Ideas

Evangelicals and Fundamentals

The Editors

A number of circumstances have transpired that call for review of the terms evangelicalism and fundamentalism in relation to the present theological situation. Several opposing schools of thought vie for use of the term evangelical. Appropriation of the word by those who do not hold to its biblical and historic content has caused some hesitancy on the part of those who hold to the doctrines of revealed Christianity, as to its proper use. They fear misunderstanding of their theological position.

Complication also results from the diverse connotations surrounding the term fundamentalism in various countries. Fundamentalism has a different savor in England and Australia than in United States and Canada. Further confusion has been caused by criticism of the “fundamentalism” of Billy Graham by liberal and neo-orthodox leaders and the censure of the “modernism” of Mr. Graham by some fundamentalists. All this semantic confusion calls for clarification.

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A growing preference for the term evangelicalism has developed within recent years in circles that keep to traditional doctrines held to be fundamental to Christian faith. This choice finds root in several important facts: first, the word is scriptural and has a well-defined historical content; second, the alternate, fundamentalism, has narrower content and has acquired unbiblical accretions.

In the New Testament the Greek to euaggelion (the evangel) is translated gospel, glad tidings. After the death of Christ the term signified the history of Christ and is the title prefixed to each of the four narratives of his birth, doctrine, miracles, death, resurrection and ascension. Further, the evangel signified the Christian revelation and was applied to the system of doctrines, ordinances and laws instituted by Christ. The evangel indicated more than a proclamation of pardon through faith and included all the teachings of Christ. Thus in the commission recorded in Mark the apostles were instructed “to go into all the world, and preach the gospel (the evangel) to every creature.” That they were sent not only to proclaim pardon through Christ but to instruct men in all details of the Christian religion, is plain from the parallel passage in Matthew, “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations … teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” Moral precepts of the Sermon on the Mount must be included in the term evangel. Following biblical content, evangelicalism calls attention to the whole gospel as set forth in God’s Holy Word.

Historically, the term evangelical follows the biblical content. Webster’s New International Dictionary defines “evangelical” as “designating that party or school among the Protestants which holds that the essence of the gospel consists mainly in its doctrines of man’s sinful condition and the need of salvation, the revelation of God’s grace in Christ, the necessity of spiritual renovation and participation in the experience of redemption through faith.” In accord with this definition the evangelical follows in the succession of Augustine, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, Whitefield, Spurgeon, Hodge, Walther, Moody, Kuyper, Warfield, Machen and men of like caliber. These men, for the most part, not only proclaimed the great doctrines which concerned with salvation, but made the evangel apply to the whole of life. Spiritual and moral renovation receive emphasis as well as justification by faith.

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The term fundamentalism does not possess biblical background nor has it gained the rich and well-defined content that history has endowed on evangelicalism. By this statement we do not disparage the contribution fundamentalism has made to the cause of Christianity. In the early part of the twentieth century the movement fought firmly and courageously for scriptural theology and the historic faith. Unashamedly fundamentalism clung to the supernaturalness and uniqueness of Christ and to the authority and inspiration of Scripture. Those who decry fundamentalism little realize that some liberals now speak of the supernatural Christ and the neo-orthodox leader, Karl Barth, defends the virgin birth. However, the word fundamentalism has an inherent weakness in that it cannot be biblically defined, and has an unpleasant connotation that cannot be blamed on the originators of the movement.

Because fundamentalism cannot be biblically defined, it cannot authoritatively define what is fundamental and what is not fundamental to Christianity. History associates it with five points that have become the sine qua non of the movement: the infallibility of the Bible, Christ’s virgin birth, his substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection and second coming. This reduction of vital doctrines has limited and circumscribed fundamentalism and reduced its effectiveness. The first World War caused some fundamentalists to focus their hope on the second coming and to exclude those who did not accept their interpretation. Unfortunately, extreme and weird prophetic interpretations became linked in the public mind with fundamentalism. The failure to employ the whole counsel of God in combating unbelief contributed to its ineffectiveness and placed the stamp of narrowness upon the name.

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At the inception of the movement in 1910 fundamentalists gave a place to the intellect and made plans for the establishment of a Christian university and Christian colleges. Later, men of lesser vision opposed education and nurtured an anti-intellectual spirit. In the debate against evolution extreme ridicule and vituperative personal invectives, rather than logic, became the custom. The charge of obscurantism was not entirely unearned. Not only in the fight against evolution, but in opposition to other matters, fundamentalists became involved in abusive personal attacks, rather than using the sword of the Spirit. Unyielding individualism of its leaders and their dictatorial spirit did not help the cause of orthodox Christianity.

Concentration on a few points of doctrine to the exclusion of ethics has also brought fundamentalism under discredit. Impression was given that ethics need only involve a spirit of negation—abstinence from externals such as smoking and card-playing. The more subtle and dangerous sins of the spirit and mind received scant attention. Failure to develop a system of Christian ethics for all phases of life proved harmful. Fundamentalism neglected to give biblical emphasis on true holiness in living and love among the brethren. Squabbles between fundamentalist leaders on minor issues has given the movement an unwholesome reputation and has made the term synonymous with bitterness and pettiness of spirit.

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In all fairness it must be stated that some accretions have been superimposed by unkindly and ignorant critics. Fanatic actions and teachings of fringe groups have been attributed to the whole. The handling of poisonous serpents by some sects (from a literalistic interpretation of Mark 16:18) has been cited as illustrating the literalism of fundamentalism. The dictation theory of inspiration has been unjustly foisted on the entire group. Unethical practices of some radio broadcasters have been cited to reflect the practice of all fundamentalists. These and many other unjust accusations have added to its unsavory reputation in the eyes of the public.

Evangelicals are turning away from the term fundamentalism not because of any inclination to disavow traditional fundamentals of the Christian faith, but are prompted by its inadequate scriptural content and its current earned and unearned disrepute. Moreover, the term lacks the appropriateness of the word evangelicalism. Scripture gives content to the evangel and not the exigency or crisis of the moment. The full-orbed gospel and the whole counsel of God comes to view in its classical meaning. It has a proud and noble succession in the history of the Christian church. While certain periods of history have obscured its true significance and foes have usurped its use, yet Scripture and history have made its import clear and its name dignified. Christians who hold to traditional fundamentals of Christianity would be guilty of grievous strategic error to accept a term not defined by Scripture and of doubtful connotation or to meekly yield the word evangelicalism to those who do not accept the content of the evangel revealed by Christ. Secular dictionaries, history and Scripture give strong witness that only those who maintain the fundamentals have the right to the term. In the midst of theological confusion evangelicals have a wonderful opportunity to live up to the scriptural and historical content of their name and proclaim the whole counsel of God.

Our Standard Of Living: Highest, But Is It Best?

The standard of living in America is said to be the highest in the world and the highest ever attained by any nation at any time in history.

It is a sobering thought that the highest may not be the best and that if our present standard of living had obtained from the beginning of our national history we probably never would have survived a war. Through good food, “gracious living,” the automobile and television, Americans have become softer and softer until the youth of our land, compared with those of other lands, now rates far down in the scale of physical fitness.

All the comforts of home are desired for our men in the armed services. Our children never walk because they ride the family car or on their thumbs. Whereas in previous generations young people either worked or engaged in active sports, many of them now get their exercise watching others play, either on the athletic fields or before a TV screen.

During the Korean war some 1,600 American prisoners were quartered with 300 Turkish prisoners in a North Korea POW camp. It is reported that more than 400 of the Americans died from the rigors experienced, but not one Turkish soldier succumbed.

In our obsession for ease, exotic foods and gadgets for physical comforts, we may have attained the world’s highest standard of living only to discover that it is far from being the best.

END

Theology

From Here to Eternity

L. Nelson Bell

“If it works it is obsolete,” is a common saying at the Pentagon. This is but a facetious recognition of the rapidity of change in an era of unprecedented discovery and development.

We see the mansions of one generation become the boarding houses of the next and the slums of the third. That which is the acme of modernity becomes, in time, its very antithesis.

Thoughtful people in every generation, aware of the kaleidoscopic changes which seem to come with ever mounting tempo, long for something that endures and is not subject to revision. Cardinal Newman expressed the thought in his immortal hymn:

Change and decay, in all around I see,

Oh Thou who changest not, abide with me.

Centuries earlier, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul wrote: “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal (temporary), but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 COR. 4:8).

Paul was no pessimist; he was a realist. To anticipate the night while it is still day is based on sound reasoning. We live in a time of unprecedented discoveries, many of which tend to make life longer and living more comfortable and enjoyable. But with change and progress the inexorable law of change and decay also operates. Strange that so few in this world prepare for the inevitable.

The glory of Christ’s redemptive work is that full provision for time and eternity has been made for man’s salvation. This truth grasped and acted upon can solve every problem. While the complexities of modern civilization, dominated by revolutionary industrial change and developments and accelerated by the atomic era, have brought with them problems that require new approaches and solutions, the basic need of the human heart is the same from one generation to the next.

Whether in the time of Abraham, Isaiah, Paul, Luther, or Moody and Graham, whether in a Fifth Avenue mansion or the jungle of Ecuador, men are still prone to lust and kill, to pride and jealousy, to sickness and death. Man has never, of himself, escaped from the dilemmas inherent within himself.

True, social complexities, corporate sins, cultural deficiencies exist that are the reflections of ignorance, indifference or deliberate perversions of truth and right. But scratch the surface and one invariably finds underlying all these the manifestations of inherent evil within the individual. We are all prone to think of sin only in limited terms and then only as it is manifested in others. We forget that the sins of the spirit are as vile in God’s sight as the sins of the flesh, that pride and envy are cancers as much as lust and dishonesty.

A third category, indifference to our brother’s spiritual and material needs, is even less frequently recognized as evil and sinful.

Change and decay within ourselves and on every hand are but the inevitable results of man’s separation from God through sin. For that reason the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only message that is completely relevant for our times. Once restore the perspective of eternity to time, of the Creator to the creature, then life itself falls into clear focus.

Nearly two millenniums ago John the Baptist exclaimed: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” In the twentieth century, just as truly as then, Christ remains the answer to the sin problem of the world. Degenerative processes of the physical body and of the society to which we belong will inevitably take their course, but Christians are united with the One who changes not—the same yesterday, today and forever.

This is being written on the fortieth floor of a midtown hotel as I look down on lower Manhattan. The Woolworth building, the pride and wonder of a former generation, is now dwarfed by scores of larger and more modern structures. People occupying them are no different than the occupants of the older building. The carriages and trams of yesterday have given away to the cars and buses of today. But the same kinds of people drive them. Sleek liners now dock where windjammers once tied up; giant planes and an occasional helicopter cross the sky. But the man traveling at six hundred miles an hour has the same heart as the one driving an oxcart.

Tomorrow will see even greater changes. We are on the eve of the greatest technological advances in all history and our imaginations are staggered by that which science may produce. But none of these things can alter the human heart one whit. Change? Yes. Decay? Certain.

In the midst of the storm there stands a Rock. Confronted by chaos there is Certainty. Lost in the maze of conflicting roads there is for us a Way. Perplexed by multiplied philosophies there is the Truth. Facing inevitable death we are offered Life. Surrounded of spurious messiahs there stands the living Christ, man’s only access to the Father.

Change and decay men can see and their inevitability should cause all to ponder. But the god of this world has blinded man’s eyes lest he would see the truth and turn to the light. The lost horizon of contemporary teaching and preaching is the future life. Concerned with the social ills about us we forget that their solution rests primarily in regeneration, not reformation; in new men with new hearts. Only that is relevant which really changes and only the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its fullness does this.

Some have accepted Christ as Saviour but failed to make him Lord. This is a perversion of truth, not an invalidation of truth itself. An unending emphasis on taking Christ into every area of our daily lives is needed, but it is also a compelling truth that no one can have Christ as Lord of life unless he is also Saviour from sin.

To neglect the fact of change and decay is folly. To look at time and forget eternity is to be utterly blind. There is turmoil and uncertainty—admit it. We are transients in a dying world—act accordingly. Christians are each generation’s visible link with eternity. That some give little evidence of this relationship in no way contravenes the validity of the fact. The imperfections of the most saintly are added evidence of the love and grace of God.

Facing the inevitability of death, only the Christian has the answer. He alone knows who he is, why he is here, and where he is going. And all that he is and all that he knows centers in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God.

We do not fully know what the future holds. But we do know the One who holds the future—and in his keeping it is safe.

Cover Story

Bultmann: Genius or Apostle?

Robert Paul Roth

What is the storm over Bultmann’s demythologizing of the New Testament? Hailed by friends as the monumental genius who has made Christianity meaningful to modern man, he has been charged by critics with both subjectivism and Docetism. He has been investigated for heresy, and he has had the honor of delivering the much coveted Gifford Lectures. What is the reason for the heated controversy raging about this man, not only on the continent of Europe and in England but now also in America?

Bultmann’s chief concern is to make the Christian message relevant to the present generation. A discerning student of history of the early Christian period, he tries to understand the Gospel in its primitive milieu so that he can divest it of all unnecessary accoutrements and present the original message in all its purity.

While his intentions may be good, Bultmann does not let this original Gospel speak to him. Coming to the scriptural record with a preconceived existential philosophy, he finds everything supernatural or other worldly to be unhistorical and mythological. Thus he declares that from the beginning the Christian message was couched in mythological thought patterns of the ancient world.

There were two mythical patterns prevalent in Jesus’ day—the Jewish apocalyptic notion of a final day of the Lord when the earth would melt and the redemption of Israel would be realized, and the Gnostic myth of the Greeks which promised redemption through the coming of a pre-existent Lord who humbles himself to save others. The preaching of the early Christians, Bultmann asserts, combined both of these so-called myths and thereby presented Jesus to use both as the pre-existent Lord sent to die on the Cross and the expected Son of Man who will come again in glory. Thus Paul is supposed to have naively combined the Gnostic myth of a dying and rising deity in Romans 6:2 with the Jewish myth of an atoning judge and redeemer in Romans 3:25 (cf. Bultmann, Primitive Christianity, New York, 1956, p. 197).

Because of these two mythical forms the true Christian message, according to Bultmann, was obscured from the very beginning. In the Middle Ages obscurantism persisted through the preservation of the Gnostic drama of a cosmic salvation. It is only in modern times, says Bultmann, that we are able to shake loose from false metaphysical world-views and gain a genuine understanding of man as he really exists. According to this modern understanding, man sees himself as the historically unique product of his past. The world around him is not a fixed structure to which he must fit himself, but it is an infinitude of future possibilities for which man is responsible. This means that man’s life is constantly being challenged with decision. Unlike the Stoic, who tries to find serenity through a rational decision that frees him from the future, the Christian, says Bultmann, finds release through a decision for Christ which frees him for the future. But this freedom is purely historical (existential) and has no relation to a future life in a new world to come.

Event As Confrontation

The Stoic thought he could rid himself of his past by rational choice, but Bultmann says that Paul with a surer realism knew that a man cannot shake himself loose from his past. If he is to be saved at all it must be by a gift of grace. This gift is the event of Christ, not understood as an historical occasion, but as the moment of revelation, a crisis of decision, which comes to individuals in every generation repeatedly whenever God meets them in judgment and mercy. In this regard Bultmann says that Christianity agrees with Gnosticism because both declare man incapable of saving himself, and both define redemption as an event. The only difference is that while Christians connected this event with Jesus, the Gnostics relegated the event to a mythical age before history began (ibid., p. 200).

Since this mythological framework is not necessary, Bultmann wishes to cut away all prescientific myths in the Bible so that nothing but the relevant message of the early Church remains. This message alone can speak to our day of “electricity and radio.” Thus the miracles, the birth stories, the empty tomb and the resurrection stories must all be discarded. The core of the message which is left is the historicity of the Cross and the good news of justification by faith. Bultmann says that man in his existence is suffering from a desperate calamity. This lostness is the point of contact for all Christian preaching because when a man reaches the boundary of his resources he can find release by making a decision for Christ. This decision, made at the edge of the abyss, will bring a man to a believing self-understanding (Selbstverstandnis), or a release from the powers of this world which he can control (and which in sin control him) into the service of that Power which he cannot control (which is the hidden God). This gives a man “serenity of soul” in the face of otherwise hopeless frustration. The historical Jesus is significant in this picture only as occasion for the encounter between the cross-event and the sinner who makes the decision for the ultimate. Apart from this personal encounter, there is no more significance to Jesus than to any other martyr in history. Really it is not the Jesus of history that concerns us (he was assertedly not even conscious of himself as Messiah), but the personal Lord we meet in the moment of decision.

Subjectivistic Criticism

Now how does Bultmann know all this? How is it possible for him to say that the original and relevant message was from the beginning clothed in an unnecessary mythical dress? The answer is that he uses the useful but dangerously sharp tool of form criticism in a most unscientific and subjective fashion. For example, every time the text of the Gospel of John does not corroborate Bultmann’s existentialist philosophy, he ascribes the discrepancy to redactional gloss. Thus when John’s futurist eschatology contradicts Bultmann’s realized eschatology in John 6:39, 40, 44 and 12:47, he simply pleads ecclesiastical redaction (Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, New York, 1955, Vol. II, p. 39.) Similarly, when the Jewish concept of an atoning sacrificial death is found in 1 John 1:7, 2:2, and John 4:10, 6:53–56, 19:34, Bultmann declares these passages to be late theological accretions because they do not fit his theory that John used a Gnostic representation for his message. This method has further led him to say that “for John, Easter, Pentecost and the parousia are not three separate events, but one and the same” (ibid., 6:57). That this fails to distinguish properly between Spirit and Son and thereby truncates the Trinity does not seem to bother Bultmann.

In addition to this question-begging subjectivism Bultmann has been rightly charged with a Docetic Christology. It seems fair to say that for Bultmann the Cross becomes an empty symbol because of his failure to take into consideration the suffering Saviour on the Cross. The Cross is not just a symbol pointing to an occasion which, having no meaning in itself, becomes meaningful only in the crisis of personal decision. As Luther said, “The Kingdom of God comes indeed of itself without our prayer!” And moreover, the Cross does not occur without the historical resurrection as it was witnessed by the apostles. Bultmann seldom mentions the resurrection because he has reinterpreted it in terms of existentialism to be a release from frustration in this life rather than a gift of new life both here and hereafter (ibid., p. 200). Ironically, in his attempt to understand man in a purely historical way Bultmann has denied the decisive significance of the Cross for all history by defining its meaning only in terms of human decision.

Furthermore, the serenity of soul that comes from this decision cannot really replace the gift of resurrection which the Gospel proclaims. The Gospel offers not serenity indeed but a holy war against sin and the joyful foolishness of forgiveness. The holy war is not fought in the ivory tower of dialectics but in the flesh and blood association of Christians who are yoked together with Christ in love. Faith is not a nontemporal, nonhistorical symbol that exists only in the realm of meaning. It is not man’s decision but God’s gift in bringing men into communion with himself through Christ, the Lord of the Church. This is no simple I-Thou encounter; this is the divine action of election as it reaches its fulfilment both in the history of the Church and in personal history. Such history will be anything but serene; actually the Christian and the Church become involved in a new tension under the Cross which tears at their hearts but is also accompanied by an abounding hilarity in hope.

Misunderstanding The Worlds

Another aspect of demythologizing is Bultmann’s criticism of the biblical three-story universe. The modern scientific world-view involves a one-story universe, and since the biblical view is mythical, Bultmann says it can be discarded. In brief this would mean that we must stop talking about heaven and hell. This criticism involves a misunderstanding of both Scripture and science.

Actually Scripture teaches not three worlds, nor one world, but two worlds. There is an eschatological, not metaphysical, dualism between this present world which is in bondage to decay and the world to come which has already begun in the coming of Jesus. It is true that the Bible also teaches that God has created things visible and things invisible, things in heaven, things on earth, and things under the earth. The invisible things are not to be understood as subjective realities only, but they refer to angels, principalities, powers, demons, departed spirits in nether regions. This biblical viewpoint was just as offensive and irrelevant to the Gnosticism of Paul’s day as to the materialism of ours. But the real issue is the resurrection. We must say to Bultmann as Paul said to the Corinthians: “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised.” If Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection, then departed spirits must pass from some kind of fettered condition to a new freedom and life in Christ, and this cannot be consummated within the confines of the visible world.

The scientific misunderstanding is due to a common confusion between science as a method and science as a materialistic philosophy. Most practicing scientists clearly understand this distinction, but nonscientific people often do not. No scientist today would claim that his science makes incredible heaven, hell, angels, demons, miracles. Science is not a philosophy, nor a world-view, but a method of investigating how things happen in our experience. The scientist is an honest observer who simply describes what is given him in experience. He tries by the help of reason to construct meaningful “shorthand” resumes of a wide range of data, and thereby he hopes to gain some control over what he experiences. There is no unity in the sciences; the only thing besides method which binds the sciences together is the assumption of uniform causality, but this must be recognized as a construct of human reason which is not binding on God in the least. When it comes to the data of faith and revelation, the scientist admits that his methods of investigation cannot apply. In this realm there can be no experiment, manipulation, or control; for in this realm we must simply wait upon the Holy Spirit to call us ubi et quando vult.

In summary we must say that just as Bultmann’s historicism is utterly unhistorical, so likewise his scientism is unscientific. Is he a genius or an apostle? Certainly he is a genius, for one cannot help but marvel at the ingenuity of this man’s handling of scriptural interpretation, but it is precisely this human ingenuity which denies him the right to be called an apostle. An apostle is one set apart by God to proclaim the Gospel of Christ Jesus, who was promised beforehand, descended from David according to the flesh, and designated Son of God in power by the resurrection from the dead! Bultmann does not proclaim that message.

Bastian Kruithof is Associate Professor in Bible and Philosophy at Hope College. He is author of five books and has contributed frequently to religious periodicals. He holds the B.A. and B.D. degrees from Calvin College and Seminary, the A.M. from University of Michigan and the Ph.D. from University of Edinburgh, where his dissertation was “The Relation of Christianity and Culture in the Teaching of H. Bavinck.”

Cover Story

Christianity and the Pagan World

Oswald J. Smith

If you want to find countries where there is little or no poverty and much prosperity, you will have to go to Christian countries. In non-Christian lands the lot of the masses is indescribable poverty and the virtual absence of prosperity.

If you want to find countries where there are hospitals to care for the sick, homes for the aged and orphanages for the helpless, again you will have to go to Christian countries. In non-Christian lands there are few, if any, hospitals or orphanages except those provided by Christian missionaries and no provision for the aged.

If you want to visit countries where people live in houses and where beggars do not clutter the streets, you will have to visit Christian countries. In non-Christian lands multitudes live in caves and shelters made out of old cans and boxes or in crowded river boats and beggars in their rags and nakedness throng the roads.

If you want to see countries where individuals own their own homes, and where they get three square meals a day, once again you will have to turn your eyes toward Christian countries. In non-Christian lands countless multitudes are destitute. They lack even the common necessities of life. They sleep on the street without enough cover to warm their bodies, and all their lives they are dependent on others. Even in communistic countries men cannot forge ahead and freedom is unknown, for they live as slaves of an atheistic, dictatorial government that holds life cheap and knows no mercy.

If you enjoy a country where there are schools, universities and colleges, where the courts administer justice, you will have to live in a Christian country. In non-Christian lands the masses have no opportunity of getting an education and justice is unknown, for bribery is rampant.

If you love a country where women are equal to men and where hard manual labor is not the lot of the weaker sex, and where woman can take her place in the office and even in politics, you will have to seek a Christian country. In non-Christian lands woman is the slave of man. She may be one of several wives or concubines. She is illiterate. In many such countries she is seldom seen; even when parades are going by, it is the men who stand and watch, not the women.

Christ Makes The Difference

What has made the difference? Christianity. Who has made the difference? Christ. Only in the countries that have been influenced by the teaching of Jesus is this difference found. Where Christ has gone, hospitals, schools, orphanages, leper asylums, homes for the blind, nurses and doctors have appeared. Where Christ has gone prosperity and plenty have followed. Where Christ has gone beggars have disappeared, homes have been built and the comforts of life have come. Where Christ has gone law has taken over and justice has been exercised. Where Christ has gone woman has been exalted, educated, reverenced and loved. Christian marriage has taken the place of polygamy. Where Christ has gone life is sacred and property protected, the individual given an opportunity to develop his business and to prosper, so that he can care for his family and leave something for them to inherit.

Go to a non-Christian land and you will find people hungry. Millions of them get only one meal a day or less and that a bowl of rice; they never know what it is to be satisfied. That is why there are so few fat people in non-Christian lands. They are thin for lack of nourishment. That is why they beg for a morsel of food. They are hungry. They have always been hungry and they always will be, for pagan governments are not long interested in their people’s welfare.

Most people in Christian countries do not know what it is to be hungry. They have more than enough. The United States throws away sufficient food to feed a nation. God has given America and Canada a superabundance of everything. The nation that recognizes Christ is rich. In 3 John 2 we are told that it is the will of God that his people should prosper. The greatest prosperity the world has ever seen will be during the millennium and it will be because Jesus Christ will be exalted as Lord of lords and King of kings.

The Duty Of Missions

What about the heathen? If Christianity makes such a difference, then ought we not to tell them about Christ? Their own religions cannot save them. They have never bettered their lot. Only Christianity can raise them from their degradation and filth to prosperity and righteousness. Only Christ can change their condition. Then why not give them Christ? He died for them. They have no other hope. All the by-products of Christianity will be theirs once they know Christ. Let us send out missionaries. Let us distribute the printed page. Let us get the message to them. By some means let us “Go … into all the world and preach the gospel.”

One Church’S Program

During the past years the Peoples Church in Toronto, Canada, of which I am the pastor, has contributed well over $3,000,000 for missionary work, most of it for foreign work. At the present time we are giving seven times as much to missions as we spend on ourselves. For instance, last year we spent $39,000 on ourselves in Toronto and during the same period we sent $282,000 to the regions beyond. Thus we are trying to put missions first. At the present time we are contributing toward the support of 350 missionaries on 40 foreign fields under 35 accredited faith missionary societies.

Each year we hold a missionary convention that lasts for four weeks and five Sundays. There is no period of the year when the attendance is as large as it is during this convention. On Sundays we hold four services—one at 11 o’clock in the morning, one at 3 in the afternoon, one at 7 in the evening and another at 9. As a rule some 2,000 people attend each of these services, making a total of 8,000 people for the entire Sunday. This continues for five Sundays.

We bring missionaries from various parts of the world, invite missionary leaders to speak on their work and show pictures, until our people catch such a vision that they can hardly wait for Sunday to make their investment for missions. Everyone takes part in the convention. They do not give cash. They make a faith-promise offering, agreeing to send in so much each month for the next 12 months. A pledge offering is, of course, between the individual and the church, and the officials may be sent to collect it, but a faith-promise offering is between the individual and God, and the individual is never asked for it. He makes it to God and he deals with God alone. As a rule much more is received than the amount promised.

It is like buying on credit. If we had to pay cash we could not get what we want, but by signing a contract and agreeing to pay so much a week or month it is possible to obtain things that are beyond our reach otherwise. So it is with missions. We sign a contract with God and we agree to send in so much month by month for a year. Thus we receive sufficient to carry our great missionary work.

Built On A Vision

The Peoples Church is built on a vision—the vision of getting the message to the Christless masses in the regions beyond. It is that alone which binds our people together. We have never had a split of any kind in the history of the church. Our people realize that “the supreme task of the church is the evangelization of the world” and they put missions first.

We have seen the same thing happen in dozens of other churches in the United States and Canada. It was my privilege to conduct the first convention ever held in Park Street Church, Boston. That church was then giving $3,200 a year to missions; it is now giving over $200,000 a year. For six years in succession I conducted this convention. The same thing happened in Grace Chapel, Philadelphia. That church was giving about $8,000 a year for missions. I held a convention there for five consecutive years. The Chapel is now giving over $100,000 each year. I have seen it happen in Presbyterian churches, Baptist churches, Pentecostal churches, Independent churches, all kinds of churches. I have never known it to fail. God’s plan is the convention. With a convention and a faith-promise offering, missions can be supported.

A Motto For Missions

About a quarter of a century ago God gave me a motto which I put in the form of a question: “Why should anyone hear the Gospel twice before everyone has heard it once?” I have used that motto all over the world and God has greatly blessed it. Missionary leaders everywhere are using it today. I have no objection to people hearing the Gospel a thousand times, but I do object when a church gives it to the same people for a quarter of a century and never once turns to those who have not yet heard. “The mission of the Church is Missions.” “This generation can only reach this generation.” “You must go or send a substitute.” “The church that gives is the church that lives.” These are some of the mottoes that influence us in our missionary work.

We must decide whether we are going to put our money into buildings or into the message. Jehovah’s Witnesses build Kingdom Halls, not luxurious in any sense of the word. They know that the message is more important than the building. They do not build a beautiful church and invite the people to come in; they put their money into the message, the printed page, and send it out. At one of their services they baptized 6,000 converts, every one of them won by the printed page. The communists are doing the same. They even boast that they took China by means of the printed page. The Church of Jesus Christ is going to have to change its methods. If we are going to depend upon missionaries, we are going to fail. The message is more important than the messenger.

Our people do not give as the world gives, namely, out of sympathy. We know that anyone will respond to physical needs. We have taught our people to give in order to carry out God’s program, which is to evangelize the unevangelized tribes of earth and thus bring back the King. Our policy is: “To hasten the return of our Lord by following his program for this age, which is to ‘preach the Gospel in all the world for a witness to all nations,’ and ‘to take out a people for his name.’ Our aim is to work among peoples, tribes and nations where Christ is not named.”

When Jesus left this world he left us one job and one only—world evangelization. Everything else is of secondary importance. We have no women’s missionary society in our church because we place the responsibility of missions upon everyone. It is only when the most important work of the church is given to everyone in the church that the church will indeed be a missionary church. I would never dream of giving the most important work of the church to any one of the many societies in the church. I give it to the entire church.

We have 130 elders. Last year our elders gave $42,000 to missions. No one becomes an official in the Peoples Church unless he is backing the great work of world evengelization and, if he ever ceases to back that work, he ceases to be an official. We have a choir of about 70 members. Last year our choir gave $10,000 to missions. We have a very small Sunday school, for we do not emphasize Sunday school work. There are less than 400 in it and yet our Sunday school gave $28,000 to missions last year. We have a small group of business girls, about 40 or 50, and they gave $5,000. Thus we have trained our people to put missions first. Any church can do the same.

There are still some 2,000 tribes without the Gospel, 2,000 languages into which no part of the Word of God has yet been translated. Jesus Christ cannot come to reign in millennial splendor, power, and glory until these tribes have been reached, for there must be some in the Body of Christ from every tribe, tongue and nation throughout the world. When, then, are we going to complete the task? When will we take him seriously? When will we invest more in missions than we invest at home? When will we put missions first? I have been preaching the Gospel now for 49 years, but I am a pastor second, a missionary first. I am a hymn writer and an author second, but a missionary first. I am an evangelist second, a missionary first. “The gospel must first be published among all nations.” God help us to accept the challenge and evangelize the world that the King may come back and reign.

END

George Stob is minister of Prospect Street Christian Reformed Church of Passaic, New Jersey, has been pastor in the state of Washington, chaplain in the U.S. Army during World War II and has taught Church History at Calvin Seminary, Grand Rapids. He is author of handbooks on Bible history and an editor of the monthly Reformed Journal.

Cover Story

Universalism in Today’s Theology

Harold B. Kuhn

The teaching of universalism is one which has divided Christian thinkers since the days of Clement of Alexandria and Origen. The subject has been raised in recent years with new force, so that it challenges consideration from the point of view of newer theological currents. The Christian Gospel raised the blunt question: “Will there be lost men who finally find themselves irrecoverably in outer darkness?” Universalism answers this question in the negative.

Early universalism held that man was created with opportunity of improvement as enduring as his being. This was the view of Clement of Alexandria. Origen, his pupil, rooted his universalism in the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of souls. The major thrust of his teaching was that human souls were now in bodily garb for the purposes of discipline and education, the outcome of which was held to be necessarily favorable. In similar vein Gregory of Nazianzen held that all punishments led necessarily to salvation. In his view God permitted evil only because he foresaw that all would be saved.

In the Middle Ages, John Scotus Erigena, following Plato’s view that our earthly life is the result of the imprisonment of the pre-existent soul in a body, taught that Jesus came to repair the entire damage, and finally to restore all to God. In general, medieval theology condemned universalism. Thomas Aquinas gave the classic formulation of the Roman church’s opposition to it, asserting that partialism was not only in keeping with the doctrine of God’s grace but that it was required by the clear statements of Scripture. Protestant orthodoxy continued the same teaching, asserting even more emphatically that the Scriptures are the final court of appeal at this point, and that they teach that the final reconstitution of all things in Christ would be accomplished only at the price of the eternal loss of a portion of mankind.

The last 50 years have witnessed a restatement of the case for universalism, given skillful expression by a number of able theologians. It will be helpful to know the basic arguments by which these defend the view that all will ultimately be saved.

Karl Barth has given expression to his belief that God’s final triumph must include the salvation of all men, in terms of what has been called “Christomonism.” In seeking to give a full account of faith as it relates to all of human life, including the mystery of man’s struggle with evil, Barth insists that Jesus Christ is the Elect Man and that we are elected in him collectively—not as separate individuals. It was Emil Brunner who first raised a vigorous protest against Barth’s weird doctrine of election and who pointed out its universalistic implications.

Reinhold Niebuhr has in less systematic fashion announced a similar doctrine. He sees salvation as being always in principle, not in fact. To him divine action is at present hidden action; we can only know it indirectly. Thus to Niebuhr as to Barth, our best attitude is that of taking our place with the sinners, living in penitence moment by moment. His confidence seems to be that the ultimate well-being of all souls must be achieved eschatologically. What Niebuhr fails to see is that his principles do not clearly rule out the possibility that there may be men with a hardness of heart which eternity does not change.

British Advocates

In Great Britain the three major recent exponents of universalism are Dr. C. H. Dodd, Dr. J. A. T. Robinson and Dr. H. H. Farmer. Dr. Robinson defends the view that universalism is in keeping with the Christian Gospel upon the ground that if divine love is omnipotent it must finally eliminate all opposition to itself. He recognizes that this involves the doctrine of human freedom, but insists that freedom can be safeguarded in a manner harmonious with the doctrine that all shall finally come to contrition. He holds that an all-compelling love can nevertheless leave freedom intact, because “the very act of submission is an act of freedom and embodies the assertion of its eternal integrity” (Scottish Journal of Theology, June 1949).

Dr. H. H. Farmer follows a similar line of approach in his volume The World and God. He assumes that if God is holy love, then we must conclude “that not only is he seeking to reconcile every individual to himself, but also that he will in the end succeed in so doing … Thus the profound concern of religious faith for God’s ultimate victory seems in its Christian form to move unavoidably towards universalism” (p. 255). He rejects the idea that the destiny of man can be once and for all settled by what happens in this world and is thus forced to assume, gratuitously we think, a post mortem existence in which even the most stubborn spirits are brought to yield to the truth.

Dr. Farmer feels that we must restate the ideas of freedom and of coercion. He insists that, given a theoretically eternal opportunity, God can manifest his wisdom with such force that it can no longer be resisted. He allows that the process may entail a very long period of time and much suffering. However, he believes, just as an irresistible logic may bring us to conclusions which we may not like but nevertheless accept, so also the appeals of God in the post mortem situation may bring even the most recalcitrant soul to yield to divine mercy, without his personality being overridden in the process.

American Supporters

In this country, Dr. Robert L. Calhoun puts the case in a slightly different form in his volume God and the Common Life. He insists (p. 248) that God’s redemptive world must be as extensive as his work within man’s environment. He infers from the triumph of God in the cosmos that “The Hound of Heaven” will never ultimatively fail, but will bring to bear upon men such influences, from within and from without, that they will hear and respond.

From similar premises, Dr. Harris Franklin Rall insists that since God has worked with success through ages of cosmic development, it would be irrational if he were to fail to achieve his objectives in the salvation of men. Assuming that God is greater than evil, he reasons that ethical triumph, no less than cosmic triumph, is implicit in divine activity. Rall’s conclusions are conditioned by his view that salvation is chiefly positive in nature. That is to say, he understands salvation almost exclusively in terms of the achievement of eternal life, not as escape from eternal death and outer darkness.

A word needs to be said with reference to the implications of the thought of Rudolf Bultmann and of Paul Tillich for the subject at hand. Both of these theologians are concerned primarily with the way in which the Gospel is to be interpreted today. They feel that a contemporary understanding of the gospel can best be expressed in terms of an existentialist philosophy, which lays stress upon living decisions in the present, rather than in terms of traditional theological expressions concerning either the past or the future. Thus such terms as “the wrath of God” and “the final judgment” are paradigms expressing dramatically the absoluteness and unapproachability of God. These and similar modes of speech are held to be poetic, useful chiefly to evoke the mysterium tremendum, or the overpowering sense of awe in the presence of the Divine. To such a view, of course, the teachings of Scripture concerning the factuality of either future blessedness or future perdition become meaningless and irrelevant.

Perhaps the most pronounced of the American exponents of modern universalism is Dr. Nels F. S. Ferre. The cornerstone of Ferre’s system is that God combines in himself the ideal and the actual, is absolutely sovereign, and will finally save all men. The final outcome of the course of things is beyond our present power of understanding. By “faith,” however, he sees God as finally supreme above all.

Ferre sets up an antithesis between God’s love on one hand, and his power and justice on the other. From this dialectic he concludes that if any of the sons of men were to be irrevocably lost, God would have acted in a manner which was both “subjustice” and “sublove.” He, like Dr. Farmer, assumes a set of conditions after death in which those who die impenitent here will be once again faced with both the terror of evil and the grace of Christ. Ferre’s language is picturesque; he sees men in this situation promptly perceiving themselves to be out of their proper element, and in consequence quickly beating a retreat to Father’s house.

Fallacy And Oversight

These modern assertions of universalism share more or less largely in three serious fallacies and in one critical oversight. Their exponents assume, first, that anything less than universal salvation is unthinkable and therefore impossible. They are unwilling to allow as a possibility that which seems to them to be unthinkable. Now it needs to be said that some of the subjective factors involved here come as reaction to the ill-advised and lurid preaching upon the subject of hell by well-meaning persons. Who of us has not heard some minister deal with the subject of eternal perdition in such manner as to create suspicion that he was in reality giving vent either to his own feelings of aggression or to his own frustration? This prompts one to add, homiletically, that no minister is prepared to preach upon the subject of hell until his soul has been gripped by the poignant fear that some of his audience may make their bed there.

The supposed unthinkability of eternal punishment rests, in general, upon what we believe to be a faulty human analogy. Universalists tend to feel that the love of God must be like human love, raised to the nth power. Now it is clear that there is a relation between God’s love for us and the love of the parent for the child. “Like as a father pitieth his children …” But this analogy must have its limits, and these limits are reached when we face the clear words of our Lord concerning “the strait gate” and “the great gulf.” It is significant that such statements, together with our Lord’s solemn references to “the shut door” and to “both soul and body cast into Gehenna,” are neatly bypassed by universalists.

These statements seem clearly to reveal in concrete form the realities of the situation as God sees it. No abstract reasoning on our part can hope effectively to explain away these statements, since they rest upon what God has actually done in history through his Son. The Cross goes beyond any of our logical processes of analogy in which we may try to set God’s love and God’s power in antithesis.

Rationalizing Iniquity

The second fallacy is the assumption that the problem of evil is capable of being rationalized. Universalism shares the weakness of absolute idealism at this point. It needs to be remembered that evil is ultimately illogical and unsystematic in character. Those who assert or imply that evil can easily be transcended by reason, or rendered logically coherent by any process of dialectic, have forgotten that our Lord speaks of “the mystery of iniquity.”

Both ancient and modern universalism fail to see that sin is in its essence ultimately contradictory, so that the gulf between the sinner and God cannot be bridged by human reason. Men are reconciled to God only in terms of the activity of God at the Cross. At Golgotha the mystery of evil was not denied; man was reconciled to God by an act which at the same time affirmed the bottomless reality of sin. No unitary interpretation of existence can possibly do justice to the mystery of iniquity, and it is perennially true that the preaching of the Cross is foolishness to the wisdom of this world.

The third fallacy of universalism lies in its shallow understanding of Calvary. Its proponents fail to see that as the darkness settled around our divine Lord at Gethsemane, and as it enveloped him on the Cross, it was not a darkness springing from a normal manifestation of his will-to-live, but a darkness born of the shocking realization that shortly divine love was to be pressed to the point of no return. From henceforth the frightful possibility should exist that in spite of God’s absolute love for men, some may resist in arrogance and selfishness and go into eternal night. In other words, in the Cross the incredible became possible; men henceforth might, in a personal and decisive rejection of divine mercy, manifest the incredible mystery of iniquity.

What is needed to correct this third fallacy is, of course, a more profound insight into two things: first, into the Eli, Eli lama sabachthani of our Lord upon the Cross; and second, into the unfathomable horror of the act by which men, in arrogance and proud denial, refuse the ultimate work of love at Calvary. When one grasps these in their profundity, he will scarcely dilute the significance of the sufferings of our Lord by a declaration of universalism. He will see, in the light of the Cross, that hell is no crude medieval invention but a hideous reality, prefigured here and now in the wreckage of character evident all about us, and the ultimate and inevitable consequence of the power of men finally to contradict God and to depart from him.

Finally, universalists overlook the clear statements of Scripture concerning the possibility of a final and decisive rejection of the love of God in Christ and a consequent eternal estrangement of the human soul. Reference has been made to the neglect of the statements of our Lord which can scarcely have any other significance than that the day of mercy has its final moment, and that some will reach this moment in impenitence. Worthy of special study in this connection is his account of the rich man and Lazarus, with its total lack of any indication of a postmortem repentance and its clear statement that death precipitates a character finality. “Neither can they pass to us that would come from thence!” To this may be added the statement concerning Judas, that “it would have been better for that man had he never been born.”

False Guides Amid Urgency

In the days of his flesh our Lord continually emphasized two things: first, that eternal life is available to all men; and second, that it is the urgent duty of all to accept it promptly and immediately. This is the “word of eternal life.” Urgency was and is the keynote of the proclamation of the Church. “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men,” said Paul. The reason is not far away: “The love of Christ constrains us as we make this judgment that when Christ died, all died.” This urgency is not merely rhetorical; it springs from the tragic fact that the kerygma is both a savor of life unto life and a savor of death unto death.

In the light of these things, it seems incredible that men entrusted with the proclamation of the Gospel should take away the railings from the precipice roads of life. We cannot refrain from voicing the conviction that those who thus remove the red flares and the danger signals do so as false guides who stand in desperate need of returning for instructions to him who said, “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many will seek to enter in and shall not be able.”

END

Cover Story

The Complete Life

Bastian Kruithof

We spend our years, not only as a tale that is told, but also in fractions. The brevity and swiftness of life have much to do with this, yet these are not entirely to blame. We are apt to remain in the valley of particulars too long and that way neglect the heights of universals. Keats on first looking into Chapman’s Homer felt like a watcher of the skies standing on a peak in Darien. And Shelley once said that if he were to die tomorrow, he would have lived longer than his father. The intensity of our lives and right perspective have much to do with seeing life steadily and whole.

In our world of specialization and the scientific outlook there is a real tendency to be content with the fractional. There may be a basic humility about this, but there may also be a creeping pride which narrows the field of interest and mistakes a trail for a highway.

It is the maturing Christian’s blessed, fundamental prejudice that he is far on the way to grasping the complete life. He is closer to seeing life steadily and whole than Matthew Arnold who gave us the telling phrase. His experience is greater than that of Keats when that young poet walked into the mind of Homer. The comprehensive intensity of his life is more full of adventure and discovery than that of Shelley, the passionate rebel, who felt so much and left out more.

But we are speaking of the maturing Christian. There are others who have the one thing needed, whose destination is heaven, but who have no sharpened senses toward the infinite boundaries of the pilgrimage that begins here and lasts forever.

The Christian stands in that enviable position where everything can be evaluated sub specie aeternitatis. His can be that cosmic wanderlust which is of the very essence of the complete life. He considers is no sin to explore the universe and get stardust on his nose. Gertrude Stein at one time made the remark that all of us have a certain amount of “stupid being.” And some have more than others. One of our dangers as Christians is that, afraid to include too much, we exclude more. One day Michelangelo walked into the studio of Raphael to study the artist’s canvas. Then he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the word amplius—greater, more ample. The picture was too cramped, too narrow. That is how our lives appear.

Religion And Culture

I have tried to formulate for myself a definition or description of the complete life. It is the life under God, lived alone and in society, with the proper concern for soul, mind and body. It is both contemplative and active, as the Middle Ages revealed at their best, and our contemporary age could and should reveal at its best.

For us the complete life includes the proper relation of Christianity to culture. In a time of decadence during the Nazi heyday there was not only a denial of Christianity but also a sneering at culture. In a play staged in Berlin one of the characters said, “Culture? Whenever I hear that word, I remove the safety catch from my gun.” The startling matter is that each time these lines were spoken they were greeted by a roar of applause.

The Two Questions

The Christian quite naturally affirms Christianity. But that affirmation can suffer from an application that is too narrow. We who experience divine grace are challenged by two persistent questions: What must I do to be saved? and, What must I do now that I am saved? If our concern is only with the first of these, we separate our religion from the cultural mandate that has come to us through the ages from God himself. Then the whole realm of culture may draw from us a sneer like that of the Nazis.

Long ago the Lord said to Adam, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.” Both sacred and secular history are evidence of the real though partial fulfillment of that order. The purpose of creation is the showing forth of the glory of God. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. To do that man must take all revelation into consideration. That was so before the fall, and that is so now. Creation, providence and redemption—all of these have their religious and cultural significance.

Definitions of culture are many and at times confusing. Perhaps a simple description will serve our purpose. By culture we understand the cultivation and appreciation of all that is true, good and beautiful in God’s world. Ideally there is no conflict between it and religion. In fact, religion is the mother of culture. T. S. Eliot reminds us that we must not look upon religion and culture as two separate but related things, nor must we identify the two. And he goes on to say that “no culture has appeared or developed except together with religion” (Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, p. 15). Of course, sin has blurred man’s vision with the result that religion and culture often appear as antagonistic. It is Christianity based on divine revelation that gives the proper perspective.

The Natural And The Spiritual

Now in terms of the two questions there is a tendency among Christians to honor the first and to ignore or misunderstand the second. The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck quotes J. Christian Blumhardt as saying that man really needs a twofold conversion, first from the natural to the spiritual life, and then from the spiritual to the natural (Philosophy of Revelation, Dutch Ed., p. 207). The implication is that the Christian should appreciate not only special revelation which deals primarily with redemption, but also that general revelation which speaks unmistakably in God’s universe. The redeemed person must think not only in terms of what he is redeemed from, but also of what he is redeemed for. Redemption has a cosmic significance. As R. H. Strachan writes, “It is impossible for a Christian who thinks at all to have Christ in his heart and keep him out of the universe” (The Historic Jesus in the New Testament, p. 72).

We have no quarrel with the first question. Evangelism thrives on that cry and the answer to it. But an exclusive concern easily results in an asceticism not worthy of Protestantism. If only the soul’s salvation and heaven count, there is a withdrawal from man’s place and purpose here. That way we lose the abundant life over and in which the two revelations shine, and we fail to prepare for it hereafter. We spend our days in a sort of perpetual spiritual schizophrenia, vascillating between a distorted spiritual claim and a desire for health and wealth and the latest gadgets that ease and confound our existence.

With such a withdrawal from the world the wholehearted and wholeheaded Christian is not at all satisfied. He sees his salvation in broader and deeper perspective. Pilgrim of eternity, he considers the importance of all that God reveals and demands in time. For him the second question certainly implies the urgency of witnessing that others may be won, but it also means his bearing witness to all that God is trying to tell us in creation, providence and redemption. He looks upon life as the unfolding of one increasing purpose. To him the City of God takes in and transforms the city of man and gives man his most significant role. For him the scientific, the aesthetic, the social and the religious are inseparable.

The Scientific

Man appears in his lights and in his shadows. There is truth in Hamlet’s soliloquy and in Pascal’s parody of the words. Yet to the latter, man is a thinking reed.

The Christian rejoices in knowledge and its quest, for all knowledge is from God. These two revelations in the Word and in the world find a response in the mind of man. Learning is indispensable and the adventure is rewarding. Whatever of value has been thought, said and done challenges our searching and our research.

We must cultivate the open mind which at its best is blessedly greedy. It reveres all revelation whether it be the mystery of the stars or of the ocean floor, the unleashed forces of the atom, the secrets of the human heart, or the being and purpose of God—or all these and more. The quest is a perennial one. Though we cannot all be scholars and specialists, we are the poorer and live the more fractionally if our senses are not keen to all the worthwhile that beats at our doors.

For the Christian, science and the scientific sense are not estranged from religion. Knowledge is not to be separated from deep religious certitude, but neither is it to be injured by unintelligent conviction. For him theology is a science feeding on the Word of God and growing from more to more, nurtured by all that is worthy and knowable.

The Aesthetic

The aesthetic sense must also be intelligent. God is the author of beauty as well as of truth. The Bible witnesses to that in content and form. Nature and life witness to it. The creativity of saints and sinners does as well.

Christians should strive to cultivate and appreciate beauty. It is part of their religious and cultural mandate. Sadly enough we are living in an age when the ark in the holiest place has given way to the jukebox. Taste has suffered even among Christians. While the psalms and great hymns remain unsung because they are “heavy, slow and boring,” our worship is invaded with secular tunes and primitive rhythms. Bach, Beethoven and Handel are considered long-haired, and instead we hear sentimental ditties and choruses that express a marked immaturity.

Television and radio have crowded out our bookshelves. Pictorial magazines are more important in our homes and hospitals than the living Word and books of value. If there is any reading, predigested digests curb our own spiritual and mental mastication. The heavens declare the glory of God and much on this good earth does the same, but we hurry through life with blinders, unmoved by the pre-education for eternity.

It is not entirely so. God pours out his beauty in nature and through poets, artists and musicians. One who has traveled remembers mountains, museums, music halls, cathedrals and libraries stocked with lore, more than eye and ear can grasp and the mind understand. All that beauty is for God to contemplate. The spillover is our reward until that greater comprehension unshackles our receptivity.

The Social

It was the divine will that man should not live alone. We have millions of brothers and sisters sprung from one common stock. The image of God in us, though sadly marred and needing restoration, makes for responsible relationship. I am more than my brother’s keeper; I am his brother. That implies privileges and duties in the family, society, the state and the world. Christianity gives us the shining ideals for each sphere. These cannot be spurned with impunity.

Christians basking in an atmosphere of, “When we all get to heaven,” are living very fractionally. If they lament the breakdown of the home, social delinquencies, labor disputes, separation from religion in education, economics and politics, and bitter race relations, they have also themselves to blame. For God requires of them that they love him above all and their neighbors as themselves. Their faith, wrapped in cellophane or hermetically sealed as insurance for the life to come, belies the words of Jesus that his followers must be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

What Christian principles have done for all the social spheres is a long and astounding story. What they can and must still do is an adventurous chapter the denouement of which depends on how faithfully Christians will practice what they believe.

The Religious

Christian faith and practice are basic to the complete life. Christians are the children of God, the people of the Book, the beneficiaries of all divine revelation. The more sharpened our senses are to the ultimate values of life and to our calling in a world that bristles with problems, the more we answer to God’s purpose and will.

Personal piety, the assurance of salvation, a healthy walking with God, a profound theology of grace are essential. And a translation of these into dynamic action for the living of these days is indispensable. We must have the devotion of St. Augustine, the brotherliness of St. Francis, the heat of Luther, the burning heart of Calvin, the passion of John Wesley, the faith of our fathers, not dead but living.

Would you strive for the complete life? Then walk with God in the city streets, through alleys and on highways, in pastures and over mountains, in the atom and among the stars, in realms of duty and of beauty. And as you walk, keep your eyes on the City of God. That is the way of the complete life.

The Cathedral

Here it stands in humble eloquence,

The great cathedral, handsome, splendid, tall.

Across the street its morning shadows fall

As if to hide the sin and arrogance

Of foolish men, who by some plan or chance

Scorn heavenly things. But yet they heed the call

To worship in this great cathedral hall

And give its ornate walls a prideful glance.

They crowd its aisles, they listen to the choir,

And hear its echoes like a heavenly lyre.

Forgetting for the moment basic sin

They lose themselves to wandering thoughts within.

The temple bell rings solemnly from crypt to floor,

While Christ outside, waits lonely at the door!

Inspiration

He entered the cathedral timidly

As if its choir and chancel frowned on him

A stranger. But the soft and vibrant hymn

The organist was playing, seemed to be

A full processional—a melody

That caught his heart and cast aside his sin,

Making him guiltless, clean and pure within.

His life felt joyous, full, and free.

He found a seat among the silent crowd

Of worshippers, and in deep reverence bowed

His once proud head in strange humility,

As voices of the choir, in ecstasy,

Caught up the hymn in childhood he had known—

ABIDE WITH ME. He was with God, alone!

HARRY ALBERT MILLER

Cover Story

Billy Graham’s Impact on New York

The Editor

How shall we evaluate the colossal religious drama recently concluded in New York City? The magnetic attraction of nearly two million persons to Madison Square Garden in summertime? More than 50,000 public decisions for Christ. New York’s official ecclesiastical cooperation with mass evangelism. The very person and message of Billy Graham. Are these factors God-propelled or man-made? Do they accelerate the collective pulse of sluggish Protestantism? Do they retard the ecumenical throb by their injection of a specifically delineated theology? Such questions engage the vigorous interaction not only of professional theologians, ministers and evangelists, but of laymen as well. What shall we say of Billy Graham? Whose voice is he?

The Spirit Or The Serpent?

Liberalism and neo-orthodoxy have virtually exorcised the Devil from their theology. Consequently, the theological left shows little disposition or reason to dismiss Billy Graham as a voice of Satan. On the other hand, some spokesmen for reactionary fundamentalism, appalled at Billy Graham’s technical and organizational alignment with modernistic clergymen, have made this very charge. A Christian college president, for example, forbade students on his campus to pray publicly for success of the meetings. Elsewhere an evangelist privately attributed the mass response in New York to Satan. A greater number in the reactionary rightist classification, however, have prayed for the evangelist and the meetings. Albeit, they speak of Graham with more reserve than gusto, and avoid reference to the Holy Spirit in evaluating his ministry.

Radical liberals, too, have leveled sharp criticisms at Graham’s ministry. Among such, Professor Arnold Nash of University of North Carolina considers the New York campaign a portent of the end of Protestantism. Similarly, others view mass evangelism as a major danger in contemporary spiritual life.

Critics Right And Left

Billy Graham’s critics include distinguished leaders in Roman Catholicism, Protestant liberalism and neo-orthodoxy, as well as irreligious secularists claiming no spiritual profession whatever. Secularists either explain mass evangelism in terms of “a promotional achievement,” or lampoon it as “a religious circus.” Modernists dislike Graham’s theological re-emphasis on the “five points” of fundamentalism (the inspiration of the Scriptures; the deity, virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection, and second coming of Christ); many of them actually view Graham’s ministry as a sinister plot to undermine their accepted theologically inclusive ecumenical views. Roman Catholics consider Graham’s converts only “half saved,” since his evangelical convictions are not carefully related to the world of culture. For several reasons, neo-orthodox leaders speak of Graham’s thrust as “naive.” They assert that in Norman Vincent Peale fashion it appropriates God for purposes of personal success; that it allegedly perpetuates an antiquated theology appended to an outmoded world-view; that, lacking a deep cultural vision, it pursues easy solutions to complex social problems.

Serious Challenge

Because of the liberalistic monopoly of organized Protestantism, evangelical Christianity has long been spurned in American religious life. The searching public criticism of representative men like Reinhold Niebuhr, Father Gustave Weigel and Harold E. Fey, however, gives evidence that leaders in virtually all major religious traditions today consider Billy Graham together with his theology a serious competitor for the loyalties of hundreds of thousands of people.

Graham is convinced that biblical evangelism moves within the orbit of biblical theology. Criticize him as some will for reviving “the five points of fundamentalism,” his doctrinal emphasis belongs not only to extreme fundamentalists but also to the historic Christian churches (whereas the semi-unitarianism that prevailed virtually unchallenged in many churches in recent decades is not expressive of genuine Christianity at all). Fears expressed over the influence of Graham’s ministry upon the ecumenical movement will hardly shape confidence in that movement’s biblical concern. An ecumenics so narrow that it considers fundamental Christian doctrines to be divisive, yet so broad that it includes both Greek Orthodox and the most liberal churches, can hardly be expected to offer a return to Christ and the gospel.

Friends As Well As Foes

On the other hand, approval of Graham’s ministry is wider than sympathy for his theology. While some Protestant leaders attach little significance to doctrine of any kind, they interpret mass evangelism as a legitimate phase of the wider “return to religion” in contemporary American life. Others, actually apprehensive of Graham’s theology, nonetheless welcome his impact on the masses for its inevitable spur to church attendance, and even to reinforcement of membership with new recruits at a time of financially burdensome physical expansion. Still others, while in theological disagreement with Graham, feel that his evangelical supporters could enrich the ecumenical movement no less than liberal, neo-orthodox and conservative forces already within its framework have done. To some, Graham holds a strategic key to the ecumenical movement. To others, whatever theological difficulties may be involved for contemporary Protestantism, Graham’s ministry demonstrates the pragmatic success of his evangelistic message.

While proponents of Graham’s ministry fall into all these categories, his fullest support unquestionably comes from Protestant ministers personally convinced of the theological basis of his work. To them, Christian witness includes the ministry of mass evangelism, a ministry in which Billy Graham excels. Moreover, for them, biblical theology and biblical evangelism imply each other: the evangelistic challenge inevitably raises the theological question, while theology to be biblical must yield a missionary and evangelistic concern for lost masses in need of salvation.

A Pathetic Minority

New York City, to which Mr. Graham courageously carried a missionary investment that some of his friends feared might prove “a colossal bust,” is a metropolitan area of ten to fifteen million persons. Roman Catholics “claim” 75%, Protestants 33% of the population. But churches of all faiths reach less than half the population, and Protestantism is a pathetic minority.

Despite liberalism’s domination of Protestantism in New York for almost two generations, the movement made little impact upon the city’s unconverted masses. While the Protestant Council of New York had a department of evangelism from its beginning, interest in evangelism was at such a low ebb that the department had not been staffed. Yet more than four million inhabitants within the city limits belonged to no church, Protestant, Catholic or Jewish.

These facts must not be forgotten in weighing criticisms that Mr. Graham’s influence upon social institutions and the world of culture has been meager. Religious forces primarily dedicated to Christianizing the social order have little to show for many decades of effort. The long-established church agencies achieved no obvious turn in the dominant temper of New York life.

Indispensable Beginning

Over against the attempt of some to spawn a Christian culture through ethical reorganization of unregenerate humanity, Billy Graham summoned New York churches to their primary task of evangelizing lost multitudes for personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. The requirement of individual repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, neglected by the “social gospel,” gained new biblical centrality.

Much criticism of Mr. Graham’s ministry is directed against the social phase of his message. Does he sharpen the religious awareness of central moral problems in national life? Is he concerned to infuse justice into the social order? Does he seek the translation of personal commitment into great social institutions? In short, Mr. Graham is often charged with diluting and over-simplifying the requirements of Christian social ethics.

The question is pertinent whether the Church properly looks to the evangelist to delineate the intricacies of Christian social ethics, any more than the Church rightly expects proficiency in mass evangelism from the theologian. Much of the Niebuhr-Graham debate has overlooked the fact that the bulk of the Apostle Paul’s teaching on social ethics is hardly deducible from his sermonic ministry.

Optimism And Pessimism

Nor must we accept every current plea for Christian social ethics as framed in an acceptable evangelical way. Mr. Graham has so much stressed the new birth as the basic ingredient to a new social order that neo-orthodox thinkers charge him with ignoring the corruption of sin in regenerate experience, and therefore with reflecting the illusions of liberal Protestantism.

While the problems of Christian culture are no doubt somewhat more complex than Mr. Graham implies, perhaps under the necessities of an evangelistic thrust, to many observers the neo-orthodox approach seems needlessly overcomplicated; by shrouding the simplicities of the gospel with theological subtleties, neo-orthodoxy well nigh places the Christian faith beyond the reach of the man in the street. Indeed, the charge of naivete pressed against evangelical Christianity today by Bultmann, Tillich and Niebuhr is not in all respects modern; it reflects a line of attack made already by the Gnostics in early Christian ages, and is based in part upon disposition to question aspects of the theology of revelation. Unfortunately, Christianity has often become more concessive, the more highly intellectualized; in place of “uncritical bibliolatry” scholars readily yield the field to criticism of the Bible. Tumult over “the obscurantism of literalism” has a long echo and bespeaks an eagerness to reject as antiquated vital elements of the Christian world-life view.

If Mr. Graham’s approach to the social question is too optimistic, the neo-orthodox approach may be too pessimistic. Neo-orthodoxy suffers from viewing man as sinner simply on the grounds of his creatureliness, i.e., on the basis of original creation. Its despair of social progress reflected in Karl Barth’s earlier writings is often criticized. While orthodox evangelism may underestimate the difficulties of social progress within the framework of redemption, neo-orthodox ethics underestimates the power of the Spirit in collective life. Whereas in the last generation liberalism dismissed the evangelical view as pessimistic, an ironic twist of twentieth-century theology is evangelicalism’s discovery of unjustifiable despair in the theology of neo-orthodoxy.

The Social Vision

To charge Billy Graham with deficient social vision is less than fair. He underscores the need to reflect Christian ideals in family, in business and labor, and in political relations.

Graham offered no direct reply to Niebuhr’s proposal that the genuineness of personal regeneration be demonstrated by applying the commandment of “love for neighbor” especially to the contemporary vice of race prejudice, thus sharpening the religious conscience at the very point where secular agencies are most indignant over social evil. But he replied indirectly (Life Magazine, Oct. 1, 1956), that such a test would tend to narrow the dimensions of neighbor-love. (Niebuhr was rightly concerned because the trade union movement supported the Supreme Court decision more aggressively than the churches; Graham might properly have noted the long-standing trade union tolerance of another type of exploitation involving all races within its ranks.) Total repentance seemed a far more complex matter.

In actuality, Graham emphasizes regeneration and sanctification, more than a broad program of social action, as the key to the problem of race hatred. The campaign in New York, where there are more colored than white Protestants, was wholly integrated. Negro and white Christians shared alike in the choir, in ushering and in counseling. Ethel Waters, Negro radio and television star, was a featured outside soloist. For thousands of Christians it was a new experience to share a hymnbook in worship with a member of another race. From Madison Square Garden, quite unpublicized, rose outlines of a new working relationship between believers of all races. Gain was registered, therefore, in the very realm that most concerned some of Mr. Graham’s critics.

At the conclusion of the Garden campaign, the Rev. Dan Potter, executive director of the Protestant Council of New York, told a news conference that he did not know another clergyman in the city who had spoken as forcibly from the pulpit as Billy Graham during the Crusade on areas of Christian social responsibility.

Depth Of Penetration

Depth of social penetration remains nonetheless an important question. Idealistic short cuts have stranded modern life in the swamps of secularism near the jungles of naturalism. All social agencies today acknowledge the difficulty of moral penetration in big cities. Because of the structure of modern community life, the sense of social solidarity is all but gone. While many workers live in city tenement and slum districts, the upper classes usually only work in the cities while they reside in the suburbs. Here in these suburban communities residents are thrown together mainly for purposes of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. In earlier generations community interests ran deeper; today, community existence poses major obstacles to a decisive turn in social outlook and life.

Moreover, the influence of evangelism upon the social order—marriage and the home, labor and economics, the state and culture—cannot be measured overnight. (Few of Mr. Graham’s critics would want their localized ministries evaluated hastily.) The striking response of young people to Graham’s plea for Christian commitment in the face of New York’s juvenile delinquency problem, and the response of college students as well, both involve strong future significance. While New York still faces the delinquency problem on a large scale, Graham’s special plea to teen-agers gained a dramatic response after police authorities had tried virtually everything else without success. During youth week in the Garden teen-agers comprised 60% of the capacity crowds. Decisions were more numerous than during earlier weeks of the campaign. More than half the converts were teen-agers, mostly unchurched. Some admittedly had participated in gang wars. Garden statistics also indicate that 2000 students from more than 400 colleges registered decisions. For these young lives strategic problems of Christian vocation and life still remain, but they represent evangelical resources with which the Church can hopefully face the coming generation.

In evaluating social impact, however, the question of present-day achievement inevitably pushes to the fore. Those who stress social issues ask: what centers of sin have shut down? what changes have taken place in the ethics of business and labor? what spheres of culture and art have been penetrated by Christian claims? what discernible impact has been made upon the problem of divorce and in the realm of sex? One critic has lashed Graham on the ground that “he failed to make enemies—enemies of the politicians at Tammany Hall, the publishers of filth magazines, the liquor traffic, the labor racketeers, and many of the fellows in the front pews of our churches who can continue their sinful practices of deceit and thievery …” What shall we say to these things?

The Gospel And Reform

It is tempting to reply that none of the great evangelists has been a social reformer in the direct sense. Cultural reformers have arisen, however, under their inspiration and impetus, as Wilberforce, for example, followed Wesley, to eliminate the slave trade in England. Those who would capture the realms of culture for Christ must first follow Mr. Graham’s initial penetration, for the spheres of marriage and the home, labor and economics, politics and government, education and culture largely remain in the grip of secularism today.

Some critics argue that Graham’s ministry has not successfully “broken through” to the unchurched. It might be asked, what Christian spokesmen achieve a conspicuous breakthrough today? And who has tried more than Graham? When in the history of this century has New York City witnessed a more sustained evangelistic attempt? If there is no general revival of historic Christianity, is this Graham’s fault? Those who speak of the disproportion between the magnitude and success of Graham’s campaigns when measured in lasting converts and religious and moral concern in the social sphere, easily forget that almost every local church program must wrestle with the same difficulties.

The fact is, however, that Graham has achieved a partial penetration, however fractional. Surely Graham’s ministry has lifted Christian evangelism into a prominent and respectable place in the national news. During the last generation it was a rare achievement when, through some evangelistic impact, Christian commitment was made an easy subject of conversation. Graham’s ministry has created a climate of evangelical witness in England, Scotland and the United States. In this Communist era how many spiritual leaders have done more to allay Christian “lost cause” jitters? Graham has gained national interest for the gospel on television (the Garden telecasts attracted letters from 100,000 seekers), competing against featured Saturday night entertainment programs. The late telecast of Impact reached many a barroom crowd. In the heart of pagan New York, Madison Square Garden and the gospel were made so synonymous that the Christian witness was given an initiative which 1700 participating churches will be able to exploit for months to come. Hundreds of thousands who missed the Garden meetings will admit privately to their probable loss of spiritual blessing. For years the “worldly crowd,” whenever it returns to the Garden for a sports event, will recall Billy Graham’s call for decisions; will hear Beverly Shea singing “How Great Thou Art”; will see hundreds of converts grouped at the altar. For a generation to come, those who shared the blessings of the Garden will be telling their children and their children’s children.

The Problem Of The Home

In repairing unhappy marriages and broken homes the New York campaign achieved spectacular results, especially in its television ministry. Suicides were averted; clandestine sex appointments interrupted; separated mates restored; dead marriages revived. The conversion of marital partners was a nightly spectacle of the campaign.

Admittedly there are few signs that Graham’s meetings significantly affected the worlds of business and labor. These spheres are vast machines today. One can scarcely say that many who control their destinies were enlisted for Christ. The campaign did reach the comfortable middle class, as one could tell from its nightly dress; the extreme poor and the rich were seldom present. Large blocs of workers from the garment industry attended through the encouragement of their leaders, which was all to the good, although Graham’s ministry is pointed toward personal decision without elaborating the world of daily work as a realm for the service of God and one’s fellow man. The New York committee drew to itself some men of towering influence in the world of finance, and committee members did not hestitate to describe the experience as a time of personal spiritual growth and gain. New campaign decisions at the executive level were not numerous, though there were some. Graham’s meeting on Wall Street had a profound momentary effect upon influential men; how good or ready the soil was it is too early to tell. The cost of the Garden campaign was $1,500,00 ($650,000 additional for television), a budget that could not have been met without substantial gifts from dedicated wealthy sources. Liberal churchmen often ask what evident changes have come into the prevailing climate of business ethics? This type of question has often harbored an anticapitalistic edge. But even when it has not, and probes rather for a healthy correlation of free enterprise and Christian principles, the inquiry too often looks to resolutions, organization and legislation, rather than to personal regeneration as the real key to social change.

In the sphere of culture and the arts the campaign shaped the Christian Arts Fellowship, after 400 seekers from the entertainment field responded at the Garden. Jerome Hines (Caruso Award winner) of the Metropolitan Opera company is first president. The group enlists twice-born talent in the entertainment world of television, radio, theater and stage (including playwrights, producers, actors, musicians, singers and models). While its main drive is personal religion and soul-winning (most affiliates are babes in Christ), with the aim of changing men, some revision of the theatrical world could issue from its concern for an enlarged evangelical witness.

Back To The Gospel

In surveying the campaign from the foregoing perspectives, however, one inevitably returns to the basic principle that the major Graham thrust is personal. The social complex is viewed, quite in accord with biblical theology, as a reflex of the realm of spiritual decision. Graham’s mission is that of an evangelist, not that of a social reformer, though he is convinced that biblical evangelism is the best road to social reform.

This emphasis, moreover, introduced into inter-church Christianity in New York City the deepest bond in its history of ecumenical enthusiasm. “There has been more real fellowship among ministers and churches in New York City than at any time for 25 years,” said one leader. Another put it this way: “The Church is most ecumenical when it is most evangelical.”

Madison Square Garden may not tower far enough, but it laid strong foundations. One reason to think that the social force of Graham’s converts can be preserved is his emphasis that Christian growth is more than a private affair; it requires fellowship in a church where Christ is proclaimed as Saviour and Lord. The real problem, therefore, is whether the churches will channel these converts into constructive action without sacrificing either evangelistic priority or social vitality. The conservation or non-conservation of converts will reflect the virility of the churches to which Billy Graham has entrusted them. Whatever may be said about the task that remains, the New York sponsoring committee is confident not only that the campaign was “the most prayed for crusade in history,” but also that in Madison Square Garden “the tide came in.”

END

Review of Current Religious Thought: September 02, 1957

G. C. Berkouwer

The international work of the Bible Societies is a tremendous effort, especially in our times, all over the world. Whoever becomes acquainted with this work will be impressed by various aspects of this task of translating and spreading the Gospel. Already in the nineteenth century there were Christians who gave their life and time for this work; e.g., in the translation work, for the Javanese Bible (over a period of 28 years, completed in 1854), in the work of Dr. Matthes in the Makassar Bible translation, and of Dr. Hardeman, who translated the Bible into the Ngadja-Dajak language. Those who wish to be informed about all the aspects of this work should read the important Bulletin of the Bible Societies.

What was the background of this great effort? Bishop Berggraf was once reminded of the word of a Japanese Christian: “The Bible is no longer a Western book, but our book.” There had been in divine providence a way for the Gospel to the Western world and now there is a way from the Western world to the East. This work of translation is immediately connected with the witness of the Gospel, “ye shall be witnesses … unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Sometimes there has been in church and theology a strange criticism, that Christianity gives the impression that it is a “book religion” just like other religions (Koran, etc.). But it is necessary to stress that no one can understand the meaning of this word “book” in a formal and neutral comparison between Christianity and other religions. In such a comparison the specific content of this “Book” is left out and we are warned in the Bible against formalism, against Pharisaism which adored the Torah (coming from heaven), but did not see and understand the content of grace, abounding grace. But when form and content are not separated, then this “Book” arouses a tremendous enthusiasm and activity, also scientific work.

Sometimes we are told that scientific work in connection with the Bible is not necessary because the mystery of the Kingdom is hid from the wise and prudent. It is obvious that this quotation from the Lord is misunderstood. All scientific work is not dominating the Church by the proclamation of science, but is a service to the Word of God.

This Word was not an isolated divine voice (vox divina) but a voice which penetrated the human world in a special time and special language. The Church rejects (and has to reject) every form of Docetism which does not recognize this real human side and aspect of the Bible. (Docetism—the doctrine of the docetae, an early heretical sect which held that Christ’s body was merely a phantom or appearance, or that if real its substance was celestial.) Docetism is not only to be avoided in the doctrine of Christology (it was a threatening danger in the history of the Church and extinguished the image of Christ our brother), but also in connection with the Word of God. Sometimes, against the sharp criticism of the Word of God, making this Word a human word, the divine Word was emphasized. This emphasis was correct, but we shall have to recognize the marvelous fact that there is in the Word of God no competition between the divine and the human side of this Word, but that it is exactly the divine voice that sounds in and through the human voice and brings thus the divine Word very near and understandable to us. The mystery of the Word of God is not only that God speaks to us, but that he speaks in this way. And from this important point of view the work of translating of the Bible becomes immediately important as implied in historic Christianity.

All the work of theology (obedient theology), exegesis and translation is service, no more and no less. Sometimes we can be impressed by the enthusiasm of a translator, working so that in a certain country they may hear in their own language—and the background of much unknown work is love, understanding the Gospel, “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:13, 14).

Of course there is danger in every Christian activity. We can do all this work in connection with the Bible as a science or as a business, with all its financial aspects. We can translate as if we are translating “a book.” But dangers are challenges to be overcome. And when we love the Word of God, then there is for us the possibility of service, in which we are reminded of the word of Pentecost, unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

All this effort needs our prayers and cooperation. In this way we shall be kept from selfishness and isolation, from glorifying the Word without obedience and love, from forgetting the world which needs the Gospel more than ever. We shall also be kept from forgetting the perspective of the Apocalypse, “the great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9).

No Docetism will take place in our hearts, neither in Christology nor in the doctrine of the Bible. There will be no rest for the Church until the Gospel is heard everywhere. Was not the preaching of the Gospel one of the signs of the times? “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14).

This is the eschatological aspect of all the work of the Bible Societies. Eschatology never is—according to the Scriptures—without an actual responsibility in the present.

Books

Book Briefs: September 2, 1957

James Packer

Maurice Restated

Reconciliation in Christ, by G. W. H. Lampe. Longmans, London, 120 pp. 6s.6d.

This book by the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology in Birmingham University contains an expanded version of the Maurice Lectures delivered in London in 1955. It is a study in the Bible doctrine of salvation, and is a much more learned and important volume than its small size, paper cover and almost entire freedom from footnotes might suggest. Prof. Lampe’s earlier book, The Seal of the Spirit, made him known as an erudite and vigorous champion of Protestant and biblical sacramental teaching; the present volume sets before us the broader basis on which he conceives that teaching to rest.

His main thesis is that what fixes the perspective and determines the interpretation of New Testament soteriology is the thought of personal union with Christ by faith. It is an error„ he says, “to try to interpret St. Paul’s teaching on the atonement in isolation from the real central point of his thought, namely, the idea expressed in that phrase ‘in Christ’ which is the true heart of his religion … Man is reconciled in Christ. This is the heart and essence of the Pauline gospel. It is also central in the Johannine teaching … It is in Christ that the sinner is justified … he is given the status of a son because he is in Christ, standing within the scope of the reconciliation that Christ effected” (pp. 61 ff). The author reviews the doctrines of sanctification, the Church and the sacraments in the light of this principle. Sanctification, he insists, is “a life of continual dying and rising in Christ” (p. 65), a process energized by the Holy Spirit as man exercises faith Christ-ward. The “virtues” of Christian character must therefore be conceived as “modes of the operation of the Holy Spirit, working in and through (the believer) because by grace he is in Christ” (p. 66). They are God-given, not man-made, and only exist where faith is active in humble dependence on God. Christian behavior is “the expression of the personal relationship of Christ, and so of the believer who is ‘in Christ,’ to his fellow men” (p. 67). The sanctifying process must be viewed eschatologically; throughout this age it remains incomplete, and Romans 7 depicts the present condition of the Christian man as the law of sin in his members wars against the law of God in his mind.

The state of the Church in the world is precisely analogous. Its “virtues,” its holiness and unity, are gifts of Christ by the Spirit, and it is not in man’s power to achieve them by his own unaided efforts; they are, indeed, eschatological qualities, which means that “neither (the Church’s) holiness nor its unity can ever be fully and completely realized in the present order” (p. 71). Prof. Lampe briefly suggests the bearing of this important truth upon current thought about reunion. Then he issues a protest against mediaevalizing views of sacramental grace as “an impersonal force, like a charge of electricity” or “a dose or injection of medicinal tonic,” and pleads for a return to the Reformed and confessional Anglican conception of the sacraments as “effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will” to believers, whereby Christ is exhibited for the evocation and confirmation of faith. The author’s scriptural demonstration of these contentions is brief but wholly admirable.

The polemical slant, however, which Prof. Lampe seeks to give to his exposition of saving union with Christ, is less happy. He wants to detach it altogether from the historic Protestant view that Christ’s saving work in us is founded upon his saving work for us, in making satisfaction to his Father for our sins, and that the ground of our justification is the imputation of Christ’s merits to us. What Prof. Lampe is trying to do is to rehabilitate the atonement theory of F. D. Maurice. This theory consisted of a catena of what we judge to be false antitheses, thus: God is the author of propitiation, therefore he is not the object of it; Christ died to save us from sin, not from the punishment of sin; Christ is man’s representative, but not his substitute; his obedience unto death was vicarious, but not penal; and we are saved, not by his satisfying God’s holy law for us, but by his reproducing his own holy life in us; Christ saves us, not by dealing with God on our behalf, but by dealing with us on God’s behalf. Prof. Lampe more or less explicitly echoes all these antitheses. He speaks as if such categories as debt, penalty and imputation were somehow inconsistent with all that he has said about faith-union with Christ, and seems to think that jettisoning the one will help to conserve the other. This too, however, is surely a false antithesis. The real reason why Prof. Lampe is unhappy with ideas of satisfaction and merit becomes plain when he tells us that he does not believe in the necessity of satisfaction for sin. “God’s forgiveness is really free; it does not have, as it were, to be compensated for by the satisfaction of his holiness through the merits either of men in general … or of Christ as man. In Christ, God brought man out of his sin into the scope of the divine forgiveness; he did not have to make it possible for himself to forgive” (p. 110 f). This, of course, is Maurice over again.

Does the Bible warrant such statements? We are sure that it does not. The Bible represents sin as guilt, and God as Judge; it interprets man’s slavery to sin, and death in sin, as penal, the first fruits of “the wrath”; and it undoubtedly represents the imputation of Christ’s righteousness as the objective ground for the removal of the subjective penal consequences that Adam’s sin has brought upon his posterity. The crucial passages here are Romans 1:18, 3:20 and 5:12–21. But Prof. Lampe devotes no attention to either; and there is no treatment of the guilt of sin anywhere in his book.

We welcome, then, Prof. Lampe’s positive emphases; but we think that a closer study of the biblical evidence will reveal that the “not-but” of himself and Maurice should be replaced by the “both-and” of the historic Reformed faith. The biblical doctrine of the covenant union of the redeemed with Christ is broader than Prof. Lampe here recognizes; Christ saves his people from the guilt of sin no less than from the power of sin, and there is no inconsistency between these two aspects of his gracious mediatorial work.

JAMES PACKER

Bultmann’S Myths

Scripture and Myth: An Examination of Rudolf Bultmann’s Plea for Demythologization, by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Tyndale Press, London. 30 pp., 1s.6d.

One of the more curious phenomena of British theological scholarship is the almost obsequious respect it tends to pay to critical theories which emanate from Germany, however destructive of the Christian religion or intellectually unsatisfactory they may prove to be. Rudolf Bultmann’s book, Die Geschichte synoptischen Tradition, published in 1921, was described by Vincent Taylor in 1933 as “one of the most important contributions to Gospel criticism of our time,” though he admitted that it was “radical to the point of scepticism.” Many of us were under the impression that Bultmann’s combination of an extreme form-critical analysis of the Gospels with an existential philosophy, which found expression in his book Jesus published in 1925, had proved unacceptable to the majority of British scholars by the time the second world war began. It has become evident however during the postwar years that some British scholars are most anxious by radio talks and English translations of Bultmann’s works to give wide publicity to his views.

In view therefore of the revival of “Bultmannism,” Dr. Philip Hughes has rendered a most valuable service in this Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture in submitting Bultmann’s plea for the demythologization of the New Testament to a critical philosophical examination. In thirty lucid pages Dr. Hughes shows that a careful scrutiny of Bultmann’s postwar books—particularly those known in English as Kerygma and Myth and The Theology of the New Testament—makes it abundantly evident that so much is thrown away in Bultmann’s demythologization that Jesus is reduced to a figure so puny that he has no claims to the attention, let alone the allegiance, of mankind. And yet by the aid of existentialism Bultmann brazenly asserts that this Jesus, who is not the incarnate Son of God, who is unknown and unknowable from the only records that we have about him, who is neither risen nor ascended, nevertheless becomes through preaching a living, challenging reality to the individual, confronting him with the opportunity and the necessity for making a decision of ultimate significance. No explanation is given why this man Jesus, any more than any other mere man, should have this power—for the very good reason that no explanation is possible.

As Dr. Hughes convincingly shows, a theology which can truly be described as “a faith without hope,” which “robs the Christ-event of its crucial uniqueness,” which is preoccupied with the present at the expense of the past and the future, which bows uncritically to the authority of “modern science” and to a large degree a demoded modern science which views the whole natural order as a closed system, does not deserve the name “Christian” in any recognizable meaning of that word, and in the last analysis is antitheistic. “Nowhere,” Dr. Hughes penetratingly observes towards the end of his lecture, “does Bultmann seek to call into question the being of God; but this, so far from being a merit, is in fact the crucial inconsistency in his system. For throughout, by setting up the knowledge of ‘modern man’ and ‘modern science’ as determinative of what is and what is not possible in our world, he proclaims that the knowledge of man is authoritative and thereby pronounces against the knowledge and authority of God. That means that in effect, though not in intention, he pronounces against the being of God. It is hardly surprising that in his writings God has the appearance of being an unexplained ‘foreign body.’ Can he not see that the logic of his position cries out for him to take the one last step of declaring ‘God’ to be the ultimate myth that has to be eliminated?” Not the least interesting part of Dr. Hughes’ lecture is his demonstration with special reference to Genesis 3 of the truth that, “the God of the Scriptures is the ground not only of all being but also of all knowledge.”

In thinking of Bultmann we ought to remember what is not mentioned in this lecture, that his theology is to no small degree conditioned by the political tensions in Germany in the prewar years. As Ulrich Simon observes in the Church Quarterly Review for March 1957: “Can any reader take Bultmann’s ‘Jesus’ really seriously without hearing, so to speak, the threatening Horst Wessel Lied in the background? The historical Son of God, born of a Jewish lady, Saviour of the whole world, had become totally inacceptable at the time … I remember only too well the swastika imposed on the Cross, in slogans, on posters, even in school classrooms while religious instruction was being given. I am not charging Bultmann with such excesses, but I do not believe that his work should be read apart from a realization that these and later events were happening at the same time.”

R. V. G. TASKER

Proven Worth

Commentary on the Gospel of John, 2 vols., by Frederick Louis Godet Zondervan, Grand Rapids. $11.95.

This commentary is one of the nineteenth-century reprints in Zondervan’s current series, The Classic Commentary Library. The book’s jacket quotes an opinion that Godet on John is “… from a theological standpoint and for going to the uttermost depths of the profound teachings recorded in the Fourth Gospel … the supreme work [containing] some of the finest pages of Christology to be found anywhere.” It is likely that few authorities would agree with this statement. M. C. Tenney, for instance, says of Westcott’s commentary that it is “probably the greatest single commentary on John ever published” (John: The Gospel of Belief, p. 318). But if Godet on John is not without peer, he is certainly one of the best commentators, particularly in his exposition of the devotional riches of this Gospel.

Godet’s theological and critical conservatism is well known. John, the son of Zebadee and our Lord’s disciple, is the author of the Gospel (I, p. 203). For a further example, John 3:16–21 is not the comment of John but is based on what Jesus himself said (I, p. 395).

But some of Godet’s positions reflect a freer air often breathed by nineteenth-century evangelicals but not shared by some of their would-be twentieth century heirs. While Thiessen (Lectures in Systematic Theology, p. 139) and Berkhof (Systematic Theology, p. 94) contend for the omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence of the incarnate Son of God, Godet flatly denies that Jesus possessed these attributes (I, pp. 270, 292–294). Nor does he falter in such a matter as the rejection of the Johannine authorship of John 7:53–8:11 (I, p. 71, and II, pp. 83–89; cf. the indecision of Thiessen, Introduction to the New Testament, p. 176).

On the relation of the Fourth Gospel to the Synoptics, Godet’s nineteenth-century position is out of touch with the contemporary viewpoint. In his hands John becomes the primary historical document among the four gospels. He refers to John as correcting “an inaccuracy of detail” in the Synoptics (I, p. 79; with Godet this is compatible with inspiration). In explaining why John places the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and not at its close as in the Synoptics, he declares that John knew that the event had “a much more serious part [in Jesus’ ministry] than that which was attributed to it in the synoptical narrative” (I, p. 83).

An interesting contrast with current ideas is also evident in Godet’s claim that the prophecies of the Suffering Servant and of the Messiah were clearly united in messianic interpretation prior to the time of Jesus (I, pp. 311–312, f.n. 1; ct. H. H. Rowley, The Unity of the Bible, pp. 133–134).

But these are matters largely confined to Godet’s introductory section. So far as the commentary itself is concerned, it has continued to prove its worth. In addition to its devotional richness, its great strength is its positive evangelicalism. Godet faithfully portrays from beginning to end the eternal life which is the possession of all who believe in Jesus Christ.

W. BOYD HUNT

Study In Apologetics

Christian Commitment: An Apologetic, by Edward John Carnell, Macmillan. $5.00.

This book on Christian apologetics by the president of Fuller Theological Seminary is divided into two unequal parts. The last third or fourth of the volume is a statement of the Christian position; the much longer first part consists of arguments by which the author recommends to his readers the theology of the conclusion.

The theology begins with a fine statement of the need of propitiating an offended God. If you and I require propitiation after someone despises the dignity of our person, God does so all the more. Christ is the propitiation—Christ’s death in the stead of sinners. “Only Jesus Christ can lead a sinner from moral ruin to judicial restoration … We can determine our place in God by simply naming our federal head.”

This biblical emphasis on propitiation and federal headship is a needed one today when so many have weak notions of God’s righteousness and sovereignty. Unfortunately some later phrases are confusing. “Let no one caricature this by saying that only those who contemplate the atonement can be saved. Abraham did not know the cross, yet he was justified. The Scriptures say that all who believe in God will be saved … Men prove their respect for God by repenting” (p. 296).

Does this mean that faith in Christ is not absolutely necessary to salvation? Will faith in God suffice? And would a Mohammedan’s faith in God suffice, as least if he repents? The precise meaning of the paragraph is not clear, yet evidently the words bear a sense that can be taken as disparagement of foreign missions, for the author tries immediately to justify missions on the ground that generic repentance is perilous and uncertain. “The Apostle Paul [limited] repentance almost (!) exclusively to the active preaching of the gospel. Not that men cannot repent without being confronted with Christ after the flesh, but that they do not repent without such confrontation” (p. 297).

However, since the book is a book on apologetics, the main interest lies in the arguments by which the author attempts to recommend his theology to his readers.

As may be expected a large part of the earlier chapters deals with epistemology. “Ultimate reality cannot be grasped unless rational knowledge is savored by spiritual conviction” (p. 13). President Carnell does not deny the need of rational knowledge, but he denies its sufficiency. But what “savoring” ultimate reality is, and how “spiritual conviction” is distinguished from rational knowledge are not explained.

The author begins by placing some emphasis on knowledge by acquaintance. He contrasts it with knowledge by inference (p. 17) and seems to identify it with presentational immediacy. A number of contemporary philosophers make use of the notion of knowledge by acquaintance. It is usually immediate awareness of sense data completely apart from interpretation. It is not knowledge by description. As Bergson says, a quality “inscribes itself automatically in sensation.”

Unhappily, after contrasting acquaintance with inference, the author confuses the reader by stating that all knowledge is inferential. Even “knowledge by acquaintance is the passage of the mind to a conclusion without the aid of a middle premise” (p. 17). This statement brings to mind chiefly what the logicians call immediate inference. For example: All triangles contain 180 degrees; therefore some triangles, equilateral triangles, contain 180 degrees. This inference has no middle term and no middle premise. But it is not the customary notion of knowledge by acquaintance.

It is in fact difficult to grasp the author’s concept of knowledge. He defines knowledge as “man’s systematic contact with the real.” He explicitly notes that this does not require consciousness. “I assert that man can be systematically in contact with the real without knowing it. But this want of awareness in no way alters the reality of the knowledge” (p. 29). This quotation contains a self-contradiction. If systematic contact with reality is knowledge, then a man cannot be in such contact with reality without knowing it, for the contact is the knowledge. Furthermore, if consciousness or awareness is not necessary to knowledge, then breathing and digestion are forms of knowledge because these are systematic contacts with reality. Here one must question whether such unconscious “knowledge” is a contribution to epistemology.

Another and more emphasized factor in Dr. Carnell’s epistemology is his theory of moral self-commitment. There are certain truths that become immediately clear as soon as we take ourselves seriously. If we stop making philosophy a mere academic game and examine our own sincere reactions to the concerns of life, we shall have insight. In one place the author states as a self-evident truth so obtained, “Whenever people receive us because of a respect for rational self-consistency, we are offended” (p. 67). This somewhat pontifical dictum is one which the reviewer is not so willing to accept. Really, I am not offended when people accept me because of rational self-consistency. I might even be flattered. But I am not flattered when it is said that my lack of insight into this truth is the result of my insincerity. In another place the author dismisses a conflicting opinion as “ossified” (p. 151).

In addition to these criticisms in detail something should be said about the general method. While the book cannot be accurately styled a form of the cosmological argument, yet it is an attempt to understand God by observations of man. “If the meaning of God’s character cannot be anticipated by information drawn from our own conception of decency … [and] unless we can meaningfully anticipate God’s standards of rectitude, it may turn out that the book, church, or priestly caste that is least moral on human standards is most moral on divine standards” (p. 142).

This line of reasoning will commend itself to those who believe that the cosmological argument is valid. It also commends itself to those who like Kant believe that theology should be founded on ethics rather than ethics on theology. In fact, it is standard procedure of those who wish to oppose the theology Dr. Carnell stands for. Did not Mary Baker Eddy write that anyone who accepts the concept of a substitutionary sacrifice has failed to understand the character of God? Have not many others opposed historical Christian doctrines on the ground that they are immoral? And in view of the noetic distortions caused by sin, is it not likely that men should fail to anticipate God’s standards of rectitude? Would it not therefore be better to appeal to revelation rather than to anticipation? Must we not conclude that theology is basic to ethics and that ethics is derivative?

GORDON H. CLARK

Fresh Viewpoints

Certainties for Today, by Lehman Strauss, Loizeaux, New York. $2.50.

This is an unusually provocative book of sermons with the ideas involved presented in clear, simple style. The reader feels at times, in fact, that he is being personally confronted with the words of a prophet. Orthodoxy here goes far beyond the mechanical use of proof texts, for fresh interpretations are coupled with the skilfull use of pointed illustrations which challenge the reader to search his own heart. The author also shows wide acquaintance with scriptural symbolism, which is so essential to correct interpretation of the Word of God. It is refreshing indeed to find the sublime truths of the Christian faith presented so interestingly and so remarkably free from the threadbare phraseology too often found fundamentalist writings.

Dr. Strauss’ frequent employment of alliterative headings is not artificial and helps the reader to remember the main points of each message. A carefully prepared index of texts has increased the value of the volume for reference purposes. A book of this quality deserves wide circulation and should be particularly well-adapted for use in discussion groups.

ERIC EDWIN PAULSON

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: The Johannine Epistles

Alexander Ross

Careful examination of the Johannine Epistles leads to the conclusion that all three of them come from the same pen. The second and third epistles, which have been called “twin sisters,” manifestly have the same author, who describes himself as “the Elder.” Comparisons indicate that the author of these epistles is also the author of First John (cf. 1 John 2:7 with 2 John 5; 1 John 2:18, 4:1–5 with 2 John 7; 1 John 2:23 with 2 John 2, 9; 1 John 3:6, 9 with 2 John 11). Of the 13 verses of the second epistle no fewer than 8 can be matched with verses of I John.

The internal evidence seems to point to identity of authorship. Who was the author? Was there at Ephesus at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second a “John the Elder,” as distinct from the Apostle John? That depends on how we interpret the famous words of Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor in the period 100–140, as quoted by Eusebius. Papias writes about the importance he attached to the declarations of the elders: “If anywhere one came my way who had been a follower of the elders, I would inquire about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or what Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples; and I would inquire about the things which Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, say.” We are inclined to agree with Dr. Smith when he says, “the Elder John must mean the Apostle John, since the apostles have just been called ‘the elders,’ and it is impossible that the term should have different meanings within the compass of a single sentence” (Exp. Greek Test.).

The existence of a Presbyter John (as distinct from the Apostle John) in Ephesus at the close of the apostolic age is regarded as extremely problematical by Zahn, Plummer, Farrar, Salmon and many others. Plummer finally came to the conclusion that this problematical figure is a “superfluous conjecture” (Cambridge Greek Test.). Many other scholars conclude that criticism has no other John to operate with but John the Apostle. This vexed question I have discussed with a fair degree of thoroughness in my Commentary on the Epistles of James and John (New International Commentary).

The external evidence also has to be considered. Has the voice of early Church tradition anything definite to say here? The Muratorian Canon, or the Muratorian Fragment, as it is sometimes called, contains a list of the books of the New Testament recognized by the Roman church about the year 180. It records a tradition with regard to the composition of the fourth gospel, which is ascribed to the Apostle John and goes on to say: “What wonder is it then that John brings forward each detail with so much emphasis even in his epistles, saying of himself, what we have seen with our eyes and heard with our ears and our hands have handled, these things have we written to you? For so he professes that he was not only an eyewitness but also a hearer, and moreover a historian of all the wonderful works of the Lord in order.”

A Clear Echo

Who can fail to hear in these words a clear echo of the opening words of First John? Bishop Lightfoot made skilful use of the fact that First John is thus associated with the fourth gospel as an argument in confirmation of the theory that the epistle was originally sent out along with the gospel as a kind of commendatory postscript. For that theory much can be said, and it has been advocated by such commentators as Haupt and Ebrard and others.

When we travel back along the stream of church tradition, we find testimony to First John which is dated much earlier than the Muratorian Canon. We find traces of the epistle in Polycarp, who suffered martyrdom in the year 155, and in Papias, who is described by Irenaeus as “a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp.” Irenaeus himself (140–202), who was familiar with the views of the church at Rome and the church in Gaul, in his treatise Against Heretics quotes the epistle twice, ascribing it to John. Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp of whom he has given a vivid account in his Epistle to Florinus, a portion of which has been preserved by Eusebius in his Church History. If Polycarp was John’s spiritual son, it may be said that Irenaeus was his spiritual grandson. The tradition of apostolic authorship thus goes back here through Irenaeus and Polycarp to John himself. The evidence here seems tremendously strong and it has not been shaken by the attempts of many critics to discount it.

Few allusions to Third John appear in early Christian literature. That is not surprising in view of its brevity, the nature of its contents and that it is addressed to an unknown person. To Second John, despite its brevity and that it also is addressed to an unknown person, we find a number of allusions, and such testimony to the second epistle may be regarded as testimony to the third.

Testimony Of Irenaeus

The testimony of Irenaeus is interesting. In his treatise Against Heretics he says of these heretics that “John, the disciple of the Lord, intensified their condemnation by desiring that not even a ‘God-speed’ should be bid to them by us; for, says, he, he that biddeth him God-speed partaketh in his evil works.” This is an allusion to 2 John 10, 11. Again, Irenaeus quotes 1 John 2:18 and goes on to say: “These are they against whom the Lord warned us beforehand; and His disciple, in his epistle already mentioned, commands us to avoid them, when he says: ‘Many deceivers are gone forth into this world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the Antichrist. Look to them, that ye lose not that which ye have wrought.’ ” This is an allusion to 2 John: 7, 8, with some slight variations that indicate Irenaeus had a different text from ours. In that second quotation he cites words of the second epistle as though they belonged to the first, but that is just a small slip on his part; it is evident that he regards the two epistles as coming from the same man.

With regard to the designation “elder” we ought to note that Peter, one of the disciples of the Lord, so designates himself (1 Pet. 5:1). If he could do that, so also could John. It may be that he uses that title as the last survivor of the apostolic company, about the end of the first century.

A Polemical Purpose

John had a polemical purpose in writing his first epistle. He is definitely on the warpath against certain dangerous heresies that were threatening to invade the churches of Asia Minor. The heresies in view, likely, are chiefly those associated with Cerinthus, who was a native of Egypt and taught in Asia Minor at the same time as John. We owe our information about him to Irenaeus and to other early writers. Irenaeus tells us that Cerinthus taught that “Jesus had not been begotten of a virgin, but had been born of Joseph and Mary as a son in like manner to all the rest of men, and became more righteous and prudent and wise. And after the Baptist the Christ descended into him from the Sovereignty which is over the Universe, in the form of a dove; and then He proclaimed the unknown Father and accomplished mighty works, but at the end the Christ withdrew from the Jesus, and the Jesus had suffered and been raised, but the Christ had continued throughout impassible, being spiritual.”

These deadly heresies aroused strong indignation in the soul of John. A knowledge of the facts about the teaching of Cerinthus enables us to understand John’s meaning when he writes (5:6) that Jesus Christ, in indissoluble union, came through, or by means of water and blood; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. His baptism in the Jordan and his death on Calvary were both essential parts of his self-manifestation, and it is the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, which cleanses from all sin (1:7).

To Establish In Truth

While John apparently never loses sight altogether of the heresies of Cerinthus in any part of this epistle, he has also a more positive purpose in his mind of writing. He wants his “children” to be firmly established in the truth and especially, to understand clearly all that is involved in Christian love, love to God and love to men. Three times he states his purpose in writing (1:4, 2:1, 5:13). The best way to become immune against infection by dangerous heresy is to know the truth (Jn. 8:32) and to be so firmly established in it that any teaching that is alien to the truth as it is in Jesus (Eph. 4:21) will at once be detected by us in its true character. John is here in agreement with Peter, who tells us that the way in which men of unstable mind can attain to spiritual stedfastness is to be in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and, in that blessed sphere, as in our abiding spiritual home, to grow (2 Pet. 3:17, 18).

Dr. James Moffat has said we would not have suffered much loss if the second and third epistles of John had been excluded from the New Testament canon. On the contrary, we would have suffered very serious spiritual loss if we had never read the subtle rebuke of “advanced” thinkers in 2 John 9. The true reading there is not the reading which lies behind the AV rendering, “whosoever transgresseth,” but the reading which lies behind the RV rendering, “whosoever goes onward” and the RSV, “any one who goes ahead.” Real advance in Christian truth comes only as we abide in the teaching of Christ and are led by the Spirit of truth step by step into the fullness of its meaning (John 16:13). Any teaching that claims to be an advance beyond the teaching of Christ, as the Cerinthian heresy no doubt claimed to be, is teaching that is dominated by the “spirit of error” (1 John 4:6) and will lead to barren regions of futile and often dangerous speculation.

Would we not have been spiritually poorer if we had lacked the scathing portrait of Diotrephes in the third epistle? Dr. A. T. Robertson once wrote an article on Diotrephes for a church magazine in which he developed the idea that Diotrephes was a typical “church boss,” and the result was that some twenty deacons wrote to the editor cancelling their subscriptions because of the personal attack on them!

Tools For Exposition

Some commentaries which may be recommended are those by Alford, Huther (in Meyer), Haupt (1st Ep.), Westcott, Plummer in Cambridge Greek Testament, Smith in Expositor’s Greek Testament, Farrar in Early Days of Christianity, and G. G. Findlay, Fellowship in the Life Eternal. Dr. Samuel Cox’s little book Private Letters of St. Paul and St. John deals in a deeply interesting and very suggestive way with Second and Third John.

ALEXANDER ROSS

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