The Church and Evangelism

One of the significant features of the Christian situation today is the awakening consciousness of the church to the claimant challenge of evangelism. There was a time, and that not so very long ago, when evangelism, in Professor James Denney’s phrase, was “the disinterested interest” of a comparative few. But now it is taking its rightful place at the head of the church’s priorities. It has become, as the Bishop of Rochester has recently pointed out, “a live and foremost issue in the outlook, planning and strategy of the whole church.” We have, therefore, a new climate ecclesiastically for evangelism.

Technique Not The Secret

Much has been written of late concerning the technique of evangelism. It is indeed an encouraging sign of our times that so much attention should be paid to this vital subject. But perhaps the hour has struck for a warning to be issued against the perils involved in too great a reliance upon method. It is the temptation of this pragmatic age to presume that technique is the secret of evangelism. It cannot be too firmly emphasized, however, that mere methods, mere schemes, mere endeavors will not in themselves produce the desired effect. Without the tide of the Holy Spirit running through them they may prove as futile as the frenzied activism of Elijah’s rivals on Mount Carmel. “And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice; no one answered, no one heeded” (1 Kings 18:28,29, R.S.V.). Method is of secondary importance compared with the primacy of the Spirit and the Word.

It is the purpose of this article to underline certain basic principles relating to the church and evangelism rather than to add to the existing pile of literature on method. And working as I am at the present moment with the “Tell Scotland” movement, perhaps I may be forgiven for utilizing the threefold statement that underlies this great nationwide campaign. Expressed in the words of its leader, Tom Allan, effective evangelism today stems from the conviction “that mission is a continuing engagement with the world at every level; that the true agent of mission is the Church itself; and that the layman has a decisive part to play.”

Engagement With The World

The question of the world is one that should continually exercise the believer’s mind, but not always in the traditional sense. It is, of course, essential that the young convert should clearly separate himself from all that would distract or defile. But once his stand has been made and he is firm on the rock and strong in Christ, then, as the familiar hymn reminds us, he must

“… stretch out a loving hand

To wrestlers with the troubled sea.”

And just as the would-be rescuer must often plunge into the dangerous waters in order to save a sinking man, so the Christian is called upon to risk contamination himself in order to win another out of the world. Remember, it was the Pharisees who drew in their skirts at the sight of the wicked and passed by on the other side. The Son of man was known as “a friend of publicans and sinners” (Matt. 11:19).

Now it is out of this Scriptural attitude that the realisation arises that evangelism is an engagement with the world. Christianity does not represent a flight from the world. That is the choice of the recluse and the ascetic, but it is not the directive of God’s Word. Our Lord’s parting commission, before his ascension to the right hand of the Father on high, was “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). In obedience to that explicit command of Christ, the church must seek to be always in the world yet never of it. And this is not to be a matter of special occasions and specific crusade. Evangelism cannot be relegated to the realm of the sporadic and the intermittent. It is the urgent task of the church all the time. It is a “continuing engagement with the world.”

Moreover, it is to be “at every level.” Too often our evangelism is limited in both conception and scope. We tend to restrict it to stereotyped patterns. We have lost the improvising genius of the New Testament Church. Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul gives us a glimpse of his own evangelistic strategy. “I have become all things to all men,” he says, “that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). When the passion for souls fully dominates our discipleship, then we shall not rest content until every avenue of approach to the unconverted has been explored. We shall covet the beatitude of Isaiah 32:20, “Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.”

The Christian Commando campaigns in Great Britain in the immediate postwar years adopted such a policy. They aimed to penetrate deep into enemy lines and to occupy a bridgehead until the regular troops of the church came. Meetings were held wherever men and women were—in factories, in shops, in cinemas, in dance halls, in public houses, in schools, in clubs and in the open air. Instead of waiting for unbelievers to come to the church to hear the message of salvation (and it might well have been a lengthy interval), the church went to them and confronted them with the Word just where they were. Such a policy must be incorporated into the regular program of every local church. Continuing engagement with the world at every level must be integral to the church.

The Agent Of Mission

A further principle of vital evangelism is that “the true agent of mission is the church itself.” Never before has the church been so closely linked with evangelism at the receiving end. We live in the era of church-centered crusades. It used to be said that too many campaigns failed because they halted on the church doorstep. That is no longer the case. Every possible effort is made in follow-up procedure to channel inquirers into the fellowship of the church.

This reorientation of evangelistic objective brings with it a fresh challenge to the church. It is not sufficient that the actual task of mission should be left to itinerant specialists, valuable though their contribution may be. The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are sadly few. We must therefore pray the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers into His harvest (Matt. 9:37, 38). And the answer to our prayer will be “Go ye.” We shall realise that evangelism is a task for the whole church, and that includes every believer. We cannot conveniently beg off this concern. When the prophet Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” he responded immediately and unhesitatingly, “Here am I: send me” (Isa. 6:8).

We have spoken of the change of attitude whereby the church is now regarded as the natural recipient of converts. There is desperate need for a parallel revolution within the church. Our eyes must be opened to see both our responsibility and opportunity. If we are to fulfill our function in the world by becoming the agent of evangelism, we must be ready for new and unusual ventures in Christ’s name. We must refuse to be fenced in by conventional inhibitions. Over the centuries, sadly enough, the church has built up defences that all too often hem her in, as well as keep the enemy out. God may well be saying to us as He said to Israel of old, “Take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord’s” (Jer. 5:10).

If the church is indeed the agent of mission, then a radical overhaul of our machinery is necessary. Every item must be reassessed in terms of its evangelistic value. The policy of the local church must be evangelistic. Evangelism must be the very air we breathe, the very blood that runs through our veins. So many churches apparently have no policy, spiritually speaking, at all. They are content to drift along from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, from year to year with no evident end in view. No political party would dream of dispensing with a program. No business firm could continue without a clear-cut plan of action. Yet too often in the Christian Church we think that anything will do. We must have a policy and that policy must be evangelistic. We must have a burden for the unsaved. We must have a consuming hunger for souls.

The activity of the local church must be evangelistic. Everything we do on our premises must be related to the task of mission. If need be, we must scrutinize our timetable to ensure that all is done for the furtherance of the Gospel. Every meeting and every organisation must be weighed in this balance and fearlessly dealt with if it is found wanting. The tree will be all the healthier when the branches are pruned.

The worship of the local church must be evangelistic. Every service must be designed to confront the congregation with the claims of Jesus Christ. Every sermon must aim at decisions. What Principal W. M. Macgregor used to call “the preaching of conquest” must return to the pulpit. We must expect conversions, for unless we expect them we shall not see them. And beyond the normal activity and worship of the church, every attempt must be made to reach out to those who are estranged from Christ—especially those resident within the vicinity. All this is implied by the affirmation that “the true agent of mission is the Church itself.”

The Layman’S Part

The final principle of evangelism enunciated by the “Tell Scotland” movement is that “the layman has a decisive part to play.” One of the “Signs of Hope in a Century of Despair” listed by Professor Elton Trueblood in a stimulating book of that title, is what he calls the emergence of lay religion. Such an heartening feature must be capitalized in the interests of evangelism. The growing consciousness within the church of the role of the laity must be harnessed to the task of mission.

This is an unequivocal implication of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. This Protestant insistence is itself derived from Holy Scripture. The Christianity of the Bible is a layman’s movement. Among the twelve whom Christ chose to receive and perpetuate His message not one was a rabbi or a priest. They were all to be found in the ordinary walks of life. Some were fishermen and one was a tax collector. It was to these men, drawn as they were from the common cross section of society, that our Lord issued his clarion call to witness: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19).

Christ is calling laymen still to play a decisive part in the work of evangelism. And if they hesitate on the grounds of inadequacy, they should ponder the second verb in the verse quoted above. It contains the open secret of power for witness. “I will make you.” The disciples were the men Jesus made. It was not what they were that equipped them for their mission, but what he made of them. He who tamed the impetuous Peter until he was known as the apostle of humility; he who enabled the reticent Andrew to become the first home missionary; he who so resolved the dilemmas of doubting Thomas that at last he owned his Lord and his God—this same living Christ can transform the lowliest believer into an ambassador of love.

The layman has a decisive part to play in personal evangelism. In these days of great crusades and mass meetings we tend to overlook the abiding need for the quiet yet fruitful witness of the individual. But in point of fact this is the basis of every sort of evangelism. It is the original New Testament technique. Andrew brings Peter. Philip brings Nathaniel. That was how the Church grew when it was very young. That is how it will still grow today. Obviously, the layman is central here. It is the duty and privilege of every believer to testify to the saving grace of Christ. If our experience is real, it will be evident. If our faith is vital, it will find expression. We shall tell our unconverted friends and neighbors what has happened to us and commend our Saviour to them. We shall say with Paul, “We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak” (2 Cor. 4:13).

The layman also has a decisive part to play in team evangelism. Much of the most effective missioning is being done today by groups. They may go out to visit from door to door or witness in the open air. They may constitute a Christian cell within a factory. Such teams are composed of laymen. They may be trained and instructed by ministers, but they are nevertheless in essence a part of the lay potential of the church.

That is a potential awaiting realisation. “The essential thing in the whole matter,” wrote Dr. Hendrik Kraemer, referring to the layman’s part in evangelism, “is that the churches forget that in the lay membership they have the most precious part of the whole body. If the churches awaken to the importance of the laymen and really try, probably for the first time in history, to give content to the doctrine of the general priesthood of all believers, there will be a deep change in our whole church life and in the relation of the church to the world.” It should be the prayer of every Christian that such a profound and far-reaching revolution may take place. A return to the New Testament principles of every-member evangelism is more than overdue.

Having indicated the fundamental convictions underlying the church’s approach to its commitment of mission in the contemporary situation, let it be stated in conclusion that evangelism is not in itself the answer to the church’s needs and problems. Evangelism is not enough. Our further prayer must be for revival. Only the Pentecostal insweeping of the Holy Spirit can make the dead bones live.

Revive us, Lord! Is zeal abating

While harvest fields are vast and white?

Revive us, Lord, the world it waiting,

Equip Thy Church to spread the light.

We Quote:

RUSSELL MAGUIRE

Chairman of the Board, American Mercury

Of paramount importance, we must have a spiritual revival—we must return to a strong belief in God and the Bible.—In a statement of “Objectives for 1957,” American Mercury, Vol. LXXXIV, No. 396 (Jan., 1957).

A. Skevington Wood served Methodist circuits in Scotland from 1940 to 1951, when he became superintendent of Paisley Central Hall where he still ministers. He holds the B.A. from University of London and the Ph.D from University of Edinburgh, where Church History was his major field. His work on Thomas Haweis (1734–1820) is being published this year by S.P.C.K.

- More from A. Skevington Wood

Cover Story

Jesus as the Ideal of Christian Ethics

Carl F. H. Henry

Much of the fascination which Jesus Christ has held for scholars comes not simply from his supernatural works, nor from his supernatural teaching, but from his supernatural moral life. The conviction that he is the “personal revelation of the holiness of God” is a prime reason for the great number of Lives about him. He was more than the great Teacher of ethics. He was its great Liver.

Nowhere else does human history show the moral glory of the Divine in human life. Nowhere else has the world found such inspiration for moral earnestness. Christ stands behind what D. M. Ross has called “the singular moral heat” of the early Christians. “From Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ to Charles M. Sheldon’s In His Steps,” Hillyer Straton remarks, “Christian ethics has been centered in Jesus.” And the sweep of his moral influence does not stop with Christian writing. “The track of His footsteps is seen,” Pressense writes, “wherever there has been any real progress in good, in love, in right, in the moral elevation of men.” L. H. Marshall affirms that “beyond Jesus of Nazareth … the moral stature of humanity can never go” and that Jesus is “the last word on all the great issues of right and wrong.”

We are told that “his biography may be summed up in the words, ‘he went about doing good’ ”; that he lived “the only perfectly unselfish life ever seen on earth”; that the “grand outstanding characteristic of Christ’s work” was his “absolute submission to the will of God”; that the uniqueness of Christianity consists in “his utter realization of the immanence of God in this present life”; that he is “the moral law incarnate.… The law of the ‘good’ is in His person a reality.”

The Wonder Of Our World

The magnificent feature of Jesus Christ is that he not only proclaimed a superlative ethic, but he lived it out to the full. In common with the earlier Hebrew prophets he held a morally majestic view of God. He supplemented this view in his teaching. Granting the holiness of their living, the life of Jesus stands apart from them and from the whole of humanity as a brilliant lightning flash in the dark night. His pure walk is the wonder of our world of mixed motives and deeds. Alongside him, even the best of men must confess unholiness. Schleiermacher agrees that the “entire history of humanity” supplies no analogy for this one whose “whole conduct, … deeds, … addresses, have a supernatural character. He must be a divine ambassador.” Here the moral life is unveiled with no discordant note, with nothing that is less than ethically superlative.

Whatever may be said about him, whether as a teacher or as a redeemer, his sinlessness is unique in the stream of human life. Nowhere does history show a fountain of righteousness like the ethical pureness which ever lives in him. He presented the ideal of the kingdom not merely in word but in deed and fact. He is the word of truth and of goodness become flesh. What he taught he uncompromisingly exemplified. “The whole of the active work of Jesus,” Wendt writes, “was an exposition of His teaching through His own example.” In him the kingdom itself appeared on earth, in that “the perfect human life, the moral ideal for man, was perfectly realized.” “No miracle of Christ equals the miracle of His sinless life,” remarks H. R. Mackintosh, in a chapter devoted to the features which set apart “the one quite unspotted life that has been lived within our sinful race” as “solitary and incomparable.” Jesus Christ, even if more remains to be said, is the faultless exemplar of virtue, “a self-determining will, perfectly bent on perfect ends,” the lone exhibition of ethical excellence to be found in the history of the fallen race.

A Superb Moral Weapon

Christ’s moral perfection has given to Christian ethics one of its choicest weapons against speculative ethics. It sets Jesus not only against the champions of a moral naturalism, from Epicurus to Dewey and Sarte, but also against the most earnest idealistic moralists, from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Kant, Hegel and Fichte, or to Hocking, Brightman and Flewelling. Indeed, none of the founders of the other world religions binds his followers in such personal moral dependence. Whether one looks to Buddha or Confucius, to Laotze or to Mohammed, to Mary Baker Eddy or to Joseph Smith, he finds this ethical teaching to be higher than their own ethical living. In this they do not differ from the philosophers of ethics. The life of Jesus thus gives authoritative power to his ethical teaching, since his life accords to it an atmosphere of personal earnestness and realization.

The point is not that all other religious ethics and moral philosophy are the work of scoundrels. Man really does wrestle with moral claims in human experience. His very death marked Socrates as an ethical martyr. Plato is passionate in his call for social and individual justice. Kant gave a dramatic centrality to the moral life. But Jesus is not related to his teaching simply as Socrates and Plato and Kant were to theirs. His life was comprehensively “the example of His own words.” As MacLennan observes, “The life of Jesus differs from that of all other great teachers of religion and morality in that He lived out His teaching Himself to the full.… What Jesus taught He was.” And this fact of itself makes all the other religious and philosophical moralists seem tame and drab, if not ethically shabby, alongside Jesus Christ. Indeed they may be men or women whose teaching here and there strikes our fancy. They may even give us some significant insight. But they do not lay upon us the duty of following them. And if they did, we could not do so with good conscience. Where does the study of philosophy or of religion, we may well inquire with Hovey, “recall the name of any saint or sage whose temper was so sweet and just, so holy and pitiful as his? whose word was so luminous and penetrating and vivifying; whose endurance of wrong was so meek and heroic; whose work was so beneficent and God-like?” Where is even one other who has not been victim of the conditioned ideals of his own day? Who by his self-giving love and supreme virtue has challenged and placed on the defensive men of all ages, notions, temperaments, and stations of life? Where else is a flawless and imperishable pattern for behavior to be found, where else is one who stands in no need of ethical renewal from without? Christ did not simply venture to define the moral ideal. He manifests it. The private lives of the great secular moralists are relatively unknown even where their ethical works are well-known.

The Philosophers Are Sinners

How are we to account for the lack of dynamic in speculative ethics? The moral philosophers of antiquity and their modern successors ignore the tragic factor of sin in the life of man. How account for their relatively lower ethical claims? They formulate objective standards for morals and religion without any dependence on special Divine disclosure. And they assume that man can fulfill the will of God by works. They do not see that he needs special redemption. On every side they betray the pride of reason.

True as it may be for Socrates that the doctrines of providence, prayer and immortality were controlling principles in his philosophy, his conviction that he had “never deliberately wronged a single person” shows dim understanding of the law of love in practice. It also shows the classic moral philosophers were wrong when they said it is impossible to have knowledge of the good without acting upon it. One cannot think of Plato without recalling that he was not taken seriously as the philosopher-king he idealized in The Republic. Seneca, the lofty mirror of Stoic ethics, praised the poverty of those around him while he lived in luxury. He even wrote the shameful document in which Nero defended the treacherous murder of his own mother. The moral achievement even of the greatest ethical philosophers falls under the biblical verdict that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The Pattern Of Perfection

All the excellences of the best men are seen in Jesus, undiminished and unceasing. His spell over the science of ethics, therefore, is not simply that of an attractive, balanced, and deep personality. He does not simply command the respect due a sage. He presents the ideal not only in his teaching but in the flesh. He speaks to the moral dilemmas of life as One who, though sharing the temptations and the burdens of men, nevertheless is a true representation of the Divine nature. “For Christians, the true standard of life exists, not in the dream land of some ideal realm, but concretely embodied in a human life.” The Christian ideal is not left to abstraction, but is manifested in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the pattern of perfect living.

Even those who hesitate to make the highest religious claim for Jesus Christ, and whose philosophy leads them in quite other directions, have acknowledged his peerless character. The distinguished personalist, Edgar S. Brightman, said “in Jesus … the ideal of personality had its highest historical illustration.” Whoever has learned of Christ can be satisfied with no lesser ideal of humanity. And whoever disregards him will fruitlessly search for a superior ideal. Christ brought ethics at the summit and lived out its most exacting demands. David Smith said: “He is never worsted in the moral conflict,” but “passes through the daily ordeal stainless and blameless.” That is why the proud Greek, the noble Roman, the barbaric tribes of the early West, the heathen of the Orient and the modern pagan and sophisticate are halted in his presence. Here, indeed, is “God living a human life.”

Rationalistic Counterattack

It was to be expected that the life and ideals of Jesus would be assailed vigorously by rationalistic ethics. To admit that Jesus authoritatively forged and achieved the moral ideal is the death-blow of speculative morality. The anti-supernaturalism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, later to emerge as a world cultural force in Communism, damned the moral attitudes and example of Jesus as obsolete. The bolder and more radical critics, such as Bruno Bauer, rewrote history in order to do away with Jesus Christ as a historical person, but the Nazarene could not be erased so easily.

The new spirit assails Jesus as a damaging example, attacking such virtues as humility, self-sacrifice and self-abnegation. It proposes to add modern ideals from contemporary science, art and socio-economic interests. The complaint of the American humanist is zealously worded by Harry Elmer Barnes and Edwin A. Burtt. Nels Ferre, a professing supernaturalist, attacks the moral purity of Christ, declaring that “sinlessness is a bloodless category, making an anemic saviour.” He charges Jesus with “unnecessary sharpness,” “moods of undue and exaggerated joy,” “impatience.” He was “almost neurotically self-concerned and invidious of others.”

Tribute From The Uncommitted

But moralists who would not allow themselves to be counted in the tradition of theological ethics have acknowledged the excellence of Jesus’ example. John Stuart Mill superficially reduced Christianity to the Golden Rule. Yet he said an unbeliever would find it difficult to locate a better example of the rule of virtue than that given by Jesus. His example of mercy, compassion and service admits no comparisons.… Even those who are loudest in their repudiation of Christian ethics have borrowed from it more than they know. “While they have been undervaluing the inner worth of Jesus Christ, they have actually been living on the virtue which came out of the hem of his garment.” One need only contrast modern to pre-Christian Naturalism to discern the debt contemporary Humanism owes to the coming of Christ into the world. Even Communism cannot escape his influence. The best elements in its concern for social justice are ultimately rooted in his example. Martineau has noted that Comte propounds as the single maxim which should guide the whole of Positivism the words “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Comte did not even know the source of these words. Yet he deliberately loosed his religion of humanity from the theological fetters of Christianity. But he could not escape the influence of Jesus Christ. So in eclectic outlooks which are openly hostile to Christianity there are unacknowledged debts to Jesus and the prophets who spoke of him.

The older attacks on Jesus’ life are fast disappearing. He is no longer accused of ill-temper or disrespect for human personality. Those protests stemmed from philosophies which tended to make human nature divine. Therefore they concealed the wrath of God. William Ellery Channing spoke for early Unitarianism of “his spotless purity, his moral perfection, his unrivalled goodness.” Jesus was “perfect, spotless in virtue, the representative and resplendent image of the moral goodness and rectitude of God.” His displeasure arose, as Karl Adam has put it, “from a wounded love of truth and honesty,” and he never surrendered moral control in manifesting it. “His anger is detached from all selfish interest; he is enraged against those who have had opportunity and yet remain opponents of the truth and of mercy,” writes George M. Stratton. And we may add that this is precisely the anger of the future judgment.

Preacher In The Red

MUSIC FOR THE MOOD

In a parish I served a number of years ago considerable tension had developed between the organist and the pastor. It reached its most glaring expression when, on a Sunday morning, I announced my resignation from the pulpit. I had hardly finished reading my resignation before the organist, with full organ, played the Doxology. The Rev. O. E. CLAUSON, pastor, Pilgrim Lutheran Church, Portland, Oregon.

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

The Academic Snub

The current trend is simply to ignore Jesus Christ. There is not a single reference to Jesus Christ in Dewey and Tufts’ Ethics that has pointed significance for the subject. Visit the reserve or stack shelves in the specialized graduate libraries. Comb the indices for mention of Jesus in books on general ethics. One will find such references few and far between. When they do occur, it is often in company with others to whom he is arbitrarily levelled. The tendency is simply to overlook die historical Jesus with indifference, and to assume that no significant ethical system—indeed, no ethical system at all—can be associated with him.

Strangely enough, Christian scholarship of the past century has encouraged this nonchalance toward Jesus. It argued that we do not know enough about Jesus to justify any estimate of his character. The higher critical assault on the New Testament not only undermined confidence in the inherited picture of Jesus but also filled the gap it left in the records with highly fanciful reconstruction. The implication of a verdict like Wundt’s was all too plain: “With the exception of a few incidents in the narrative of the Passion, … the outward life of Jesus is a tissue of legends.” The inward life would be even more difficult to recover. The result of such doubt was well expressed by Warner Fite: “It would be not too much to say that for the part of the world called Christendom the life of Jesus is history’s greatest problem.” The next step is to separate the discussion of the Christian moral ideal from a necessary dependence on the historical Jesus.

Neglect Of The Historical

Modern theology, after having mistakenly “rescued” the “ethical Jesus” from the “biblical Jesus,” today sketches his example only in the most cautious and skeletal manner. The significance of Jesus Christ to the progressive revelation of the plan and character of God is placed “behind the historical.” A curtain intrudes between the life and teaching of the historical Jesus and the exact content of revelation. One of the marks of the current dialectical theology is that both the teaching and example of Jesus lose their central and authoritative significance for the ethical life.

Rudolf Bultmann denies that Jesus regarded himself as Messiah. He finds no essential relationship whatever between the Kingdom of God and the historical person of Jesus. Barth complains that “Jesus Christ … the Rabbi of Nazareth [is] historically so difficult to get information about, and when it is got, one whose activity is so easily a little commonplace alongside more than one other founder of a religion and even alongside many later representatives of His own ‘religion.’ ” So too Brunner treats the historical Christ. He locates Christ’s moral authority wholly outside history. The believer cannot learn the content of Christian behavior from the past, either from the Bible or the historical example of Jesus, but only in immediate revelation-encounter with God. Niebuhr rejects the conviction that the historical Jesus is the incarnation of absolute perfection. “The Christian believes that the ideal of love is real in the will and nature of God, even though he knows of no place in history where the ideal has been realized in its pure form.” Niebuhr never satisfactorily resolves the tension between the Jesus of history and the Christ of Christian faith in his writings. There is little light in the verdict that “the Jesus of history … created the Christ of faith in the life of the early church, and … his historic life is related to the transcendent Christ as a goal and ultimate symbol of a relation which prophetic religion sees between all life and history and the transcendent.”

All such reconstructions neglect the connection between Christian faith and morals and the conviction that the historical Jesus was the embodiment of absolute and sinless morality. Because of this confidence the followers of Christ find their moral example in him. Where else can they turn? Lecky noted that Christianity has been “the main source of moral development of Europe, and … has discharged this office not so much by the inculcation of a system of ethics, however pure, as by the assimilating and attractive influence of a perfect ideal. The moral progress of mankind can never cease to be distinctly and intensely Christian so long as it consists of a gradual approximation to the character of the Christian Founder.” …

A Biblical Motif

This connection between Jesus and Christian morality has not only been recognized across the centuries. It comes from the New Testament witness itself. It is inseparable, as Smyth observes, from the apostolic picture of the moral life. “The ethical example of Jesus as an object of faith was clearly and positively given in the apostolic witness to him, and it is a known and distinct Light in the Christian consciousness.” But that is not all. Jesus himself implied it—more, he explicitly taught it—to his earliest followers. Our Lord’s invitation “follow Me” implied a discipleship in the ethico-religious sense. He is “the Way” (Jn. 14:6). The Christian is to walk in him. Jesus consciously knew that he gave man the ideal pattern of behavior, or more accurately, that he fulfilled the requirements of true human morality in his own life.… The New Testament writers candidly confess themselves to be sinners. They are men who have fallen short of the moral ideal. Their hope is redemption. Yet again and again they set Jesus forth as the supreme moral ideal (Eph. 5:2, Heb. 12:3, 1 Pet. 2:21 ff.). Their verdict is that Jesus Christ is “holy, guileless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens” (Heb. 7:26). He is Jesus Christ “the Righteous” (1 Jn. 2:1).

This portion of Christian Personal Ethics, published this month by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., is an abridgment of Chapter 17, without footnote references, and is reprinted by permission.

- More from Carl F. H. Henry

Cover Story

Too Little and Too Late

John Morrison

The fact that this terse expression has become trite does not invalidate its significance, and it is apposite to the situation in many mission fields today. It takes on added significance when we realize, if we do, that time is running out on us and that the coming decade may well decide the issues of our world missionary program. Africa, or at least part of it, is the one continent that is still adolescent in development, and as such, offers the best opportunity for Christian missionary work.

Victory In A Pagan Land

It is computed that there are some four million Roman Catholic and two million Protestant adherents in the Belgian Congo today. Even allowing for a certain enthusiastic exaggeration, the two faiths could probably number, at least, four million sympathizers. That is over 30 per cent of the total population, surely an amazing success in a land and among a people who were entirely pagan eighty years ago, and where the Christian message was quite unknown.

It may be said, with some degree of truth, that the missions went in for quantity at the expense of quality, and that in the early days of missionary work their eagerness to break the crust of pagan life inclined missionaries to impose the minimum of conditions on those brave enough to break away from stark heathenism. Yet, as the impact of the Christian truth made a breach in the walls of pagan thought and custom, it became necessary to hold up a standard for Christian aspirants that exceeded by far that in the home church of which the missionary was a representative.

In the Belgian Congo, for instance, the Congolese did not consider lying a sin. Rather, it was regarded merely as a defensive measure adopted until one could be sure he could somehow wriggle out of the possible consequences of any given predicament. Often a convert would tell a lie when the truth would have served him better, simply because he was faced with an unknown situation, and he was conscious of the fact that he could always tell the truth as a last resort. The evil consequences of drunkenness made abstinence a necessary qualification for entry into the church, and this was not easy in a land where native brews were considered food and drink.

Animism, with its degrading and cruel practices and customs, was woven into the very warp and woof of native life, and was the most difficult of all evils to overcome. What missionary has not been bitterly disappointed and chagrined to discover among those he nurtured in the faith some relapse into pagan belief?

It could also be said that Christianity was a novelty, that the missionaries brought in strange and interesting articles, such as the victrola, the sewing machine, even an organ or piano, and that these enticed the native into taking a chance by breaking away from that which had previously been inviolable, his pagan way of life.

As schools and hosiptals developed in the missionary program, the need for trained workmen became acute. This added incentive to break away from the old things appealed to many. Yet it was as true in these early days of missionary effort as it was in the early days of history that the “spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” and in the ranks of those who came forward was to be found the nucleus of a new order.

Competition For The Spirit

Although Christianity stands today on its own intrinsic worth, many competitors have appeared on the scene.

The lure of wealth is one of these. One former pastor received $40,000 for his yearly crop of coffee; as a pastor he had received $6.00 a month. There is position (fame on a lesser scale); a former school clerk of the mission is flown some 1,200 miles by plane and lodged in the best hotel in the capital at government expense, in order that he may attend the Governor-General’s Council, of which he is a member. One might also mention entertainment; athletes and theatrical artists are brought from Europe and America to instruct and develop the Congolese in these arts and pastimes. Then there is government education. Until the last few years all education was directed by missionaries. Now government schools have been created throughout the Congo, up to and including the university standard, and these appeal to the Congolese.

Finally, one might mention distraction. I call it distraction in the French sense of the word, while keeping in mind the English, for one can hardly call it entertainment or amusement; it is neither. Cheap drinking bars have sprung up, crowded at night where jazz, that primitive African harmony, comes back to its home to roost after having clothed itself with the garments of civilization. It blares forth from loudspeakers, sometimes in the native dialect, and is often obscene. It even mocks the church, by using hymn tunes and putting words of its own to the music. As one travels down the main artery in the native city, it is impossible to reconcile this with the scene of several decades ago, or even with the unsophisticated village of the “hill country.”

Yet the large cities are the mecca of the young boys and girls who are now attending our schools in the interior. Few among the youth think of spending their lives in the drudgery of trudging out to the field or the plantation in the early morning, laboring all day, and then returning at dusk to the primitive habitation and monotonous life of the village. The cities call to them. Returning visitors paint a glowing scene of life in the metropolis, and the tale loses nothing in the telling. The young boy or girl is entranced with the prospect of a glittering life, which holds so much of novelty and diversity, and so the trend to the large centers continues. This means that where the orientation of missionary plans was formerly directed to the “hill” village (as the Congolese call the villages distinct from the nontribal centers), the emphasis is gradually turning to the large commercial and industrial centers. It is estimated that about 10 per cent of the Congo population is concentrated in the larger towns and that most of the brighter students in school, the future leaders of the Congo, are looking eagerly to these places for their future life. Protestant missions have been slow, or reluctant, to admit that the center of emphasis has changed, and that, while the Christian work in the “hill” villages must be maintained, the towns afford opportunities of concentrated work that are unique in Congo.

The Roman Catholic Church has been wiser, and Leopoldville today counts several hundred of their missionaries. The Protestant missions, who have a ratio of about one to three with Roman Catholic missions throughout the whole Colony, have but a score of their workers there. Most of these are engaged in secretarial or cooperative enterprises that have little, if any direct touch with Congolese life.

Crucial Moment In Missions

This may well be the crucial moment for Protestant missions, for it is easy for these bright young men and girls to drift away from the church amidst the temptations of the bright lights. And a new way of life adopted in these surroundings may be quite difficult to change.

The moment is crucial, also, for transferring power to the indigenous church. The fledgling should, if necessary, be pushed out of the nest into trying his wings, for it is the experience of most missionaries that the Congolese, as a group and even as individuals, are reluctant to accept responsibility. The day is ripe for placing the Congolese on the same level of ecclesiastical responsibility as he has attained in government and commercial circles. The church cannot afford to drag behind secular and mundane forces in its efforts to build an indigenous and autonomous Christian institution, the Church of Christ in Congo.

Yet, even as the younger nations of the world today look for help, in counsel and finance, to the older ones, it is no less true that this situation exists in the missionary program. The home churches, if they would ultimately avoid the reproach of “too little and too late” must gain a new understanding of the church’s program “to make disciples of all nations.”

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, John Morrison served in World War I with British forces in France and East Africa. For more than 30 years he has been in the Belgian Congo as a missionary of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., being presently in charge of the new strategic work of that mission in Leopoldville.

- More from John Morrison

Cover Story

The Bible and the Christian Writer

Frank E. Gaebelein

As we think about the Bible in relation to Christian writing, we must define Scripture in terms of the King James or Authorized Version. The literary influence of other translations through more than three centuries has been but a drop in the bucket compared with that of the King James Bible. Perhaps the Revised Standard Version or some other new translation may eventually supplant the King James Bible. If so, the loss from the literary point of view will be very great, as some versions of inferior nobility and vigor of language replace the book that is literature’s chief glory.

Turning now to the Christian writer, we need first of all to look closely at the objective, “Christian.” If we limit our discussion to the evangelical segment of Christianity, let us be careful to avoid any parochialism of outlook. Evangelicals are not the only Christians. There are those who share with us a firm belief in historic, supernatural Christianity, who worship Christ as Lord and Saviour, who take a high view of Scripture, yet who may not use all our terminology and who hold a view of the church and of the ministry different from ours. They, too, are Christians; and from some of them we have much to learn, especially when it comes to writing.

What Is A Christian Writer?

Let us grant that the writer whom we are considering is a Christian, a regenerated child of God, committed to the evangelical doctrines of Scripture. The question is, What do we really mean when we talk about a “Christian writer?” We might say simply that we mean Christians who write. That is much too broad a definition. The other day I asked the editor of a leading Bible study magazine, “What’s the matter with Christian writing today?” His answer was candid, if not entirely elegant: “Most Christian writers,” he said, “can’t write. Many of them can’t spell or punctuate. And a lot of them have nothing to say anyway.” The plain fact is that not every Christian who writes is a Christian writer!

We must go on, therefore, to identify the Christian writer as a Christian who, being reasonably competent in the craft of writing, treats his subject in a manner that directly or indirectly reflects his spiritual convictions. He may be working in such fields as theology, biblical exposition, philosophy, or other areas closely related to the faith. Or he may be writing about so-called secular matters. Again, he may be practising what is often called “creative writing,” such as fiction or poetry. Whatever his subject matter, he is a Christian writer if the Christian world view, which is the world view based upon the Bible, is reflected in his writing.

This distinction is subtle but all-important. Reflecting the Christian world view does not mean conscious and obvious moralizing or, heaven forbid, labored preaching. It does mean that Christians, and certainly Christian writers, ought to have a God-centered view of life and the world. And it means also that this view of life, this Weltanschauung, to use the German term, is not held in a vacuum. Anyone, whether writer, teacher, or scientist, who has genuinely committed himself to the Christ who is the living God incarnate has made a decision that henceforth will color all of his work and all of his thinking. How far-reaching that decision is Browning tells us in “A Death in the Desert”:

I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ

Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee

All questions in the earth and out of it,

And has so far advanced thee as to be wise.

All writers must write from some particular point of view. And Christian writers ought to write from a God-centered, Christ-oriented, biblical view of life.

But at this point in our discussion we must turn back to the Bible. What is there about Scripture that makes it the one book of incomparable influence upon the Christian writer? First, the truth that the Bible reveals; second, the manner in which it states this truth. The two are organically related in that the second grows out of the first. To begin with, it is primarily the distinctive, biblical view of life and the world that influences the Christian writer. The major premise of Scripture is the living God. He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the God who, through his Spirit, inspired the Book. He is the God who, when he speaks in the Book, tells the truth. In the Bible, therefore, he tells the truth about himself and about man, sin, the world that now is and the world that is to come. Thus the Bible presents a view of life and of the world distinctively its own and in a class apart from all other philosophies and all other religions. And this view the Bible equates with truth.

Next, turning to style and form, we find a correspondence with the content of Scripture. The Book that communicates truth speaks truly. The reference here is not to the inerrancy of Scripture, important though that is. Rather am I speaking from the writer’s point of view. Though we must always remember that our Bible is a translated book, it is remarkable how little fumbling for words the sensitive reader sees in Scripture. In its use of words, the Bible is the best model, because it speaks directly and truly; in it the right word is in the right place.

Think, for example, of the declaration of John the Baptist, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Here is finality of expression. So also with the words of our Lord, “By their fruits ye shall know them” or, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Go back to the Old Testament and there is the same rightness of expression, as in the psalmist’s petition, “Search me, O God, and know me; try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting.” Likewise with Job’s great affirmation: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” It was not without reason that the Greek rhetorician, Longinus, in his treatise On the Sublime, which, by the way, every writer ought to know, took as an example of sublimity in literature the words of Moses in Genesis: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

Contagious Greatness Of Scripture

Now this quality of unerring choice of the right word in the right place carries over to the writer who is steeped in the Bible. In the Princeton University Alumni Bulletin (June 1, 1956), there is a moving address by Judge Harold Medina on “The Influence of Woodrow Wilson on the Princeton Undergraduate, 1902–1910,” a period covering the judge’s own college years. In this address, Judge Medina says this of Wilson:

But how he could talk! And we flocked to hear him … At first we were fascinated by his perfect diction and the skill with which he chose just the right combination of words to express his meaning. Pretty soon it dawned on us that what he had to say was important. There was no mistaking his sincerity; he spoke with a singular intensity; he was always quoting from the Bible; and bit by bit he got his spiritual message over to us …

Moral principles, ideals, action, achievement, power; all these spelled out to us in the words of Christ, with continual emphasis upon unselfishness and sacrifice, the peace and good will to men which went beyond one’s own borders and reached out to all mankind, and the unending fight against what he called “the thraldom of evil.”

Here was a man who really believed in unselfish devotion to one’s country, who was seeking, in the words he quoted from the Bible, to “prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God,” and to lead us out of the wilderness into green meadows where ideals and principles were formulated and acted upon. This is what young people craved to hear in 1909, it is what they crave to hear now, and it is what they will always crave to hear.

Woodrow Wilson was not only a great president; he was also a great writer, a great Christian writer, if you will. And he was a great Christian writer in large part because of his intimate and continued use of the Bible.

In his Aims of Education, Professor Alfred North Whitehead has written what Sir Richard Livingstone of Oxford calls the greatest statement about education outside Plato: “Moral education is impossible apart from the habitual vision of greatness.” Unfortunately, Whitehead lets us down as he points to the history and culture of ancient Greece and Rome as “the habitual vision of greatness.” Certainly for the Christian writer, “the habitual vision of greatness” is not classical history and literature but the Bible, the Word of the living God. And a host of great writers rise up to prove this point.

An Inescapable Influence

The influence of the Bible upon our literature is inescapable. Think of Shakespeare, who in his thirty-seven plays alluded to fifty-four of the sixty-six books of the Bible. How many Christians today know their Bibles that well? There is Bunyan, who, with meager education and knowing little beside the Bible, produced the greatest allegory in the English language. Edgar Allan Poe, whose subject matter was far removed from Scripture, drew heavily upon it, as Professor Forrest of the University of Virginia showed in his fascinating study, Biblical Allusions in Poe. We think too of Lincoln, the writer of our most imperishable American prose. In his recent book, A Clerk of Oxenford, Professor Gilbert Highet of Columbia University has a fascinating essay tracing, line by line and phrase by phrase, the influence of the Bible upon the Gettysburg Address. And at that he misses the echo of the close of the eleventh chapter of Romans in Lincoln’s climactic series of phrases: “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

The most telling illustration of the inescapable influence of the Bible upon great writers comes from the poet Shelley. Shelley was expelled from Oxford because he wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Necessity of Atheism.” In it he said, “The genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed Book of God ere man can read the inscription on his heart.” Or, in less rhetorical language, “Man must tear up the Bible, if he would know himself.” Just eight years later Shelley wrote his greatest prose work, the critical essay, “In Defense of Poetry.” At its climax, this is what he said: “Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance [an allusion to Daniel]; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow [almost an exact quotation from Isaiah]; they have been washed in the blood of the Mediator and Redeemer, [New Testament, evangelical phraseology].” The brilliant, unbelieving poet of the nineteenth century could not escape the Bible.

Paradox Of Christian Writing

Now we come to the paradox of the Christian writer today. More than any other of his fellow writers, the Christian writer of our time is close to the Bible. His faith in a biblical one, so much so that he has been labeled bibliolater, biblicist, or literalist. The epithets may not be accurate, but they show that he is known for his closeness to the Bible. Yet in spite of this relationship to the Scriptures, evangelicals by and large are not writing well.

I happen to be associated with a book club that is committed to the policy of selecting for its members only evangelical writing of genuine worth. A survey of our selections since 1954 shows that a large proportion of them have been books from other countries—England, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Australia. Indeed, if we had depended upon the writings of American evangelicals, we should have had difficulty in continuing. Not only that, but of the many books submitted to us for consideration many are marred by careless writing.

To cite another example, a while ago I read Albert Schweitzer’s autobiography, Out of My Life and Work. The difference, theology aside, between this book and one by an evangelical writer that I read at about the same time was as the difference between day and night. With Schweitzer I felt in touch with a distinguished mind; the other book, although well-intentioned, was flat and uninspiring.

Evangelicals Have Written Well

It was not always so. A few generations ago, and, in fact, even more recently, evangelicals were writing a great deal better than today. Nor need we go as far back as Bunyan. Take, for example, a man of more modest ability, the Princeton theologian Charles Hodge. This is the tribute The Cambridge History of American Literature (Vol. III, pp. 202–203) pays him:

There is a strange sublimity and extraordinary perspicacity about the style of Charles Hodge. It is not style at all.… Yet … few books open the mind on fields of grandeur more frequently than this systematic theologian. Its prose is not unworthy of being associated in one’s mind with that of John Milton. Out of the depths this man cried unto his God and found Him.

He writes with transparent sincerity. There is neither condescension nor cringing. There is nothing left at loose ends. There is no sparing of thought.… He only claims to apprehend the Word of God.”

Of more recent evangelicals there is J. Gresham Machen, a writer not inferior to C. S. Lewis in his lucid facility in handling ideas. The Systematic Theology of Lewis Sperry Chafer contains passages of genuine nobility and power, especially in his treatment of the Atonement. Dr. Samuel Zwemer, apostle to the Moslems, wrote with notable vigor. And the books of Robert E. Speer, another evangelical, contain some eloquent writing; while for simple clarity, there is the work of Harry Ironside.

Why The Present Mediocrity?

But why are Christian writers not doing better today? To put it bluntly, there seems to be a short circuit between the Bible and most of our contemporary evangelical writing. We ought to be doing some of the best writing of the times simply because we are, of all writers today, nearest the Bible. But we are far from producing the best work. Why? Why is our supreme model, our authentic “vision of greatness,” being thwarted in its communication, if not of greatness, at least of distinction to our writing? The answers are not easy. I suggest six reasons why present-day Christian writing seems to be so little influenced by the Bible.

First of all, can it be that in this busy day of radios, TV, picture magazines, tabloids, condensed books, much traveling and many meetings, we simply do not know the Bible as well as we think we do—or as well as our predecessors knew it? Yes, we use the Book for preaching, for reference, for proof texts, for help and comfort. But is not much of our use of Scripture for an ulterior purpose? Do we really know, and love, and read the Bible for its own sake? There is such a thing as living in the Word, making it literally the vital context of life and thought. Bunyan did that and God used him to write a book of incomparable power.

Some years ago Professor Charles Grosvenor Osgood of Princeton wrote a little essay, Poetry as a Means of Grace. This is what the Princeton humanist—and he is a Christian humanist—advises, after recommending an intimate acquaintance with any one of the great poets as an antidote to modern materialism (p. 22):

Choose this author as friends are chosen … think of him daily in odd moments. Read a bit of him as often as you can, until at least parts of him become part of yourself. Do not consult other books or people by way of explaining him any more than you can help. Let him explain himself. What you thus come to know in him will every day seem new and fresh; every recourse to him brings forth new thought, new feeling, new application, new aspects of things familiar. He becomes an antiseptic agent against all the agencies that tend to make life sour, stale, and insipid.

Apply this counsel to the Bible, as Professor Osgood himself does. This is what we need—this kind of living in the Book, if the Bible is to communicate power to our writing. But for it to do this the evangelical writer must know the daily discipline of the Word of God, or it will never be for him a means of grace.

A second thwarted biblical influence in our writing is this: Many of us are not bringing to the Bible a truly Christian education. There is within us a tension between the secular and the Christian world view. Even in Christian institutions, the secular frame of reference has crept in. Yet all truth is God’s truth; the Bible knows no other truth but God’s. But most of us at some time in our education have become habituated—perhaps unconsciously—to the false dichotomy between sacred and secular truth. Thus, not being fully committed to a God-centered world view, we have allowed the secularism in our thinking to offset to some extent the biblical view of life.

Danger Of Trifling With Truth

A third reason for the short circuit between Scripture and Christian writing may be the comparatively low estate of aesthetic appreciation among evangelicals today. Is it possible that debasing the aesthetic faculty in some fields affects it in other fields? Consider the third-rate music that we so often hear and sing in our services—the jingling, flip choruses unequally yoked to the name and work of our Saviour, the hymns dripping with sentimentality. Think of the lack of good taste in some public presentations of the grand truths of redemption. At the close of a recent telecast by a popular evangelical leader, viewers were urged to write in for fifteen-cent key rings with “a cute, little cross” attached. What has happened to our Christian, let alone our aesthetic, sensibilities? There is artistic integrity, there is truth in art as in science, history, or finance. The tear-jerking religious tune is false, because musically it lacks integrity. The heart-rending sermon illustration that never happened in the first place, though all too often told by the preacher as though it happened to him, everything in our life and thought that savors of sentimentality and pretension—these too violate integrity. Do not be mistaken. The Bible knows what sentiment is; it is full of true and valid feeling, because it is par excellence the book of the human heart. But the Bible never sinks to pretense and sentimentality. And when evangelicals traffic in these things, the noble and wholesome influence of Scripture may be thwarted in our thinking and in our words.

In the next place, the supplanting of sound values by the world’s methods of popularity and success may be clouding the influence of the Bible upon our writing. This is a difficult problem. Christian writing needs the note of contemporaneity, but never at the expense of truth and never at the price of debasing the coinage of sound usage. Words are important. The right word need never be irrelevant. It is doubtful whether the right and the true word is ever the cliche of the popular, mass-circulation periodical. Exactness in usage is no more equated with stodginess of style than good taste with a dull, unattractive format in our publications. In an article in the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago Jacques Barzun dissected the growing vocabulary of business and bureaucracy. Words like “processing” as applied to human beings and the pretentious business usage of “contract” came under his scalpel. Perhaps a similar deflation is due some of the overworked words in our evangelical vocabulary, so that some day we shall no longer have to read about ministers “pastoring” churches and writers “authoring” books.

Biblical Criterion Of Work

The foregoing is related to a fifth explanation of lack of biblical influence upon evangelical writing today. It may be that some of us have forgotten the Scriptural principle of hard work, resulting in the achievement of excellence to the glory of God. As Solomon put it in Ecclesiastes, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might”—a saying that finds its New Testament extension in Paul’s advice to the Colossian church, “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not to men,” coupled in the same chapter with this great criterion: “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.” But this costs; it costs hard work, and the price will not come down. Whatever we are doing as Christians, whether it be writing, or teaching, or anything else, let us remember that nothing is ever too good for the Lord. On the title page of his autobiography, I Remember, Abraham Flexner, whose report on medical schools revolutionized the teaching of medicine in America, quotes Hesiod: “Before the gates of excellence, the high gods have put sweat. Long is the road thereto and rough and steep at the first, but when the height is achieved then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning.”

The Snare Of Pedantry

Still another reason for the comparatively low estate of writing among evangelicals may be an overconcern with the outward marks of scholarship. In recent decades a good many evangelicals have been among the “have nots” when it comes to recognized scholarship. Today we are concerned, and rightly so, with the growing prestige of evangelical thought. Thus, some who are writing in the more technical fields may be betrayed into a cumbersome vocabulary under the delusion that they are thereby being scholarly and profound. We may, however, safely leave that kind of style to theologians like Niebuhr and Tillich, both of whom excel in it. Instead, we should try to write clearly and incisively like Gresham Machen, or with the fluid lucidity of C. S. Lewis, neither of whom is ever obscure and both of whom are scholarly without pretense. Or, more modestly, we may seek the unadorned simplicity of an H. A. Ironside.

“The Man Of Letters As Saint”

Finally, consider a noble example of the Christian writer at his best, the greatest writer and theologian of the Reformation, John Calvin. Before his conversion Calvin was one of the most brilliant humanists of the Renaissance. In a biographical essay (Calvin and Augustine, pp. 4–5), Professor B. B. Warfield says:

It is interesting to observe the change which in the meantime [i.e., after Calvin’s conversion] has come over his attitude toward his writings. When he sent forth his commentary on Seneca’s treatise—his first and last humanistic work—he was quivering with anxiety for the success of his book.… He was proud of his performance; he was zealous to reap the fruits of his labor; he was eager for his legitimate reward. Only four years have passed, and he issues his first Protestant publication—the immortal “Institutes of the Christian Religion” … free from all such tremors. He is … content that no one of his acquaintance shall know him for the author of the book.… He hears the acclamations with which it was greeted with a certain personal detachment. He has sent it forth not for his own glory, but for the glory of God; he is not seeking his own advantage or renown by it, but the strengthening and the succoring of the saints.… He has not ceased to be a “man of letters,” … but he has consecrated all his gifts and powers … to the service of God and His gospel.

What we see in Calvin, thus, fundamentally is the “man of letters” as saint.… He was by nature, by gifts, by training—by inborn predilection and by acquired capacities alike—a “man of letters,” and he earnestly … wished to dedicate himself as such to God.

“The man of letters as saint.” It is an exalted ideal that we see in a man like Calvin, or, to turn to our own American literature, in Jonathan Edwards, whose literary eminence is so clearly recognized in the recent life by Professor Perry Miller. Verily, it is a great thing to be a Christian writer—a writer who tells the truth about God and His Son, a writer in whose work there is reflected even in a very small way the beauty and power of the Bible.

END

Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, Headmaster of the Stony Brook School, on Long Island, is a gifted lecturer and writer in biblical and educational subjects. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of New York University, with an A.M. from Harvard, he holds honorary degrees from Wheaton College and the Reformed Episcopal Theological Seminary. This article abridges his lecture at a recent Workshop and Conference on “The Christian and the Literary Scene” at Wheaton.

- More from Frank E. Gaebelein

Cover Story

God and the Continental Congress

Stewart M. Robinson

The Journals of the Continental Congress make an excellent textbook on free government. Excerpts would be suitable for the Voice of America. Full sets given to political leaders in a dozen languages might help the cause of peace.

The thirteen original states of our Federal Republic sent a total of 337 official delegates to this remarkable convention during the period September 5, 1774, to the end of 1786, after which its work was taken up by the Constitutional Convention.

A Working Congress

The Congress put in 3,100 working days. The 1774 session was designedly brief, 35 working days. The 1775 session began by appointment May 10, and took the month of August off. In the following years, Congress was on duty twelve months, and took no time off save for Sundays, Good Fridays, and Christmas Days, but not New Year’s Days. It met six days a week. It lost a week in 1776, moving from Philadelphia to Baltimore. In 1777 it lost about two weeks shifting from Philadelphia to New York, via Lancaster. Its sojourn in Princeton in the summer of 1783 was marked by a rather desultory ending. The Annapolis residence became a little sketchy at the end, that at Trenton only an episode. But the last two years in New York saw a strong comeback in pertinacity. The score by years and work-days runs thus: 1774, 35 days; 1775, 146; 1776, 291 days and no day lost by reason of no quorum or no business; 1777, 287 days with 7 lost; 1778, 304 with 1 lost; 1779, 309 with 2 lost; 1780, 299 with 1 lost; 1781, 284 with 2 lost; 1782, 231 with no day lost; 1783, 214 with 21 days lost; 1784, 182 days (26 as Committee of the States) with 33 days lost; 1785, 215 days with 37 days lost; 1786, 206 days with 14 days lost. The founding fathers accepted the Ten Commandments, which state that the Sabbath Day is holy, and that “six days shalt thou labor.”

Sunday Sessions Unusual

In spite of the tensions of that period only seven Sunday sessions were held. Sunday, July 14, 1776, Congress determined “That an express be sent to overtake the powder wagons going to Virginia … that the committee … of Virginia … send … as much of the lead they now have at Williamsburg as they can spare … that a letter be written to the commanding officer in the Jerseys, to march such of the militia, and flying camp … as they may judge necessary … that the committee … of Pennsylvania be requested immediately to order to the several places of their destination all the British officers, prisoners, in this city; their ladies not to be requested to go until the weather is more suitable … that the commanding officer in Pennsylvania … exert himself to forward the immediate march of the militia to New Jersey … that the deputy quarter-master general be directed to request the use of some house of public worship, to cover the troops during their short stay in this city.”

Congress met Sunday, December 29, 1776, to arrange to get “cannon and ordnance stores as are required … being immediately necessary.” Sunday, August 3, 1777, Congress ordered Washington to relieve General Philip Schuyler of command. Sunday, September 14, 1777, Congress met to resolve “that the Board of War be directed to … remove all public bells in Philadelphia … upon a near approach of the enemy … that if Congress shall be obliged to remove from Philadelphia, Lancaster shall be the place at which they shall meet … that the public papers be put under the care of Mr. Clark … General Dickinson … is hereby directed … to conduct the said papers safe.”

Sunday, April 26, 1778, brought Congress together at 3 P.M. to conduct several “yea and nay” votes which had been demanded the previous day. On Sunday, September 26, 1779, Congress met to hear letters announcing the arrival of the French fleet. Congress met on Sunday, April 8, 1781, upon receipt of intelligence that the British fleet was moving out of New York harbor, presumably for the Chesapeake.

Prayer Indispensable

Almost the first item of business in September, 1774, was to obtain a Chaplain for Congress and ask him to open Congress with prayer. With a broad-minded recognition of good religion and good sense the strongly nonliturgical New Englanders plumped for an Episcopalian. Thenceforth, chaplains were regularly elected, two of them at a time. One liturgical and one nonliturgical cleric made up the team. The Journals contain references to stipends, and calls made upon them for additional duty at the funerals of members who died while in attendance. There is one period when the daily Journal commences with the word “Prayers.” The pay schedule on an annual basis indicates that the chaplains officiated regularly as a part of each day’s proceedings. While Congress met in Philadelphia and in New York, and these two places were the principal places of meeting, the clergy were local churchmen, and doubtless carried on other responsibilities.

Recognition Of God

Reference should be made to the public statements of the Continental Congress that recognize God. 1775 had a Fast-Day Resolution; 1779, 1780, 1781, 1782 saw Congressional proclamations for both a Fast-Day and a Day of Thanksgiving. We are familiar with Thanksgiving Days. Where are the Fast-days? Perhaps we are missing something in the most important form of public relations: “getting right with God.” The first Fast-Day Resolution (June 12, 1775) might well be cited since most moderns do not know what the term signifies. “As the great Governor of the World, by his supreme and universal Providence, not only conducts the course of nature with unerring wisdom and rectitude, but frequently influences the minds of men to serve the wise and gracious purposes of his providential government; and it being at all times our indispensable duty devoutly to acknowledge his superintending providence, especially in times of impending danger and public calamity, to reverence and adore his immutable justice as well as to implore his merciful interposition for our deliverance: This Congress, therefore, considering the present critical, alarming and calamitous state of these colonies, do earnestly recommend that Thursday, the 20th day of July next, be observed, by the inhabitants of all the English colonies on this continent, as a day of public humiliation, fasting and prayer; that we may, with united hearts and voices unfeignedly confess and deplore our many sins, and offer up our joint supplications to the all-wise, omnipotent, and merciful Disposer of all events; humbly beseeching him to forgive our iniquities, to remove our present calamities, to avert those desolating judgments with which we are threatened, and bless our rightful sovereign, King George the Third, and inspire him with wisdom to discern and pursue the true interest of all his subjects, etc.”

The Thanksgiving proclamation of October 11, 1782, still glows with the flush of great achievements. “It being the indispensable duty of all nations, not only to offer up supplications to Almighty God, the giver of all good, for his gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner to give him praise for … great and signal interpositions of his Providence in their behalf, the United States in Congress assembled, taking into consideration the many instances of divine goodness to these states … the present happy and promising state of public affairs … do hereby recommend to the inhabitants of these states in general, to observe, … Thursday, the 28 day of November next, as a day of solemn Thanksgiving to God for all his mercies; and they do further recommend to all ranks, to testify their gratitude to God for his goodness, by a cheerful obedience to his laws, and by promoting … true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.”

Spiritual Priorities

A series of letters to the people stud the annals of the Continental Congress, and they are real jewels in the treasury of our country. Besides rendering a faithful accounting of legislative service, they sound a clear note of truthful information, and upon occasion call attention to the spiritual nature of man and to the place which God has in the life of national society. Not every such communication mentions God, but enough do to emphasize the feelings of the heart.

“Above all things we earnestly intreat you, with devotion of spirit, and penitence of heart and amendment of life, to humble yourselves, and implore the favour of almighty God; and we fervently beseech the divine goodness, to take you into his gracious protection.” (Address to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies—October 21, 1774.)

On the same day that Congress assembled in Philadelphia, in May, 1775, pursuant to a call issued on their adjournment in October, 1774, doughty Ethan Allen entered Fort Ticonderoga and demanded its surrender. Captain Delaplace, commanding the garrison, required his authority. Allen answered, as told by Washington Irving, “In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” No tell-tale radio babbled hourly news reports of Philadelphia events to forest-bound Ticonderoga. Many Americans, however, in those days, believed that people should do what they were intended to do, that authority issued from proper agencies, and that God and man linked together make an unbreakable chain.

On December 10, 1776, Congress addressed the citizens: “Confiding in your fidelity and zeal in a contest the most illustrious and important, and firmly trusting in the good providence of God, we wish you happiness and success.” Trenton and Princeton came as an answer to that firm trust.

May 29, 1777, another report was made to the nation, closing: “Do what it is in your Power to do; and you have the greatest reason to rest assured that, under the gracious protection of divine Providence, your virtuous struggles will be crowned with abundant success.”

May 26, 1779, Congress addressed “The Inhabitants of the United States of America” in a summary of the situation which was read beside firesides where the chill of evening still traveled on the wind.

“Fill up your battalions … place your several quotas in the continental treasury … prevent the produce of the country from being monopolized … effectually superintend the behaviour of public officers; diligently promote piety, virtue, brotherly love, learning, frugality and moderation; and may you be approved before Almighty God worthy of those blessings we devoutly wish you to enjoy.”

The principal business of Congress while the fighting lasted was to read the daily communications from George Washington and make suitable answers. Washington was a member of the Congress until he accepted its commission as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Continent in June, 1775. On December 23, 1783, Washington appeared before Congress to return his commission. It is a moving statement: “Mr. President: The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place, I have now the honor of offering my sincere congratulations to Congress, and of presenting myself before them, to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country … my gratitude for the interposition of Providence, and the assistance I have received from my countrymen, increases with every review of the momentous contest … I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have superintendence of them to his holy keeping. Having now finished the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theatre of action and bidding affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose order I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take leave of all the employments of public life.”

END

Ordained to the ministry in 1918, Stewart M. Robinson served as divisional chaplain, U.S. Army, with the American Expeditionary Forces and then served churches in Ohio, New York and New Jersey until, in 1934, he became editor of The Presbyterian. A frequent contributor to religious journals, Dr. Robinson is editor of Political Thought of Colonial Clergy.

- More from Stewart M. Robinson

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: January 21, 1957

John H. Gerstner

We shall comment on Roman Catholic matters currently discussed in Roman periodicals.

The Jesuit weekly, America (Dec. 22, 1956), reports with satisfaction that California is the 48th state to permit tax exemption for private schools. The magazine rejoices in this triumph for religion in general. The concluding words are: “The will of the people, confirmed by the courts, now prevails. A dubious legal quibble has been destroyed—and with it, is to be hoped, the spectre of an injustice in education alien to every Christian nation.”

This is a characteristic attitude of the Roman church in this country. Every act that tends to favor her and other religious groups’ interests she approves as triumphs for religion in general. This gives the impression that Rome is concerned with liberty and benefits for all religious groups. But in Barcelona we visited with an evangelical minister. A little second-story room was all he was allowed to use for a church. Even then he had no sign to indicate the nature of the building. This was against the law in officially Roman Catholic Spain. This evangelical pastor was not supposed to speak to Roman Catholics about his religion. And he had much more time to do so because Franco’s Roman Catholic state closed all non-Roman schools. So it goes in Peru and other Roman nations.

The Roman Catholic refutes the charge of inconsistency, thus: We claim religious liberty for ourselves on your principles and deny them to you on our principles. But why does Rome not say this openly and plainly? Why is this information hidden in textbooks for scholars only? And why, in 99 cases out of 100, is the opposing idea implied, as in the article above cited?

How the Roman scholar looks on Protestantism is revealed in the current Ecclesiastical Review. “An English theologian recently visiting America asked to speak to an expert on Protestant theologies at a Catholic seminary. He was promptly informed that no such expert existed precisely because Protestantism is not theological. If the Englishman had put the question differently by asking for the expert on Protestantism, he would probably have been introduced to the professor of Church History. Protestantism is too often treated in our seminaries as a sixteenth-century phenomenon which has somehow perpetuated itself for the past 400 years.” The article develops the idea that Protestantism is theologically amorphous varying with the denomination and the century. “Which Protestantism?” is the question.

There is undeniable truth in this pet Roman polemic. Variations in Protestantism are many and confusing, we must penitently acknowledge. But, Roman Catholics almost never mention relevant further considerations. Vast variations exist also within the unity of Rome, and a core of unity exists within the diversities of Protestantism. One variation within Romanism was alluded to in the preceding paragraph. The Roman Catholic teaching concerning religious liberty varies between the U.S. and Spain, for example. It has broken out at times in controversy between American ecclesiastics and Cardinal Segura. In the practical realm one Romanist promotes bingo and another attacks it. In the theological arena opposition is most apparent. Almost every variety of doctrinal opinion in the denominations of Protestantism is found in the orders of the Roman church.

Rome does not deny these things, but rather points out that, despite them, all her different schools acknowledge the authority of the pope. But Protestants may reply: We all recognize the authority of Christ and the Bible. The Roman Catholic counters: Yes, but you have different opinions about Christ and the Bible. We can then observe: Your theologians differ in the definition of an ex cathedra statement. It would be good if both sides would let this point rest about here: the Roman Catholic, admittedly, has more external, visible, constrained and conspicious unity; the Protestant has more internal, invisible, unconstrained and inconspicuous unity.

The Marian Year is now past, but deification of the Virgin continues apace (Ecclesiastical Review, Nov., 1956). In a remote way, Mary became our Co-redemptrix already in the Incarnation, for Christ took on himself a human body with all its sufferings in order to redeem us and atone for our sins. Mary agreed wholeheartedly to be mother of just such a suffering Redeemer, hence already in the Incarnation Mary cooperated in our redemption. At the cross the Saviour consummated his work of redemption amid great sufferings. He gave himself up entirely as our Sacrifice to the Father. But Mary is there too: ‘with her suffering and dying Son, Mary endured suffering and almost death. She gave up her mother’s right over her Son to procure the salvation of mankind; and to appease the divine justice, she, as much as she could, immolated her Son so that one can truly affirm that together with Christ she has redeemed the human race.’ (Benedict XV). Hence not only remotely in the Incarnation, but also proximately and immediately in the very act of the Redeemer on Golgotha, Mary is our Co-redemptrix. Not that the price paid by Christ was not sufficient. It was all-sufficient. But God willed to accept Mary’s offering as part of the price, even though that of the Son was all-sufficient.”

The entire article is in the same vein. But we confine ourselves to but one other phase of mariolatry—Mary’s Queen-ship. The present Pope Pius XII had said in 1946: “Jesus, the Son of God, reflects in His heavenly mother the glory, the majesty, and the dominion of His Kingship, for, having been associated to the King of Martyrs in the ineffable work of human redemption as mother and Co-operatrix, she remains forever associated to Him, within an almost unlimited power, in the distribution of grace which flows from the Redeemer. Jesus is King throughout all eternity by nature and by right of conquest; Mary, through Him, with and subordinate to Him, is Queen of grace, by divine relationship, by right of conquest, and by singular election. And her kingdom is as vast as that of her Son and God, since nothing is excluded from her dominion.” “Mary is also Queen by conquest, for she cooperated with the Saviour in redeeming us from Satan.…”

Since the statements are made, criticism is necessary. If Mary is thought of as Co-redemptrix, this implies her divinity. Redemption is, as the Roman Catholic church teaches, a work of infinite grace: an infinite sacrifice to an infinite God to remove an infinite guilt. If Mary could cooperate in that—if she could be a co-effector of an eternal and infinite redemption—she must need be infinite and eternal. The Roman church is nothing if not logical—so it should not take long for her to say this in so many words, rather than leaving the inferences to Protestant polemicists.

- More from John H. Gerstner

Books

Book Briefs: January 21, 1957

Indispensable Tool

The Westminster Atlas to the Bible (Revised Edition) by George E. Wright and Floyd V. Wilson. The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1956. $7.50.

To say that the present atlas is an indispensable tool for every serious Bible student is to say the obvious. This revised work is a delight. As to format, printing, illustrations and maps it is a masterpiece. It contains sixteen more pages than the first edition (1945) and discusses the latest discoveries in Palestine, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. The remarks on the excavations at Megiddo (p. 113) are a model of compact archaeological reporting. One can spend much profitable time in examining the well chosen illustrations, and will learn a good deal about the Holy Land from such examination. The picture of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (p. 104), which in the original edition had been reversed, is now printed correctly. All in all, the book is a pleasure to behold.

We cannot but commend the authors for the manner in which they have written the material which accompanies the maps and illustrations. An introductory essay by William F. Albright provides an excellent introduction to the study of the ancient Near East. This is followed by a chronological table or outline of ancient history which will well serve the purposes of ready reference. There is an excellent restraint, also, in the discussion of some of the problems connected with the relationship of archaeology and the Bible. The patriarchal period is dated as c.2000–1700 B.C. No attempt is made to force a late date upon the patriarchal age, and this, we believe, is wise.

To be regretted is the fact that the authors are willing to embrace a “critical” view of the Holy Scriptures. Their sympathies lie with the modern school of biblical studies rather than with the historic Christian position which regards the Bible as infallible Scripture. For example, on page 26 we are told, “—we lack precise knowledge of the nature of Abraham’s religion,—”. Genesis one to eleven is said to contain “Hebrew traditions about the Creation and the Flood” (p. 25). The Christian position is that these are not merely Hebrew traditions but the revelation of God about the origin of all things. There is much mention of the ministry of Jesus, but one looks in vain for a clear-cut statement as to who this Jesus is. Nor does it help to be told of Paul that on the way to Damascus “—he had the vision of the living Christ which transformed his life and affected the course of history” (p. 95). The phrase “living Christ” is vague and shadowy. The Christ Whom Paul saw on the Damascus road was One who had been crucified and by a mighty miracle had risen from the dead. He was the risen Christ.

For the most part, however, the “critical” viewpoint of the authors is excluded from the discussion, and for this we are truly grateful. The value of the book is thereby tremendously enhanced, and so, can be used with great profit. The scholarship which has gone into the book’s preparation is truly admirable and we congratulate the authors upon their production.

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Exegesis And Homiletics

The First Epistle of John, by Robert S. Candlish, Zondervan, Grand Rapids. $5.95.

Like a trip to the mountains that border the sea!

Candlish was a leader among “the Wee Frees.” For many years he preached in Scotland’s most influential church and was Principal of New College, Edinburgh. In this book he combined careful exegesis and true homiletics to produce forty-six messages of insight and inspiration. He died in 1873, but in this reprint his preaching lives on.

The Doctor did not pause for thorough investigation of the background of First John, but he occasionally makes clear the references to the incipient Gnosticism which John contacted (e.g., pp. 198, 528). The analysis is of the text. The Epistle is “the divine fellowship of light, righteousness, and love, overcoming the world and its prince” (p. 436). There are four parts: in 1:5–2:28 God is light; in 2:29–4:6 God is righteousness; in 4:7–5:3 God is love; and then there is conflict with the world, 5:2–21. Our author overrides human chapter divisions for new truth (e.g., 350) which is often strikingly stated. For example, the child of God is born of the Spirit as Jesus was:

You who believe are born of God as he is. I speak of his human birth; in which you, in your new birth, are partakers with him; the same Spirit of God being the agent in both, and originating in both the same new life. His birth was humiliation to him, though it was of God: your new birth is exaltation to you, because it is of God. His being born of God by the Spirit made him partaker of your human nature;—your being born again of God by the Spirit makes you partakers of his “divine nature” (p. 220).

Criticism? There is perhaps too much subjectivism, as in dealing with what John says about anti-Christs (p. 355). He seems to teach an impeccability realized on earth from a passage like “whosoever is born of God cannot sin” (3:9 A.V.), without sufficient attention to the continuous action of the Greek infinitive, which makes John really say, “he cannot go on sinning, he cannot make sin a habit of his life” (Cp. however, p. 352).

May I suggest, first, that laymen buy this book for their pastors; second, that pastors take a course in First John, under Candlish, by reading this large type for fifteen minutes a day for 46 consecutive days. It will deepen spirituality and quicken love for Christ and men.

W. GORDON BROWN

Ecumenicity

The Church for the New Age—A Dissertation on Church Unity, by Christopher Glover. Exposition Press, N. Y., 1956.

This is an extraordinary book. Every Protestant ought to read it. It sets forth opinions which, if believed by the Anglican Church generally, are eye-openers in the area of Ecumenicity. And if what the author claims is true, it is indeed essential for every Protestant to be aware of the claims and to understand and appreciate them.

Bishop Walter Carey of the Anglican Church wrote the foreword. He stated that the author’s “thesis and analysis is (sic) uncontrovertible.” What then is the viewpoint which is uncontrovertible?

Mr. Glover claims that the Church (the holy catholic church) is marked off by four characteristics. It is divine in origin, visible in character, organic in structure and priestly in function. There are only three communions (possibly a fourth) which are true and valid parts of this holy catholic church by these standards. One is the Roman branch of the holy catholic church, a second is the Greek Orthodox branch of the holy catholic church and the other is the Anglican branch of the holy catholic church.

Only through the aforementioned branches of the church is it possible to be assured of salvation. God has worked through other so-called churches and has allowed people to be saved, but their salvation is “uncertain” and they can have no certainty or assurance save through the branches of the holy catholic church. All Protestant churches, including Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed, Congregational, Baptist, etc. are not true churches. Their ministries are not valid and their sacramental systems are built on error and not on truth.

Biblically, God intended that there should be one visible organically united church. This is the plan and will of God. Division is sin and while the division of the three branches of the only true church is sinful, the schism of Protestantism is more sinful. There is little present hope for reunion of the three dissenting branches of the true church—Roman, Greek, and Anglican. Error exists in the Roman and Greek forms and these two branches are temporarily confirmed in their obstinacy. The Anglican Church alone possesses all the truth and alone is the branch of the true church which is true to the demands of the biblically true church.

There can never be a reunion of the churches as this relates to Protestantism because Protestant churches are not really churches. They must submit to the basic claims of the Anglican church and come penitently to its fold and recognize its basic or essential claims. Protestantism’s ministry can become a valid ministry when it has been validated by the laying on of the Anglican hands and its people assured of salvation through Anglicanism’s sacramental system.

If the author of this book is right, Protestantism has been wrong for more than four hundred years. Its views on the church, ministry, and sacraments have been wrong too. With incredible aplomb this writer takes himself and his church so seriously that he becomes as dogmatic as any Roman pope. Most ecumenical enthusiasts will be far less enthusiastic once they read through this volume. If a Fundamentalist wrote a book the way this book is written he would be pilloried and termed as an obscurantist. At times this reviewer asked himself the question, “Is the author really serious?” Well, he certainly is serious, and his conclusions are well and good for those who wish to accept them. But for me and my house (my father having come up through the Anglican tradition) there are dissenting voices both from the conclusions and the evidences used to support them.

—HAROLD LINDSELL

Cancer Anonymous

Determined to Live, by Brian Hession, Peter Davies. 15s.

No one can read this book without being moved with admiration for the courage of its author. A clergyman of the Church of England who has for many years been deeply impressed with the value of visual aids in the presentation of the Gospel, Brian Hession was in Hollywood in 1954 acting as “spiritual technical adviser to a company making a religious film,” when he consulted a doctor and was informed that he had only three or four days to live. The diagnosis was—inoperable cancer in an advanced stage. As they faced this stunning blow in the presence of God, Mr. Hession and his wife became convinced that they must find a surgeon who would consent to take the risk of operating. They found their man in Dr. John Howard Payne of Pasadena, California. The finest human skill, the best possible nursing and all expenses paid by generous friends are not uncommonly found in the United States. In the Hessions’ case these were combined with a strong faith in God and a determination not only to survive, God willing, but to prove that it is possible after a colostomy to live an active life to the glory of God. As the story shows, Brian Hession is still alive and engaged in worthwhile work after more than two years. It is his great desire not only to continue in the production of religious films, but to sell to the world the idea of Cancer Anonymous (on the analogy of Alcoholics Anonymous). The greatest need, he feels, is to stimulate faith and hope amongst cancer patients who are too ready to accept a fatal diagnosis as certain. The plain fact is that there are far more cures in the early stages of the disease than most of us imagine, and Brian Hession is alive to show that even in an advanced stage, recovery is not impossible.

This is not a treatise on faith healing, for under God it was the surgeon’s skill which brought about the miracle. But miracle is not an inapt word, for thousands were praying, and it was surely God who blessed the means used and inspired His servant to remain alive, for the sake of his wife and children and his work, when the medical verdict left no loophole for recovery.

Cancer Anonymous is surely a project which ought to command universal sympathy and widespread support. If the main subject of the book were a plea for the production of religious films, your reviewer would feel obliged to enter one or two strong caveats, particularly concerning the propriety of any actor impersonating our blessed Lord. Nor must affectionate admiration for the author be misconstrued as an endorsement of some decidedly loose phraseology from a biblical and theological standpoint.

FRANK HOUGHTON

Too Brief

A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, edited by Eugene R. Fair-weather. Westminster, Philadelphia, 1956. $5.00

This book is volume 10 in The Library of Christian Classics. Other volumes are: 1. Early Christian Fathers; 4. Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa; 15. Luther: Lectures on Romans; 24. English Reformers.

The present volume covers Anselm to Ockham. Aquinas is naturally given a separate volume, but the verb covers is still too inclusive. The material on Anselm is perhaps sufficient, but this can hardly be said of Abelard, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus and Ockham. Duns, for example, is allowed nine pages of fairly important material, and Ockham is give six pages of fairly unimportant material.

The editor’s Introductions to the several sections are well written and reflect great learning; but they are so general and summary that I fear a scholar would find them too brief and a general reader too unintelligible.

GORDON H. CLARK

Missionary Literatur

Jungle Doctor Hunts Big Game, by Paul White. Paternoster Press. 4s.6d.

Here we have the fourteenth volume the now famous Jungle Doctor series, but lest there should be any misgiving, prospective readers may be assured that there is absolutely no sign of any diminution in Dr. White’s unrivalled powers as a narrator of his missionary experiences and adventures in Central Tanganyika. From beginning to end the book is completely absorbing, and in places most moving. Like its predecessors, its pages effectively and unselfconsciously display the Gospel as the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, and as missionary literature, entirely suitable for both young and old and challenging to both young and old and challenging to both believer and unbeliever, we know of nothing better. The book is attractively illustrated by Graham Wade.

PHILIP E. HUGHES

Biography

The Protestant Bishop, by Edward Carpenter. Longmans. 35s.

This is the biography of a Bishop of London who, though little known, exercised a powerful influence upon the destinies of the English Church and people. Henry Compton came of a noble family which had rendered great service to the Royalist cause. Henry Compton exiled himself to the continent during the commonwealth and only returned to England with the restorction of the monarchy.

His early promotion is sensational by our standards and stemmed, no doubt, from his noble birth, but was later justified by his outstanding ability. He was ordained deacon and priest in 1666; three years later he became a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. Within a month he proceeded to the degrees of B.D. and D.D. In 1674 he was made Bishop of Oxford and a year later, of London.

Compton was a man of very simple faith. His biographer says, “he may perhaps be numbered among the twice born.” He scorned the proud conceit of those who exalted their own intellect above spiritual understanding. “We are absolutely dependent,” he writes, “upon the righteousness of Christ for our justification: and for getting out of our state of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

He was devoted to the monarchy because he was even more passionately devoted to the English way of life, and he believed each to be dependent upon the other. But he was a typical Englishman in his rooted antipathy to the Church of Rome which he considered to be alien to the freedom-loving Englishman, the inevitable cause of despotism and tyranny and the source of unscriptural doctrine and worship. Thus his career as a Bishop was dominated by a determination to keep England Protestant, and this determination ultimately overrode even his loyalty to his sovereign. It was impossible to avoid a clash between Bishop and King. Whatever religious sympathies Charles had were with Rome, and his successor, James, was a Roman Catholic determined to force his religion upon the Country. Compton drafted a loyal address on behalf of the clergy in which he assured the King that “our religion established by law is dearer to us than our lives.” Compton was soon suspended from office but he did not cease to use his influence to oppose the policy of the King. The danger to Parliamentary Government from the King’s arbitrary conduct and the threat to the Church from his Roman Catholic influence, drove Compton to be one of the signatories to the invitation to William of Orange to come to England. Canon Carpenter’s book has much that is relevant to our contemporary situation. Compton taught his clergy by an ingenious system of conferences the dangers of Roman Catholicism and the errors of that church, and he saw that this teaching was passed on to the people. Such teaching would be most valuble in this age of what Bishop Hensley Henson called “comfortable anarchy.”

When the bloodless revolution was achieved many of Compton’s Episcopal friends deserted him and the Archbishop shut himself up at Lambeth and took no part in the Coronation. (Incidentally it was left to Compton to draft a Coronation service which is substantially what we use today and it was his genius which introduced the presentation of the Bible to the sovereign). Episcopal leadership is frequently timid and hesitating in matters of deep theological moment but in things of social or political sentimentality they are bravely, but not always wisely, vocal.

Compton’s boldness and faithfulness was not rewarded by William or Anne, both of whom passed him over when the Archbishopric was vacant. This soured him so that in his later years he encouraged “just those elements in the nation which would have bypassed the Act of Succession in the interests of the Pretender.” It is refreshing to read of an ecclesiastic in high office so fearless and forthright in his determination to preserve the church and nation from spiritual tyranny, but it is rather saddening to discover that human nature in every age bears some of the less attractive characteristics.

Parts II and III of this book tell the story of Compton’s work as a Diocesan Bishop and his responsibility as such for chaplains in “the Plantations of America.” His wide sympathies included the French Refugees and the Greek Orthodox Community in London. It is interesting to note that his conditions for approving of a Greek Orthodox Church in London were that there should be no pictures or ikons, they must repudiate the doctrine of transubstantiation, and there must be no prayers to the Saints.

T. G. MOHAN

Cultic Dictatorship

Thirty Years A Watch Tower Slave—The Confessions of a Converted Jehovah’s Witness, by W. J. Schnell. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, $2.95.

This volume was writen by a man who was entangled in the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses for three decades. He writes his personal life testimony of his relationship to this movement. The story is in the form of an expose of the cult and its machinations.

Briefly the author contends that the cult is dangerous, having its origins in the personalities of Charles Taze Russell and Judge Rutherford. Both of these men, he claims, were deceivers who deliberately and for evil gain created this cult and its crude theology. Based upon distortions and falsehoods the cult moved forward in a totalitarian framework in which innocent men and women were led astray. The victims lost their freedom, their right to think and their souls too in the maze of this deception. Once under the iron rule and reign of the cultic dictatorship the victims were used to promote the sale of literature and to fill the coffers of the cult with the financial gains.

When an individual tried to free himself from the meshes of the dictatorship he would be persecuted and hounded in a fearful fashion. Mr. Schnell himself experienced the tortures perpetrated on those who would be free—not in the sense of physical imprisonment but from the pressures used by the organization to keep the victims in line.

One cannot doubt the genuineness of the author’s insights nor the obvious lessons which should be learned from his experiences. At the same time one cannot but be amazed at the organizational zeal of the movement and its remarkable success in winning converts. Quite obviously the cult is not even sub-Christian—just anti-Christian and thoroughly dangerous.

The volume lacks some of the artistic graces of good writing, but it has the touch of the sincere about it.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Far East News: January 21, 1957

Campaign In Manila

An evangelistic campaign, described as Manila’s first major Crusade for Christ, is now under way, with Dr. Robert Pierce delivering the messages in an open-air auditorium seating 5,000.

Never before have churches in the city united for a campaign to continue for three consecutive weeks (January 13-February 3). The National Evangelistic Strategy Committee is sponsoring the crusade, with 75 churches giving support to the effort.

(This is a large majority of Protestant churches in the predominantly Roman Catholic city. In December, the Philippines were officially consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the Eucharistic Congress.)

Dr. Pierce, president of World Vision, Inc., with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, is well known throughout the Far East, where his organization supports many Christian projects.

Meetings are held in the auditorium of the famous Sunken Gardens, opposite city hall in downtown Manila. The platform, with its 60-foot tower and cross, seats a 600-voice choir. Heading the sponsoring committee are Chairman Jose A. Yap and Ellsworth Culver, coordinator.

Prayer support is being given by many churches in the provincial areas.

Chaplain Honored

The Republic of Korea Award of Military Merit has been given to an American Protestant chaplain for his work in organizing a Christian chaplaincy to aid men of the Korean Air Force.

Air Force Chaplain (Captain) Robert M. Moore (Presbyterian, U. S. A.), of Jersey City, N. J., received the award from Major General Chang Duk Chang, vice chief of staff of the Korean Air Force. It was bestowed in a ceremony at Bergstrom Air Force Base, Texas, where Chaplain Moore is now serving.

Different Message

Former Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who as a pilot in the Japanese Navy led the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, is on a tour of the United States as a Christian missionary.

Fuchida was converted after the war through the efforts of an American missionary Timothy Pietsch, and later joined the Sky Pilots of America, a group which aims at interesting boys in Christian work through their love of airplanes and trains young men to become flying missionaries.

He is chief of the Sky Pilots in Japan and has launched an evangelistic campaign among his fellow countrymen.

Before the Pearl Harbor attack, Fuchida trained 360 special pilots for a month and a half. During the attack, he said years later, he was filled with a love of his country and hatred of Americans, but added, “there was no real joy in my heart.”

At Midway, he was in sick bay aboard an aircraft carrier when it was bombed by United States forces. Both his legs were broken. Later, he was sent to build an airfield in Iwo Jima.

In August, 1945, Fuchida was to take part in a suicide mission against Guam, but the war ended before it could take place. He was tried as a war criminal and acquitted.

Stemming The Flood

“When Viet Nam joined the ranks of Communist-divided countries, Christian people the world around said, ‘My, isn’t that too bad.’ … Why shouldn’t it have been so? Millions of Americans, and others, had done nothing to stop it … hadn’t even said a prayer.

“In nearby Cambodia, I found only one missionary printer and one antiquated press … only one! He had succeeded in rolling off material which was piled from the floor to the ceiling of his tiny back-alley shop in Phnom Penh. In an adjoining room, a native Cambodian boy, a spastic child, was trying to fold and assemble that material by hand. That Christian printer had been praying and hoping for over a quarter of a century for reinforcements that hadn’t come.

“Is it not inconceivable that in these days of technological know-how, achievement and advance, that we should expect one man and one spastic boy to stem the Red flood in such a strategic country all by themselves?”—From address at “Men’s Council on World Objectives,” Spokane, by Clay Cooper, president of Vision, Inc.

Strong Bid For Aid

When Roman Catholic authorities in New Zealand made a strong bid to obtain state aid for their expanding network of church schools, the government set up a special commission to hear evidence.

The Commission heard reports from all quarters and finally reported it had no recommendation to make. A Roman Catholic member of Parliament moved that the matter be referred back to the Commission for further investigation, but the motion died for want of a second.

Roman Catholics comprise about 16 per cent of the population of New Zealand. Anglicans total 37 per cent and Presbyterians 25 per cent. Both have a number of church schools and other educational institutions.

Under the existing plan, time is allowed up to a half-hour a week for religious instruction in state schools.

Government Ally

A leading Australian Methodist clergyman has charged that the Christian Church in Communist China is now “so fully a party to the plans and politics of the government that it is actually an ally of that government.”

“It is playing its role,” declared Dr. Malcolm Mackay, minister of the Scottish church in Sydney, “in subverting men and women from the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Its prophetic function is ended and Jesus Christ is not its King.”

He called for an end to contacts between Western churchmen and the State-subordinated churches of either Communist China or Russia, branding such contacts as “sentimental nonsense.”

He added:

“It is time we put an end to this blind and wilful folly which has made deep inroads into our churches and to have an end to this sentimental nonsense which sees all the right with the other side and all the wrong on our side. That is not Christian charity. That is high treason in an ideological war.”

Deaths

*Richard Johnson, American Methodist missionary of Owatonna, Minnesota, drowned when he was caught in a strong current while swimming at Kuala Trengganu in Malaya.

*George T. Stephens, 72, Canadian-born evangelist associated with both Billy Sunday and Billy Graham.

*Dr. Clarence E. Krumbholz, 69, executive secretary of National Lutheran Council’s Division of Welfare for 15 years.

*Bishop Alexander Caillot, 95, of Grenoble, France, said to be oldest Roman Catholic bishop in world.

CHRISTIANITY TODAYis a subscriber to Religious News Service, Evangelical Press Service and Washington Religious Report Newsletter.

Russia News: January 21, 1957

‘Rise In Vain’

Metropolitan Anastasi, head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, has told the people of the Soviet Union in a radio message that the communists “rise in vain against Christ and his immortal gospel.”

The Gospel, he said, has “edified and consoled” countless millions through the centuries, while Communism “has brought with it nothing but bitter disappointment.

“Communism has not eliminated poverty and suffering from the earth, and it has not given people the blessings it has promised. Instead of bread, it gives them a stone. Instead of freedom, it gives them agonizing slavery and impoverishment.”

All free peoples, the Metropolitan said in the message broadcast by Radio Liberation, “recoil from Communism.”

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia comprises those who refused to accept the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate after the Russian Revolution.

‘Emptiness Of Heart’

The broadcasting of Christian teachings and principles to the Russian people is the free world’s greatest opportunity of smashing the Iron Curtain.

This is the opinion of the Rev. Paul E. Freed of Greensboro, North Carolina. Back from a six-week visit to European countries, including Russia, he said there is “a great emptiness of heart” among young Russians “which I am convinced can be filled by true Christianity.

“The young people of Russia have had atheism pounded into them since childhood, but I don’t believe that deep down within themselves they can deny the existence of God.”

Mr. Freed is president of International Evangelism, an independent missionary group which since 1954 has operated the “Voice of Tangier,” an international radio station in North Africa. The short-wave station currently broadcasts seven hours a day in 23 languages. It uses five sets of beamed antennas, one of which is directed to Russia.

Africa News: January 21, 1957

Nitro In Nigeria

The State and the Roman Catholic Church in Eastern Nigeria are locked in controversy over the government’s free universal education plan, designed to take effect this year.

Basis of the disagreement is the government’s decision that all schools receiving government subsidy must conform to government standards. The Roman Catholics, who claim over 50 per cent of the Christians among the region’s 7,000,000 population, assert that parents have the right to decide the nature of their children’s education. Also, they have expressed fear of mishandling of funds in a region which has had frequent investigations of corruption.

In answer to the Roman Catholic charge of a “godless State monopoly of education,” Prime Minister Azikiwe said, “the government of the Eastern Region is irrevocably committed to the principle of religious freedom.”

Protestants have quietly accepted the plan, feeling that they will benefit from it. Under the new arrangements, financial problems will be solved and missions, responsible for 95 per cent of education in the country, will have the right to give religious instruction in classrooms. Mission officials have the opportunity of being nominated as managers of schools and can influence policy by becoming members of local councils.

Roman Catholics, on the other hand, see the plan as a threat to their bid for control of education in the region.

The Prime Minister has pointed out that “the government will not prevent any person or voluntary agency from establishing a private school which shall charge fees, provided that such schools need not claim to be eligible to receive grants-in-aid as a right.”

—W.A.F.

Exodus From Egypt

Familiar faces are being missed in Egypt today as a result of the recent government action against British and French nationals.

In addition to virtually the entire business, professional and consular communities, three distinct groups of British people have been ordered out of the country. These include one missionary organization almost in its entirety, the total force of educationalists and all the Anglican clergy.

The missionary organization was the Egypt General Mission, a group of women and laymen, including nurses and doctors, from Britain and Australia. Members of the organization came under a dark cloud last spring on government charges of teaching Christianity to Muslim children. The Mission’s two schools were closed and taken over by the government.

After the recent outbreak of hostilities, the Mission Hospital in Shebin al Qanater, in the Delta, was expropriated and the staff sent to the Mission headquarters in Zeitun, a suburb of Cairo, where all were kept under house arrest and given orders to leave the country within seven days. With the bank account under sequestration, members had no way in which to pay for plane tickets. Appeals for the release of funds fell on deaf ears. Finally, tickets were bought by non-British friends. Observers predict the organization will never be permitted to return to Egypt.

In mid-December, only one clergyman from the United Kingdom remained—the Rev. Roy Stewart, for the past five years pastor of the St. Andrews Church of Scotland, Cairo. Of Mr. Stewart’s congregation, two remained, one a retired Scottish businessman and member of the Kirk Session, and the other the wife of an American University professor.

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Technique Not The Secret

Engagement With The World

The Agent Of Mission

The Layman’S Part

We Quote:

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The Wonder Of Our World

A Superb Moral Weapon

The Philosophers Are Sinners

The Pattern Of Perfection

Rationalistic Counterattack

Tribute From The Uncommitted

Preacher In The Red

The Academic Snub

Neglect Of The Historical

A Biblical Motif

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Victory In A Pagan Land

Competition For The Spirit

Crucial Moment In Missions

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What Is A Christian Writer?

Contagious Greatness Of Scripture

An Inescapable Influence

Paradox Of Christian Writing

Evangelicals Have Written Well

Why The Present Mediocrity?

Danger Of Trifling With Truth

Biblical Criterion Of Work

The Snare Of Pedantry

“The Man Of Letters As Saint”

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A Working Congress

Sunday Sessions Unusual

Prayer Indispensable

Recognition Of God

Spiritual Priorities

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Indispensable Tool

Exegesis And Homiletics

Ecumenicity

Cancer Anonymous

Too Brief

Missionary Literatur

Biography

Cultic Dictatorship

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Campaign In Manila

Chaplain Honored

Different Message

Stemming The Flood

Strong Bid For Aid

Government Ally

Deaths

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‘Rise In Vain’

‘Emptiness Of Heart’

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Nitro In Nigeria

Exodus From Egypt

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