the result of some later accident or mistake, have been inserted from elsewhere. The last four chapters especially have been said to be incompatible in tone and content with the earlier chapters, and the hypothesis has been advanced that they are a part of the “painful letter” to which the Apostle refers in 2:4 and 7:8. This “painful” or “severe” letter, it is supposed, must have been written after I Corinthians, since the latter is regarded, by those who advance this hypothesis, as unfitted for such a description. 2 Corinthians 10–13, then, would be a fragment from that letter which in some way not known to us became attached to our epistle. Various other passages have also been the subject of similar conjectures.

Such theories, however, are without the support of a single shred of external evidence. No early writer, no ancient manuscript and no breath of tradition betrays any indication that II Corinthians ever existed in a form other than that in which we now possess it. And, besides, it is difficult to see why our present I Corinthians should not be the “painful letter” mentioned in 2:4 and 7:8. Consider for a moment the extremely painful matters about which St. Paul writes in that epistle: serious divisions and factions in the church at Corinth, the pride with which its members had become “puffed up,” their condonation even of a case of incest in their midst, their willingness to institute legal proceedings against one another before unbelievers, their abuse of the Lord’s Supper, the grave disorderliness of their public worship and the denial by some in their midst even of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Tertullian was not without some justification in saying that I Corinthians was written “not with ink, but with gall” (De Pudicitia XIV).

Then, too, it must be remembered that St. Paul was writing a letter, not composing a literary essay or a logical treatise. The epistolary form is essentially spontaneous and flexible. In a letter, especially from an apostle to a church which he had founded, there is nothing either surprising or inappropriate in changes of subject matter, of style or even of mood. There is room for doctrinal instruction, ethical admonition, praise and gratitude, reproof and censure. And it must not be forgotten that it was Paul, one of the great personalities of history, who was writing, or rather dictating, this letter—Paul who lived so devotedly and felt so deeply that it was nothing unusual for him to break off from a particular theme and to embark on a profound and enriching digression. Indeed, it may be asserted that perhaps the noblest part of this epistle is an extended “digression,” namely, from 2:14 to 7:4. In 2:13 he is recounting how he traveled anxiously from Troas to Macedonia, hoping to meet Titus there with news from Corinth; but this subject is interrupted—and thank God that it is!—by a thought concerning the manner in which God causes the believer to triumph in Christ through all adversities, and it leads on to a sequence of great and glorious themes which have been an inspiration to countless saints who have suffered for Christ’s sake during the succeeding centuries.

The account of his coming to Macedonia and meeting with Titus is resumed only at 7:5. These events took place, as far as we are able to ascertain from the evidence available, in the autumn of 57 A.D., and immediately upon receiving Titus’s report on the manner in which his earlier epistle had been received St. Paul wrote II Corinthians and sent it to Corinth by the hand of Titus and two other brethren (8:16–24), intending to follow them himself after an interval (9:4, 12:14, 13:1, cf. Acts 20:2). The Pauline authorship of II Corinthians is not open to serious dispute.

Tools For Exposition

Of the commentaries which have been written on II Corinthians we shall mention only five, all of which will be of great value to the student of Holy Scripture: the Homilies of John Chrysostom (fourth century), the commentary of John Calvin (sixteenth century), and, in more recent times, those of Charles Hodge (1835, but recently republished), James Denney (1894, Expositor’s Bible), and, on the Greek text, Alfred Plummer (1915, International Critical Commentary).

PHILIP EDGECUMBE HUGHES

Theology

The New Birth-an Imperative

L. Nelson Bell

When Jesus uses the word “must”, we would be utterly foolish to disregard or try to explain away that which he says.

Speaking to Nicodemus, an educated Jewish leader, he astonished this man by telling him his only hope of entering the kingdom of God depended on his being born again.

Strange to say, some try to explain away our Lord’s words, asserting that the new birth is an archaic term, long associated with an outmoded theological concept, scientifically ridiculous and in no way related to the needs of modern man and incompatible with the advanced scholarship on which today’s religious approach is predicated.

Others may explain away the significance of a spiritual re-birth by interpreting it in terms of human progress and achievement, leaving out its supernatural source and effect on the individual.

As one layman to other laymen: are we wise to do anything less than study what Jesus said and what the Bible teaches about this important subject? If Jesus said “must” shall we say anything else? At least three things should be done: define our terms; ascertain man’s present condition; see what the Bible has to say about these things.

What is meant by “being born again”? Our Lord made it plain to Nicodemus that the new birth is a spiritual, not a physical, experience. He says (John 3:6), “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In other words, being born again is a work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the individual. This work of the Spirit compares to the blowing of the winds, invisible to the eye but none the less real.

John speaks of man’s regeneration in these words: “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

To further clarify the meaning of regeneration our Lord links this work of the Holy Spirit in man’s heart with his own death on the cross and man’s acceptance of his salvation by faith. This he embodies in the best known verse in all the Scriptures, John 3:16.

But why should man be born again; what is his present condition that such an experience should be necessary? The Bible speaks of us as being “dead in trespasses and sins”. We hate to admit the situation but unregenerate man is spiritually dead and conversion to and faith in Jesus Christ means life from the dead.

For a long time we have tried to fool ourselves into thinking that the evil we see in the world is the result of unfortunate social conditions, psychological maladjustments, economic needs, ignorance, etc. All these things play their part in the tragedies of the social order but underneath all of this there is evil inherent in the human heart.

This can be demonstrated by a simple comparison of men and women possessing every advantage the world has to offer and those unfortunates to whom most of the good things of life have been denied—in the hearts of all lurk the innate tendency to hate, lie, steal, lust, kill, etc., fully corroborating the words of the Bible that “ALL have sinned.”

It is sin that brought death into the world. It is sin that brought spiritual death with separation from God. Therefore, the first step in the new birth is a realization of our actual condition—that we are spiritually dead.

What does the Bible say about the new birth? As a matter of fact, one finds many references in varied terms so that we cannot miss the meaning.

Matthew tells us, “Except ye be converted, and become as a little child, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (18:3).

Jesus said: “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life” (John 6:47).

Paul explains this transformation in these words,” … who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4). And 2 Corinthians 5:17 reads, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.”

There are so many other references—scores of them—that I will only mention certain phrases: “Of his own will he begat us”; “Being born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever”; “Partakers of the divine nature”; “Born of him”; “Born of God”.

The most amazing effect of being born again is that there is a complete change. Our natures change because we become partakers of the divine nature; our destinies change because fellowship with God is reestablished; our desires and preferences change because we see and evaluate this world with something of God’s perspective; our attitudes change because we have the love of God in our hearts.

The new birth may be sudden and dramatic like Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road; or, it may be a quiet event, the time and hour never known to the one experiencing it, as was probably the case of Timothy.

I have a friend whose name only a few years ago was on the front page of every paper in America, one of our great war heroes. This man was a hellion (if you know what I mean), profane, immoral, a hard drinker, with a broken home and an evil reputation.

One day he came to the end of his rope. In desperation he turned to a casual friend, a true Christian, and in that friend’s home he confessed his sins and cried out to God for forgiveness. He arose from his knees a new creature in Christ—born again—and since that time he has been a living demonstration of the transformation Christ can and will bring to the heart surrendered to him in repentance and faith.

I know another man, reared in a Christian family, who from before his birth was dedicated to God and who in his youth and young manhood was surrounded by the blessings of a Christian home and the prayers of godly parents. When the transition from death to life took place he cannot tell, but he knows he has been born again because of the witness of the Holy Spirit in his heart.

Every individual has a personal responsibility to God. A godly heritage is a great blessing but ultimately we must make our own decision for or against Christ. “God has no grandchildren!” This is not a trite saying but the expression of a profound truth. To be born into the kingdom of God involves a personal experience with Christ whereby, through the help of the Holy Spirit, we accept him as our Savior from the guilt and penalty of sin and make him the Lord of our lives.

As new drags and remedies and operative techniques become known and publicized there come an avalanche of appeals for relief from those suffering from the diseases for which these new medicines or procedures are designed. How much more do men need to know of the cure for sin which God in his infinite love has provided through his Son!

We cannot explain the new birth in scientific terms; we may be unable to express it in words of human wisdom or with a philosophical approach, but it is something which can be demonstrated and which is being demonstrated in the hearts and lives of thousands.

After all, there is no argument against a transformed life.

WORLD NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

One of the largest crowds in Billy Graham’s New York Crusade turned out the night he delivered a special address to the thousands who had made decisions there to live for Christ.

An estimated 19,000 jammed Madison Square Garden for the sermon on “How to Live A Christian Life.”

Mr. Graham began by asking, “Who is a Christian?” Before answering, he described some people who are not Christians. He said:

“A person is not a Christian because his parents were Godly people. Christian parents are wonderful, but they can’t make the decision for a child. He must do it himself. A person is not a Christian just because he is sincere. My mother thought she was giving me cough medicine once, but she had poured out some poison. She was sincere, but she was sincerely wrong.

“A person isn’t a Christian just because he follows his conscience. His conscience may be dead. You aren’t a Christian because of your feelings. Feelings change.

“Then who is a Christian? I’ll tell you. A Christian is a-person in whom Christ dwells. The Scripture says, ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’

“A Christian is a person who believes that his sins have been forgiven through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. The devil will try to make you doubt this. How can you know your sins have been forgiven? Because God said so, and God can’t lie.

“A period of adjustment follows the decision to live for Christ. Your life has been changed. Christian growth must begin unless you are to remain a spiritual baby. Some people never grow spiritually and many of our churches are filled with babies. These people are among the most miserable on earth, because they don’t feel at home with Christ and they don’t feel at home with the world. They want both, and it doesn’t work.

“How does a Christian grow? I am going to list five ways. There are others, but these are five of the most important.

“First, a Christian grows when he prays. When you were a baby, you had to learn to walk. You learn to pray the same way. God doesn’t expect your words to be perfect. When I heard my son, Franklin, say ‘da-da’ for the first time, the words were more beautiful than any ever used by Churchill. I am going to be a little worried, however, if he is still saying ‘da-da’ when he is 12 years old.

“It’s a shame that our churches are practically empty for Wednesday night prayer meetings. The person who waits to pray until he feels like it, will never pray. The devil will see to that. The Bible says you are to pray without ceasing. This means that you can be in a spirit of prayer while driving the car, walking down the street, working in the office or wherever you may be.

“Every Christian should have a quiet time alone with God every day. Your spiritual life will never be much without it.

“Prayers should be filled with praise to God, with thanksgiving for all the wonderful things he has done. Self-examination should be in your prayers, as you confess shortcomings. God is interested in hearing your personal requests, no matter how small. You should seek guidance in prayer. An important thing to remember is that you should pray that God’s will be done and not your will. People make mistakes. God doesn’t.

“Second, a Christian grows when he reads the Bible. This should happen every day, without fail. The Word of God cleanses the heart. Many people don’t read the Bible because they don’t understand it all. I want to tell these people that they will never understand all the Bible. I passed a big milestone in my own Christian life one day when I knelt before God and confessed there were many things in the Bible I didn’t understand, but that I was going to accept it all as the inspired Word of God, by faith. From that moment, the Word became a living fire in my soul.

“Turn off the television set and read the Bible. Begin in the New Testament if you’re a new Christian. It’s easier to understand. Don’t read to see how many chapters you can cover. It’s better to read two or three verses and meditate upon them.

“Make sure you have a Bible with big print. One of the devil’s biggest tricks is to have Bibles with small print, so people won’t read them. In addition to the King James Version, I would recommend the Phillips Translation.

“Third, a Christian grows when he leads a disciplined life. Your bodies, minds and tongues should be disciplined. Practice self-control. The Holy Spirit will give you the strength to become Christian soldiers.

“Many temptations will come to do battle with such discipline, but in Christ you can resist. The Bible says, ‘There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.’

“The tempter will flee when you answer with a verse of scripture. It’s impossible to argue or rationalize with the devil. Jesus, the Son of God, answered temptation by saying, ‘It is written.…’

“A little boy expressed it very well one day when he said, ‘Everytime temptation knocks, I just send Jesus to the door.’

“Fourth, a Christian grows by being faithful in his church. Going to church is not optional; it’s necessary. God says we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together.

“Lots of people today don’t go to church because it is too hot. In the winter they don’t go because it is too cold. I’m afraid I don’t know the ideal church temperature.

“Many figure that the preacher is doing a fine job if he doesn’t go five minutes beyond 12. But if that happens, they are ready to get another one. It may surprise some of you to know that you don’t go to church just to hear a preacher. You go to worship God.

“Get into a good church where the Bible is preached and Christ is exalted. Get to work for God. Join a Bible studycell in your church. The communists borrowed this method from the early church and their godless doctrine spread like wildlfire.

“Five, a Christian grows through service. Be a soul winner. There’s a difference between a witness and a soul winner. A soul winner is filled with the Spirit of God. He visits the sick. He gives to the poor. He loves his enemies. He is kind to his neighbors. Anyone can walk up to another on the street and bark, ‘Brother, are you saved?’ It takes more than that.

“We have a lot of witnesses today but very few soul winners.”

Wall Street Rally

12,000 persons, from financiers to clerks, jammed Wall and Nassau Streets for four blocks in all directions to hear Billy Graham speak on sin, business and money from the steps of the Federal Hall Memorial.

The evangelist told the crowd that “you can make millions of dollars and not find God, if you are separated by sin from Him who is the source of all peace and happiness.”

Immigration Bill

The National Association of Evangelicals has voiced objections to Senate Bill 2410, introduced by Senator John F. Kennedy (D.-Mass.)—providing for an annual redistribution of unused quotas.

Such a provision means that quotas from such countries as England, Ireland and Germany, which are seldom filled, could be assigned to regional pools. This would give emigrants from Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania a second chance of coming to the U. S.

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, NAE Secretary of Public Affairs, said the bill “provides for a shift of quotas from the unused ones for western and northern Europe, that have provided our main cultural emphasis, to southern and eastern Europe, that are Roman Catholic and decidedly of minority cultural emphasis. Moreover, its philosophy is that we have a moral obligation to help handle population surpluses.”

The bill was praised by Msgr. Edward E. Swanstrom, executive director of Catholic Relief Services. He said “it is particularly gratifying to know that Senator Kennedy and his colleagues have drafted a bill which the senator says ‘is a strong bill and one which no member of the Senate need feel any hesitancy in supporting.’ ”

The Walter-McCarran Act, passed in 1952, provides that the annual quota for any one of the 85 major quota areas shall equal one-sixth of one per cent of the number of inhabitants of the United States, based on the 1920 census. The House Un-American Activities Committee claimed recently, said the NAE, that the Communist Party has created over 180 organizations for the purpose of bringing “grass roots” pressure on Congress to destroy the Walter-McCarran Act.

Worth Quoting

“Of all the panaceas ever set forth in the world to remedy the ills of the human race, there is only one that is effective. That is the gospel of God’s saving grace. This is no over-simplification of a complex problem. It is the one and only basis upon which the superstructure of any temple of peace can be erected. If there is one question upon which we can pronounce dogmatically it is this, that until man has first made peace with God he will never be at peace for any length of time with his fellow-men.”—

JAMES H. HUNTER, author.

People: Words And Events

Editor Dies—Dr James Richard Joy, 93, editor of The Christian Advocate from 1915 to 1936, died July 1 at Manhattan General Hospital. Since 1936 he had been librarian of the Methodist Historical Society. From 1891 to 1904 he was on the editorial staff of the Methodist Book Concern.

Medal of Honor—The Pentagon indicates it will switch its “non-combat” stand and approve a Senate resolution to award the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously to four chaplains who lost their lives in the sinking of the troopship Dorchester during World War II. The chaplains perished on Feb. 3, 1943, after giving their life preservers to servicemen on the transport. They were The Rex. George L. Fox, Gilman, Vt. (Methodist); The Rev. Clark V. Poling, Schnectady, N. Y. (Reformed Church in America); The Rev. John P. Washington, Newark, N. J. (Roman Catholic) and Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, York, Pa.

Poll on Parsonages—Most clergymen are not in favor of having parsonages right next to churches, according to a survey made by the Southern California-Arizona Methodist Conference. “There is a tendency to encroach upon the privacy of the home life of the parsonage family” when it is next door, said a majority. They expressed a preference for at least three bedrooms with rugs, draperies or curtains supplied. At least one bedroom should have twin beds and all should have “good” mattresses. One full-length mirror is “helpful.” Of the 217 clergymen polled, 174 voted for two or more bathrooms.

Teen-Agers Pray—About 3,000 teenagers, delegates to the 13th annual convention of Youth for Christ International, spent a night in prayer at Winona Lake, Indiana, for Billy Graham’s New York Crusade.… Madison Square Garden officials said Graham has outlasted and outdrawn all previous attractions in the arena’s 30-year history. In seven weeks the Crusade attracted 824,300. The previous record was made in 1947 by the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus, which ran for 40 days with a total audience of 785,813.

Children’s Center—Dr. Daniel Poling, editor of “The Christian Herald,” has donated his house and 400 acres of property at Deering, N. H., for use as a children’s center.

Good News—Churchmen received good news when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that “obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press.” The high court upheld four laws—an 1872 Federal law making it criminal to send obscene matter through the mails, a California law against writing, publishing, selling or exhibiting obscene matter and a Newark ordinance banning “strip tease” acts in theaters.

Chaplain of Year—Secretary of the Army Wilbur M. Brucker presented the Army Chaplain of the Year award to Chaplain (Major) Arthur E. Mills (Advent Christian) of Aurora, Ill. Chaplain Mills, who has twice won the Silver Star for gallantry in action, is now post chaplain at Fort Monroe, Va.

Business Men Go—Evangelist Tommy Hicks challenged the delegates to the fifth annual convention of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International: “In the mission fields, the doors are closing to preachers and missionaries, but they are open to businessmen. Businessmen are doing something they have never done before—leaving their businesses for short periods and going out to the ends of the earth to witness to the untold dying millions, and paying their own expenses to do it.” 175 responded at two meetings when Hicks challenged them to go.

Conservative Debate—The possible addition of the word “premillennial” to the doctrinal statement caused considerable debate at the June annual Fellowship of Conservative Baptists. No vote was taken.

Digest—Church construction set a new record for the month of June, amounting to $73,000,000.… Evon Hedley, Toronto, appointed executive director of Youth for Christ International to succeed Dr. Ted W. Engstrom, new president of YFC.… G. Keith Hargett named director of film distribution for Moody Bible Institute. He gave famous “Sermons from Science” demonstrations for six years.

3 Hours In Queue

Alejandro Clifford, a journalist from Cordoba, Argentina, made a special trip to New York City recently and attended one of the Billy Graham Crusade meetings. He stood in a line outside Madison Square Garden for three hours. These are the things he heard and felt:

It was pouring rain. I did not know what to do or where to go on Sunday in New York. The great city seemed a far from cheerful place at 3 p.m. to this South American journalist with his one suit of clothes and one pair of shoes.

I decided to make for Madison Square Garden, which was quite close to my hotel, and to stand in the line for the Billy Graham meeting, if there should be a line at such an early hour. To my surprise, people were queueing up, and more and more kept arriving.

Though I had a press card which entitled me to a good seat, I decided to stay in the line. I wanted to know what sort of people were being reached by the New York campaign. Were they, as some said, people who do not need reaching? I was soon able to answer that question and several others. The line of folk waiting at 3:30 for the opening of the doors of the Garden at 6, was a crosssection of the world. I saw people of all ages, races, social conditions. Vigorous youth, the crippled, the blind. And suddenly my own little section of the queue became very interesting as people got friendly and began to talk.

I was wedged in tightly between two middle-aged colored women. The one on my left leaned over me and addressing the one on my right asked: “What church do you belong to, lady?” After a short pause there was a shamefaced reply: “No church.” A shocked “That’s not good!” from my left, was followed by an explanation from my right: “When I was a little girl I went to Sunday School and church, but I have been nowhere for many years. I’m coming every night to hear Billy, because I know his message is the truth, and I want to find Christ.”

The well dressed lady in front of me turned and said: “I am Swedish. When I was a girl, I used to go to the Lutheran Church, but in the States I have never been anywhere. Now I have become a Christian, thanks to Billy Graham.”

Four policemen were sheltered from the rain just a couple of yards from where I was standing. They were discussing baseball but soon switched over to a discussion of Billy Graham. Some of the remarks were far from complimentary. One of the policemen, a young, earnest looking fellow, asked his mates if they had taken the trouble to listen to Billy, then added: “I never bothered to listen to the guy until last night. I can tell you I never heard anything like it in my life. You’d better listen before you talk.” And with that they separated.

A stoutish overdressed woman in her early thirties, who was standing just behind me asked: “Can anyone tell me where I can find the story of the little man who climbed a tree because he wanted to see Jesus?” At once several Bibles were pulled out, and the man who was standing beside her showed her the passage in Luke. Zacchaeus was merely an excuse to start a conversation, for the woman continued: “I do wish I could understand this question of being born again. I listened to Billy’s sermon on John 3:16 last night. I went home and memorized the verse, but I can’t understand how one can obtain eternal life or be born again.”

The man with the Bible got busy and gave her a very clear explanation of the way of salvation. Then suddenly the woman said: “I am Jewish. Do you think the Lord Jesus Christ would receive a Jewess?” The man read several passages, Isaiah 53 among them. A German woman who was standing quite close to the Jewess, patted her on the back and handed her a couple of tracts written specially for Jews. As she did so she said: “Take these, Madam. I am a German, and I feel that by doing humble work and serving the Jews, I can atone in a small way for the terrible manner in which my nation treated them. And then, it gives me a chance to talk to them about my Saviour, their Messiah.”

And so it went on. The people were so interesting! The young colored schoolmaster, now employed by United Nations, who had just lost his teaching job because he insisted on reading the Bible to his students; the young man with the long hair who wanted to argue about the age of the earth, but did not wish to discuss sin; the smiling Oriental who did not seem to understand much English but who certainly showed that he was on the Lord’s side.

When the doors opened, I went in. Billy spoke very simply, but with power, on the Second Coming of Christ. And when the invitation was given, I felt the tears running down my cheeks as I saw that my Jewish friend of the queue was one of the first to go forward.

People can tell me whatever they like now about the sort of folk Billy Graham reaches or doesn’t reach. It won’t worry me. I know the truth. I stood for nearly three hours in the queue.

Brother Team

The Rev. B. O. Baker, pastor in Fort Worth for the last 10 years, and his brother, Dick, who worked with Howard Butt as associates in Billy Graham’s New York Crusade, have formed a new evangelistic team.

All campaigns will be conducted through church sponsorship.

Both are graduates of Baylor University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

During the 10 years the Rev. B. O. Baker was pastor of Birchman Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth, the annual budget increased from $28,000 to $110,000, property value from some $50,000 to $350,000 and membership from 500 to 1,800. He will do the speaking for the team.

Dick Baker will be the music director. He was founder and director during college days of the Baylor Religious Hour Choir. Some of the songs he has written include Longing for Jesus, Keep Looking Up and Lord, Send Revival.

Brewer Suggestions

Brewers are reportedly weeping into their beer because their product failed to show an increase in sales last year. American Brewer has rushed forward with some suggestions to change the trend:

“Make the serving of beer predominate at all industry events. We are producers and salesmen of beer. We must also be consumers.

“Each employee is a potential salesman, and all must be encouraged to not only drink beer but promote its usage among families and friends. Could not brewery unions, which have a big stake in our industry, cooperate in this direction?”

School Decision

The following special article was written forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Peter de Visser, publisher of Grand Rapids (Mich.) International Publications.

The Christian Reformed Church, at the June Centennial Synod in Grand Rapids, Michigan, started off its second century with a strong reaffirmation of support to Christian education. The Synod voted, 88 to 22, to continue its ownership and operation of Calvin College and Seminary, rather than to turn the denominational schools over to private society operation. The Synod backed up its decision by approving relocation of the schools to a new and expanded campus, authorizing the construction of five buildings—one for the seminary, two dormitories, a power and heating plant and a physical education building to cost a total of $3,500,000 and to constitute the first units of the new 166-acre campus at Knollcrest, southeast of Grand Rapids.

A minority report of the Board of Trustees’ long-range planning committee had suggested that the college ought eventually to be turned over to a private educational society. The decisions to retain control, to remain in Grand Rapids and to expand on a new and larger campus, settled for the time being the efforts of some to have the college and seminary moved to Chicago, New York or Los Angeles and of others to curtail the the college to the upper two years and establish regional junior colleges in various sections of the U. S. and Canada. Part of the funds for the new three-quarter-million-dollar seminary building are already on hand, as funds for this project as a Centennial Memorial were raised at a special Centennial Thank-offering April 7, which brought in about $300,000. The college and seminary combined now have nearly 2,000 students.

A move toward eventual organization of regional synods, to meet on alternate years, was taken with appointment of a committee to draw up a specific plan of reorganization, to be presented to a future synod. At present the general synod meets each year.

Backing for increased missionary activity, both at home and abroad, was embodied in several actions. The Board of Foreign Missions was authorized to lend personnel assistance to the Reformed Church of Korea. Similar assistance was offered to the Reformed Churches of Australia and New Zealand, composed chiefly of recent Dutch immigrants to those countries. Encouragement also was given to cooperation with the Church of Christ of the Sudan in moves to establish a theological seminary in Nigeria.

In keeping with its Centennial thrust of increased activity in church extension, the Synod authorized opening of 10 new fields by its committee on home missions. The spurring of community evangelism has been one of the main features of the church’s anniversary program.

The Synod passed on for guidance to its 500 component congregations a set of resolutions condemning racial discrimination and segregation. No specific action was taken regarding the contents of the resolutions, but it was deemed desirable to circulate them to the congregations for their study and guidance in local situations.

The Synod voted to grant women the right to particpate and to vote in congregational meetings, at the discretion of local church consistories. Some churches of the denomination have allowed woman suffrage for many years.

Conversations looking toward closer co-operation were approved on request from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and one faction of the Protestant Reformed Church. Three delegates were appointed to attend the Reformed Ecumenical Synod in South Africa in 1958.

A resolution affirming continued opposition to appointment of any Presidential envoy to the Vatican was approved.

Adopted was a budget of more than $4 million, including more than $1 million each for foreign missions, home missions and Calvin College and Seminary. Financial assessments for the coming year were set at $16 per family for evangelism and $16 per family for foreign missions, also $14 per family for the support of Calvin College and Seminary. A new dormitory at the denomination’s Indian Mission School at Rehoboth, New Mexico was approved, to cost $80,000.

The Centennial Synod marked the climax of the denomination’s observance of the one-hundredth anniversary of its founding by Dutch immigrants in western Michigan in 1857. Fraternal delegates were present with greetings from the Reformed churches of Australia, Ceylon, Japan, South Africa and the Netherlands. A repeat performance of the Centennial pageant, “Upon This Rock”, was given for the synodical delegates.

The church’s Centennial Committee was asked to continue another year, with a view to establishing a denominational information agency to assist in the task of church outreach. The committee has done an extensive job in publicizing the work and message of the Christian Reformed Church during its centennial year.

Today the Christian Reformed Church has congregations in 28 states of the U. S., in Alaska and in all of the Canadian provinces. In recent years the Canadian membership has mushroomed because of the large influx of immigrants from Reformed churches of the Netherlands, so that now there are nearly 125 churches in Canada. And while the quarter-million membership of the Christian Reformed Church is still predominantly of Dutch ancestry and background, many nationalities are now represented on the church rolls.

Germany

Matter Of Judgment

Bishop Harms Lilje of Hanover, Germany, president of the Lutheran World Federation, asked people in the free world not to pass judgment upon the leaders of Christian churches behind the Iron Curtain who may be forced to make compromises with their communist governments.

“From my own experience under the Nazis, I know that the lines are not always clearly drawn,” the bishop said.

Bishop Lilje said “we will not be fooled” by any communist propaganda which might be voiced by delegates from Iron Curtain countries who attend the Lutheran World Assembly at Minneapolis, August 15–27. Delegates from eight Communist-ruled countries are expected to attend the sessions.

The bishop made his comment in response to statements by five refugee Protestant clergymen who testified recently before the Senate Internal Security sub-committee. The refugees asserted that delegates to the Lutheran meeting from Communist countries are appointees of the Red governments and may seek to spread false propaganda about freedom of religion. The clergymen who testified to the Senate subcommittee were accompanied by Dr. Carl McIntire, president of the fundamentalist International Council of Christian Churches.

“If there is a man who is just a servant of the other system (atheism) and who does not really care for Christianity, we would soon find him out,” Bishop Lilje declared.

Meanwhile, he urged that the representatives of Lutheran Churches in Communist areas be greeted with cordiality and he said he hoped the press would refrain from asking them questions “which are bound to be embarrassing to them.”

He said that great difficulty had been encountered in seeking permission for delegates to attend from the church in East Germany. He added he believed it would be helpful both to the Assembly and the church in the Eastern Zone if they can attend.

“It does something to a man to be able to breathe, if only for a few days, the air of freedom that we take so much for granted,” he declared.

Bishop Lilje said that the Lutheran Church in Germany has taken the position that “the shepherd must remain with his flock.”

“We have told our pastors that even if others flee to the West, they must stay and minister to those who remain,” he said.

“They have a hard duty to perform,” he observed, “and I don’t think it is up to us to judge them.

“We know that the communist governments are against religion and believe that in 50 years or so it will die out and not exist any longer, but our job is to give a constructive Christian testimony, not to argue politics.”

Bishop Lilje said that he hoped delegates would be present from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and East Germany.

Africa

Islamic Way

While Nigeria jubilated over the victories of her 70 delegates to the London Constitutional Conference, Alhadji Ahmadu, Prime Minister of the Northern Region, made it clear that Christian ideas of modern democracy would not set aside the traditional Islamic way of life in the North.

With Londoners agog at the Nigerian costumes (silk top hats with ostrich feathers and a minister’s gown with 20-foot-long train), the delegates and their advisers hammered out plans for regional self government this year for those who want it (the West and East). In 1959 full national independence within the British Commonwealth will make Nigeria the largest independent country in Africa and the fourth in the Commonwealth.

In a London radio interview about his people’s rush to nationhood, swarthy, six-footer Alhadji Ahmadu stated that the Northern Region’s Moslem feudal system would not be scrapped under the new “democracy.” He said “we have foundations on which we have been building the modern civilization.

“The Islamic faith forbids the participation of women in elections. No matter what happens in the other regions, as long as I am in office we shall oppose votes for women because of our religion.”

Anxious about their future in a predominantly Moslem region (Northern Nigeria and Saudi Arabia are reported to be the only two areas in the world where pure Islamic law is practiced), Conference delegates representing Christians and pagans in Nigeria’s “Middle Belt” (6 million population) are seeking the formation of a Middle Belt State, which southern politicians also favor as a way of trimming the North’s political bloc.

The British government has promised to appoint a commission to investigate the desirability of setting up new states in all three regions to protect minority groups.

This in contrast to the policy followed in smaller Ghana (4½ million), where Dr. Nkruman, the Prime Minister, declared: “The government is not prepared to create constituencies representing special religious, racial or tribal interests.”

Meanwhile, the steady advance of Islam in West Africa is arousing churchmen. A motion deploring inroads being made into Christian affairs by Islam was passed at the annual Synod meeting of the Anglican Church in Lagos, Nigeria.

Delegates claimed Moslems were “demoralizing Christians in their beliefs” through subtle tactics such as exchanging seasonal gifts and observing harvest ceremonies. To combat the Moslem advance, the Synod adopted a program of teaching about Christianity and Islam.

Pointing up the increasing power of Islam even in the “Christian South” of Nigeria, Christian candidates for a chieftancy title in the town of Iwo were reported hiding their religious identity by dropping baptismal names in order to gain popularity in the election.

In a newspaper interview, Maulvi Naseem Saif, chief Ahmadiyya missionary for West Africa, replied to protests of the Church.

“We are speeding up our own activities,” he stated. “We want to see that in our own lifetime this great country becomes Moslem, and by that I mean the whole population joins Islam. We are confident.”

Mission leaders, aware for the last decade that the advance of Islam has been outstripping Christianity in West Africa, are alarmed at the apathy of African Christians. The Rev. J. S. Trimingham, commissioned by the Methodists and Anglicans to make a survey of Islam and the Church in West Africa, reported “the increasing stagnation of the West African Church. The churches are concerned with internal organization and not with evangelism among non-Christians.… Fervor to evangelize their fellows has waned or died.”

The Sudan Interior Mission, largest Christian agency working in the Moslem areas of Nigeria, is tackling the problem by encouraging their churches to evangelize Moslem neighbors with literature.

If African Christians are stung into action, Maulvi Saifi’s threat may prove to have a healthy effect.

—W. H. F.

Dare We Renew the Controversy?

Carl F. H. Henry

The Evangelical Responsibility

A higher spirit to quicken and to fulfill the theological fortunes of this century will require more than the displacement of modernism, more than the revision of neo-orthodoxy, more than the revival of fundamentalism. Recovery of apostolic perspective and dedication of the evangelical movement to biblical realities are foundational to this hope.

Exalt Biblical Theology

Evangelical theology has nothing to fear, and much to gain, from aligning itself earnestly with the current plea for a return to biblical theology. To measure this moving front of creative theology sympathetically, to understand its concern and courage and to name its weaknesses without depreciating its strength will best preserve relevant theological interaction with the contemporary debate.

The evangelical movement must make its very own the passionate concern for the reality of special divine revelation, for a theology of the Word of God, for attentive hearing of the witness of the Bible, for a return to biblical theology.

Positive Preaching

Rededication to positive and triumphant preaching is the evangelical pulpit’s great need. The note of Christ’s lordship over this dark century, of the victory of Christianity, has been obscured. If it be evangelical, preaching must enforce the living communication of the changeless realities of divine redemption. The minister whose pulpit does not become the life-giving center of his community fails in his major mission. Perspective on Christianity’s current gains and final triumph will avoid a myopic and melancholy discipleship. The Christian pulpit must present the invisible and exalted Head of the body of Christ; linked to him this earthly colony of heaven moves to inevitable vindication and glory. The perplexing problems of our perverse social orders find their hopeful solution only in this regenerative union. Out of its spiritual power must spring the incentives to creative cultural contributions.

Enlarge Christian Living

The evangelical fellowship needs a fresh and pervading conception of the Christian life. Too long fundamentalists have swiftly referred the question, “What distinguishes Christian living?” to personal abstinence from dubious social externals. The Christian conscience, of course, will always need to justify outward behavior, in home, in vocation and in leisure. But Christian ethics probes deeper. It bares the invisible zone of personality wherein lurk pride, covetousness and hatred.

Unfortunately, fundamentalism minimized the exemplary Jesus in the sphere of personal ethics. The theme of Christ’s oneness with God was developed so exclusively in terms of his deity that the import of his dependence upon God for all human nature was lost. The manhood of Jesus is essentially one with ours; its uniqueness is in the zone of sinlessness, not of humanness. His uncompromised devotion and dependence upon God, his sustained relationship of mutual love, embodied the ideal pattern of human life in perfect fellowship with God. In view of his unbroken union with God, his humanity holds a central significance for all humanity.

In this light, a new importance attaches to the Nazarene’s learning of the Father’s will in the course of obedient dependence. His struggle with temptation to magnificent victory over all the assaults of evil, his exemplary trust, his unwavering reliance on God even in the darkest hours, his interior calm of soul, the well-spring of love that flowed from his being—in all these experiences Christ models for us an ideal spiritual relationship with God. In Jesus of Nazareth, God is fully resident; in God, Jesus is fully at home. He lives out the “rest in God” that actualizes the “abiding” to which we are called.

Another way in which evangelicals need to move beyond the fundamentalist ethic is in comprehending the whole of the moral law in fuller exposition of love for God and neighbor, and in the larger experience of the Holy Spirit in New Testament terms of ethical virtue. Often quite legalistically, and with an absoluteness beyond New Testament authority, fundamentalism’s doctrine of surrender, of rededication, has merely proscripted worldly practices, from which the believer was discouraged. Unemphasized, however, are the fruit of the Spirit and those many virtues which differentiate dedicated living in terms of biblical Christianity.

Social Concern

We need a new concern for the individual in the entirety of his Christian experience. He is a member of all life’s communities, of faith, of the family, of labor, of the state, of culture. Christianity is by no means the social gospel of modernism, but is nonetheless vibrant with social implications as a religion of redemptive transformation. To express and continue the vitality of the gospel message, marriage and the home, labor and economics, politics and the state, culture and the arts, in fact, every sphere of life, must evidence the lordship of Christ.

Obviously, the social application of Christian theology is no easy task. For one thing, fundamentalism fails to elaborate principles and programs of Christian social action because it fails to recognize the relevance of the gospel to the sociocultural sphere. Modernism defines Christian social imperatives in secular terms and uses the Church to reorganize unregenerate humanity. Its social sensitivity gave modernism no license to neglect the imperative of personal regeneration. Evangelistic and missionary priorities, on the other hand, gave fundamentalism no license to conceal the imperative of Christian social ethics. Despite the perils, no evasion of responsibility for meaningfully relating the gospel to the pressing problems of modern life is tolerable.

The divine life is a “being in love,” a social or a family fellowship in which personality expresses the outgoing, creative relationships of redemption. A worker by God’s creation, man sees vocation as a divinely entrusted stewardship by which to demonstrate love to God and service to man. As divinely ordained, the state declares God’s intention and the dignity of man’s responsibility for preserving justice and repressing iniquity in a sinful order. This world challenges man to interpret literature, art, music, and other media in reference to eternal order and values.

Approach To Science

Evangelical confidence in the ontological significance of reason makes possible a positive, courageous approach to science. For more than a century and a half modern philosophy has regrettably minimized the role of reason. Kant disjoined it from the spiritual world. Darwin naturalized and constricted it within the physical world. Dewey allowed it only a pragmatic or an instrumental role. These speculations took a heavy toll in Christian circles. A segment of evangelical Christianity nonetheless maintained its insistence upon the Logos as integral to the Godhead, the universe as a rational-purposive order, and man’s finite reason is related to the image of God.

Yet for more than a generation the evangelical attitude in scientific matters has been largely defensive. Evolutionary thought is met only obliquely. American fundamentalism often neglected scrutinizing its own position in the light of recent historical and scientific research. It even failed to buttress its convictions with rigorous theological supports.

Yet modernism, despite its eager pursuit of such revision, achieved no true correlation of Christianity and science. While modernism adjusted Christianity swiftly to the prevailing climate of technical conviction, its scientific respect was gained by a costly neglect of Christianity’s import to science.

Today a new mood pervades the scientific sphere. That mood may not fully validate the evangelical view of nature, but it does at least deflate the presuppositions on which the older liberalism built its bias against the miraculous. The evangelical movement is now given a strategic opportunity to transcend its hesitant attitude toward scientific endeavor, and to stress the realities of a rational, purposive universe that coheres in the Logos as the agent in creation, preservation, redemption, sanctification and judgment.

The ramifications of revelation and reason are wider, however, than science, for they embrace all the disciplines of learning. The evangelical attitude toward education itself is involved. The day has vanished when all the levels of learning, from primary to university, were in the service of God. Christianity cannot long thrive in an atmosphere in which mass education is allowed to repress and impugn Christian confidence and conviction. Christianity must not withdraw from the sphere of education, but must infuse it with new spirit and life. Christianity need evade neither truth nor fact, for it offers an adequate view of the universe in which we are driven daily to decision and duty. In answer to the present secular perspective in public education, shall evangelicals establish private Christian schools? Or shall they rather work for eternal verities within the present public school order or perhaps even pursue both courses? One fact is certain: evangelical neglect of education will imply the irrelevance of historic Christianity to the pressing problems of the contemporary academic world.

Doctrine Of The Church

The evangelical movement needs also the sustained study of the New Testament doctrine of the Church and a greater concern for the unity of regenerate believers. Its program for reflecting the unity of the body of Christ in contemporary history is inadequate in several regards.

Evangelical discussions of the unity of the Church are shaped to protest the ecumenical framework as a compromise to be avoided. Ecumenical Christianity blesses a cooperation broader than the New Testament fellowship; it needs to be reminded that not all union is sacred—that the more inclusive the union, the greater the danger of compromising and secularizing its Christian integrity. By contrast, the evangelical movement easily restricts cooperation more narrowly than does the Bible. It must learn that not all separation is expressive of Christian unity. The principle of separation itself may acquire an objectionable form and content, related more to divisive temper than to theological fidelity. In the face of the inclusive church movement, the evangelical spirit reacts too much toward independency. Through refusal to cooperate with believers whose theological conservatism and dedication to Christ are beyond question, evangelical Christianity is in danger of divisiveness and disruptiveness.

Sound Doctrine And New Life

Evangelical insistence that the unity of the body of Christ requires a basic doctrinal agreement and a regenerate membership is sound. The ecumenical temperament encourages the breakdown of denominational barriers at too great a price whenever it minimizes doctrinal positions. Interdenominationalism in our century has sprung from a peculiar assortment of motives. Fundamentalists stimulated denominational desertion through discontent with theologically inclusive programs ventured by liberal leadership in the established denominations. Such was not in actuality an antithesis to denominationalism, since denominational tenets were not called into question. Indeed, most evangelicals prefer to support New Testament programs within their own denominational lines, allowing interdenominational cooperation to spring from multidenominational dedication to common evangelical priorities. The compromise of priorities in denominational circles, however, led to interdenominationalism at the expense of denominationalism and quickened the sense of an extradenominational unity based on common doctrine and faith.

The liberal interdenominational urge had a different motivation, namely, a virtual depreciation of denominationalism as unworthy sectarianism insofar as any fixed creedal positions are affirmed. This exaltation of the experiential unity of the Church through the disparagement of doctrinal soundness is the great peril of ecumenical ecclesiology today. Its constant danger is the elevation of the concern for unity above the concern for truth.

Precision In Beliefs

Evangelical emphasis on an indispensable doctrinal basis for Church unity needs, however, to be defined with greater precision. Such concern accounts for evangelical uneasiness over the creedal vagrancy of the World Council of Churches whose nebulous emphasis is only on “Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.” Since the evangelical movement includes churches that are both creedal and noncreedal in heritage, a specific creedal unity has not been elaborated, although common theological tenets are listed. This evangelical listing of a doctrinal minimum raises difficulties for creedal churches, inasmuch as they consider no article of faith dispensable. To Reformed churchmen, evangelical formulas often appear open to objectionable development. They prefer a strict creedal fellowship, a restriction that excludes progress toward the unity of diverse evangelical elements. The evangelical failure to fully elaborate essential doctrines has resulted in fragmentation by granting priority to secondary emphases (in such matters as eschatology). Evangelical Christianity has been slow to establish study conferences in biblical doctrine, to encourage mutual growth and understanding. Ironically, study sessions on theological issues are now often associated with movements whose doctrinal depth and concern are widely questioned. The significance of Christian doctrine, its dispensability or indispensability, its definition as witness or revelation, the elements identified respectively as core and periphery—these are issues on which evangelical Christianity must be vocal.

Fellowship Of Disciples

Evangelical Christianity too frequently limits the term “evangelical” to those identified with a limited number of movements. This needlessly stresses a sense of Christian minority and discourages cooperation and communication with unenlisted evangelicals. But the tensions of American church history in this turbulent century cannot be automatically superimposed upon all world evangelical communities. Ecumenical leadership in the Federal Council of Churches and its successor, the National Council of Churches, failed to reflect the viewpoint of that considerable genuinely evangelical segment of its constituency. In the World Council of Churches, leaders on the Continent also have often found themselves theologically far to the right of American spokesmen, and have found American evangelicals in the World Council disappointingly unvocal. Long before the establishment of organizations like the World Evangelical Fellowship, many European churches have approached the World Council in quest of an enlarging evangelical fellowship. Evangelical world alternatives to inclusive movements arose after most large historic denominations were already enlisted in the World Council. Does evangelical loyalty within these committed denominations necessarily depend upon public repudiation of the World Council, and upon entrance instead into minority movements quite withdrawn from the stream of influential theological discussion? Even the National Association of Evangelicals in the United States must accept the absence of Southern Baptists and Missouri Lutherans, whose antipathy for theological inclusivism keeps these denominations also outside the National Council. The question that obviously remains, of course, is whether an evangelical who prefers identification with the broader movements can justify his participation, if he knows his own spiritual heritage, except in the capacity of a New Testament witness? Must not a silent evangelical in this climate always ask himself whether the silence which once perhaps was golden, now, through a dulling of love for truth and neighbor, has become as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. Indeed, must not the evangelical always and everywhere address this question to himself in whatever association he is placed?

Lack of evangelical communication across the lines of inclusive and exclusive movements is not wholly due to the exclusivists. Ecumenical enthusiasts have encouraged neither fellowship nor conversation with exclusivist evangelicals. This coldness contributed needlessly to the fundamentalist suspicion of all outside their own constituency, and did little to mitigate the incivility that some fundamentalists reserved for such individuals. The unity of the believing Church re quires communication between evangelicals on a basis of mutual tolerance and respect.

Concern For Unity

Unfortunately for the evangelical cause, the concern for the unity of the Church is now largely associated in the public mind with the inclusive vision. The failure of evangelicals to hear what the Spirit says in the New Testament to the churches has created the void now being filled by inclusivist conceptions of unity. The evangelical church needs with new earnestness to seek unity in its fragmenting environment, needs to reflect to the disunited world and to the disunited nations the sacred unity of the body of Christ.

Although evangelicals have criticized the broad basis of ecumenical merger and unity, they have achieved in their own ranks few mergers on the theological-spiritual level. Without conceding that denominationalism is evil or that health increases in proportion to the reduction of denominations, may there not be evidence that evangelical Christianity is over denominationalized? If doctrinal agreement enhances the deepest unity of believers, may we not expect progress in the elimination of unnecessary divisions by emphasizing the spiritual unity of the Church? Evangelical Christianity, if it takes seriously its own emphasis on the unity of the body, must show visible gains in demonstrating unity in church life.

Contemporary Christianity would gain if the discussion of ecclesiastical tolerance were set in a New Testament context. The scriptural respect for individual liberty in matters of religious belief must not obscure definite requirements for indentification with the body of Christian believers. The New Testament upholds specific doctrinal affirmations as indispensable to genuine Christian confession. In this biblical setting, divisiveness is depicted primarily as a theological question, not (as is usually the case today) as a matter of ecclesiastical attitude and relationship. The modernist tendency to link Christian love, tolerance and liberty with theological inclusivism is therefore discredited. Modernist pleas for religious tolerance and the caustic indictments of fundamentalist bigotry often were basically a strategic device for evading the question of doctrinal fidelity. This flaunting of tolerance, however, was discredited when inclusivist leaders suppressed or excluded evangelicals not sympathetic to the inclusive policy. The “tolerance plea” swiftly dismissed as divisive what was not clearly so in fact. Divisiveness meant disapproval of the inclusive policy, tolerance meant approval. But the New Testament does not support the view that devotion to Christian liberty and progress and to the peace and unity of Christ’s Church is measured by the devaluation of doctrine in deference to an inclusive fellowship. From the biblical point of view, doctrinal belief is a Christian imperative, not a matter of indifference.

Whenever it professes a genuine regard for the scriptural point of view, the inclusive movement is driven to soul-searching in respect to doctrinal latitude and its own propaganda for organic church union. Within the World Council, in contrast with the National Council, exists a forum from which this ambiguity can be challenged. Evangelicals in this movement, if they bear an evangelical witness, must constantly call the Commission on Faith and Order to judge the theological and ecclesiastical question from the standpoint of Scripture.

The fact must not be ignored, however, that different evangelical conceptions of the visible Church are prevalent. Although historically the Christian churches have all insisted upon a minimal theological assent for admission to membership, Reformed churches share Calvin’s view that even in the Church wheat and tares—professing and believing Christians—will dwell together until their final separation in the judgment. Baptist churches have traditionally placed greater emphasis on a regenerate membership and on a pure church. Even the disciplinary procedure of the more broadly conceived Reformed churches, however, considers church members flouting or indifferent to creedal standards as guilty as grave sin. Christian churches in the past stressed both a minimal requirement for membership and a maximal indulgence for avoidance of discipline or exclusion. But modernist leaders asserted the inevitability of doctrinal change. Heresy trials became an oddity in contemporary church history, not because of an absence of heresy, but because of the lack of zeal to prosecute heretics.

We dare not own any other authority over life and deed but the living God. We dare not own any other God than the righteous and merciful God revealed in Jesus Christ. We dare not own another Christ but Jesus of Nazareth, the Word become flesh who now by the Spirit is the exalted head of the body of believers. We dare not own any other Spirit than the Spirit who has breathed out Scripture through chosen men, that doubt may vanish about what God is saying to the Church and to the world. We dare not own any other Scripture than this Book. Let other men proclaim another god, another Christ, another spirit, another book or word—that is their privilege and their peril. But if once again the spiritual life of our world is to rise above the rubble of paganism into which it is now decaying, it will be only through the dynamic of revelation, regeneration, and redemption, through the sacred message which once brought hope. We have a task to do, a task of apostolic awesomeness; let us rise to the doing. The hour for rescue is distressingly late.

END

The Word Of God

Holy book!

Torch of God!

Light from off the Everlasting Throne!

Towering shaft of Infinity,

Around whose foot men rear

Their little spires of thought.

Inconceivable monument of the ages,

Binding man to God.

Without thy piercing, healing light,

Man is but a darker shadow

Flitting to and fro

In the impenetrable blackness

Of an eternal

Void.

JOE CARSON SMITH

This article concludes the abridgment of lectures on “Evangelical Responsibility in Contemporary Theology” delivered by Editor Carl F. H. Henry at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and Calvin College. The lectures will be published in full by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company in August in their series of Pathway Books.

Billy Graham and the Pope’s Legions

The Editors

There is little doubt but that America is gradually becoming a Roman Catholic country. This is not surprising, however, for the strategies of Rome give her considerable earthly advantage. Her claims are impressive: the bishops in communion with the See of Peter form a divinely constituted, perpetual, inerrant, teaching Church. Rome is a continuation of Christ’s incarnation. The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. Rome is the only power which has defeated secularism and modernism. She is at home in all lands. She is the Church of the catacombs, the Church of the Fathers, the Church of the great councils, the Church of the Middle Ages—in short, the Church of all ages. If any Christian effort will endure to the end of time, and thus merit the devotion of men everywhere, it is the Church of Rome.

An expert from the American Institute of Management recently examined the management excellence of the Roman Church. He concluded, in a 26-page report, that the Church was eighty-eight percent efficient [Time, January 30, 1956], Rome is disciplined and determined; her wealth cannot be assessed. She adapts her strategy to every situation. When her interests are at stake, she is cruel. When they are not, she is gentle. The Inquisition is valid against Protestants but not against children of the Vatican. When the Church speaks, debate is out of order, for the good is what the Church approves.

Rome’s confidence was illustrated several years ago when I had coffee with a learned Jesuit at Harvard Square. As I quizzed him about the future of the Roman Church in America, he looked at me with flashing Irish eyes and thundered, “Today, tomorrow, or a century from now, it makes no difference. We are patient. We will subdue the earth to the greater glory of God.”

Life magazine recently reviewed one phase of Roman Catholic power in America. The leading story of the May 27th issue was devoted to the 75th year of the Knights of Columbus. The pictures, many in full color, depicted the kind of pomp and circumstance which goes into Roman strategy. The legions of Rome are awesome. More than one million practicing Catholics make up the ranks of the Knights of Columbus. They are fraternally pledged to the ideal of bringing America under papal rule. They are powerful, wealthy, loyal. Little wonder that the Pope affectionately describes the Knights as “the right lay arm of the Catholic Church in America.”

It is significant, however, that the same issue of Life ran a story about Billy Graham. The contrast between the Knights of Columbus and Billy Graham pretty well sums up the contrast between Roman Catholic and orthodox Protestant intentions. The reader sees a young man in a business suit. He is holding an open Bible. In passion and love he pleads with sinners to repent. The pictures are in black and white, not color. There are no uniforms, no banners, no legions. The Garden is filled with people from all walks of life, people whose hearts are as hungry as their minds are curious. Before Billy Graham has finished, hundreds leave their seats to unite with the person of Jesus Christ. Even priests of Rome find their way to the mourner’s bench. The suasions of Rome are no match for the gospel. The tens of thousands which have responded in the Garden and to the televised broadcasts from the Garden give living evidence to the power of a message devoid of pomp and ceremony.

The Protestant Church is not very healthy. It is divided and weak. Its clergy dispute about matters which are elementary to the Christian faith. Scholarship is neglected in the colleges and seminaries. Rome, of course, interprets this as nothing but the logical conclusion to the Reformation. The ecumenical movement, on the other hand, says that the illness can be cured by devising new forms of visible unity. Rome is wrong in her diagnosis and the ecumenical movement is wrong in its therapy. The Protestant Church is sick for one reason: the gospel of Jesus Christ is not being preached with power and conviction.

We have no intention of making an idol of Billy Graham, but the fact remains that this young evangelist is a symbol of what God can do through a humble life. When Billy Graham stands behind the sacred desk, he makes it clear that he is mediating the Word of God. He is not discussing personality integration or the power of mind over body. This was strikingly reviewed in the June 25, 1954, issue of U.S. News and World Report. Scotland was astonished at the power of Billy Graham. Many were puzzled to explain the phenomenon. U.S. News editors cleared up the matter. “The people want to know the truth. They want it declared with authority and conviction, dogmatically and without apology. They prefer half an hour, or even three-quarters, of this kind of preaching to the ten minutes of platitudes which all too often is given from church pulpits.” This is excellently taken. There would be no sickness in the church if priests and ministers would bind their consciences by the Word of God.

Another symbol of this same power is the distinguished dean of American radio evangelists, Charles E. Fuller. For over a third of a century he has preached a compassionate gospel to those who labor in hard and distant places. His weekly listening audience is estimated at twenty million. He seldom refers to himself. With a tear in his voice and compassion in his heart he beseeches men everywhere to be reconciled with God. God blesses his ministry because his ministry is true to the Word of God.

The Pope must look to his legions because he can no longer look to the gospel. Let me illustrate this. Father Kelly recently warned Roman Catholics not to listen to Billy Graham [Time, May 6th]. The priest’s contention was that Graham evades “Catholic distinctives.” His converts, thus, are only “half saved.” This is an interesting complaint, for it betrays the distance which Rome has come from the simplicity of the gospel. The Apostle Paul could cry, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” And so can Billy Graham. But Father Kelly cannot. He must cry, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, plus the necessity of baptism, plus the mediatorial work of Mary, plus the centrality of the mass, plus the unity of the Church, and you will be saved—providing, of course, you improve grace throughout your life by performing good works, and then only after a frightful bout with the flames of purgatory.”

The Roman Catholic Church will continue to grow. She will infiltrate government, education, and labor. But let us not fear. Rome has her limits. The Lord says to worldly wisdom, as he says to the tides of the sea, “Thus far shall you go, and no farther.” Rome can coerce the film industry to use priests and Christopher medals in movie plots; she can lobby senators with effective cunning; she can rule over the treasuries of the world. But these are strategies of worldly wisdom. They have nothing to do with the gospel.

This is effectively pointed out by the late Donald M. Baillie [The Theology of the Sacraments, page 96]. He cites Karl Barth’s admission that “The mass in its conception, content and construction is a religious masterpiece. It is the high water mark in the development of the history of religion and admits of no rival.” He then adds the shrewd conclusion of Barth, “Religion with its masterpieces is one thing, Christian faith is another.” This is the sum of the matter. Rome is a genius in worldly wisdom. But worldly wisdom is one thing, the gospel is another.

If we honor the Word of God, we have no reason to fear Roman Catholicism. God is sovereign. His Word will not return void. The ministry of Billy Graham is witness to the biblical truth that it is “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6 RSV). We sing with Martin Luther,

And tho’ this world with devils filled

Should threaten to undo us;

We will not fear, for God hath willed

His truth to triumph thro’ us.

The Prince of darkness grim, we tremble

Not for him; his rage we can endure,

For lo! his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.

The Pope will continue to look to his legions. But let us look to the power of the gospel. Whenever the counsels of worldly wisdom become too efficient, God seeks out a man of faith—an Abraham, a Gideon, a David. And he uses this man of faith to confront an entire culture with the claims of Jesus Christ. God destroys the proud in their own folly. One sermon preached in the power of the Holy Spirit can undo in a day what worldly wisdom has taken a century to build.

The Pentagon’S Responsibility For Servicemen Abroad

The Girard case has focused the attention of America on the predicament of our service men when accused of crimes while stationed abroad.

The Formosa riots likewise illustrated that America has no one policy for dealing with such cases, in some countries retaining jurisdiction and rights of prosecution of servicemen while in others recognizing the rights of the local governments and courts.

Unfortunately little that has been said about the situation in Japan, Taiwan (Formosa), Germany or elsewhere, has dealt with the basic problem of the behavior of our troops overseas.

The average American soldier is a decent boy, thrust into new and often frustrating surroundings and at the same time confronted with temptations in their rawest form.

There are serious attempts to condition servicemen for the situations they will encounter overseas. Many officers add their influence to that of the chaplains to maintain the moral and spiritual standards important for the soldier as an individual and for him as a representative abroad. That such conditioning and safeguards often prove insufficient is known by the Pentagon, by American civilians living or traveling abroad and by many of the people living in the lands where servicemen are stationed.

Frankly, we feel that far more can and should be done to prevent incidents and to keep Americans from becoming increasingly unpopular in areas where they are quartered.

First of all, not all men who volunteer or are inducted into the services are suitable to send abroad for garrison duty. Some of them are obvious liabilities from the very start and some procedure should be devised to eliminate them from foreign service.

In the second place, we believe far more should be done to indoctrinate those sent abroad, not only as to the reason they are being sent but also the objectives in that area. Most important, these men should be made to understand clearly that as long as they are on foreign soil they are representatives of America and will be required so to act.

Finally, the strictest possible discipline should be enforced on those who get into trouble. Nothing does more to harm relations with those America wants to help than to see American men guilty of illegal or immoral acts go unpunished and often unnoticed.

We have before us a long letter telling of multiplied incidents in Formosa which built up a seething resentment which finally boiled over in riots. This letter tells of Chinese injured by drunken Americans; of others injured by speeding American vehicles; of the use of money to entice and at times debauch young women from good homes; and most of all, of wrongs reported to authorities which went unheeded and without redress.

Part of the difficulty comes from failing to look at incidents through the eyes of local custom and opinion. For instance, a “peeping Tom” would be frightened away in China, or he might be caught and beaten, but to kill him is as drastic punishment as would be the shooting of a speeding motorist in America.

Even a verdict of “guilty” with a suspended sentence would have in some measure appeased an aroused populace. A quickly rendered acquittal was regarded as a grave affront to the Chinese and also as a flagrant miscarriage of justice. The same ends could have been accomplished by taking due regard to local customs.

All of which leads to the conviction that, living in a small world as we do, and wielding the world-wide influence and power which we do, America will be wise completely to revise its policies with reference to its representatives abroad. The day has passed when we can do as we please—and the opportunity for drastic reforms may be very short.

END

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