How to Bring a Nation under God

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

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

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

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

True Patriotism

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

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

Outside Of History

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

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

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

Strength Of Tradition

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

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

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

Dignity And Conscience

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

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

Our Greatest Need

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

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

Four Steps To Take

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- More from Samuel M. Shoemaker

Cover Story

Fundamentalism-Modernism: A First Step in the Controversy

Geoffrey W. Bromiley

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

Beyond The Breach

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

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

A Call To Both Sides

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

Scientific Procedure

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

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

Dominating Assumptions

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

Subjective Factors

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

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

Biblical Approach

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

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

Role Of Investigation

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

Inroads Of Rationalism

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

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

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

- More from Geoffrey W. Bromiley

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: October 28, 1957

G. C. Berkouwer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- More from G. C. Berkouwer

Books

Book Briefs: October 28, 1957

F. F. Bruce

Current Viewpoints

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

F. F. BRUCE

Macartney Memoir

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRANK A. LAWRENCE

Botanical Answers

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

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

CARL F. H. HENRY

Physicians And Faith

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

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

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

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

FRANK HOUGHTON

Sex And Marriage

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

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

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

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

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Whitefield Distorted

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

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

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

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

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

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

ARNOLD A. DALLIMORE

Filing, Indexing Aid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J. C. HOLBROOK

Worthy Studies

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

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

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

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

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

A. F. WALLS

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

- More from F. F. Bruce

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: Exodus

David W. Kerr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical Storm Center

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

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

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

Fruitful Preaching Source

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

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

The Student’S Tools

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

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

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

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

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

DAVID W. KERR

- More from David W. Kerr

Barabbas, Annas and Pilate

Christianity in the World Today

One of Latin America’s most beloved poets, Ruben Dario, finishes an ode to Christopher Columbus with this sideswipe at the dictatorships and violence which have all too often characterized the volcanic republics south of the Rio Grande:

While Christ walks the streets, feeble and frail,

Barabbas flaunts his slaves and chariots.

Christopher Columbus, unhappy admiral,

Pray to God for the land which you discovered!

Barabbas today has not only his slaves and his chariots, but his tanks and jet fighters as well. Carnage in Cienfuegos, assassination in Guatemala, kidnaping in Trujillo, bombs in Buenos Aires—these are the order of the day in lands where people still prefer Barabbas to Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself was once tempted to use the methods of Barabbas to establish his kingdom. He could have achieved sudden and universal popularity if he had chosen to espouse the political cause of rebellion against Rome. Satan said to him in the desert, “All this power will I give thee … if thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.”

But instead of violence, Jesus chose the path of humiliation, love and sacrifice. He refused to endorse the methods of political banditry.

Much of Latin America today is in the hands of Barabbas. Its dictatorships have ranged from the benevolence of Guatemala’s liberal Ubico to the conservative egotism of Colombia’s Rojas Pinilla; from the comic-opera grandiosity of Trujillo in the Dominican “republic” to the demagoguery of Peron in Argentina; from sugar-rich Batista in Cuba to oil-rich Perez Jimenez in Venezuela. All have had this in common—they have climbed to power over the dead bodies of their compatriots in revolutions of varying ferocity.

Possibly the most dangerous manifestation of Barabbas in Latin America is the existence of a strong and organized Communism in nearly all of the lands to the south of us. Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina—nowhere in Latin America can one escape contact with Red agents and Marxist doctrines. This is not surprising to those who are familiar with the dead authoritarianism of the official church and the economic feudalism still prevailing as an integral part of Latin America’s Spanish heritage.

Ex-president Galo Plaza of Ecuador, referring to this double legacy of religious authoritarianism and economic feudalism, recently stated that it is a short step from these factors to dictatorship. He could have added, “and to Communism,” for coincidentally present in Latin America are all the other factors which provide fertile soil for the Marxist agitators—a rising spirit of nationalism, a phenomenal industrial boom, the emergence of labor as a political factor, and a careful cultivation of Latin minds by social reformers of the left. Add to these ingredients the fact that Latin America has not found spiritual satisfaction in Roman Catholicism, and you have a perfect hothouse for communistic insemination.

Although Romanism opposes Communism with all its strength, it has at the same time created the very conditions upon which the Red cause thrives. By its accumulation of superstition and formalism in Latin America, as well as by its indifference to the economic and social welfare of the masses, the church of Rome has not only defaulted as a possible solution to the rule of Barabbas—it has cultivated the very factors which have opened the doors to communist activity.

For the moment, in one form or another, Barabbas is firmly entrenched.

At the other end of the political spectrum in Latin America can be discerned the shadowy, black-robed form of clericalism. This is Annas, the sinister, scheming religionist, whose interests are more political than spritual. Twice a high priest, and patriarch of a high priestly family, his were the money changers whose tables Jesus indignantly overturned. Fattened by a lucrative temple revenue, Annas is more interested in cultivating the favor of secular rulers than in ministering to the spiritual needs of a hungry people. Religion with him is a profitable career, not a faith. Cynically, he plays the game of power politics.

Nowhere in the world today has Annas had the opportunities afforded by long and uncontested tenure as in Latin America. Recognition of Roman Catholicism as the official religion, compulsory religious education in the schools, education in many instances controlled by the priests, concordats with Rome, government patronage of cathedrals, churches and mission territories—for the centuries that have passed since the conquistadores first brought the sword and the crucifix together to the Hispanic New World, Romanism has been the unchallenged (although, paradoxically, frequently neglected) religion of Latin America.

That this religion is superficial more often than not, cannot be denied. In many instances the Indian idol has become the Roman saint, and the crucifix has thinly disguised the indigenous paganism of the Aztecs and the Incas. Nor is the Romanism of European vintage much more profound. Possibly as low as 10 or 15 per cent of the Catholics in Latin America are truly practicing their religion. Theirs is a faith of outward convenience and of social propriety. It goes no deeper. I have been told of one country where the masses are said to be the briefest in the world—ordinarily one priest preaches the sermon while another says the mass in order to hurry things up for the parishioners!

Rome itself considers Latin America an unchurched mission field. Foreign priests are pouring in. The Spanish-speaking lands may be nominally Catholic, but the hold of Catholicism is tenuous. The hand of Annas is weakening, his grip failing. And as he sees his onetime power slip, he struggles frantically to maintain a degree of political, if not spiritual, control over the Latin American hemisphere. This explains the persecutions in Colombia—the ecclesiastical pressures in Mexico—the political maneuvers of Rome in so many of the republics. But, Annas is fighting a losing battle.

Still another important figure on the Latin American scene is that of Pilate, the cultured, worldly-wise, liberal-minded procurator who by his spinelessness sent Christ to the Cross. Pilate knew better, but he tried to pacify Annas and his crowd—he compromised his ideals on the altar of expediency. And in this he symbolized the political liberalism of Latin America.

Evangelical Christianity owes a large debt to the liberals of Latin America—the Masons and the free-thinkers, the men who stood up to the Jesuits a generation or two ago and by the sheer weight of their intellect and conviction turned the political charters of their lands into liberal channels. Latin American liberalism produced great leaders and great educators, and opened the doors to Protestant missions.

But in the last generation, political liberalism, lacking a spiritual core, has sold itself down the river. Being devoid of religious and ethical content, it has yielded to expediency. And the average Latin American liberal today is married in the church to a Catholic girl, has his children baptized in the church, educates them in church schools, and when the pressure is on he sells short his liberal ideals.

If Pilate at one time seemed to be the great white hope of Latin America, he is now simply the foolish little man who tried to wash his hands of responsibility.

Revolution, clericalism and liberalism. In none of these has Latin America found the solution to her moral, spiritual and political problems. Revolution breeds violence. Clericalism nurtures bigotry. Liberalism spawns indifference. Neither Barabbas, nor Annas, nor Pilate has provided what Latin America wants and needs.

But the three men have one thing in common—nothing much was heard from any of them after Good Friday. They are definitely pre-Resurrection figures in the Holy Week pageant of our Lord’s Passion. Up through Good Friday they each had their following. But on Easter mom they were eclipsed and condemned by the shining glory of the Risen Lord.

This Reformation Day of 1957 finds us in the Holy Week of Latin America. Barabbas, Annas and Pilate are struggling for the Hispanic soul, while off to one side, a crown of thorns on his brow, stands the Lord Christ, the Eternal Son of God. For the moment he is a minority. He stands in apparent defeat. But the day will come—very soon—when he shall break asunder the bonds of death.

Humanly speaking, it is unlikely that the Reformation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries will repeat itself in Europe. Catholic Italy is overshadowed by the Vatican. Catholic France is vitiated with the inroads of secularism. Elsewhere, Moscow is in control, but Latin America is different. In a climate of relative liberty, the Gospel of Christ has made tremendous advances. Already like the brightness which precedes the dawn, there are signs of an evangelical awakening.

If it please God, a glorious Resurrection Day is just ahead. For Latin America, Jesus Christ is the answer!

• This special interpretive article was written for CHRISTIANITY TODAY by W. Payton Roberts, staff correspondent. See also Dr. Taylor’s article in this issue.

People: Words And Events

Active Laymen—One of the largest laymen’s gatherings in recent history was held this month at Miami when the Presbyterian Men’s Conference drew almost 10,000. Among the speakers were Dr. Theodore F. Adams, President of the Baptist World Alliance, Dr. Billy Graham, Mr. Howard Butt, Jr., and the Rev. J. Marcellus Kik, Associate Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

New Library—Princeton Theological Seminary in October dedicated its new Robert E. Speer Memorial Library, built at a cost of $1,700,000 and with a capacity of 400,000 books. It is said to house the largest and finest collection of theological books in the western hemisphere.

Lutheran Hour’s 25th—Lutherans celebrated the beginning of the 25th year of broadcasting the “Lutheran Hour” at a rally in Milwaukee recently, attended by 7,000 persons. The Lutheran Hour, of which the Rev. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann of New York is the speaker, is now heard over more than 1,250 network and independent stations around the world, and in 53 languages.

Leaving Gotham—Dr. John S. Wimbish will leave the pastorate of Calvary Baptist Church in New York at the end of the year, after seven and a half years of service there. A native of Georgia, Dr. Wimbish will return to the Southland to resume pastoral duties and evangelism within the Southern Baptist denomination.

Editorial Task—Emile Gabel, former editor of La Croix, Catholic daily published in Paris, told 400 delegates from 30 countries at the fifth World Congress of the Catholic Press at Vienna that Catholic journalists must not leave their readers in “editorial isolation.… to think out, in a vacuum, problems connected with current events,” but that they should discuss anything that concerns truth and justice and thus help to create informed Christians. “The Catholic press must propagate the teaching of the Gospels,” he said, “but this must not be done abstractly.”

Mission Milestone—The 80th anniversary of the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago was celebrated recently. Known all over the world for its “Unshackled” radio program, the mission is a landmark in Chicago, and the second oldest city mission in America. It is currently engaged in an expansion program to cost $420,000.

Ethics in Public Office—A committee of 12, including 5 religious leaders, has been appointed by Governor Orville Freeman of Minnesota to study ethical and moral standards in state government. The governor said he would ask the committee—first of its kind in the country, according to one political scientist—to come up with recommendations to foster greater integrity in public office and better service to the people’s interests.

Publishing Progress—The nation’s largest denominational publisher, The Methodist Publishing House, founded in 1789, recently opened its new two-million-dollar headquarters building in Nashville. About 1,000 persons are employed in Methodist publishing activities in Nashville, and another 1,000 in the 14 branches of the organization.

Personality Stories—Two new books from the pen of George Burnham, News Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, are being released this month. Prison is My Parish, the story of Park Tucker, Atlanta Penitentiary chaplain, has been published by Revell, and Billy Graham and the New York Crusade, by Mr. Burnham and Lee Fisher, is scheduled for release October 30 from Zondervan.

Only a Nickel—According to the Southern Baptist Handbook, “Mr. Average American” spends only 5¢ a day for religious and welfare causes. In contrast to this nickel, each day he spends 9¢ for tobacco, 15¢ for alcoholic Beverages, 22¢ for recreation, 58¢ for transportation including foreign travel, 59¢ for taxes, $1.12 for food and $2.30 for other household expenses such as rent, clothing, savings, medical and miscellaneous expense.

Conferences Prepare Far East Pastors

TOKYO, JAPAN—It is now regarded as evident, among Christian leaders of both East and West, that Asia will never be reached for Christ unless native pastors in their own countries do the job of evangelizing.

The time of the white missionary as an important factor is rapidly drawing to a close. No matter how appealing the foreigner’s message may be, and no matter how attractive his personality, it is still something packaged in America. Asians are looking to Asians for leadership.

Fierce tides of nationalism are rising in all the nations of the Far East, coupled with superior initiative of Communism in exploiting situations. The day has passed when an American can command respect simply because he is an American, but hordes of tourists, workers, government officials and church leaders, failing to recognize this, have pushed the public relations barometer to the storm stage.

Fully aware of the approaching new day, based on many years of experience in the Orient, Dr. Bob Pierce and his World Vision organization have been holding pastors’ conferences for the last three years. The big aim is to arouse the evangelistic zeal of pastors in the various countries, in order to leave behind a commanding voice for Christianity when the welcome mat is pulled from beneath the white man.

Outstanding speakers from America have been greatly used of God in the conferences, but each year there has been increased use of “team” speakers from the Far East. And it seems that delegates sit a little straighter in their seats and listen with greater concentration when an Asian is speaking.

An example of this was seen at the conference in Japan, attended by 800 pastors ranging from liberals to fundamentalists. Bishop Enrique C. Sobrepena of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, who serves as chairman of the East Asia Christian Conference, went to the rostrum. He told the ministers the same things, in effect, that they had heard many times from Western speakers, but he was an Asian speaking to Asians. He hit hard, in uncompromising language, on the main points found in Luke 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”

“This can only be done through Christ,” Bishop Sobrepena said, “and he is calling upon us as ministers in the great task of individual and world redemption. Those of us who would participate must be willing to bear our portion of the Cross like the great men of old—the Apostle Paul, Livingston and Carey. Sacrificial service is needed.”

In commenting on the significance of the pastors’ conferences, the Bishop said, “I think they have tremendous value. I don’t know of another agency in the Far East that could bring all the different factions together for fellowship, inspiration and instruction.”

Nothing should be detracted, however, from contributions made to the conferences by Dr. Pierce and his three principal associates from the United States and India. Their talented efforts were blessed of God, but they share the feeling that such unusual opportunities may not always be present.

Evaluations by three members of the team traveling with Dr. Pierce are as follows:

Dr. Paul S. Rees, pastor of First Covenant Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota:

“A ministry to ministers has an importance that may be described as geometric, since the effect of it runs so far and so rapidly. There is the sheer impressiveness of the number of ministers and church leaders who have attended the meetings. Not less than 3,500 in the first five! For another thing, there is the breadth of compass by which the conferences have been marked. In most cases, the whole gamut of Protestantism has been represented.

“Impressive also is the fact that these have been Asian leaders with whom we have been associated. Can anyone think of an area on this planet more strategically and crucially important for the Christian Church? From Indonesia on the south to Japan on the north, we have seen the breath of God blowing upon souls of his servants. And this has been as true when we were at grips with such preacher’s ‘shop’ as ‘How to Prepare a Sermon,’ as it has when we were seeking to define for ourselves as ministers that distinctive doctrine of ‘Grace’ that makes the Christian message ‘Gospel.’ ”

Dr. Richard C. Halverson, associate director of International Christian Leadership:

“The most significant aspect of the pastors’ conferences was what I would call ‘true ecumenity.’ Together in Christion fellowship were representatives of many divergent groups from the extremely informal, non-liturgical to the extremely formal and liturgical. There was a striking demonstration of unity and love in Christ among the delegates. In several instances, pastors were reconciled to those they had previously opposed and there was public admission of the reconciliation of groups.”

The Rt. Reverend Dr. Alexander Mar Theophilus, Bishop of the Mar Thoma Church, India:

“As Christian workers continue their work in their separate churches and congregations, they are liable to feel lonely and weak. Sometimes they may feel as Elijah felt—‘I alone am left.’ But in these conferences they come together in deep Christian fellowship around the Word, and realize the unity given in Jesus Christ. The deepening of their dedication and strengthening by the Holy Spirit has made them serve their congretions more effectively and be better pastors of their flocks. The need for evangelism in Asian countries, to be carried on by the Church in Asia, has been presented with greater force. Along with evangelism, the need was seen for witnessing to the love of Christ in acts of love in ministering to the needy in society by sacrificial service, and by the prophetic ministry in calling the nations to the will of God.”

Dr. Pierce: “The conferences have exceeded my greatest dream. We have seen men come together under the blood of Christ who had never before enjoyed fellowship. And we have seen them return to their cities, villages and jungle outposts with a new zeal for winning the lost. Entire tribes in mountain areas are being won for Christ by men of God who substitute action for programs. They have a simple belief—that God is who he says he is and will do what he says he will do. For all that is being accomplished, we must give God the credit. He is doing an unusual thing in Asia.”

A capsule review of the conferences, with the largest remaining to be held in Korea, is as follows:

Bandung, Java—597 registered. This was the first conference sponsored by World Vision in Indonesia, and marked the first time that various Protestant segments united for a common goal. In a church that evolved from a European background, there was a graciousness and drawing together by such groups as the Sundanese Church of Western Java, Christian Missionary Alliance Balanese, Assemblies of God and Chinese groups. Stiffness was broken down as the men ate, worshiped and prayed together. Now that the ministers have come to know one another, they will be offered more in the way of practical helps if a conference is held next year.

Cebu, Philippines—625 registered, representing an estimated 15 denominations. Since this was the third year of conferences in the Philippines, the format changed from the purely inspirational to practical counseling in particular problems—stewardship, homiletics and social responsibilities. Some ministers from remote islands journeyed as much as seven days to the conference.

Baguio, Philippines—811 registered, representing 33 denominations. Dr. Pierce felt this was the greatest and most fruitful conference he had ever held. The ministry of the Holy Spirit resulted in Bible-centered unity and love. A number of the leading clergymen in the Philippines came forward at a service in humble rededication of their lives. Twenty-five observers were present from the liturgical Philippine Catholic Church.

Poli, Formosa—600 registered. The largest group, by far, came from the Presbyterian Church, greatly in the majority in Formosa. An estimated 250 mountain pastors, many from aboriginal tribes, who were not Christians 12 years ago, were present. They received a larger view of the total church than they had known in their mountain areas. In the 12 years, more than 400 churches have opened in the mountains of Formosa as people go from tribe to tribe talking about Jesus Christ.

• The above report of religious conditions and perspectives in the Far East was written by George Burnham, News Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, on tour with Dr. Bob Pierce and other American Christian leaders who have been conducting pastors’ conferences and evangelistic meetings in the Philippines, Formosa, Japan and Korea. After a brief vacation, Mr. Burnham will resume his duties on the news desk of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, with the November 25 issue. In the interim, the news department is being handled by Peter deVisser, Editorial Associate.

Baptist Jubilee Advance

A five-year program of evangelization, starting in 1959, is being planned by the major Baptist conventions of the United States and Canada, to climax in a Third Jubilee Celebration in 1964, commemorating the first national organization of Baptists in America, the General Missionary Convention, formed in Philadelphia in 1814. This cooperative effort, called the Baptist Jubilee Advance, is being sponsored by the American Baptist Convention, the Baptist Federation of Canada, the Baptist General Conference of America, the National Baptist Convention of America, the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., the North American Baptist General Conference, and the Southern Baptist Convention, with cooperation of the Baptist World Alliance. Baptists in 101 countries around the world will participate in the six-year celebration. A two-year program of preparation is now in progress.

Crusade Aftermath

The General Assembly of the Protestant Council of the City of New York has approved an expanded one-million-dollar program of evangelism, establishment of a Protestant chapel at New York’s International Airport, and has announced plans for a Crusade for Church Attendance the first three months of 1958. In addition, representatives of 31 denominations projected establishment of Protestant information centers in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Disciples Plan For Future; Change Name

(This special report was prepared forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Dr. James DeForest Murch, prominent author and editor, ordained minister of the Disciples of Christ and a member of the Convention’s restudy commission and a director of the Disciples Historical Society.)

Christian unity—the traditional concern of the Disciples of Christ—was at the forefront of the 1957 Convention of that communion in Cleveland, Ohio, October 11–16. The Convention moved toward merger with the United Church of Christ (Congregational and Evangelical and Reformed) consummated in the same Cleveland Public Auditorium last June. It further strengthened ties with the ecumenical effort of the National Council and World Council of Churches.

This does not mean, however, that the 2,000,000 Disciples of Christ listed in the Convention’s Year Book and reported in the religious statistics of the USA are moving this same direction. The International Convention is prone to think of itself as “the mainstream” of the religious movement begun by Barton W. Stone, Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott and Benjamin Franklin early in the nineteenth century, but it is in fact only one of three groups tracing spiritual ancestry to that source. The Church of Christ (opposed to the use of instrumental music in worship) now numbers better than 1,000,000. The so-called “independent churches,” strictly biblical and evangelical in faith, number over 1,000,000. This leaves the Convention proper with a constituency of less than 1,000,000. The 2,000,000 “right wing” of the movement has no relationship with the National Council or World Council of Churches and is completely opposed to any union with the United Church of Christ.

The International Convention, however, is an organization of tremendous influence, headed by men capable in ecclesiastical diplomacy though mostly liberal in theology. The ICDC includes in its organizational framework educational, missionary, benevolent and other agencies significant in American Protestantism. Many ecumenical leaders in the NCC and the WCC were at one time prominent in Disciple leadership and “earned their spurs” in the efficiently-operated machinery of the Convention or its agencies.

The Cleveland Convention gave much time to reports and future plans of these agencies. Its announced theme was “His Love—We Share,” dealing with the 1957–58 agency emphases upon missionary education and benevolence.

The United Christian Missionary Society, largest of the agencies, in a 17,000-word report told of the work of 254 missionaries and 2,093 national leaders in 11 mission fields. Its budget last year was around $5,000,000 and it is building a capital fund of $3,000,000.

Especially through the women’s work in local churches, the UCMS exerts great influence in minister placement and in interchurch and agency relationships. Because of this fact, and its “open membership” and ecumenical policies, it has long been the chief “bone of contention” alienating “independent churches” from International Convention support. These churches now have a missionary program of their own, giving $2,000,000 annually to support over 400 missionaries in over 20 foreign fields.

International Convention agencies which tend to unify the churches are the National Benevolent Association, The Pension Fund and the Board of Church Extension. NBA, supporting 10 homes for the aged and 7 homes for children, reported assets of some $10,000,000 with revenues for the year of $3,000,000. Pension Funds for ministers reported assets of $23,354,136. Church Extension board has, since its beginnings, loaned some $35,000,000 to assist churches in building projects. These boards are wisely administered without discrimination.

The Board of Higher Education serves 32 colleges, universities and seminaries (enrollment, 25,000 students), including such well-known institutions as Texas Christian, Drake, Butler, and Phillips University. In this area the constant battle between conversatives and liberals has given rise to more than 20 strictly evangelical Bible schools and colleges—institutions not recognized by the Board—but training more than half of the young men studying for the ministry among Christian churches.

The Disciples of Christ Historical Society, serving all wings of the movement, reported progress in the erection of its $1,000,000 Thomas W. Phillips Memorial library and museum in Nashville.

Fringe agencies, representing varied interests, held meetings at Cleveland. On the “right” the National Evangelistic Association, sounded a strong evangelical note. Dean E. G. Homrighausen of Princeton gave three challenging addresses. On the “left” the controversial Disciples Peace Fellowship and the Campbell Institute promoted extremely liberal social and theological views. While meeting the needs of minority groups, such gatherings had little effect on the Convention.

Resolutions processed by the Committee on Recommendations had to do with social concerns such as farm incomes, minimum wages, economic assistance programs, foreign trade, social welfare, United Nations, disarmament, immigration and refugees, race relations and capital punishment. Pronouncements followed the usual pattern set by the National Council, but all were prefaced by a modifying statement to the effect that “human pronouncements must not be confused with the will of God.” Resolutions on Christian unity committed the Convention to complete cooperation with the WCC and NCC in its ecumenical objectives and programs.

Most significant was the approval of a projected $25,000,000 fund for establishing 1,500 new churches in the next few years. Inter-agency rivalry over administration of this project is being ironed out, and “independents” and “schismatics” will be excluded.

There is a marked tendency toward centralization of authority in the Convention with potentially larger control over the agencies and the churches. At Cleveland the name of the Convention was changed from the International Convention of Disciples of Christ (Christian Churches) to the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). Most of the local congregations bear the name Christian Church, not Disciples of Christ, and the action will eliminate much confusion. While the move was said to have no significance as to ecclesiastical structure or function, nevertheless many advocates of strictly congregational polity see a shift from a Convention of individual Disciples with agency service features to an eventual delegate convention officially representative of the churches and with growing powers over churches and agencies.

Most of the 8,000 registrants at Cleveland will prefer to remember the great assembly by the “Ecumenical Communion Service” on the Lord’s Day. The Convention had invited all Protestants in Cleveland to join them in the observance of the Lord’s Supper. A throng variously estimated at 10,000 or 15,000 partook of the bread and the wine together. Four hundred deacons from Greater Cleveland Christian churches served the emblems of the Lord’s death and suffering in just eight minutes. It was an impressive and soul-lifting service.

Traditionally the mass Communion Service has been the high point of national gatherings of the Disciples for 100 years. As a people they have always maintained the Lord’s Supper as the center of their worship and observe it every Lord’s Day. Their open communion practice is based on the belief that the observance is an “ordinance of Christ” and is basically an experience of the individual Christian with his Lord.

The next Convention will be held in Saint Louis, Mo. Beginning in 1960 the gathering will be held biennially.

Dr. Granville T. Walker, minister of University Christian Church, Ft. Worth, Tex., was chosen president for 1958, succeeding Mr. John Rogers, a layman and outstanding business and civic leader of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dr. Gaines M. Cook continues as Executive Secretary of the Convention.

Worth Quoting

“There is … something we can learn from Billy Graham. It is the profound importance of good public relations, competent publicity and efficient organization in conducting a religious campaign.… Billy Graham’s crusade was magnificently organized.… Crude commercialism? I don’t think so. The Graham office has conducted the campaign in dignified fashion. No blatant sensationalism. Public relations firms are tempted to sell religion as you might sell soap or toothpaste, but the Graham crusade was conducted in good taste.… It has often been said that if Saint Paul were living today, he would be a journalist. I rather think he would be a modern evangelist whose religious crusades would dwarf those of Billy Graham. He would employ the best modern techniques of publicity and promotion: direct mail, TV spots, doorbell ringing, etc. ‘Every scribe instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a householder who brings forth from his stockroom things new and old’ (Matt. 13:52).”—The Rev. John B. Sheerin, C.S.P., editor of the Catholic World, in “What Can Be Learned From Billy Graham?”

Eutychus and His Kin: October 28, 1957

Robert Ingram

SAINTS AND SPOOKS

On the eve of All Saints’ Day

The spooks and goblins play

And witches stir their brew;

For the balanced Middle Ages,

Before paying saints their wages,

Gave the devil his due.

This equitable spirit

Saved the treasury of merit

(Which no goblin or fey spirit

Could properly inherit)

While assuring the ghosts of a chance

For a lark in the dark and a dance.

We’re well past Middle Age

But spooks are still the rage:

The kids are keen for Halloween

And now demand a Horrorland

(On Channel Z, color TV).

From these ghouls which unnerve us,

What saints will preserve us?

For saints today are quite passe,

We have only the stars made by movie czars.

We adore the gun-slingers

And the well-modeled singers,

But no star in Hollywood

Need be holy, pure, or good—

What all-star cluster

Could pass all saints’ muster?

While a world without saints savors horror for fun

A weird witches’ sabbath has fiercely begun

And horror in earnest closes its shroud

On the vacant heart of the man in the crowd.

Neither celibate monks nor the profligate stars

(Though the saints filled their cells as the drunks crowd the bars)

Could redeem or release from that spirit unclean,

The Power of darkness, the Prince Halloween.

Only the Lord of the age drawing near,

The Prince of Life, has broken the fear

Of death and the prison of sin,

Conquered the strong man and entered in.

“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.”

So sings the ransomed sinner

whose heart no longer faints

For all who wait Christ’s coming

are called to be His saints.

In hope they speak the gospel’s word:

All saints’ day is the day of the Lord!

EUTYCHUS

GOD AND THE SCHOOLS

It is encouraging to have you print pieces like “Fourth R in American Education” by Renwick Harper Martin (Sept. 2 issue). However, it seems to me Mr. Martin’s thesis falls apart when he accepts the fallacy that it is only sectarian religious education which is opposed by our laws and court decisions.

Are we Christians unable to recognize that in the eyes of Roman civil law any religion is sectarian? Christianity itself is sectarian for a statist, a Jew, a Unitarian, an agnostic, a Buddhist or a Moslem: yet these people are part of our American legal system. This is the very proposition upon which even the mention of God in state schools has been forbidden by some court decisions.

The Bible itself is sectarian, and, with all sympathies with the evangelical position, it must be recognized that the very introduction of the Bible into schools is a sectarian procedure. The decisive point of this issue is that at which we agree it is all right to be religious, but all wrong to profess a religion. How can one go to church without going to a church? And how can a church escape being, in a true sense, sectarian?

St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church

Bellaire, Texas

In his “Fourth R” Renwick Martin works a familiar theme which is quite popular these days—that of the “godless” public school. Such articles persist in the libel of the public schools which charges them with responsibility for the current crime wave and … juvenile delinquency. No proof is ever offered for this monstrous allegation.…

Mr. Martin bases his charge on the bland assumption that if there were more religious education in the schools these conditions would not exist.… We know that in all sectarian day schools religious indoctrination is carried on.… Yet we have no proof that products of these schools are any more crime proof or any less delinquent than products of the public schools.…

The whole problem of moral behavior is obviously more complex than Mr. Martin suspects.… The author urges the Bible as the key to his solution. This is good, but Mr. Martin should be told that the great majority of our courts have upheld the legality of Bible reading in the public schools. These courts have repeatedly held that the Bible is not a sectarian book (for example: Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, and many others). Thirteen states actually require Bible reading in the schools, and five others specifically permit the practice. The picture Mr. Martin gives of government ruthlessly eliminating religion from the schools is simply not factual.

Mr. Martin feels that his own brand of religious teaching which is “non-sectarian” would be unobjectionable if carried on in public schools. The trouble is that everyone else thinks his brand is “non-sectarian” and just what ought to be taught. It is my own opinion that the only kind of religion worth teaching is sectarian religion. Yet this is just the kind (Mr. Martin’s included) that cannot be taught in public schools. This is not just a matter of law—it is a matter of practicability.

This is not to say that schools should be “godless” or that religion cannot be dealt with in any classroom. We cannot ignore God just because the building we are in happens to be publicly owned. Nevertheless, we must face the fact that if we want to preserve our one school system serving all creeds and teaching mutual respect, we shall have to leave the job of sectarian indoctrination to the home and the church. After all, why not? What is wrong with the home and the church?

Protestants and Other Americans

United for Separation of Church

and State, Washington, D. C.

Which is better, to have the average public school teacher read, without comment, a few verses of Scripture every morning, or plan for religious education of pupils at least an hour a week under consecrated Christians? For me I would choose the latter.

In 1922 the Hennepin County (Minnesota) Sunday School Association [prompted] leaders in St. Paul and Minneapolis to secure legal advice and to prepare a bill providing for Weekday Religious Education on released time from public schools … not to exceed three hours a week. This bill went through both houses in the state legislature with little or no opposition. Schools were begun in both cities during 1923–24. The system has grown by leaps and bounds. Churches, parents and public schools cooperated nicely. It was not at all uncommon for 100% of a given grade to be enrolled. A fulltime supervisor was employed. Teachers were paid by the hour. Juvenile delinquency was greatly reduced.

In Pittsburgh Dr. Ben Graham, Superintendent of Schools asked the religious leaders to plan a program of weekday religious instruction for high school students. Fifteen districts were organized, giving each church a chance to be represented. It was agreed that classes would be held in nearby churches, on school time and that students would receive credits toward graduation. Thousands of students have been enrolled. A fulltime member of the county staff directs the work.

Eighteen years of my ministry were given to religious education in Minneapolis and Pittsburgh. Weekday religious instruction does make for honesty and a better way of life.

Manchester, N. H.

WARMTH OF FAITH

The book review by R. V. G. Tasker dealing with the work of Rudolf Bultmann (Sept. 2 issue) calls, it seems to me, for clarification. The reviewer cites Ulrich Simon: “Can any reader take Bultmann’s ‘Jesus’ really seriously without hearing, so to speak, the threatening Horst Wessel Lied in the background?” A connection is established between the apparently negative aspect of much of Bultmann’s work and the “political tensions in Germany in the prewar years.” The writer cited says he is not “charging Bultmann with such excesses,” i.e., the Nazi attacks on the Church, but his statement is so ambiguous that an uninformed reader might well conclude that Bultmann’s views were dictated by social pressures of the time. Quite apart from the fact that the Jesus was published in 1926, Bultmann’s view of the historical Jesus roots in the modern critical movement and in his own work in form criticism dating back to 1921. If Simon and Tasker mean on the other hand that they think of the Nazi outlook as caused by rather than the cause of critical scepticism, they should say so clearly. As it is, the statement hits below the belt. If I can say a word from personal acquaintance with the great scholar, I would testify to his rugged personal integrity and to the warmth of his Christian faith and preaching.

Harvard Divinity School

Cambridge, Mass.

DEWEY AND WORSHIP

The review of Dr. Manford Gutzke’s book, John Dewey’s Thought (Sept. 16 issue) did not, in my estimation, do full justice to this work as a contribution to the field of religious education. I hold Dr. Gutzke and his work in high esteem and have had occasion both to discuss this book with him and to read it. I feel that I can comment on his work as we have both written on the same subject, he from the standpoint of John Dewey, I from the standpoint of John Calvin.

Dr. Gutzke seeks to establish validity for Dewey’s thought in the area of religious education from a true, evangelical standpoint. It is his thesis that the “preferred behavior patterns” of Dewey may have successful religious application. He notes that the church tends to associate “attitudes” of worship (folded hands) with the experience of meeting God in worship and he concludes that Dewey’s thought may provide guidance in the matter of establishing the best possible procedures within the best possible environment for the business of “training a child in the way he should go,” according to a true Christian epistemology.

If there is a fault in Dr. Gutzke’s writing (other than its difficulty to read) it is the implication which one senses rather than meets headon, that practices and procedures may, in themselves, be means of grace, whereas “preferred behavior patterns” can never be more than auxiliary, as a context to the use of the primary means of grace which is the Word.

First Presbyterian Church

Alexandria, La.

EVANGELISM FOLLOW-UP

Now that the Billy Graham Crusade is over, the intensive effort of the churches … to welcome those who committed themselves to Christ begins.

It is providential that this period of conservation comes at the beginning of the active church year. The months from September to Christmas are strategic, and the period from Christmas to Easter full of the greatest promise. So wide has been the influence of the New York meetings that churches far beyond their environs have a wonderful opportunity to share in their after effects … this fall and winter season.…

Because a similar period meant so much to the church I served in Philadelphia during and following the great Billy Sunday campaign in that city in 1915, I venture to … record a few of our experiences.…

Mr. Sunday’s Tabernacle Meetings covered the three months leading directly up to Easter. But many weeks before, from the beginning of our fall season, we had been preparing for them. During the meetings we rebuilt our weekly program to coordinate with the program of the Tabernacle. Consequently the church was ready to continue the effort along lines suitable to the situation. For example, the Wednesday evening prayer meetings which had been going on for months continued, so that the people who had chosen ours as their home church might be personally brought into our fellowship and warmly welcomed in our homes. Similar arrangements were made to receive them into the church school classes and the organizations for men, women and young people. A special welcome was planned in the Sunday services, deliberately avoiding, however, anything that would separate them into a distinct group. They were, from the beginning of their church experience, absorbed into the on-going life of the church.

One of the most effective instruments for bringing the men together had been instituted before the Tabernacle meetings began. The men of the church had established a pleasant Sunday afternoon to run from four to five o’clock. Those who “hit the trail” during the meetings were brought in and introduced and welcomed, and given opportunity to tell … what their decision had meant to them. Perhaps nothing meant more to the new converts, as well as to the men of the church.… After the Tabernacle meetings were over this gathering was continued for months and offered all kinds of opportunities for mutual fellowship. Similar plans were provided for other groups.

Certain facts stand out as I recall this vital period of Bethany Temple:

First, we religiously followed up the persons (whose commitment cards we had received) who had named our church as their preference. And we followed them up at once, and continued to keep in touch with them until we reached them. Second, we gave them an invitation to become communicant members of the church as soon as they could attend the communicant classes through which all new members were instructed. Special classes were held for children. Third, we made some person or family responsible for introducing the new members to the older members in their own neighborhoods, and keeping in touch with them in a friendly yet unobtrusive fashion for a few months. Officers of the church were assigned especially to this task. Fourth, we had a group system in the church which brought the families together at stated times. The new members were quickly drawn into these friendly home groups and as soon as possible the meetings were held in their homes. Fifth, the officers of the church, church school and organizations all kept their eyes open for tasks to which these new members could be assigned and timed.

This program continued over the years with the result that within a few years the converts from the Billy Sunday meetings had been completely integrated into the life of the church.

Bethany Temple received the cards of 108 persons who “hit the sawdust trail,” not counting many of our own members who went forward to reconsecrate themselves to Christ. During the two years following the meetings we received into our membership, from the families of these 108, a total of 450 people including the trail-hitters themselves.

The question is being asked concerning the converts from the Billy Graham Crusade, “Will they continue?” The answer will depend partly on the persons themselves, but to a large extent on the way they are received and built into the churches they join. If the churches, inspired by their devotion to Christ and their dependence upon the Holy Spirit, will faithfully seek to build these folks into a living church, they will stand.

I remained long enough at Bethany Temple to see the church do this very thing. When I left, at least a third of the teachers and officers of the church school and a goodly proportion of the active workers in our organizations, and many of the officers of the church, had been drawn from the ranks of those that came to us directly or indirectly through the Billy Sunday meetings. I can say truthfully that no event in the 14 years of my ministry in Philadelphia had such a vitalizing influence on the church as a whole as the Billy Sunday meetings and their aftermath through the years.

I must add a postscript. Two years after the Billy Sunday campaign I happened to be in the study of another minister, of a church not unlike our own in personnel and neighborhood. As the minister and I chatted together he caught me looking around at his bookcases. Atop one was a bunch of cards which he thought had caught my eye. He said, “I see you are looking at these cards; do you know what they are?” I said I had no idea. “Well,” he said, “those are the cards I received from the Billy Sunday meetings.” “What did you do with them?” I asked. “Do?” he replied; “why nothing.” I said, “Do you mean to say that you never followed them up?” “Certainly not,” he answered. “Such cards mean nothing, we never received a member into our church from that much publicized campaign.”

My heart ached for that man, and it does now. Of all the lost opportunities that I can personally remember over a lifetime in the ministry, that is still to me the most tragic. If you are a minister and have been in any way moved by the Billy Graham meetings, do not fail yourself, your church, these new converts and your Redeeming Lord.

Asheville, N. C.

• Dr. Ferry, now retired, was for many years pastor of the Bethany Temple Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.—ED.

A YEAR’S READING

The only irritant and discordant note I have detected in your otherwise outstanding and commendable articles during a full year’s reading was sounded in your recent articles on RSV, which somehow did not satisfy, being negatively critical in part, and “damning with faint praise” in part. As a member of a conservative church-body’s committee, which for five or six years has critically studied the RSV, making careful comparisons with the original texts, I have come to George Eldon Ladd’s conclusions, viz. “Criticism, if any, must be directed to the revisers’ judgment, not to their theological presuppositions,” and “The charges have repeatedly been made that RSV reflects a liberal theological tendency and that the translators have misrepresented the original text in favor of lower theological positions. A critical study of RSV does not bear this out.” If the RSV is not perfect, it is, as Dr. Ladd declares at the close of his evaluation of the RSV NT (CT, July 8, p. 11), “the most useful translation we possess.” Then why, I wonder, has the good doctor “no zeal, in principle, to defend the RSV per se”? If the RSV is “the most useful translation we possess,” why not all help perfect it by sending valid criticisms with supporting evidence to the RSV Translators’ Committee for consideration, as my church through its committee plans to do? Valid criticisms and helpful suggestions are most welcome, I am sure. Unjustified criticism can only harm the critics and the good cause. I very much incline to agree with John M. Leggett Jr. (CT, August 19, p. 24).

St. Peter’s Lutheran Church

Shaker Heights, Ohio.

I am continually astonished at the success of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. You have done the impossible …

President

Belhaven College

Jackson, Miss.

This joins with many ministers, I believe, who have postponed too long writing you and commending you and yours for good editorship well done …

Calvary-Asbury (Meth.) Church

Sudlersville, Md.

“A Layman and His Faith” … attributes to Cardinal Newman the words of the Rev. Henry F. Lyte. It was Lyte, not Newman, who wrote those beautiful words of the hymn “Abide with Me.”

First Presbyterian Church

Dinuba, Calif.

I am a retired Methodist minister, having served for more than 40 years in the pastorate and the educational work of the Church. Since the first issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I have been an appreciative reader … Your issue of Sept. 16 is the best.… In this number are more articles of great value to the Church of today, than I have ever found before in a single issue of any periodical.

Custer, Okla.

I have just finished re-reading some of the early pre-subscription issues.… This second encounter convinced me that I have missed more solid reading than I can afford, so please find check inclosed.

Blairsville, Pa.

For rural pastors like me, it keeps us up-to-date on spiritual trends and news.… It is written in very plain language.…

United Baptist Church

Island Falls, Me.

- More from Robert Ingram

Ideas

Protestant Purgatory

Inevitable logic compels those who deny the existence of an eternal hell to invent a temporary purgatory. The problem of unequal justice upon earth in relation to punishment and reward perplexes the mind that rejects the biblical revelation of the fashion of life to come. What must be done with those guilty of unrepented sin?

In a recent issue of a popular denominational magazine a writer asserted that we “have to rediscover the moral equivalent of hell.” His sense of justice recoiled at an equally cordial welcome in heaven for infamous men like Hitler and Stalin and saints like Paul and Augustine. In his own way, the above writer would solve the problem by proposing a consideration of “the redemptive and cleansing possibilities of hell.” The fires of this temporary hell are a “burning shame” and “searing regret,” a source of redemption, and, as such, a “Protestant” purgatory.

The horror of the Roman Catholic purgatory, however, should cause serious hesitancy in proposing as a moral equivalent of hell, the suggested temporary purgatory, for the satisfying of a sense of justice. Roman Catholics have been robbed of peace, consolation and hope, enjoyed by those who rest on the promises of Scripture. Roman Catholicism denies the infinitely meritorious sacrifice of Christ, and has insisted that the sinner make additional satisfaction for his sins. Only by enduring the painful, agonizing fires of purgatory can the half-pardoned sinner qualify himself for the favor of God. He must justify himself by fire, and to the torment which he endures is added the anguish of loved ones on earth who are driven to purchase candles and masses to buy his release. One shudders at the thought of what needless tortures the invention of a Protestant purgatory could bring.

Actually, limiting the torment of hell to soul and mental anguish does not lessen but rather increases suffering. Often the teaching of hell is rejected because the thought of literal fire is abhorrent. Yet, mental agony can cause more pain than a literal flame. The book of Proverbs states, “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?” Mental institutions are filled with broken spirits. A wounded conscience has caused more suicides than physical ills. Burning shame and searing regret intensify rather than soften the horror of purgatory.

The “Protestant” invention of a place to purge souls, of course, denies the necessity of the vicarious Atonement of Christ. If a “burning shame” and “searing regret” cleanse and prepare the soul for heaven, then the entrance of the Son of God into history was futile and vain. One may seriously question the wisdom and goodness of God in sending forth his Son to be born of a virgin and to die on Calvary’s Cross, if all that God needed to see in the soul of man was remorse and contrition. We must silence the prophetic voice of Isaiah who claimed that the Servant was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. We must hush John the Baptist’s declaration, “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” We must still the message of Peter that we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot.

Part of the attempt to abolish the biblical eternal hell comes from a desire to vindicate the love of God. The assertion has been made that if love is love and God is God, heaven can’t be heaven until hell is empty. God, according to this view, is made to be something of a Moloch who demands his creatures to pass through fires of purgatory before reaching the golden shore. But those who reduce the being of God to love and ignore his justice are still on the sharp horns of a dilemma even with the invention of a temporary purgatory. If God’s justice does not demand full satisfaction for sin, what particular attribute of his demands remorse and contrition, activated by purging fires?

Classical liberal theology stressed the subjective element of the Atonement; its sole aim was the moral transformation of the sinner. The sight of the Cross, it was asserted, fills the sinner with remorse for his sin, impels him to repent, and places him upon the path of righteousness. (The crucifixion led one sinner, Judas, to hang himself.) A classic example of the effect of remorse and contrition is portrayed in the life of Martin Luther. He describes his experience by saying that at times he suffered such violent and hellish tortures that had they lasted even ten minutes he would have perished and his limbs would have turned to ashes. He painfully realized that he was utterly incapable of proper repentance and that his penitence did not achieve righteousness. He saw nothing worthy of salvation in his agonizing remorse, and it was his subjective experience that finally drove him to accept the objective righteousness offered in the Gospel. Luther found his justification, then, not by the fires of contrition and repentance but by the faith in God’s Son.

That personal repentance does not satisfy either the individual soul nor the holiness and justice of God was recognized by the theologian, Dr. McLeod Campbell. He found the atoning fact in the Lord’s sympathetic repentance for man. Since man was incapable of an adequate repentance, Christ drank the cup of repentance for him. This idea finds no correspondence in Scripture and does not satisfy the justice of God nor the awakened conscience. Repentance, personal or vicarious, does not answer justice either in the court of men or of God. The wounded conscience cries out for punishment of its sin or an adequate Atonement. Were Christ’s sympathetic repentance sufficient, of course, there would be no need of the fire of purgatory to activate repentance on the part of the sinner.

The important question in this matter is whether purgatorial fires would really actuate godly sorrow. Penitence merely to avoid the consequence of sin would not be considered genuine sorrow. Dives (Luke 16:19–31) has been pointed out by some writers as an example of the redemptive quality of hell. In hell, they assert, he developed great concern for his five brothers and pleaded that Lazarus be sent to warn them about the place of torment. But in truth, this was not love; it was a hellish artifice, placing responsibility for his incarceration upon God with the deceptive implication that he had not been sufficiently warned. Abraham informed him that his brothers had already had sufficient revelation concerning the life to come from Moses and the prophets. But Dives revealed an intransigent impenitence when he argued, “Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.” Abraham’s reply to him was that if they refused God’s revelation given to them through Moses and the prophets, nothing would move them to repentance. The entire story of Dives demonstrates sharply the futility of expecting genuine repentance in hell.

The day may come when some theologian will speak of the redemptive quality and transforming power of death. However, the logic of the continuity of mind and character of life here with that which one experiences hereafter is still generally conceded. The unconverted, impenitent sinner enters the next life in his unregenerate state. What, then, in this newly invented purgatory would lead the sinner to godly repentance, if upon earth the goodness of God did not lead him to that act? (cf. Rom. 2:4). Would torment induce the sinner to contrition? Liberal theologians have spoken scornfully of repentance motivated by fear of hell, and surely godly sorrow implies more than a desire to escape retribution. But if “searing regret” and “burning shame” are to define genuine repentance, the question remains whether remorse and the works of remorse constitute redemption.

The word “redemption” is often used in a loose and popular manner to signify “deliverance” without any reference to price, or to specific means by which deliverance is accomplished. Suggestion has been made that redemption may be obtained merely by an act of repentance. The term is so well defined in Scripture that the wrong use is inexcusable. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon defines redemption as, “everywhere in N.T. metaph., viz., deliverance effected through the death of Christ from the retributive wrath of a holy God and the merited penalty of sin.” Webster’s New International Dictionary defines the word, “In Christianity, deliverance from the bondage and consequences of sin, especially as through the reconciliation (atonement) effected by Christ.”

Scriptures substantiate the above definitions by an overwhelming array of passages. “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” (Rom. 3:24–25); “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13); “In whom we have redemption through his blood.…” (Eph. 1:7); “Who gave himself a ransom for all.…” (1 Tim. 2:6); “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity.…” (Titus 2:14); (cf. also, Col. 1:14; Heb. 9:12; 1 Pet. 1:18–19; Rev. 5:9). And who would deny the import of Christ’s own statement, “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28)? The idea of deliverance through ransom may be repugnant to some liberal theologians, but it is the clear Scriptural definition of redemption.

Under the providence of God, Luther delivered the church from the dogma of justification by works and re-established the doctrine of Christ’s infinitely meritorious work on Calvary’s cross. He vanquished the argument for purgatory with all its attending evils by nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on that notable day, October 31, 1517. Now, 440 years later, children of the Reformation would establish a “Protestant” purgatory wherein redemption might again be wrought out through works of penitence! What can be the purpose, the value, in their refusing to proclaim the teachings of the Reformers, especially the truths that have come forth from the Word of God?

Christian Perspective In A Non-Christian World

There is an uncertainty in America today which is unusual. A people who have prided themselves on national progress and international prestige suddenly find themselves unsure in both categories. We have been known historically as a “Christian nation” endowed with unusual material and geographical advantages, but there now arises the grave question whether the very things of which we have boasted most might evaporate before our eyes.

In such a situation Christian perspective and conscience is desperately needed. To the Christian the clear question must be: What is right? Man has a primary responsibility to God and an equally inescapable duty to his fellow man. From the Christian perspective there can be no divorcing of the one from the other. The fact that the majority of individuals are devoid of Christian conscience makes the task of the Christian more difficult and also more imperative.

It can be safely said that most laws in America are compatible with the Christian concept; in fact, their basic philosophy stems from Judeo-Christian teachings. Our difficulty therefore is not in the laws of the land, but rather in how they are regarded on the one hand and how they are administered on the other. Right now a good deal is being said about the “law of the land” with reference to the race issue. But a host of other laws which also have bearing on citizens in their relationships to the government, and to each other, are accorded scant notice. The “fix” is a politically expedient way of evading laws, from the ticket for over-parking to a gross violation of tax laws. Racial discrimination is highlighted in Little Rock yet plagues every section of the country. A low view of the law, as such, seems ingrained in much of our citizenry.

To put it bluntly: our national life is at an alarmingly low spiritual and moral ebb. The very resurgence of an interest in religion seems to have stirred the forces of evil to even greater activity.

Now America finds herself out-distanced in a field of science where we thought we were well ahead. There is no use denying the fact that Russia’s successful launching of the first earth satellite was a major achievement and there is no denying the fact that it has served to lower American prestige around the world. Some captured German skill may have been used to make this artificial moon possible, but there the reasonable assumption remains that the satellite is largely the product of scientific developments we did not believe possible in Russia.

How should the Christian react to the present situation? From a personal standpoint he can say that he knows all things work together for good for all that belong to Christ, and hence these things cannot touch him. This is unquestionably the comfort and hope of the believer, so far as his personal problems are concerned. But, he also has a responsibility to others and this cannot be discharged by a detached approach.

In the international field the Christian has a responsibility which has not been discharged. As a Christian he should work for the evangelization of the world. As a citizen he should work for morality in our international relationships. The Christian can produce effective arguments to show that our recognition of Russia in 1931 was a grave mistake. Many who see no moral issue involved nevertheless can show that the advantages of such recognition accrued almost entirely to Russia and that she has increased in power, in territorial acquisition, and in international infiltration and intrigue ever since she received such recognition.

On the home front Christians have too often been savorless salt and hooded lamps. Conformity to worldly concepts and compromises with spiritual and moral issues has weakened the Christian testimony as effectively as did the compromise of Israel with the Canaanitish nations more than three thousand years ago.

For a generation there has been an increased emphasis on the influence of the Church as such. Both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant denominations, through their cooperative agencies, have laid increasing emphasis on legislation. In so doing have not Christians actually been led to shirk their responsibilities as citizens? There is reason to believe that the active voice of men who speak out as individuals on moral and spiritual issues and who exercise their influence through their vote actually contribute far more to good government and right living than those who lobby in the name of the Church. There is nothing wrong with a united voice for right, but there is something strangely compelling in the witness of Christian men who stand up and are counted as individuals expressing their plea for social righteousness.

The Christian perspective demands that we try to see things as God sees them and that, having sought the leading of the Holy Spirit, we exercise in every way possible our influence for that which is right. We have been shocked by blatant corruption in some labor unions. We stand appalled at the political power of unworthy characters. Our souls rise in righteous indignation and disgust when hate and prejudice erupt in violence against people because their skins are of a different color. All these evils stem from sin in the human heart. All of them demand the judgment of a righteous and holy God. But their cure is to be found in the redemption God has provided through his Son.

The key to our internal and international problems is to be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The custodian of that truth is the believing Church. The agents of the message are Christians. This is a time when we need to look up and receive, surrender from within and believe, and then to go out and live and act by and in the power of him who redeemed us and offers salvation to all who will believe.

Public Relations And Religious Revival

The link between public relations and religion is under scrutiny. In the aftermath of Billy Graham’s New York campaign, many newly “promotion-conscious” forces are asking: “What can we learn from Billy Graham?” Some religious leaders are answering: “We can learn the profound importance of good public relations.”

The Church has no better “publicity gimmick” than evidence to the world that Jesus Christ is still actively working in human lives. No high pressure salesmanship shaped by the spirit of the times, no slick programing of public relations, no tricks of the advertising trade, no experienced mass manipulation, no engineering of human decision, can turn the sinner from the evil of his way to the Living God. Regeneration involves a supernatural rebirth. “No man can call Christ Lord except by the Spirit of God.” No mechanics can dispense with the Holy Spirit. Many observers disregard this real secret of effective mass evangelism. Public relations produces spectators, not saints. It is one thing to lay fingertips on glory, another to lay hold of new life.

The real question is, what does promotion and publicity “pull a crowd” for? Some promotion may attract to church participation; other promotion may compete against it. Does religious promotion narrow the gulf between men and the Living God? Does it lead men to the message of Christ’s death for sinners? The religious surge may bear us toward the one true God but it may deluge us with false gods as well.

Fortunately, today’s sober spiritual concerns are gaining respect on the part of the press, radio and television. Here again science may fulfill its role as the handmaid of theology to the glory of God. The Graham campaign in New York shrewdly appropriated many positive values of scientific communicative techniques.

Yet we must bear in mind certain irreducible differences between mass advertising and mass evangelism. Mass advertising tends to generalize individuals; its pressures are for conformity. Mass evangelism, on the other hand, aims to refine and sharpen uniqueness in view of individual decision and destiny. Because spiritual commitment often requires action contrary to prevailing social pressures, it would be an untenable generalization to recommend the ideal 20th century evangelist to be a public relations tycoon. Rather, the message of the effective evangelist may recommend and call the public relations tycoon of our era to repentance.

Some editors still apparently assume that an agnostic makes the best religion editor, or at least that the religious cause is best served if a reporter is not a committed believer. If such editors were covering the story of apostolic Christianity, they would have preferred Gamaliel (“Keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this … undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them …” Acts 5:38), to Paul as an authoritative interpreter.

Measured in terms of modern promotional success stories, the New Testament evangelists and the apostles were perhaps far from ideal. But they told the truth at the cost of life itself; they spoke to man’s deepest needs in terms of the Christ.

A modern public relations staff would have advised Paul to “pull many of his punches,” but the apostle would have proved an exasperating client. He was more concerned with winning converts and serving Christ than with winning friends and influencing people. Whereas public relations aims to avoid all offense to customers it often exploits, the Gospel often is first a scandal to those it convicts and saves.

The Church must do more than appropriate the publicity opportunities of our age. By inspiring new forms and a loftier message, it must enable the very techniques and content of publicity to bring the avenues of promotion into the service of spiritual truth and righteousness. For too long secular promotion has borrowed great words and themes of Christianity to fill them with a secondary content that grieves spiritual sensitivities. Vocabulary of our religious heritage—Crucifixion, Atonement, Gethsemane, miracle, conversion, regeneration, etc.—has suffered from essentially secular trespassing. To restore to these terms their primary spiritual sense, and once again to sharpen man’s consciousness of God by them, is no easy task.

At the same time, the Church can learn much from the public relations world. This learning, however, comprises far more than the appropriation of valuable techniques and insights for mass communication. Public relations speaks simply and directly to the public; it aims for an immediate point-of-contact in the familiar vocabulary of the man in the street. Precisely this is how the Gospel of Jesus Christ first met the sinner. Jesus knew how to speak of water, bread and light as swift transitions to eternal spiritual concerns. The Gospel is superlative for its profundity in simplicity: it is good news, and that is what the modern man needs to hear. That “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,” is neither abstruse nor elusive in meaning. While so profound that all human philosophies are shallow alongside its depth of implication, the truth of the Gospel applied by the Holy Spirit is simple enough that it may gather the man in the street and his children into the fold of grace.

Theology

What Did Christ Do For Me?

L. Nelson Bell

I was walking down a hospital corridor by the stretcher of a man on whom I was to operate in a few minutes. Looking up into my face, he said: “Doctor, I was saved last night. My pastor came to see me and I accepted Christ.”

The anesthetist, head of the department, a man with little apparent concern for religion, overheard the remark. Following the operation, when all had left the doctors’ dressing room except this doctor, he asked: “Just what did that man mean when he said he was ‘saved’? How can Christ save anyone?”

Like so many of us laymen, he was confused by theological terms. Or perhaps he took Christianity as a matter of course without any idea as to its real meaning.

Knowing him well, I feared that he had been indifferent to Christ and his claims. He had an only son at the state university. I said: “I know your son is at the university and how keenly you are interested in him, his career and his welfare. Suppose that he got into serious trouble, and that on going down to see him you should find out that it was a situation where you could take responsibility for him and pay the full penalty yourself. How gladly you would do this for your boy! That, in one sense, is what Christ did for you, and for all the rest of us. Our lives are all messed up. We are guilty of multiplied sins against God, sins which demand judgment and punishment. But God has stepped in and intervened on our behalf in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. He accomplished something we could not do for ourselves. He took the responsibility of our sin and paid the price himself on the Cross.”

That which Christ effected for us on the Cross is spoken of as the Atonement. This particular word appears only once in the New Testament (Romans 5:11) but the implications of the Atonement are found throughout the Old and New Testaments and are at the very heart of the Gospel message.

How can the Atonement be explained in terms we laymen can understand? I recently examined two books on the subject. One is so exhaustive and so couched in theological terms that it was not easy to follow. The other did not explain the Atonement: it explained it away. This danger besets modern theology.

The Atonement (at-one-ment) is the means, the procedure, by which sinful man is reconciled to a holy God. There are those who deny that any reconciliation between God and man is necessary, and affirm that God is a loving Heavenly Father and that man is simply to turn to him and he will be received and forgiven. The difficulty with this argument is that the God of love is also the God of holiness, and sin and the unpardoned sinner cannot come into his holy presence. Furthermore, the justice of God demands that sin be punished. Even sinful humans recognize this necessity. Man recognizes the validity of punishment and vicarious substitution whereby one individual may suffer for or pay the penalty for another.

It seems logical to turn to the Scriptures to see what they teach. It is here that we find the historical record about Christ, who he is and what he did.

An honest reading of the Bible leads to the inescapable conclusion that Christ died for our sins. He, the eternal Son of God, came into this world, lived a sinless life and died on the Cross to take upon himself the guilt and penalty of all sinners who believe.

Speaking to his disciples, our Lord referred to an incident that occurred in the wilderness many centuries previously. A bronze serpent had been placed on a pole and stricken men were told to look towards that uplifted serpent as a token of their faith in the saving power of God. Jesus said: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:14, 15).

I know there are those who inveigh against the use of “proof texts,” but any layman—particularly one who is a lawyer and interested in and affected by the law—knows that precedents, decisions and judgments are constantly cited in court and are a part of a valid procedure. How much more have Christians the right to take the Bible and accept what it teaches by statements in multiplied places; these together constituting an overwhelming volume of evidence.

In 1 John 2:2 we read: “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Now “propitiation” is not a common word and we laymen may wonder what it means. According to Webster it signifies, “to appease, to render favorable, to conciliate, to atone, to effect reconciliation,” etc. The Prophet Isaiah, speaking to Israel, made a statement which is valid today: “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear” (Isa. 59:2). Those who argue against the need of reconciliation to God through Christ’s atoning work simply evade the awfulness of sin on the one hand and the holiness of God on the other.

Isaiah recognized man’s need when he wrote: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities … and with his stripes we are healed.”(53:5), while the Apostle Peter confirmed this in these words: “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Pet. 2:24). The same thought is expressed many times and in many ways in the Scriptures. Man can reject this concept but in doing so he is rejecting the work of Christ and the Word of God.

“Christ redeemed me” is a familiar phrase. Christ did just that for us, paying the price to buy sinners back to himself.

There are many “theories” of the Atonement. It is popular today to say that no one theory does full justice to this truth. There are many phases of the Atonement and this side of eternity man will never know the depth and height and breadth of the love of God which made our redemption possible and effective. But when we try, with the frailties and limitations of the human mind, to describe the greatest of all Christian doctrines let us be careful that we do not explain it away.

“Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures,” affirms the Apostle Paul. This has been the heart of the Christian message down through the ages and the efficacy of his death was confirmed by the fact of his resurrection.

Sinful man needs redemption. God knows that need and has made full provision to meet it. In Christ on the Cross the need and the sinfulness of man is forever met. Here we see the grace and mercy of God united with His holiness and justice in one supreme act of atoning love.

L. NELSON BELL

- More from L. Nelson Bell

Cover Story

Eyes Front!

William M. Elliott, Jr.

“What is that to thee? follow thou me” (John 21:22).

A friend once asked Daniel Webster, “Mr. Webster, will you tell us the most important thought that ever occupied your mind?” The great statesman thought a moment, and then said, “The most important thought that ever occupied my mind was that of my individual responsibility to God.”

Now it was this truth—that a man has an individual responsibility to God entirely apart from his fellows—that Jesus was seeking to instill in Simon Peter’s mind that morning by the sea of Tiberias. After Jesus had served breakfast to the seven disciples there on the shore, he took Peter aside for a private conference. It was during this conversation that our Lord revealed to Peter that he would be called upon to suffer a martyr’s death, that he would die for the faith.

As the two men talked, John, “the beloved disciple,” came toward them. When Peter turned and saw his fellow disciple approaching, he said to Jesus: “Lord, and what shall this man do?” Then came the sharp rebuke which forms our text: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.” In other words, “Mind your own business, Peter. What is in store for John is no affair of yours. Only see to it that my plan for you is carried out. I’ll take care of John.” You see, the Master was rebuking Peter for turning his mind away from his own private duty to idle and fruitless speculation about the fate of a companion.

Needed Rebuke

The big fisherman needed this rebuke, and so do many of us. One of the most important lessons which you and I have to learn is to get our eyes off other people, and tend to our own knitting—doing and being what God meant for us to do and to be. Strong in all of us is the tendency to watch the other fellow, and to contrast our situation with his. It is a common temptation, and, from a psychological point of view, a destructive habit. So many things that plague men’s lives grow in this soil—envy, discontent, resentment, self-pity. The offices of physicians and psychiatrists are full of unhappy, restless individuals who are frustrated and inhibited in this very thing.

It is a great day in a person’s life when he makes up his mind to be himself—to do his own work, to fill his own special niche, and to follow God’s unique plan for him. Only thus can he experience fulfillment and peace of mind. Emerson once wrote: “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself, for better, for worse as his portion.”

God had a work for Peter to do, and a work for John, because each of these men was unique, and it was this uniqueness which made the cause succeed. Peter could serve God’s cause best by simply being Peter. He would have fizzled at John’s work, as John would have failed at his. God’s will or plan is never the same for any two of us. The Divine Architect never hands down two sets of blueprints exactly alike. His plan for your life is not his plan for mine, and his plan for my life is not his plan for yours. But both are essential.

To Each His Gift

I wonder if you have noticed how much St. Paul emphasizes this truth in his epistles. Writing to the Christians in Corinth he says: “Men have different gifts.… There are different ways of serving God.… God works through different men in different ways, but it is the same God who achieves his purposes through them all” (1 Corinthians 12:4–6, Phillips translation). And writing to the Ephesians Paul said, “His gifts unto men are varied. Some He made Special Messengers, some prophets, some preachers of the Gospel. His gifts were made that Christians might be properly equipped for their service, that the whole Body might be built up” (Ephesians 4:11, 12, Phillips).

In Martin Luther and Philip Melanchton we have the Peter and John of the sixteenth century. Luther knew that in some respects he was not as gifted as Melanchton, but he also had the wisdom to see that he could do a job for the kingdom which Melanchton, with all his gracious endowments, could never do. He said: “I was born to be a rough controversialist. I clear the ground, pull up weeds, fill up ditches, and smooth the roads. But to build, to plan, to sow, to water, to adorn the country, belongs by the grace of God to Melanchton.” It was a great day for the Protestant Reformation, and for the kingdom, when Martin Luther was willing to be Luther in all the glory and power of his individuality.

God knows what he is doing when he hands to each of us a particular set of abilities, and if we determine to be somebody else, or demand that somebody else be just like us, we are hindering Christ’s purpose, and retarding his work.

All have a share in the beauty,

All have a part in the plan;

What does it matter which duty

Falls to the lot of a man?

Inhibiting Growth

This habit of watching others inhibits our spiritual growth and makes us less effective in our service for Christ. We who work hard in the church see others who are not working hard, and it disconcerts us. They seem worldly, indifferent and free. They assume little or no responsibility for the Christian cause. And, as we watch them, we begin to feel a little sorry for ourselves. We think our lot is hard, and that we are bearing a disproportionate share of the burden. As a result of this comparison, we grow tired of responsibility, and want to “throw in the sponge.” Why should I, we ask, carry such heavy and demanding loads, while others go scot free?

It is a familiar but dangerous mood. We are so busy wanting others to follow Christ faithfully that we do not settle down to the business of following him ourselves. Some horses have to have blinds on their bridles to keep them from distraction. Maybe we Christians need some such device if we are to have a consistent and undisturbed loyalty to Christ.

Another way in which this habit of looking at others hinders our spiritual growth is that as we see their weaknesses and failures we become satisfied with our own religious progress and become complacent Pharisees. The poor achievements of others become our standard instead of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. But Christ is our example and our ideal, not some limping, indifferent church member!

No Valid Excuse

This is a wonderful text too, for those people who say that they will not join the church or profess the Christian faith because they see certain professing Christians whose lives are imperfect. They say that they do not follow Christ because someone who professes to be religious has let them down. He has given such a poor demonstration of Christianity that they have been forced to turn from it in disgust. That is a familiar complaint of the irreligious, but I believe that Jesus would say to all such people, “What is that to thee? follow thou me!”

Some people never tire of talking about hypocrites in the church. What a stale dodge it is! Wrote Dean Chas. R. Brown of Yale, “You speak of religion to some man, and all he can think to say is some silly quibble.… You mention the church, and his mind is off like a rat to drag out some moth-eaten story about an unworthy deacon. You wish to show him the well that is deep, and he merely jumps up and down in the puddle of his own conceit to splash you with mud. How pitiful it is” (Finding Ourselves, Harper, p. 83).

Let me say a word about the contention that there are hypocrites in the church. The people who attend church regularly and take an active part in its fellowship are not playing the hypocrite. They are not pretending anything. They are confessing something. They are confessing that they need what religion and the church have to offer. The Christian church is not a display room for model Christians. If you think that it is, then you have a wrong conception of the church. The church is a spiritual hospital for people who know that they are sick, and are without hope in this life and in the next without the grace and power of God. Some may join the church to impress others and to gain a reputation for piety, but this can be true of only a few. I do not stand in this pulpit because I think that I am better than someone else, and I do not stand here because I have “arrived” spiritually. I am here because I think that this is where God wants me to be, and because I have some good news about him. As Paul said to the Corinthians, “we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5).

This line about hypocrites in the church is a common one, and is an excuse very helpful to the devil. He capitalized on it, plays it for everything it is worth. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis makes quite a point of this. This book, you know, is a series of imaginary letters written by Screwtape, an elderly devil in hell, to his young nephew on earth whose name is Wormwood. Screwtape is coaching Wormwood on how to keep people out of heaven and get them into hell. In one of these letters the old devil is telling Wormwood that one of the best ways to get his man into hell is to encourage him to watch the people he meets in church. Here is what he says: “When he gets to his pew and looks around him he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbors. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces in the next pew.… Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anti-climax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman” (op. cit., pp. 16, 17).

We Must Answer

Shame upon us Christians that we do not more perfectly reflect Jesus Christ in our lives and conversation! May God in his mercy forgive us if we are ever the cause of another turning away from Christ and missing eternal life! But friend outside the church: this does not excuse you. What you say about certain church members may be true, but it will not weather the final judgment. When you come to stand before Christ he will not ask you how another believed or lived. There you must speak for yourself, and only for yourself. And this plea of yours about how others failed will be the lamest of all excuses.

Remember, God offers you his beauty and his glory, however much some of us may have missed it. As Leslie Weatherhead suggests, you don’t say, “Beethoven’s music is no good,” just because the girl next door murders his sonatas on the piano, do you? You don’t say, “I shall stop seeking health,” because you know a doctor who is sick, do you? Of course you don’t. Then why do you say, “I’m finished with Christianity because I know a preacher or a layman who is a humbug”? He may be, but why miss the salvation Christ offers—why lose the enrichment of personality and the inner peace and harmony which he offers—just because another has been such a poor example of what a Christian ought to be?

If some of us have missed what Christ came to give, why should you miss it? If you do not like some of the people in the church—if you are persuaded that we have tarnished the faith with unworthy lives, will you offer yourself for the Christian cause, and do the job right? If some of us have hurt the good name of Christianity, will you help to redeem it? If the church is not at all what you think it ought to be, will you come in and help to make it better?

“What is that to thee? follow thou me.”

Eyes front! Forward march!

William M. Elliott, Jr., is pastor of Highland Park Presbyterian Church and Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, South. He holds the A.B. degree from Park College, B.D. from Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, and Ph.D. from Edinburgh University. Davidson College has conferred the D.D., and Park College the L.H.D. Dr. Elliott is author of several books, among them For the Living of These Days and Lift High That Banner.

Chosen And Appointed Path

To know despair. To feel

The stark, blank hurt of her

Whose mother-love has spent

Itself upon a Judas.

To taste delight, as sire

Whose sun-kissed baby daughter

Laughs her infant ecstasy

Into his singing heart.

To have the joy of soul—

Clean maiden whose treasure springs

From bursting heart to golden song

Upon her wedding day.

To touch and clasp the pain

And burden of the bruised

And scattered multitudes

Who wander lost, and yearn.

To share the hope and fear

That stir and wrench and pull

Each human heart, and drive

From grasping earth to God.

“To laugh with them that laugh,

To weep with them that weep,”

To serve the Lord of Love

Among his hungry sheep.

JOE CARSON SMITH

- More from William M. Elliott, Jr.