Books

Book Briefs: January 21, 1957

Indispensable Tool

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

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

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

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

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

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Exegesis And Homiletics

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

Like a trip to the mountains that border the sea!

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

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

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

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

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

W. GORDON BROWN

Ecumenicity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—HAROLD LINDSELL

Cancer Anonymous

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

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

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

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

FRANK HOUGHTON

Too Brief

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

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

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

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

GORDON H. CLARK

Missionary Literatur

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

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

PHILIP E. HUGHES

Biography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

T. G. MOHAN

Cultic Dictatorship

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

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

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

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

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

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

HAROLD LINDSELL

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: January 21, 1957

John H. Gerstner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theology

The Prayer of the Five Widows

Elisabeth Elliot

An account after the Auca ambush in Ecuador, from CT’s seventh issue.

11th November 1966: Kimo, one of the Auca Indians of Ecuador who killed five visiting missionaries, visits London in the company of Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the victims. Kimo is now a converted Christian, although he still displays the large holes in his earlobes which his tribe believe will keep them faithful to their wives.

11th November 1966: Kimo, one of the Auca Indians of Ecuador who killed five visiting missionaries, visits London in the company of Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the victims. Kimo is now a converted Christian, although he still displays the large holes in his earlobes which his tribe believe will keep them faithful to their wives.

Hulton Archive / Getty

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon a year ago, five young women were asking God for two things regarding their husbands: that they might be permitted to contact the Auca Indians again, and that they might be protected. As we sat in our jungle homes here in Ecuador, two in Arajuno, one in Shandia and two in Shell Mera, we little dreamed of the answer God was then giving. He answered both of those prayers, but, as is often the case with him whose thoughts are as far above ours as the heavens are high above the earth, his answer far transcended what we had in mind.

Silence on a Sand Strip

The second contact was given. Probably at about two-thirty in the afternoon at least ten Aucas arrived at the strip of sand where the men had set up their little camp. Having seen them some time earlier from the airplane, approaching the beach, the pilot had reported to his wife the anticipated contact. We can imagine the five, then, as the forest rang with their praises. They sang hymns together, committed themselves to the Lord once more and eagerly prepared for their longed for visitors. It was not long before savage yells, instead of hymns of praise, echoed through the forest, polished wooden spears slashed through the air and five young men lay dead on the Rio Curaray. Silence closed once more over the stand strip, and those beloved Indians returned nonchalantly to their thatched homes, to recount another killing to their waiting families.

When Christianity Today inquired about the burden in the hearts of the five widows of the Auca ambush in Ecuador (January 23, 1956), their reply suggested that this article might appear anonymously, since it mirrors the mood of all five women. Their scribe, however, was Elisabeth Howard Elliot. Graduated from Wheaton College (48) with a Greek major, she studied Spanish in Ecuador and, with a view to Scripture translation, studied the Colorado and Quichua languages in the west and east jungles there. In 1953 she married missionary-martyr Jim Elliot. Today at Shandia, on the headwaters of the Napo River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon, where the only communication with the outside world is by radio and airplane, she works alone in Bible translation, literacy work among women, teaching and medical work at a government accredited school for boys. Marjorie Saint is now serving in Quito as hostess of the guest house for HCJB (The Voice of the Andes). Barbara Youderian continues to serve in the Ecuadorean jungles, at the outstation of Cangaime among the Jivaro headhunters. Olive Fleming plans to return to the United States to serve in the office of The Fields, a religious publication. Marilou McCully manages a home for missionary children in Quito.

The asked-for contact had been given. But what about the protection?

Protection from Disobedience

When the Lord Jesus prayed to His Father, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John, he asked, too, for protection for those whom the Father had given him. For what purpose? “. . . that they may be one, as we are.” Protection from what? “. . . that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one.” Each one of our five men, years before, had asked for the whole accomplishment of God’s will in him at any cost, to the end that Christ be glorified. The Evil One is determined, however, that Christ shall not be glorified. But, in making them obedient men, God had answered the prayer of his Son, the prayer of the men themselves and the prayer of their wives. The adversary did not succeed in turning them aside from Gods highest purpose. They were protected from that most fearful of all dangers, disobedience. They loved God above all else. “Herein is the love of God, that ye keep his commandments.”

The prayer of our hearts today, of the widows who remain, is the same, that Christ may be glorified.

Christ’s Glory in Some Aucas

First of all, we continue asking for that which motivated the men from the beginning of the project—that Christ may be glorified in some Aucas. The contact God gave to the five was only one step in the opening of the fast-closed doors to that tribe.

Nor was it the first step. Others had thought and prayed for years about them, asking for an entrance, flying over the territory in search of their whereabouts, seeking a way to carry to them the Word of Life.

Some of the five men had long borne them before the Lord, asking for their salvation and committing themselves to God for them.

Now, thousands of Christians in all parts of the world have learned of them and are praying.

For us who have been most closely touched by the death of the five, there could be no greater joy than to know at last that the blood of our husbands has been the seed of the Auca church. Our hearts go out to the very ones whose strong brown arms sent flying the lances that killed our loved ones, for we know that they walk in darkness, knowing not even the name of Him who is more than life to us. And how shall they hear without a preacher?

So we ask for those whom God has prepared to be sent to the Aucas and only those. A well-meaning but misguided effort could ruin further opportunities to enter the tribe. But because God has done a tremendous thing in taking five of His choicest servants in this incipient stage, we are bold to expect tremendous answers to prayer in the future. We believe He will send the Light to the Aucas and have given ourselves anew for that, if He should care to choose any one of us to go. We were wholly at one with our husbands in their desire to reach the Aucas and had it been possible, would gladly have accompanied them. The last thing on earth we would have wanted would have been to hinder them in obeying the command of Christ, which was as clear to us as it was to them. He was directing; the only issue at stake was obedience. Jesus made the conditions of discipleship unequivocal—“Forsake . . . Deny . . . Follow.” This is the price we are asked to pay.

Many speak of the five men as having made the “supreme sacrifice.” We do not think of it in that way. They would not have called it that. One of them wrote in his diary years ago, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Jesus promised that whoever loses his life preserves it. Can we call this sacrifice? When we make a purchase, we pay the price, of course, but no one thinks of this as a sacrifice. How much less, then, when our lives, already paid for by Christ at tremendous sacrifice on his part, are offered to him? We lose nothing. We gain everything. Hence, we ask that God may choose those whom He wishes to carry the gospel to the Aucas, that they may be prepared by his Spirit, that they may not count their lives dear unto themselves, and that thereby the Aucas may be brought out of their bondage to know Jesus Christ, that he may be glorified in them.

Christ’s Glory in Us

We ask, further, that Christ may be glorified in us. “For we know that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Our hearts are filled with gratitude for the privilege He gave us in being the wives of men who were chosen to be slain for His sake. None of us is worthy. It is all of His grace, but we know that the Lamb is worthy, a thousand times, the lives of our husbands and of us. He chose to glorify himself in their death—may He now glorify Himself in our lives.

During those harrowing days when the rescue party was on its way to the beach, when we did not know what the next radio report would bring, we were conscious that whatever the outcome, God was determined to bring us to himself. He had promised, “When thou passest though the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee, for I am the Lord thy God. . . . Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honorable, and I have loved thee.” How could we have proved the truth of that promise if there had been no waters? And what rivers could overflow but deep ones? And so, to show us that he meant what he said, to prove to us his love, this was what he sent, this thing which each of us had been sure she could never endure, the loss of the one who was as her own soul.

Purpose in the Stab of Pain

And how, then, can Christ be glorified in us through this experience? By our responding with thanksgiving to his dealings with us, by our declaration of our love to him in utter obedience, by our believing that his judgments are right, that he in faithfulness has afflicted us. We ask that we may go on in peace, as he has mercifully permitted us to do thus far. In talking together, we have often said that we did not want to miss one lesson which our loving Father would teach us by this thing. To us, the loss of our husbands is not a tragedy in itself—it is one more of our Father’s right judgments. But it would indeed be a tragedy if, in our failure to respond to him with love, trust, and praise, we should miss what he intended for us through it. We ask that we may know him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death. If, through the loss of our husbands, we may cause Christ to rejoice, to see in us the travail of his soul and be satisfied, we shall never call it sacrifice. Each day, when little things remind us, with a new stab of pain, that our husbands are gone, we turn these things into prayer—“Lord, by this, too, glorify thyself. For this, too, I thank thee and trust thee, knowing that there shall be glory, as thou has promised, through this suffering.”

Christ and the Little Ones

Not only do we ask that Christ be glorified in the Aucas and in us, but also in our children. Most of them will have no recollection of their fine fathers. But our Lord gave his word, “All thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.” We ask for his wisdom in training them, for his Spirit in us, that they may be as obedient as their fathers. How wonderful it would be if he should prepare one or more of them to go to the Aucas! We would give them to him for his use, asking that they come to know him as Savior and Lord at an early age. Far be it from us to withhold from the Lord the lives of these little ones, children of the men who did not withhold their own lives. May they sing from true hearts,

Faith of our Fathers, Holy Faith,
We would be true to Thee till death.

Wherever the Spirit Speaks

Finally, we ask that Christ be glorified in the lives of those to whom the Spirit of God has spoken because of the death of the five men. We have received letters from all over the world, telling of the impact of the event on one and another. But we have heard of few who have actually done anything about it, who have been changed by it. We pray earnestly that those who have heard the voice of the Lord may be obedient. We pray that young men who have been attracted by the “opportunities to use their talents for the Lord in the United States” may abandon themselves, with their talents, to Christ, for his use wherever he wants them. We pray that if any young wife is hesitating to commit her husband and family to God, through fear of loss, she may believe the words of our Lord Jesus, “Truly I say to you, there is no man who hath forsaken . . . who will not receive.” We have proved beyond any doubt that he means what he says—his grace is sufficient, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. We pray that if any, anywhere, are fearing that the cost of discipleship is too great, that they may be given to glimpse that treasure in heaven promised to all who forsake.

And all our supplication is “with thanksgiving”— for his great love, for the high privilege of serving him with all of our hearts, for having given us as husbands men who were true soldiers of Jesus Christ, men to whom we could look up in every respect, men who set for us a great example of faith that acts on what it believes. We look forward with joy to that day when God will reveal to us his complete plan, knowing that we shall see clearly that every step of the way was ordained to the end that Christ might be glorified. Our husbands already walk with him, their joy complete. We, too, shall see him face to face, and be satisfied.

This hath He done, and shall we not adore Him?
This shall He do and can we still despair?
Come let us quickly fling ourselves before Him,
Cast at His feet the burden of our care,
Flash from our eyes the glow of our thanksgiving,
Glad and regretful, confident and calm,
Then through all life, and what is after living,
Thrill to the tireless music of a psalm,
Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and
through sinning,
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed:
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.
(From St. Paul, F. W. H. Myans)

Cover Story

The East German State: Has It Feet of Clay?

Harold B. Kuhn

The title “Democratic Republic” sounds nowhere more hollow than when applied to the present government of East Germany. Its rulers can scarcely be reassured by recent events in Hungary, where the instruments of power in the hands of the ruling elite have perforce been turned against the people in whose name they profess to rule. It is the purpose of this article to note some of the major features of this “Republic” and to seek to evaluate its points of strength and its areas of weakness.

Soviet Advantages

In installing the puppet regime in their zone of occupation, the Soviet rulers had three major points of possible advantage. First, they had at their disposal the large Junker estates, which most of the world agreed should be divided. Thus the land reform should have pleased the beneficiaries, and should have brought to the government a broad popular support from the peasants. This advantage was not pressed; crushing agricultural quotas discouraged the tillers of the land at the outset. More important still, the history of such “reforms” in Russia convinced the East German farmers that collectivization would follow in short order. This they have not wanted. Many are not waiting for it, for farmers make up a good portion of the refugees who leave the “Republic” at a rate of 1,000 per day.

The population of the seven Lander or provinces comprising the East German state has been traditionally socialistic. Thus the workers would not normally be opposed to the basic objectives of socialization. Yet the regime seems to have failed signally to enlist the loyalty of the workers, who for some uncanny reason are largely unmoved by socialist inventives. The barrage of agitative propaganda seems to annoy and disgust them, so that the new political orientation fails to “take” on them.

The intellectuals of this land have been traditionally tolerant of bureaucratic administration and generally responsive to official dictation and to state planning. Why, then, has the regime failed to win the general support of the intelligentsia?

Leaders in East Berlin official circles complain of the ideological indifference among the intellectual classes. Conversations with those who flee to the West reveal, however, that there is much active opposition to the dogmatism of Marxist science. As one trained physicist told the writer, he faced the choice of assenting to the dogmas stemming from dialectical materialism (at the expense of intellectual honesty) or of rejecting them and in consequence running afoul of the regime. He chose the latter alternative.

One cannot avoid the impression that the Communist party and the major classes of the East German population are separated by a lack of rapport. With the exception of the events of June, 1953, this has generally manifested itself in passive antagonism. Rulers and subjects appear in the form of two opponents in a battle of attrition, each determined to wear down the other.

Weaknesses Of Government

The causes underlying the weakness of the government of Pieck, Ulbrich, Grotewohl and others are numerous. The government began under the handicap of having been installed by a conqueror. It has never been able to make the smallest logical claim to rest upon the popular will. Indeed, its leaders seem to feel no need to establish such a base of support. They have, moreover, been embarrassed by their own pretension to sovereignty. At the demand of their Soviet masters, they have insisted that they headed a government which could make up its own mind. This prevented any candid statement to their subjects of precisely which powers remained in their hands and which were reserved to the Kremlin. This failure to take the people into its confidence has compelled the regime to bear the responsibility for the repressive acts and arbitrary decisions which, in part at least, have been imposed upon it from without.

A further feature tending to alienate the government from its citizens is the exactness with which it maintains the features which are part of the ritual of communist dictatorship. These are: rigid censorship of press and mails, constant internal espionage, senseless restrictions upon travel into and out of the country, the secret police and a brutal administration of the penal code. Most of these seem senseless to the outsider, while to the insider they bear no obvious relation to the achievement of the goals set by the rulers for the land.

Brute Force

The Party itself, hated by the masses, maintains itself in power by brute force. It rationalizes its position by posing, through endless propaganda media, as the agent of transformation, which promises a glorious tomorrow through planned and managed change. Conversations with refugees from all classes fail to support the view that this appeal finds much popular response.

The regime justifies its rigid control of the social and cultural life of the land upon this basis, namely, that it must discipline in order to reform. Propagandistic attacks upon the West as decadent continue monotonously. Life is designedly austere, and no major concessions are made to the demands of the masses for emotional relaxation, save such minor ones as the qualified tolerance of jazz and lipstick.

The governing clique lack much of the creative inspiration which their counterparts in the Soviet Union may at times experience. In Russia there is some measure of realism in the adaptation of measures to conditions in the land. In East Germany, on the other hand, the processes of the Kremlin are applied without creative imagination to a situation that is radically different. This creates an air of unreality, a feeling that the land is a stage upon which an unconvincing drama is being played. It is against this feeling of unreality that the instruments of official propaganda work with fervor and without great apparent success.

Impermanence Of Two Germanys

In the light of the foregoing factors, the East German government seems a strange combination of strength and weakness. It is difficult to weigh the one against the other. It is doubtful whether the East German officials expect their government to survive for long should Germany be reunited. This may account for their continued demands for recognition of their state, and for the pressure of Vice-Premier Otto Nuschke upon the Church of East Germany to acknowledge its permanence. These and similar actions bear witness to a possible doubt in their minds as to whether the impossible situation of two Germanys can long be maintained.

It is well known that East Germany is predominantly Protestant. The Evangelical (Protestant) Church has attracted wide attention for its courageous resistance to the encroachments of the regime. Dr. Jacob, Bishop of Cottbus, declared in Berlin last June that the Church would accept no compromise with atheism and would resist the “theoretical and material godlessness” that underlies the dialectical materialism to which the government professes such slavish adherence.

The Church in East Germany operates currently upon the basis of the agreement which Premier Grotewohl signed with Bishop Otto Dibelius on June 10, 1953. This agreement was secured by the prompt and courageous action of Bishop Dibelius and provided for a reduction of the many forms of harassment of the Church by Red officials. It promised, among other things, a review of the sentences of imprisoned pastors, relaxation of regulations upon public services and the readmission of youth expelled from schools because of church attendance.

A Secular Confirmation

The major thrust of the government’s attack upon the Church has been against the youth work, the Junge Gemeinde. At no point has the war of attrition against the Church been pursued with more ingenuity. Knowing the place which Church confirmation held in the mind of the German people, the regime introduced its own secularized version of confirmation, the Jugendweihe, or Youth Dedication. This is an impressive ceremony, urged upon all East German children “who wish to become loyal citizens” and arranged to coincide with the time of Church confirmation, generally during Holy Week.

Bishop Dibelius spoke promptly for the Church, condemning the Jugendweihe and laid down the general principle that a youth cannot participate in both Church confirmation and the state’s “youth dedication.” The outcome of the struggle is at this moment still in doubt. There can be no doubt that the long-range objective of the government is the destruction of the Christian Church. At present, the regime tolerates the Church, provided it “refuses to become a refuge for reactionary circles”—meaning that it may take no part in any movement to restore freedom to the people of East Germany.

The struggle for the minds of the youth continues. The F.J.D. (Free German Youth) compels its members (numbering some 2,000,000) to pledge to destroy “capitalist moral standards and superstition”; in other words, to obliterate the Christian religion and the ethics which it seeks to inculcate. Youth who refuse to participate in Youth Dedication are barred from universities and incur other serious handicaps.

The Weight Of Restrictions

It is difficult for the outsider to imagine the weight of restrictions under which the Church in East Germany operates. A pastor may not be transferred from one parish to another, save under most unusual circumstances. His income is less than that of common laborers, averaging about $30 a month. His children may not enter schools for higher education, and he and his family are in constant peril of arrest for some imaginary or real infraction of obscure bureaucratic regulations. This writer’s knowledge of these pastors indicates that they are overworked, tired, poorly paid but withal courageous in their determination to perform their duties in the fear of the Lord.

The larger ministry of the Church is curtailed in every way imaginable. A church may receive little or no help from the outside; it may export no funds whatsoever. While the supply of paper for atheistic literature is abundant, the publication of religious periodicals is rigidly controlled because of “paper shortages.” Home missions are rigidly curtailed; all but a handful of the Railway Missions ministering to the aged, the infirm and mothers traveling with children have recently been closed.

It is clear that the regime tolerates the Church solely because it finds her obliteration too costly. This toleration is a temporary expedient, until the older generation dies, and until a new generation can be trained in atheism. Meanwhile Vice-Premier Nuschke (a member of the Christian Democratic Union who is currently tolerated in the government) advises “a united front” and suggests that there is no time for controversy over religion or “other minor issues.”

A Light In The Night

Today the East German Church finds herself on the defensive in this conflict of wills with the State. She is the only significant bridge between her unhappy land and the free world. Within her tight frontiers, she is exerting an influence which is surprising when measured against her problems. There is reason to believe that as she cannot extend herself laterally, she is finding her own spiritual life deepened through her sufferings, and that as she can draw but little from the Church outside her frontiers, she is drawing more heavily from the resources of her Living Head.

In the meantime the people of East Germany live in their meager and monotonous world, while their rulers live in isolation from them in their own world of words and of perfectly coherent ideological dogmas. Many from all walks of life can bear the stifling and unreal atmosphere no longer. By the hundreds, these walk away, making their way to East Berlin, and thence across the border into the refugee installations in Free Berlin. Others cross the border temporarily, upon the pretext of visiting relatives, and spend a few cherished hours breathing the better air of the free world.

If and when Germany is reunited, and if the present government of East Germany is liquidated, the question of what legacy the regime will leave behind is a crucial one. One dares to hope that such a time will reveal that the East German Church has been largely significant in keeping alive the ideas and ideals of Christian civilization during the long night of communist rule.

We Quote:

ROBERT C. COOK

Director, Population Reference Bureau

In our finite world indefinite multiplication of people must eventually pass any possible optimum. Standing room only becomes a possibility in no very long time … In about 4½ centuries population density of the entire 52 million square miles of the earth’s land surface would be some 25,000 persons per square mile. That is the concentration on Manhattan Island today.… Considering how much desert, arctic, and mountain land is uninhabitable, it is not too soon to give serious consideration to the question of population optimum for this unexpansible planet.—in “The Population Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. XII, No. 8 (Oct., 1956), p. 296.

LORD BOYD ORR

Director-General, FAO, from 1945 to 1948

Our immediate problem is the provision of food for say 5,000 million by 2,000 A.D. and possibly a further 2,000 million in the following twenty-five years.… The limit to food production is neither lack of knowledge nor physical obstacles of soil or climate. The limit is imposed by economic factors. The amount of any food a farmer produces is determined not by what is possible but by what he hopes to sell at a remunerative price.—in “Science and Hunger,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. XII, No. 8 (Oct., 1956), pp. 309 f.

Dr. Harold B. Kuhn is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Ky. Summer after summer he has carried on an educational and evangelistic ministry to Russian zone refugees in Germany. He holds the B.A. from John Fletcher College, and the S.T.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has pursued post-doctoral studies at University of Munich.

Cover Story

Christian Missions in Japan

L. Nelson Bell

There is grave need for a complete revaluation of Christian missions in Japan today. Post-war policies of the major Boards, the tremendous influx of independent and diverse new groups and, most of all, the sobering fact that after many decades of mission work the Christian Church in Japan has yet to make the impact so needed in that land, all combine to challenge to a new concept for spreading the gospel message, and of the Church itself.

The average Christian abroad does not have the remotest idea of what has taken place and is taking place now. He does not know what policies are now being pursued, nor of the cross-currents of conflicting opinions which have such far reaching effect for or against the evangelization of that great nation.

A Difficult Field

Japan has always been a difficult nation for Christian missions. An old culture; an advance civilization by Western standards; one of the highest literacy rates of any nation and deep rooted religious practices inherently antagonistic to the Christian faith, all of these and other factors combine to make imperative that the Gospel shall be presented in its simplicity and power and in a complete trust in the presence and work of the Holy Spirit.

Where Christian missions have been carried on depending on the uncompromised Gospel and its implementation by the Spirit there have been corresponding results. Where there has been a tendency to deviate from the historical evangelical concept of the Church and her message there has been a corresponding deviation in both quantity and quality of results. Theological liberalism has more adherents in Japan than is probably the case in any other mission field of the world.

While the combination of difficulties outlined above are real and ever present, they are complicated today by matters having to do with mission policy. On the one hand we have the determined effort of some of the major Boards in America to erect an ecumenical Church on a man-made foundation and to maintain it by hidden but not the less very real ecclesiastical and financial pressures. On the other hand we have an influx of a great number of independent and often diverse groups, far out numbering the old line denominations, but lacking both in missionary experience and often in an adequate doctrine of the Church.

Because of these conflicting interests and policies missionary work in Japan is confused and confusing. To face the problems will require a work of grace and an outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit on all concerned. This is an end not too much to pray for, nor to expect if Christians will act as Christians should. But rest assured, it will require a work God alone can do.

The Rise Of The Kyodan

One of the serious bones of contention today is the Kyodan or United Church of Japan. The history of its organization is of great significance. Just prior to the outbreak of World War II the Japanese government determined to insure full control of all religious forces. It passed a law naming conditions under which any religious body could secure official recognition and immunity from arbitrary police action. When Christian denominations began to apply for recognition they were first told that no applications from bodies with fewer than five thousand members would be accepted. Then when the smaller groups had formed unions among themselves to meet this requirement they were told that only one Protestant group would be recognized. Rather than be left without any legal status almost all united.

Not by the wildest stretch of imagination could such a union have taken place without extreme government pressure, although it is true that from the earliest days of Protestant Christianity in Japan many denominational leaders had been working for union. Their successors now used the government-given opportunity to the utmost. This government sponsored union was enthusiastically acclaimed in America. Most of the major mission Boards of North America decided to further it and set up the Inter-Board Committee, which agreed upon resumption of work in Japan to support only churches in the Kyodan. In this way the Japanese churches were faced with a dilemma—continue in the Kyodan and receive mission board support, or, as some felt impelled to do, follow the dictate of conscience and withdraw from this government-sponsored organization and find themselves without missionary support. That many were led to take the latter step is a tribute to their Christian convictions and courage.

Among the major denominations the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (South) took a much more liberal viewpoint. The mission and the Board agreed to cooperate with Japanese ministers and churches, formerly associated with the work of that Board, both inside and outside the Kyodan, regarding the choice as one for the Japanese themselves to make. Had all Boards taken this statesmanlike position the Kyodan would largely have disintegrated as it lacked the spiritual unity necessary for a genuinely ecumenical church.

It is true that some smaller groups never entered the Kyodan and immediately following V-J day many other elements withdrew and assumed their former identity: Episcopalians, Lutherans, elements of the Baptist groups, Friends, Nazarenes and others. Some former Presbyterians withdrew to establish the Reformed Church of Japan, others reestablished their identity as the Shin Nikki, or new Church of Japan.

Virtually A New Denomination

Today something less than half of the Christians in Japan are in Kyodan churches and they are made up largely of Methodists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians. The Committee of Cooperation, a group set up to administer the work of the Inter Board Committee and the Kyodan, is locating Methodist missionaries in fields developed by Presbyterian and Congregational missionaries.

Today to all intents and purposes the Kyodan has itself become a denomination. Strange to say, the ecumenicity and cooperation such a group should be expected to extend to others is lacking. Backed by the Inter-Board Committee and the Kyodan leadership, missionaries assigned to the Kyodan are not permitted to work with non-Kyodan ministers and churches. Where denominational differences existed before, differences which were often submerged in a spirit of Christian fellowship and love, an ecclesiastical wall has been set up.

Such a policy is an admission of weakness, not of strength, and it aggravates the already confused mission and church situation. Today there are some 143 Boards and Christian organizations working in Japan. Many of these groups are very small but some are large and are continuing to grow. The largest interdenominational group is T.E.A.M., The Evangelical Alliance Mission, with over 150 missionaries.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that 90 per cent of the 2400 Protestant missionaries came to Japan after World War II. This proportion of new missionaries, many from small and often divisive groups lacking both the wisdom of years and of experience, has created problems both in the realm of general policy and also, very often, with reference to an adequate concept of the Church itself.

An Impaired Witness

The Christian Church in Japan is weak; few of her leaders have the zeal and vision needed in a nationwide program. Tithing, to be found among the Seventh Day Adventists and to a lesser degree in the Reformed Church, is otherwise almost unknown. Japanese pastors are inadequately paid and this increases the power of those who dispense mission funds. The non-cooperative spirit of the Kyodan is largely matched by a similar attitude in many of the independent groups who in some cases are suspicious of each other and in others may join in a distrust of the older denominations.

The end result is a greatly impaired Christian witness in Japan, one totally inadequate to seize the opportunity and meet the desperate needs of that nation.

This is not a blanket criticism of any one group. Some of Japan’s finest Christians are in the Kyodan. Some of the most devoted missionaries from abroad are working in that group. Others of equal Christian faith, zeal and devotion are to be found in the noncooperating and independent groups. The Kyodan, with less than half of the church membership and only about one-fifth of the total missionary personnel working in Japan, has no right to arrogate to itself a priority it does not deserve. Nor do the other groups have the right to indulge in a wholesale condemnation of the Kyodan.

There is a desperate need today for some unifying influence in Japan, not directed towards a united ecclesiasticism but to a recognition of the fact that Japan needs Christ and that present personnel and policies are falling far short of the task.

Men inside and outside the Kyodan agree that the Billy Graham campaign of last March had a most wholesome effect on the church as a whole. But it was entirely too limited in time and scope. A nationwide campaign of gigantic proportions is needed. Japan is flooded with western movies and with propaganda of one kind or the other which presents western culture at its worst. This needs to be counteracted with the Christian message on a saturation basis. Christian films in large quantities, along with large sums spent in buying time on radio and TV networks, are needed to present the claims of Christ—not a mere system of ethics but the Gospel in all of its simplicity and power.

Many are convinced that some of the major mission Boards are missing the boat by maintaining a false ecumenicity which is doing harm to the Japanese Church, frustrating many missionaries who find themselves caught in the web of unrealism, and which is also drying up the source of giving, both in America and more important still, in the Japanese Church itself. There is a failure to measure up to the evangelistic need because of the channeling of missionary activities primarily into institutional work.

Missionary statesmanship at its very best is desperately needed, a statesmanship not now in evidence among the denominational Boards as a whole, the Japanese Christian leadership nor in the independent and interdenominational groups.

The effective evangelization of Japan is at stake, and the time for its accomplishment may not be indefinitely prolonged.

Preacher In The Red

TREMOR IN THE PULPIT

It was Easter Sunday morning in 1907, my third Easter in the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church. I stood before my congregation in Venice Center, N. Y., to read the Scripture lesson, as found in Matthew 28. When I came to verse 4, instead of the inspired words, “And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men,” I heard myself say, “And for fear of him the shakers did quake.” Appalled, I quickly proceeded to correct my mistake by solemnly declaring, “For fear of him the Quakers did shake and became as dead men.”

By that time solemnity was at an end!—HOWARD S. BACON, Elbridge, N. Y., retired member of the Central New York Conference of the Methodist Church.

L. Nelson Bell, M.D., F.A.C.S., missionary in China for 25 years and for 15 years a successful surgeon in Asheville, N.C., is Executive Editor of Christianity Today. At present he is making a six weeks trip to Japan and Korea.

Cover Story

Rising Tempo of Rome’s Demands

C. Stanley Lowell

The year 1948 marked the beginning of a new epoch in the American history of the Roman Catholic Church and the beginning of a new epoch in American history itself. In November of that year the leaders of this powerful church undertook a drastic reorientation of their attitude toward the United States government. It was a change not of conviction but of strategy, not of direction but of pace; yet the new strategy and the new pace were so striking as to constitute in themselves a major change. The statement of the Bishops issued at that time will repay thoughtful reading by every American. These men serve notice that the vast power of their organization will henceforth be devoted to destroying the principle of Church-State separation.

When the Bishops sound the call to action, their language is clear. They say plainly that “Separation of Church and State has become the shibboleth of doctrinaire secularism.” They pledge themselves to “work peacefully, patiently and perseveringly” for its destruction. Thus, with a bold announcement supported by the cleverest of propaganda, this powerful church has set out to destroy the free position of the American churches.

Then And Now

This change in Roman Catholic strategy is expressed in the church’s attitude toward education. During much of the nineteenth century, its hierarchy was concerned to eliminate from the public schools every reference to God, the Bible and religion and to make the schools strictly secular institutions. Roman Catholics brought more than one hundred cases before the courts to achieve these objectives. I cite here but one of the hundred—that of People ex. rel. Ring v. Board of Education in Illinois. In this case Roman Catholics sought to eliminate Bible reading and devotional exercises from the public-school program. The court agreed with their contention that these practices did violate Church-State separation as expressed in the Constitution and ordered them discontinued.

Roman Catholics undertook to drive religion out of the schools not because they were atheistic or secularistic people, but because they were not powerful enough to determine the kind of religion to be taught. They preferred no religious teaching at all if they could not have Roman Catholic dogma. The provincial council of the Roman Catholic Church in Baltimore, 1840, imposed on priests the responsibility of seeing to it that Catholic children attending public schools did not participate in any religious exercises there. They were also to use their influence to prevent any such practices in the public schools.

The “secular public school” was in substantial part the achievement of the Roman Catholic Church. Today, however, this church has about-faced. Today it denounces the secular public school as “godless” and argues loudly for the return of religion to education. Today movements for the teaching of “moral and spiritual values” in the public schools, like the recent one in New York City, find the hierarchy in hearty endorsement. The change of front is due to one simple fact—the Roman hierarchy now feels strong enough to permeate any public-school moral and spiritual teaching with its own dogma, or to secure public funds for its own private, sectarian schools.

Toward A New Era

The 1948 pronouncement of the Roman Catholic Bishops pointed the way to a new era in American Church-State relations. As far as Rome was concerned, this pronouncement marked the end of the line for Church-State separation. The principle that had received grudging recognition from this group as long as it was a weak, ineffectual minority was now to be replaced by one more in keeping with the main line of Romanist tradition.

The resources of this powerful church were quickly marshaled for action. The Roman Church claims a membership of 33 million in the United States, which has become in the hands of the hierarchy a gigantic battering ram to breach the wall of separation. The adults in this membership comprise the “Catholic vote” of which we hear so much. There are, comparatively, not many Catholics holding high public office. This is actually a source of strength to the hierarchy since it is able to keep in perpetual intimidation the Protestant officeholders who fear nothing more than that the “Catholic vote” might be turned against them.

This political power is skillfully wielded to secure preferential treatment for the Roman Church. A good example is the nearly $1 million voted by the Eighty-fourth Congress to refurbish the Pope’s summer palace. The payment was for damages allegedly inflicted by American bombs upon a neutral power in World War II. The summer palace was not located in Vatican City, however, and the damage, according to impartial observers, was negligible. This subsidy to the Pope went through as a high-level, nonpartisan item. No one would have thought of voting against it. To do so might have offended the “Catholic vote.”

A far more serious matter was House Bill 6568, which was smuggled through the Senate in the confusion before adjournment of the Eighty-fourth Congress. This provides another $8 million plus for Roman Catholic activities in the Philippines. After the war, American lobbyists visited the Philippines and alerted Roman Catholic officials to the rich potential in “war services” and “war damages.” The church collected for services allegedly suffered to its installations. The Bishop of Zamboanga, the Archbishop of Jaro, the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul and the Knights of Columbus were among the Roman Catholic groups receiving generous grants. How many millions were paid is difficult for an outsider to determine.

The above mentioned act merely amended the law so that Archbishop Santos of Manila, whose “claims” had been rejected by the Commission, could get his millions along with the millions that had gone to his colleagues. Although the sum was “only $8 million,” it should be recalled that the Archbishop’s claims originally ran to $30 million. All of these claims will no doubt be revived, while others from the innumerable church orders will be added. All will be paid in time. Oh yes, there is a chance that the Protestants may qualify for about $30,000 under H. R. 6586.

The public schools of the Philippines received not one cent. Nor will they, because they lack a high-powered lobby and the unveiled threat of reprisal at the polls.

Sectarian Subsidies Unlimited

There have been other government subsidies to the Roman Church. The Hill-Burton Act, which authorized Federal grants to sectarian hospitals, has been a bonanza to this church. Under it the Roman Catholics have collected $112,039,000 for their institutions. Protestant institutions have received $23,118,000. Even the disparity of these figures does not tell the story. Close observers have noted the large proportion of the grants that have gone to Roman Catholic hospitals in the South. In Alabama alone, for example, this church has obtained $6 million for its hospitals. Baptist churches with a total adult membership about equal to the Roman Catholic have a conscientious objection to taking Federal funds. Only a pittance, therefore, has gone to this group. What is worse, businessmen have begun to refuse to contribute to Baptist hospital campaigns, asking, “Why don’t you get your money from the government the way the Catholics do?”

The Roman Church has found the Hill-Burton Act a marvelous means for penetrating the hitherto impervious Protestantism of the South. Handsome healing centers built with Federal funds serve as a strong means for the propagation of this faith.

The campaign to shift the cost of Roman Catholic sectarian schools to the American taxpayer bids fair to be as successful as the hospital program. The campaign began easily as fringe benefits were sought from the government—bus transportation, textbooks, health benefits, lunches and the like. More recently, as for example in the Bishop’s statement issued in November, 1955, there is insistence upon the “full right to be considered and dealt with as components of the American educational system.” This statement also claims for parochial-school pupils the same government aid that goes to public-school pupils.

A useful gimmick in softening the public for sectarian subsidies is the so-called “study” of education. Proposals for a “study” were slipped through the Connecticut legislature as a “noncontroversial” item. No sooner had the commission begun its work when there began a spate of press releases about how many children were in parochial schools, the proportion of the educational load being carried by the Roman Catholic Church, the “saving” thus effected to the taxpayer. Presently Roman Catholic leaders throughout the state joined in a well-directed chorus appealing for state subsidies. The demands were based on the commission’s “scientific study.”

During the past year the drive for tax support has developed yet a new twist. This is a demand that tuition payments to parochial schools be allowable income tax deductions. The fiftieth annual convention of the Knights of St. John meeting in Dayton, Ohio, and the Central Catholic Verein meeting in Wichita, Kansas, are among the many Roman Catholic groups that have appealed to Congress for this kind of “relief.” Thus a back-door assault on the public treasury keeps pace with the front-door demand.

In many communities where they are in the majority, Roman Catholics have simply taken over the public schools. They have staffed them with nuns and priests whose salaries, paid from state funds, go directly to their superior, without deductions. It took long and expensive litigations to clear up situations of this kind in Missouri, New Mexico and Kentucky. There are still numerous “trouble spots” all around the country. Last year in Indiana, for example, more than $2 million in tax funds went to “public schools” that were in effect parochial schools of the Roman Church. There are 152 garbed nuns teaching in the public schools of Kansas with their salaries going to their church.

A Major Decision

In simple justice it must be said that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is now within sight of its goal. Success has come even faster than its leaders dreamed. Many activities of this church are already receiving tax support. Hospitals, schools, orphanages and other “welfare programs” are in this category. Other activities receive sizable grants from community chests. The measure of this support is being constantly increased. The time is in sight when all the so-called “social service” activities of the Roman Church will be supported by tax funds collected by compulsion from citizens of all faiths.

The Protestants, if they are realistic, will see but two alternatives before them. One, they must accept the principle of government subsidies to churches—that is, the principle of plural establishment—and get into the scramble to get all they can for their own denomination. Or, two, they must stop kidding themselves with the false tolerance that plays into Rome’s hands, and battle to hold the line for Church-State separation.

The first of these alternatives—plural establishment—would have definite advantages over the “don’t look now” policy being presently followed by the Protestants. If the Protestants were to go all-out for government subsidies, they would probably be able to rectify the absurd inequities of the Hill-Burton grants. They must recognize, however, that in changing from the principle of voluntarism to the principle of official compulsion, they are taking a drastic step, which will have the most far-reaching consequences. Also, and this is a more practical matter, they are moving into competition with old hands at this business of obtaining political favors. It is a kind of competition that, because of their own predilections, the Protestants stand to lose.

Westerly, Rhode Island, is a tiny community that offers a good sample of the sort of thing we might expect under plural establishment. The Roman Catholics of Westerly, having developed their own schools to the point where certain public school buildings were no longer needed, proceeded to take them over for their own use. The town council voted them to the Roman Church at a purchase price of $1. The Methodists of Westerly were resentful as they saw these valuable properties falling to the Roman Catholics, one by one. They decided to get one for themselves. After working some wheels within wheels and getting help from Catholic citizens who believed in “fair play”—they were able to get one of the buildings for $1. Since their success, however, there has been a rash of such giveaways in Rhode Island. The recipient has been, in every instance, the Roman Catholic Church. Now that the principle has been accepted and “the Methodists are doing it too,” there is no restraint.

The worst feature of plural establishment, however, would be the extremity of its pluralism. Our culture would be hopelessly enclaved as 250 religious establishments or more threw themselves into the wild scramble for tax funds. The principal beneficiary would be the church that is prepared for an operation of this kind, a church that has, in fact, lived on state subsidies for many centuries.

The Alternative

The alternative is clear. Protestants must face this challenge frankly at the political level. As the Roman Church moves toward state financing and toward those favors which are the precursor of establishment, Protestants must stand in resolute opposition. They must do this in good humor and brotherliness, but with unbending firmness. The Roman Catholic propaganda that softens the nation for official favors must be dispassionately exposed. Protestants must recognize that they are not promoting secularism when they insist that the Roman Catholic Church shall raise its funds the way other churches do, or when they insist that there shall be no official favors or preferments for any church.

Roman Catholicism in the United States has come a long way in a century and a half. At first, as a feeble minority it accepted Church-State separation. The principle seemed best in the circumstances. Now, as a powerful minority—united in the midst of a divided majority—it calls for the end of Church-State separation. It intimidates Congress, censors and silences opposition, collects vast sums from the public treasury and drives toward official recognition and establishment. If the Protestants do not unite in determined opposition to this drive, another decade will see the end of Church-State separation here. We shall have, to all practical effect, a religious establishment in a country whose Constitution forbids it. That establishment will be pluralistic—or otherwise.

After attending Asbury College and Duke and Yale universities, the Rev. C. Stanley Lowell invested a year with the Methodist temperance movement and then accepted assignments to Methodist parishes for 20 years. Since April, 1956, he has devoted full time to Protestants and Other Americans United, an organization corrective of sectarian encroachments on the American policy of separation of Church and State.

Cover Story

Evangelism in Scotland

Tom Allan

In Scotland today, as in every other country in the world, there is a completely new sense of urgency about our evangelistic responsibility.

The word “evangelism” has undergone a dramatic transformation in the past quarter century in our religious vocabulary. Twenty-five years ago evangelism was regarded as an activity on the sidelines of the Church’s life. Evangelism was regarded, by and large, as a sphere for the specialist, not a concern of the whole Church. Evangelism was not thought of as integral to the Church’s existence.

Evangelism Is Lifeblood

Today that situation has been completely transformed. Perhaps the most significant thing in the life of the Church in Scotland is the growing awareness that evangelism is in no sense simply a sectarian concern, but that it is, on the contrary, absolutely inherent within the life of the Church itself. We are beginning to recognize in Scotland that evangelism is the life blood of the Church.

The Church exists in the world for two purposes. One is to be the bride of Christ. The Church is the household and family of God, the beloved community that God bought with the blood of His Son, the bride of Christ. As the bride of Christ the Church exists to offer worship to God, to glorify God, to love Him who first loved us. This is its primary function, and ought to be its major concern: so to worship God that He is truly in the midst of His community.

But the Church is also the body of Christ. In Scotland, we are beginning to recognize more and more the Church as “the body of Christ.” The Church is the instrument that God Himself has appointed to carry forward the saving work of Christ in the world. As this body of mine is the instrument of my intention and my desire, so the Church, according to the New Testament, is only the Church when it is acting as the agent and the instrument of the intention of Jesus. And where the Church is not concerned with missions it has ceased to be the Church.

Some people in Scotland—and I am sure there are some also in the United States—still do not believe in evangelism. Some people in the very heart and center of the Church’s institutional life in Scotland look blithely on our evangelistic concern.

A missionary home on furlough forty years ago was spending the night with Principal James Denney, one of our great Scottish theologians. The missionary arrived, filled with despair, after a meeting in a church. Denney asked him what was wrong. The man said, “Well, I met so many people in the church who don’t believe in missions.” Denney’s reply was succinct and memorable. He said, “These people have no right to believe in missions; they don’t believe in Christ.”

What is the situation to which the Scottish Church addresses itself in its evangelism? When Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr came to give the Gifford Lectures in 1947, he said that the United States was the most church-minded nation in the world with the single exception of Scotland. I think that is true. In Scotland the total communicant membership of all the churches in our national census in 1950 emerged as 58 per cent of the average population, and that included, of course, the Roman Catholic Church. I understand that the figure in America is 60 percent. No other nations in the world have such a high percentage of communicant members as Scotland and the United States.

But I believe that figure means very little, at least in Scotland. In fact, it can be misleading, in that it induces in us who are ministers the complacent thought that our task is at least half done.

Statistics For Scotland

A census was taken recently of church attendance in Glasgow. It showed that less than 20 per cent of the people go to church on a Sunday; and Glasgow is perhaps the best churchgoing community in Scotland.

Perhaps 35 per cent of the total population attend church on such special occasions as a national day of prayer, for baptism or for the sacrament.

But the real issue confronting the Church in Scotland in its evangelism cannot be assessed statistically. It is that for vast numbers of the people in Scotland, in every section of the community, among the intellectuals, among the agricultural laborers, among the workers in the shipyards, the Church might as well not be there. There’s no hostility, there’s no antipathy, there’s no vociferous opposition, but in Scotland today the institutional church is largely irrelevant for vast sections of our community. And that is the situation in which our evangelistic task is set.

Three-Pronged Effort

Now how is the Scottish Church dealing with this situation?

Following the war, evangelistic activity in Scotland followed three main lines.

The first line of experiment was the special mission, organized outside the local parish, and extending over a limited period. Perhaps the outstanding example of this kind of mission was the Glasgow Churches Campaign of 1950. Three hundred ministers from various churches in Scotland and England, and indeed from Ireland and Wales as well, came into Glasgow for three weeks. During that period we preached at the street corners, we showed films in the streets, we went into pubs, dance halls, cinemas, theaters, football stadiums. We preached the Gospel wherever we could. This “commando” type of campaign was carried into factories and shipyards, seeking to establish a bridgehead between the Church and the world.

Second was the approach to such special groups as workers in industry, through industrial chaplaincies and the emergence of movements like the Scottish Christian Industrial Order, which set up cells of workers within factories and workshops and shipyards to witness to the faith in daily occupation.

Third, an evangelistic approach was made through the parish. This began, probably about 1935, when Dr. George McLeod initiated an experiment in his working-class parish. He sent out volunteers, two by two, from his congregation to visit every home in the community. That missionary experiment through the parish, recognizing the congregation itself as the agent of mission, remained in the years following the war the most widespread form of evangelism in the Scottish Church.

It is significant that during all these years from 1946 until 1952, when the Church in Scotland was trying by all these methods to come to terms with its missionary responsibility, there was not one single major campaign of mass evangelism. In my book, The Face of My Parish, I committed myself in writing to this conviction held in common by most of us in the Scottish Church who were really concerned about our mission, that the day of the mass meeting was over. Five years ago I believed that within the whole strategy of modern evangelism there was no place at all for mass evangelism, for the big meeting with the appeal for decision. All our evangelistic experiments in those years following the war completely excluded mass evangelism as an authentic and a valid method.

In 1952 it seemed time to launch a national movement of mission, a movement to give coordination and homogeneity to the efforts taking place all over the country. In the perfect setting of a small country such a movement might press the gospel claim in every section of the community at a national level.

“Tell Scotland” Mission

And so the “Tell Scotland” movement was born. That movement represents all the historic denominations of the Scottish Church—the Church of Scotland, the Baptist, the Methodist, the Congregationalist the United Free, the Episcopal Church in Scotland and the Churches of Christ.

The movement is based on three convictions. First, we believe that effective evangelism is not an occasional or sporadic activity, but a continuing engagement with the world at every level. The effective mission is not something that takes place for a fortnight or three weeks as a special effort, but ought to be going on all the time as the continuous, constant, compulsory daily task of the Christian community.

The second principle is that the agent or instrument of effective evangelism is the Church itself, constantly witnessing to the presence of its Risen Lord and constantly seeking to represent Him in terms of the whole of life.

The third principle is that the place of the layman is decisive. I use the word “layman” because there is no other word to use. If the Gospel is to be communicated to the world, it can only be communicated where the world and the Gospel come together, at that part of the front where Christ and the world meet. Where is that? It is in the life of the layman, witnessing to his faith in his daily vocation and in his leisure time.

Planned In Three Phases

The movement was planned in three phases.

The first year, September, 1953, to June, 1954, was a year of preparation. In it we sought to alert the church to its responsibility and to encourage discussion of the evangelistic theme among responsible laity throughout the whole Church.

The second phase, from September, 1954, until June, 1955, we called recruiting the laity. This was directed toward recruiting the lay forces of the Scottish Church. The movement was to express itself through the witness of small groups of lay people in their own congregations, witnessing to their faith in the local situation.

Anxieties Over Graham

Into that situation Dr. Billy Graham came to Scotland, in the year of recruitment. When it was suggested that Dr. Graham might come to Scotland there was much hesitation. There were reservations about certain aspects of Dr. Graham’s theology in many sections of the Scottish church. Primarily, there was an honest concern lest the Crusade, with its inevitable appeal to the national press and with its spectacular appeal to the whole nation, would irrevocably damage the central point of the “Tell Scotland” movement, which is the quiet, unspectacular and yet crucial preparation of each congregation for its own mission. There was much discussion.

After much talk and a great deal of prayer, the steering panel unanimously sent the invitation to Dr. Graham to conduct his Glasgow Crusade.

Since The Reformation

It was my privilege to act as chairman of the Executive Committee of that crusade in Glasgow. Five years ago I did not believe that mass evangelism was relevant within the context of modern missions. Twelve months after the crusade, after the closest study of the situation in Scotland and after the closest possible intimacy with Dr. Graham and his work while he was in Glasgow, it is my own absolute conviction that perhaps nothing has made a deeper mark on the religious and secular life of the Scottish nation since the Reformation than Dr. Graham’s crusade last year.

The thrilling story of that crusade includes the thousands of people who came night by night and twenty-five thousand people who during that time found new life in Christ or found reconsecration.

The crusade came in the second phase of “Tell Scotland,” and we were very worried about its coming. We were seeking to recruit the lay forces of the church for the unspectacular, quiet, humble witness of the laymen within their own situation, and we wondered how the crusade would affect us.

Results Of The Crusade

The crusade did these things for Scotland: First, it reminded us of the true aim of evangelism, by confronting us with that perpetual mystery of the power of God in Christ to change and transform a man’s life. Second, it reaffirmed the central message of evangelism, the unchanging good news that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Third, it underlined the essential conditions of evangelism, faithful and expectant prayer and the unity of God’s people. Fourth, it reasserted a powerful method of evangelism, the mass meeting with the simple proclamation of the Word of God.

What happened as a result of the crusade? I know a congregation whose minister had tried for five years to get a group of lay people in his church to undertake the work of the “Tell Scotland” Movement in his own parish. He preached about it; he appealed to his people to come for prayer, for Bible study, for witness in their own situation. He couldn’t even get the session in the congregation to move. We were in the second phase of “Tell Scotland,” to recruit the lay people, but he couldn’t recruit his own members, and I know scores of ministers in Scotland who were in precisely that situation. Men were committed heart and soul to “Tell Scotland,” but couldn’t find the response from the pew that is essential if we’re going to bridge the gap between the church and the world.

On The Last Sunday

The last Sunday of the crusade, this minister asked those in his congregation who had been deeply moved and challenged by the crusade—and this was unprecedented in this church—to rise in their places. In that select, exclusive, west-end church, a hundred men and women stood up. “Now,” he said, “I want you people to join me in becoming the agents of mission in this parish. If you are prepared, go home and write me a post card and tell me that you will be here Wednesday night to begin with me to study our responsibility in the world.” By Tuesday he had seventy-eight post cards. Today in that church there is a dynamic group of lay people who are translating the faith into practice in their own parish.

Mission Of Visitation

And so we have reached the third phase of “Tell Scotland,” the outgoing, the outreach of these lay groups throughout the country. During the last winter, 800 missions of visitation were in process throughout the whole of Scotland. I personally have knowledge of some 900 lay groups that are meeting week by week with their minister for prayer, for Bible study and to prepare and equip themselves for the work of witness in their own parishes. We are seeking thus to Tell Scotland, and our prayer, as it was the prayer of John Knox is, “Lord, give me Scotland, or I die.”

Field organizer of the “Tell Scotland” Movement from 1953–55, Tom Allan was executive chairman of the Billy Graham All-Scotland Crusade in 1955. Since September, 1955, he has been minister of St. George’s-Tron Parish Church, Glasgow. He holds the M.A. degree from Glasgow University, where in 1946 he also completed divinity studies interrupted to serve with the intelligence branch of the R.A.F. under General Eisenhower in France and Germany.

Theology

Judgment on the Christian West

Charles W. Lowry

In the year of grace and also of infamy, 1956, it is difficult to write in measured terms and with analytical judgment. The words, above all others, that every American needs to hear, are set forth in several verses from Jeremiah 8. From the President down to the mechanic in overalls and the high school boy, we need to meditate on this strange and accusing declaration of the reality of iniquity, of divine displeasure and of shattering judgment.

I harkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? every one turned to his own course, as the horse rusheth into the battle.

Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times, and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but may people know not the judgment of the Lord.…

The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them.…

For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

In a special sense, I believe, these somber and accusing words are addressed also to Christians and the Christian church.

Rejection Of Neutralism

Here I am thinking not only of American prelates and Christian intellectuals, some of whom long ago half-baptized Communism by saying it was a Christian heresy; and of all too complacent middle-class churchmen, who from Sunday to Sunday sit in comfortable seats in richly appointed edifices of worship. I am thinking, also of a leader like Professor Karl Barth and his disciple Pastor Martin Niemoller, who between them have called on Christians to repudiate American and anti-Communist foreign policy and to be neutral in the East-West struggle.

The Hungarian people have declined neutralism. With startling unanimity—reliable estimates say 99 per cent were behind the revolt—they rose against the stooges of the Kremlin in their midst and they did not flinch when Soviet discipline and steel and firepower were concentrated against them.

What did the West do? Britain, France and Israel seized the chance to assault Egypt. The United States was in the midst of a presidential election in which—as in 1916 and in 1940—peace was so much the leading issue that Adlai Stevenson, with the aid of men normally as realistic as Clinton Anderson and Stuart Symington, had gone to the most extreme lengths to try to seize the other handle of the peace stick. We acted with creditable decisiveness on the Middle Eastern crisis, thanks to the coolness of President Eisenhower and in considerable measure to the readiness of the United Nations as a whole to take a stand. On Hungary, where world unanimity was lacking, we pushed through a resolution or so in the United Nations, so far without effect, and earnestly embarked upon laudable plans for relief and for receiving refugees.

Nothing But Words

What is the position of the Christian American? It has been stated categorically, but I believe justly, by Manes Sperber, speaking not for the Christian specifically but for the West. Writing in the New Leader, he says:

A stony silence was the West’s only response to the revolutionaries perishing in the battle for Hungary.… Having come to the aid of the Hungarian people with nothing but words, the West now does not have even the right to weep.

Sperber is right; we have lost the right even to weep. The last rags of righteousness are stripped from our souls, and we stand naked and shivering in the Wind and in the lightning and thunder of the just judgment of Almighty God.

Perhaps, however, not so much to say anything pious or wise, but in order not to keep silent, as St. Augustine once said in a very different context, we can meditate on the extraordinary predicament in which Christendom is and in which Christians are. Perhaps it is not being presumptuous to do this, if we realize that Christianity has a special responsibility for Communism. In a sense the latter is the Christian West’s unintended, but definite and fantastic, gift to the world.

Predicament Of Christendom

What are the hard facts? First, communism arose in the West, specifically in Germany and Great Britain with a considerable French infusion. Second, Karl Marx, the Moses of Communism as Engels was the Aristotle, was a baptized Christian and an Evangelical at that—which in Europe means a Lutheran. We Christians commonly speak of Marx as a Jew, and in favor of this is the fact that he was very Jewish in his mind and soul.

A third fact is that the materials which went into composing communism as a system were drawn from Western philosophy, scientific progress, industrialism and social conditions in the nineteenth century. A fourth fact is the astonishing assimilation in Communism as a doctrinal and mythological system to the Bible and Christianity. This can be shown by a doctrine-to-doctrine comparison, such as is worked out in my book Communism and Christ. It must, however, be stressed that this is an example of unconscious thinking.

It is a result certainly unintended by Marx who was passionately sincere, subjectively, in his conviction that religion is the opiate of the people, the dope administered by beneficiaries of capitalism, and the leading obstacle to social and historical progress.

Communism is as far as ancient Gnosticism from being in the normal sense of the phrase a Christian heresy. It is rather an opposed and a competing system, controlled by diametrically antagonistic premises; and it is in a very nearly exact sense the expression in twentieth-century terms of the spirit of Antichrist. It seeks deliberately, strategically, uncompromisingly and with fierce, inhuman hostility to extirpate the influence, teaching and name of Jesus Christ.

The confusion, division, rationalization and compromise of Christians in relation to this issue are surely a marvel of the present age which future historians will find scarcely credible.

The fifth and final fact to be noted is that Communism as a creed and a universal salvation system has been exported from West to East, thus reversing a religious trend of thousands of years.

The Demonic In History

So much for what is. If, next, we ask why this is, the answer is very difficult and can be either brief and summary, or very long drawn out and complicated, with every facet of modern history brought into the story. We must give the short answer.

The Bible teaches us that there is a great mystery about faith. Indeed, the apostle Paul says that the short and simple truth about living Christian faith is that it is God’s gift. This applies in principle, also, to every powerful expression of faith and to the primacy of the will to believe in human existence.

From this standpoint there is no rational explanation of the faith of Marxism-Leninism, aptly named for two of the great believers of history. Reason can list and link together many important conditioning factors and circumstances, but the final explanation must be assigned to the mysteries of human freedom, the power of the demonic and the satanic in history, and divine providence and judgment.

The Judgment Of God

Particularly important is the last named explanatory factor, divine providence and judgment. The biblical and Christian view of history is that God is everlastingly at work in His world both as Creator-Lover and as Judge. While we may well shrink from facing and accepting the relation—for “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”—there can be no doubt that God is related in a most important way to the astounding, total phenomenon of Communism.

Communism, also stripped at this moment of its last hypocritical pretension and standing naked in all its hideous, inner ugliness, represents the fearful divine verdict on Christian and Western civilization: “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.” That is, Communism denotes both in its curious origin and in its extraordinary expansion the existence of a grave sickness in Western culture. This sickness is primarily of the soul and therefore concerns most intimately the Christian Church.

The heart, literally, of a civilization is the values which are generally accepted by its people and which are the cardinal motives of life in its manifold phases. Communism stabs us awake because its values are explicit and are in violent, deliberate contrast with those the West has received and taken for granted. What we generally fail to realize is that Communism could not have arisen and certainly could not have advanced so spectacularly without a preparatory loss of faith in transcendent reality and a secularization and materialization of values.

What of us in the United States? To some extent we have missed or at least blunted the secularization that has swamped Europe, including Great Britain. There are widespread indications of religious revival in our country as a whole and there are our fantastic church statistics. According to Dr. Will Herberg, more than 95 per cent of all Americans actually identify themselves religiously.

Liberty More Than Life

Yet soon after the merciless rape of Hungary by the Soviets, I heard a former Soviet Colonel of Intelligence “Meet the Press” of America. The half hour in which this took place was one of the most uncomfortable I have ever spent. Four top news correspondents set out to obtain for the American TV audience a story from the Colonel who had repudiated communism and “the inhuman communist system.” They never got much of a story, for their minds and that of their guest never met. They felt the Hungarian revolt was a failure. They wanted the Colonel to comment on the harsh dilemma of the captive peoples. He never conceded failure even in the slightest degree and he really never accepted a question those crack inquisitors gave him. Each time he would tilt or transpose the question so as to bring it over into a different dimension of existence.

The devastating climax of the interview came when the young ex-Soviet Colonel so very mildly said that it seemed to him that our main purpose in America was to stay alive. For the people of East Europe, on the contrary, this was not the situation. For them existence under the communist system had become intolerable and liberty mattered more than life.

Behind this attractive, apparently baffling young Russian I seemed to see and hear distant figures like Patrick Henry, Sam Adams and our first Congressmen who adopted on July 4, 1776, a ringing declaration of defiance even against death. But I could not see that this got through to the American reporters. They seemed to be fixated in another, flatter dimension, the dimension of peace, prosperity, and “don’t topple the applecart” in which most of us seem to be living.

The Inner Meaning

“Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.” Is this indeed the inner meaning of Communism in relation to the Christian West?

On this question Christian Americans must think and think furiously. Communist tyranny is crumbling, though no man can say what streets of desolation and rivers of young blood must still be added to the holocaust of Budapest. Milovan Djilas, former close friend of Tito and Vice President of Yugoslavia, says that the uprising of the Hungarian people is comparable in significance to the French and the Russian revolutions. It means that the whole Communist system is on the way out. For this confession Tito jailed him.

Where will we be in that day? Possibly just where we are—comfortable, fabulously prosperous, obsessed with the desire for peace at any price, finding it incredible that men and women, boys and girls could fling their lives away with calculated abandon.

“Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” These words still determine the ultimate course of this world, and in our age of anxiety and storm, the purposes of the Kingdom “not of this world” are strangely fulfilled.

Charles Wesley Lowry, born in 1905 in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), holds a B.D. degree from Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, and a Ph.D. from Oxford. From 1934 to 1943 he served as Professor of Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, and from 1943 to 1953 as Rector of All Saints’ Church, Chevy Chase, Md. Since 1953 he has concentrated his energies in the field of religion and public affairs. He is Chairman, with Dr. Edward L. R. Elson as Co-Chairman, of the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order.

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: The Epistle of James

Alexander Ross

The range of thought in this epistle of James, some have said, is so limited that we are kept on rather a pedestrian level. Even if that were a strictly accurate estimate of the Epistle, let us remember that our flight to the heights from which far-reaching vistas of truth open out before us is a preparation for returning to the ordinary walk of life on its more prosaic levels. The supreme test of the quality of our religion is how we react to the long monotonous trudge on hard and stony roads, and not in the moments of ecstatic communion or in moments of specially strenuous activity (Isa. 40:31). We ought to be grateful to find in the Canon of Holy Scripture a book as severely practical as this Epistle, a book that contains words as sharp and uncompromising as these: “Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves” (1:22); “you believe that God is one, and you are quite right; evil spirits also believe, and shudder” (2:19, Weymouth).

The great Christian scholar, Origen of Alexandria (circa ca. A.D. 230), is the first Church writer who explicitly quotes this Epistle as Scripture, ascribing it to James, the Lord’s brother. In the Shepherd of Hermas, written about the middle of the second century, we hear fairly clear echoes of the teaching of the Epistle. In an earlier writing, the Epistle of Clement of Rome, written about the year 96, the echoes are much fainter; indeed, the evidence supplied by this writing is of doubtful validity. But, if the external evidence for the Epistle should appear to be rather vague and inconclusive, there seems to be no doubt about the evidence supplied by the Epistle itself. It enables us to reach some conclusions with regard to the authorship that seem to be irrefutable.

Authorship Of James

The writer was a Jew. He speaks of Abraham as “our father” (2:21), he applies to a Christian place of worship the word “synagogue” (2:2), he uses the Jewish word “Gehenna” in 3:6 and a specifically Jewish name for God in 5:4. He was a Jew of Palestine, knowing well its early and latter rains (5:7; cf. Deut. 11:14) and its hot burning wind that withers he grass (1:11). The name of this Jew was James, and the only one of that name mentioned in the New Testament whose claims call for any scrutiny here is James, the Lord’s brother. The disciple of Jesus, James the son of Alphaeus, seems to have been an obscure and undistinguished person; and James, the son of Zebedee, died early as a martyr, in the year 44 (Acts 12).

There are three interesting lines of argument in connection with the internal evidence that students might profitably explore. In my commentary on James in the New International Commentary (published in 1954) I have explored them with a fair degree of fullness. Here I simply mention them.

1. In the vocabulary of the Epistle there are some coincidences of language with the vocabulary of the speech of James at the Jerusalem Council of the year 50 and the letter issued by that Council (Acts 15). There are also two coincidences of language between the vocabulary of the Epistle and some of the words of James recorded in Acts 21:24 and 26. 2. The Epistle is the work of just that type of mind which is typical of James in the New Testament and in Church tradition. 3. The Epistle contains more reminiscences of the teaching of Jesus, and especially of the Sermon on the Mount, than all the other apostolic writings put together. The writer is not quoting from our Gospels; he must have stood very close to Jesus, to be able to reproduce so much of His teaching in a way that is strikingly independent.

If these three features of the Epistle are studied carefully and judicially, they will be seen to provide strong evidence that points in the direction of James, the Lord’s brother, as the author. The evidence is cumulative in both force and volume. This James is the only James in the early Church who was so well known that the simple designation, “James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ” was sufficient to identify him at once to his readers. The Epistle has nothing whatever to say about the controversy that led to the holding of the Jerusalem Council of the year 50, the controversy about the place of Gentiles in the Church. Some have argued that this shows that it was written long after that Council, when that controversy had fallen into the category of “old unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago.” A far more reasonable theory, and one to which the majority of scholars adhere, is that it was written before the Council. Various hints here and there in the Epistle also point to an early date. Even so radical a scholar as Dr. A. T. Cadoux, in his little book on The Thought of St. James (published in 1944) advocates the early date, mentioning such arguments in support of it as the simplicity of the greeting, the use of “synagogue” for a Christian place of worship and the reference to “elders” only as officials of the Church (5:14).

Alleged Weaknesses

Some have looked with suspicion on the Epistle because of what they have described as its lack of theological teaching. We can, however, find a good deal of what has been called “compressed theology,” in such phrases as “Of His own will He brought us forth” (1:18), “the implanted Word” (1:21), “heirs of the Kingdom” (2:5) and the like. A remarkable feature of the Epistle that deserves careful study is the witness that it bears unobtrusively, at more than one point, to the Deity of Christ. In its very first words James stands as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is one with God. Jesus is the Judge who stands before the door (5:9), and His Name is the resource of the Christian in sickness and sin (5:13–15). As Bengel, Warfield, J. B. Mayor and even so advanced a scholar as James Moffatt have held, in the first verse of the second chapter Jesus is referred to as “our Lord Jesus Christ, the Glory.” As Moffatt says, the Christian religion is there described as belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the divine Glory, which is a striking term for Christ as the full manifestation of the divine presence and majesty. Severely practical the Epistle may be, but, as I have said in my commentary, the practical exhortations “have their roots in deeper things, in the vital truths of Christian theology, though these roots, as is natural, are, to a large extent, hidden from the eye.”

Others have criticized this Epistle because of what they regard as its lack of evangelical fervor. Luther had doubts about it because he thought that it contradicted the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. This is a very serious misunderstanding. The plain truth is that Paul and James deal with entirely different subjects. Paul in his teaching on justification is combating Jewish legalism; James is making his protest in the interests of morality, against Antinomianism. We may put it like this: they are not antagonists facing each other with crossed swords; they stand back to back, confronting different foes of the Gospel.

Dr. John Duncan of the New College, Edinburgh, once said that Antinomianism is the only heresy. That may be going too far, but it most certainly is a foul and pestilential heresy. There are some ardent evanglicals who need to have their souls strengthened and braced up by the searching, ethical teaching of an Epistle like this.

Addressed To Dispersion

James, revealed in the Book of Acts as a person of commanding power and influence in the Jerusalem Church, writes here to some Christian Jews of the Dispersion (1:1). They had experienced the miracle of regeneration (1:18). James speaks of the worthy Name which had been invoked upon them in baptism (2:7). He exhorts them to wait in patience for the coming of the Lord (5:7), looking for the crown promised to those who love Him (1:12). The Book of Acts describes a migration of Christian Jews from Jerusalem, which followed the death of Stephen (Acts 11:19). Thus, there could quite easily have been Christian Jews of the Dispersion to whom, at an early date, this letter was written.

Analysis

It has been said that James seems “to have poured out what was uppermost in his thoughts, or closest to his heart, without waiting to connect his matter, or to throw bridges across from subject to subject.” This tentative analysis may be suggested: (1) greeting (1:1), (2) trials from without (1:1–12), (3) trials from within (1:13–18), (4) hearing and doing (1:19–27), (5) respect of persons (2:1–13), (6) relation of faith and works (2:14), (7) sins of the tongue (3:1–12), (8) the false and the true wisdom (3:13–18), (9) mischief caused by strife and evil speaking (4:1–12), (10) the uncertainty and brevity of human life, leading us to humble dependence on the will of God (4:13–17), (11) the terrible doom that the rich oppressors of the Church are to meet (5:1–6), (12) final exhortation to the Church to stand firm and to be forebearing in view of the coming of the Lord (5:7–12), (13) various activities of the Church—prayer, praise, visitation of the sick, confession of sins, and the restoration of backsliders (5:13–20).

Tools For Exposition

It will be difficult to find a better Commentary than the one by that prince of biblical exegetes, Dr. Alfred Plummer, which was issued as one of the Expositor’s Bible series. For close study of the Greek text, a study so minute as sometimes to be in danger of becoming wearisome, those who know Greek will be well advised to have beside them, if at all possible, J. B. Mayor’s Commentary (Macmillan). J. B. Hort’s notes extend only as far as 4:7; they exhibit so often the keen exegetical insight of that great Anglican scholar that we profoundly regret that he was unable to complete his work. Help can be obtained from Ropes’ Commentary (I.C.C.), Moffatt (Moffatt Commentary), Arthur Carr’s little textbook (Cambridge Greek Testament), and, of course, from John Calvin.

Is Modernity Worth Sparing?

The question so little raised, but so pressingly urgent, is whether Western culture is any longer worth sparing? After all, if salvation (the term is theological) is ethical, by what right do men expect a halo permanently to hallow their pagan ways? Today not sin, but rather Christianity is subterranean. The basic Christian dogmas are marginal to the prevailing outlook on life. The ideas by which men shape their social life have become warped and individualized. Art and literature are no longer simply Christian-pagan, but pagan-Christian; the humanistic motif has triumphed and reaches even into the churches. When has paganism dared, as in our decade, to incorporate even Jesus as one of its fleshly themes? When has the music and song of the churches, historically centered in the Psalms, erected so wide a bridge to the world, so that the world itself replies in kind, although carnally, blending the spiritual motif and rock-and-roll with scant sense of incongruity and attracting to religion many who do not take it seriously? Our streets are crammed with pagans, and not even the revival of religion—and an indubitable awakening there is among many sincere Christians—can hide from view this conformity of religion to paganism. Indeed, more worldly-wise adults in the Americas are said to consult newspaper horoscopes than consult the Bible for light on the day’s decision.

Each passing decade now finds the inhabited world in a state of instability and shock worse than the preceding period. Every sweep of the horizon discloses widening crevices. The soulless nations remain as bleak signposts after the landslide of Western civilization into abysmal pagan depths. In civilized Europe in 1945 and 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, more people succumbed to cold and starvation than for many preceding generations or centuries; millions of refugees from bombed cities or hostile governments begged for asylum; fully a third of the people in France and Italy voted for Communist party candidates; the homeless survivors of oppressed continental Jewry fled to Palestine for refuge, while a million Arabs were dispossessed in that dissension-wracked land. The ascendancy of the white race seems nearer its eclipse.

Indeed, the future of human history itself lies in doubt. Henry Steele Commager, in The American Mind (1950), points to the unparalleled “breakdown of personal integrity … looting and destructiveness, … sexual promiscuity” discovered in the second American war, and remarks that the two world wars failed to induce in the American “either a sense of sin or that awareness of evil almost instinctive with most old world peoples … but accentuated his own assurance of power and success. His culture was still predominantly material, his thinking quantitative …” (pp. 432, 410). The old landmarks of Christian culture are vanishing, and some “prophets” are left with no more basis for optimism about the future than a confidence that man is a “tough animal.” National fatigue is spreading, and despair increasingly clouds the face of the man in the street.

The world is less one world than ever, except in its sins. It has less homogeneity; beyond a common veneration of science, a common dread of the atomic bomb, the great unanimities slip away. The Kremlin, depending on the Marx-Lenin philosophy, regards a clash with the Western powers as inevitable. Europe, the home of modern Western civilization, is caught in the tug of war between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. The United Nations itself is frustrated by a lack of unity; any great power bent on war can exercise its veto power, and even small powers have already spurned U.N. verdicts.

The real question before us is not whether Europe and America will be cut to the Soviet pattern, or Russia to the Anglo-Saxon; rather, it is whether the whole world in our day will go down in nihilism. We are face to face not merely with one of the great divides of history, but with the divide of divides in the sphere of human decision.

When C. Virgil Gheorghiu penned The Twenty-fifth Hour, a best-selling French novel, he applied that title deliberately to “The hour when mankind is beyond salvation—when it is too late even for the coming of the Messiah. It is not the last hour, it is one hour past the last hour. It is Western Civilization at this very moment. It is NOW.” Although Arnold Toynbee might write (A Study of History, p. 554), “We may and must pray that a reprieve which God has granted to our society once will not be refused if we ask for it again in a humble spirit and in a contrite heart” (a stupendous if, indeed). Gheorghiu speaks of Western civilization as already being superseded. Only while we can be sure that a man and a culture have not drifted past redemption’s point does any semblance of hope remain. In any event, we are far down the road to final destruction and doom. Our culture is afflicted with moral paralysis, and may never learn to walk again. At least, hope is fast running out that it can recover from its crippling deformities.

Only skilled pilots can maneuver the ship of Western culture any longer through the twilight of midcentury chaos toward even the hope of a sunny dawn. No other post-Christian generation has stood as desperately as ours in need of expert navigational advice. Sprawling mudflats and sloughs extend treacherously on every side, and the sea of life is encumbered with obstacles that faith alone can move.

Indeed, a deeper problem vexes us today: how long before a people set adrift lose their capacity for taking compass bearings? What are the limits of heaven’s tolerance? When does collective shame reach a depth from which there is no route back? When is the cup of iniquity in a given culture full to overflowing? When is “civilization” divinely outlawed, and faced with a death penalty? Dare we any longer look for the spiritual reconstruction of a culture that stinks already? Has it, like Lazarus, perchance already been dead four days, and the Lord refuses now to come near its grave?

The Christian concern to “rescue” the Christian-pagan culture of the West is remarkably strange. Whatever bears the impress “pagan” is marked for judgment, as the early Christians well knew. The apostolic community was aware that “this present evil world” is near death, that the forces of Satan almost everywhere intrude into its life, that in this world of wars and rumors of wars there is no unending peace. They made no goal of rescuing a pagan culture; nor would they have ventured to perpetuate a pagan-Christian, or a Christian-pagan, culture. What God sends to its death in judgment neither prophet nor apostle can resurrect. And the pagan spirit is doomed, no less in A.D. 1956 than in A.D. 1. Indeed, only a Christian-pagan conception of the Church’s task can be committed absolutely to the goal of cultural rescue—for this implies a primarily social conception of the Gospel and a highly optimistic view of society and history as well.

To some, it may seem a needless concession to pessimism to speak of modern culture as headed for doom and as outside the pale of redemption. But to those familiar with the New Testament this perspective cannot but appear realistic. The lively sense of historical end-time produced in the early Christians a quite different expectation from that among most modern Christians, many theologians included, who think the possible extermination of a pagan-Christian civilization on this fair planet an intolerable and insufferable presumption. That is why, to this Christian-pagan way of thinking, committed at all odds to the survival of a Christian-pagan culture, the blessing of the Church is conferred upon Christian-pagan strategy: the United Nations becomes the only real hope for peace, the integration of the races takes priority over the regeneration of the race, and so forth. The church of the hyphen, of the Christian-pagan disposition, made room even in its divinity schools for professors hostile to all supernaturalism, who promoted the organization of the Church while yet they were enemies of the evangel, propagating instead (as the essence of Christianity) the mirage of the social gospel. The twentieth-century church yielded to Communism, with its radical atheism, a role of challenge against the Christian-pagan patterns of our day more dynamic than the Christian-pagan forces themselves retained. Communism ranged against a pagan-Christian culture, in the interest of paganism, displays more zeal than those segments of the Christian camp whose main interest is the perpetuation of a Christian-pagan order. Both have lost the vision of Augustine’s The City of God; one is still enamored of Plato’s Republic, while the other is committed to the Manifesto of Marx and Engels.

For the early Christians, the only hope for the whole world lay in the appearance within it of what Professor F. Van Der Meer refers to as “a new category of men … ‘christanoi’ or ‘christians’ ” (in Atlas of Western Civilization, p. 36). The advancing Christian witness added a new dimension to human personality, one that the Bible depicts in the idiom of regeneration, justification and sanctification. Redemption through Christ altered man’s sensibilities in every sphere of life. The early Christians were not committed, therefore, to the perpetuation of Graeco-Roman culture. They preserved what was compatible with their faith, but they were not primarily concerned with the fate of a civilization which, however religious, was not built on foundations of genuine spirituality. They knew that only supernatural regeneration produces men and women of indomitable faith, unshakable peace, superb morals and neighbor-love. They knew because they had participated in the life of the old culture before their walk with Christ. They did not regard it as a Christian responsibility to aid a dying culture in exploring non-Christian or pagan-Christian avenues of survival. They had a Gospel to preach, and they preached it as to dying men and doomed nations.

The great frontiers before us all now are either nihilism or repentance and faith, for the present soul fatigue must lead, if not to spiritual renewal, then to disillusion and destruction. Once a world was dying in its sins, and Christianity seized the initiative. The safe era of the pax romana served as a framework for the propagation of the Gospel within the empire, and later the Christian witness systematically moved beyond the frontiers of the empire into barbarian lands. When the old culture succumbed, Christianity survived. The fate of the culture was not the fate of Christianity.

Only evangelical Christianity voices the biblical verdict: the modern mind is unsound, and requires renewal; the modern man stands in need of supernatural rebirth. Speculative philosophers still prattle about “maturing” the modern mind, or “shaping” the modern mind, but evangelical theology alone uses the relevant vocabulary: the utter necessity of regenerating the whole man.

The continuation of our very existence depends on the solution to basic problems, which Christianity alone has power to solve. The peoples of the world stand in desperate need of moral and spiritual enlistment, charging daily life with a sense of ultimate responsibility. We need to overcome the feelings of a generation which is not only incredibly ignorant of Christ, but which lives as if the Gospel were untrue. Many hear the Gospel today as something unbelievably novel, much like the throng in the Athenian market place.

The Christian needs to tell forth the fundamental facts of incarnational religion with a vividness to match the hour. He must enter, unintimidated by their modern eclipse, into a mood which grasps the elements of biblical revelation as new discoveries.

He need not fear because he speaks for a minority view. The power of Christianity has never depended on numerical superiority. The fisherman Peter by himself could resist the Hebrew religious leaders; the tent-maker Paul could carry the message of Christ through the far-flung Roman empire; the scholar Augustine in his day could convincingly interpret the debacle of history from the Christian standpoint; Luther could spark the Reformation and Calvin help sustain it; Wesley could turn the tide of secularism in England a century ago, and in our time Billy Graham can carry light to the Gentiles of three continents. So God through his anointed servants in succeeding generations becomes the light of a city, of a country, of a continent.

When the old Roman Empire crumbled, Christianity was scarcely known to the east of Jerusalem. In the Middle Ages, Europe alone (including Britain) was a virile center of Christian faith, transplanted later to America and other colonies. It is highly questionable whether there any longer exists a genuinely Christian nation on the face of the earth. But true followers of Christ are salted over the face of the globe. In Israel there are not many, fewer still in Egypt and Syria, but there are some; interdicted by totalitarian persecution in Red China, by autocratic religion in Colombia; eking out an apprehensive existence in Soviet Russia and satellite lands like Hungary; singing hymns in the jungles of the Cameroons and of the Congo—they remain the light of the world. In much of Southeast Asia the enterprise of “foreign missions,” as Western churches refer to it, seems to be drawing to an end. But the Church itself is in little peril of extinction even there. For dedicated nationals remain united with their living Lord. Indeed, recent events have quickened the cause of evangelism, for national workers now courageously proclaim the apostolic message in centers where the missionary movement itself has lost a biblical witness and vitality.

In his column “Spires of the Spirit” in the Washington Star, the chaplain of the United States Senate, Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, notes that even in the United States only a vigilant minority carries forward the fight for freedom. He recalls the sixteenth-century letter of Henry IV of France to his friend Crillon, who had failed to appear for a crucial battle. With biting scorn, the King wrote: “Go hang yourself, brave Crillon. We fought at Aques and you were not there.” Although applied to the tense modern battle for liberty, the anecdote can also be given a sharper turn. What more shameful verdict may history and eternity pronounce upon today’s Christian minister and the layman than this: “It was an end-time—for your generation and its culture—but you were not there”?

In 1956 no man, least of all a professing Christian, can afford to be neutral. These are days of unmasking, when neutrality discloses only those who desert the faith. Christian compassion leaves no man to his own destiny, for the lack of spiritual decision leads to hell, first on earth and then for eternity. It is not for us to answer the question “after 1956, what?” for God holds the future in His hands, but there is a question for whose answer we may be sure, “what must I do to be saved?” The Philippian jailor asked it centuries ago. The apostolic reply, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, and your household” (Acts 16:31), which wrought emancipation for one imprisoned soul, still has power to free all who are captive to the spirit of paganism. The Gospel in its very unveiling of the living God imparts at once a new hue to man and society, and to nature. It has power still to bind the awakening conscience to Christ and the inspired Scripture. If any word of Christ’s holds out hope to the West it must be found in His last instruction to the first century followers: “Go ye … and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:19 f).

A generation and a century, a civilization and a culture, which advance under alien commands are trooping always on the quagmire of doom. In passionate obedience to the Great Commission the Church fulfills her mission, while, by their response to the Christian confrontation, men and nations seal their destiny. In a time of peril the Church can do no better than to obey those majestic marching orders, rushing to the aid of dying men carrying their misplaced hopes with them.

Fear Of Man Ejected By Fear Of God

In his first inaugural address Franklin D. Roosevelt made the statement that has become a popular and common quotation. He said in part, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” From pulpit and platform this quotation has been hurled to dispel the dark, overhanging clouds of fear—but without effect. Darkling clouds still lower over our civilization.

The fear of Roosevelt’s concern cannot be compared to the new dread that possesses the hearts of people. The fear of 1933 was defined by Roosevelt as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” The present terror is not nameless, nor unreasoning nor unjustified.

Atomic and hydrogenic doom is the name of this fear. Scientists reason that the new destructive weapons are capable of destroying civilization, if not the earth itself. Dread of their use is indeed justified, for previous wars have revealed the demonic character of man.

Actually the new fear has displaced an older fear. Fear of man is superseding fear of God. Millions have shaken off the dread of God only to become enslaved by another anxiety—fear of the future, the fear of man for man. This modern apprehension terrifies as much as did concern of the hereafter implanted by the thought of fire and brimstone. Terror of unrighteous and of sinful man in possession of nuclear weapons has supplanted terror of the righteous and holy God.

In casting off the fear of God man has in reality repudiated that which alone will dispel the fear of man. Isaiah pointedly asked, “who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass; and forget-test the Lord thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth?” (Isa. 51:12, 13). If man had not forgotten God, he would not now be living in fear of man.

Dread of man finds its source in distrust of divine power. The creature is thought to possess greater power than the Creator. Reflection on the infinite might of God evidenced in creation and providence generates confidence and peace. God has greater power to preserve than enemies have to destroy.

Only fear of God will cast out fear of man. This is not a terrifying or servile fear of God but a reverential fear. It finds its source in the realization of God’s power and righteousness. Wisdom and true religion are the fruits of reverential fear. It leads to Christ and commitment to His care and providence.

The present generation needs to learn that the only road to real security and confidence is found in the fear of God. Only Almighty God has the power and the love to protect man from man. Commitment to Him makes fear of man unreasonable, for God’s power is unbounded and man’s power limited. It makes terror unjustified, for the Psalmist has declared that those who abide under the wings of God’s protective care shall not be afraid for the terror by night. Only as a nation dwells under the fear of the living God does fear of man become “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.”

Only to a God-fearing nation can it be declared in truth, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

A Preacher’s Great Temptation And The Spiritual Antidote

Every minister called upon to stand in the pulpit week after week should read 1 Corinthians 1:17 to 2:5 at frequent intervals.

Paul the great preacher, the divinely instructed theologian, places his finger squarely on the ever recurring temptation to proclaim God’s truth with “enticing words of man’s wisdom.”

To the unregenerate world the preacher is engaged in a foolish business and it cannot be otherwise. Man in his natural state wants a convincing sign or a well reasoned philosophy. To yield to such pressures is an insidious and deadly temptation.

It is not easy to preach a message which is a stumblingblock to some and meaningless jargon to others. Nevertheless that is the preacher’s mission.

But how can it be effective? Does not reason demand that we convince our hearers by the very force of logic and erudition? Take care! Paul found the preaching that has lasting effect is centered in Christ and Him crucified; foolishness to the world but the power of God to those who will believe.

An intellectual concept of the gospel message is vital, but there is also the absolute necessity of a personal relationship with the One Who made that Gospel possible. This experience of the burning heart enables one to rise above the ever-present temptation to please the “itching ears” in any given congregation. It is this recognition of the supernatural origin and effect of the Gospel which alone can compel the minister to preach the message on God’s terms and in God’s way.

Eutychus and His Kin: January 7, 1957

SOBER UP

Martyrdoms have been commemorated in stained glass through the ages. Only to our time, however, has come the happy thought of memorializing a hangover in glass. There on the neighbor’s serving table is a choice selection of beautiful “Swedish modern” decanters, the relics and mementos of the New Year’s binge that finished off the Christmas spirits. Through the generous self-interest of progressive distilleries a man may now hit the bottle and keep it as a trophy.

Perhaps a liquor manufacturer in search of art treasures for his advertising might be referred to the triptych on the Fall of man by Albrecht Altdorfer in the National Gallery. The left panel would be appropriate for an antique label: it pictures Bacchus, dissolute and obese, presiding over a loathsome mass of besotted revelers.

I sense the reaction of some of my “kin” among your correspondents: “You evangelicals find it so convenient to attack the sins of the flesh! Everybody is against dmnkenness and scarlet sin. What about pride … the self-righteous hypocrisy of a sanctimonious wife that drives a man to drink … the social sins that create economic misery from which alcohol seems to promise escape? Don’t you realize that the alcoholic is a sick man?”

Touche! But to plead that drunkenness is not the only sin or even the worst sin or that it involves physical consequences beyond the initial sin does not disguise the fact that it is sin. This plea suggests a mistake like that of the crusaders against “Demon Rum.” Passing social legislation is no more effective than smashing whiskey bottles in dislodging the demon from the sinner’s heart.

Only Christ can do that. Christian soberness is more than temperance in food and drink. Aroused from the drunken befuddlement of wordly stupor, the Christian sees the real issues. He knows what time it is—that the night is far spent and the dawn near. The sober Christian is not a lean ascetic, but a full man—drunk with the new wine of Pentecost!

EUTYCHUS

MARIOLOGY-MARIOLATRY

There is a common misuse of the world “Mariology.” The term itself is neutral and refers simply to the theology concerning the place of Mary in the Christian scheme of things. Mariolatry (literally: worship of Mary) is the better term to use in describing certain extreme Roman Catholic theological developments which seem to threaten the unique place of Christ as our Redeemer. How unfortunate it is that these developments seem to exalt the humble Mother of God at the expense of her Son. For Mary always points us, not to herself, but to Christ: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it” (St. John 2:5).

JAMES H. DAVIS

Ascension Episcopal Church

Hintong, West Va.

JORDAN’S STORMY BANKS

Having lived in Israel for three years I write … (1) The Arab conquest of Palestine was in 634 A.D., and this rule lasted till about 900.… The Jews had ruled the land for more than a thousand of the 3000 years of its recorded history, and had always maintained their claim. (2) Extensive Arab immigration came only after Jewish colonization brought new prosperity to land wrecked under Arab and conqueror misuse.… (3) The Jewish contribution to the allied cause in World War II was magnificent in man-power, applied science and money. The Arabs never lifted a finger to free themselves from the Turks.… The Arabs were given over 100 times as much land freed from the Turks.… On the basis of past history, what hope is there that any Christian hand or voice would … protect this nation, a pilot project for the world in working out the teachings not only of the Old Testament prophets but of him whom the Jews call their greatest Prophet.…

ELIZABETH G. CHAPMAN

May I, through your columns, ask Christian people three questions:

Are Arab refugees any less important or deserving in the sight of God than Jewish refugees? Or Hungarian refugees?

On what grounds can you justify the West’s support of Israel? (Surely not on religious grounds for if Egypt is a Moslem nation, modern Israel is out and out materialist with no claims to Christian partisanship whatsoever.)

If we believe in democracy and the sovereign right of a nation to determine its own affairs, how can we maintain this belief and, at the same time, deny these rights to ANY nation whose internal policy does not happen to please us?

The point is that through our support of Israel, the ancient foe of Araby, we seem to have driven the Arab nations into the arms of the Communists, and this seems to me to be not only a great pity but a very grave mistake.

M. B. JOSE

St. Paul’s United Church

Prescott, Ontario, Canada

CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE

Will Gordon H. Clark answer this question in print: If the virgin birth is as essential as the Incarnation in Christian belief, why does not Paul mention it in Galatians 4:4, 5 nor John the Evangelist in John 1:1–18 …? Please notice that these two writers both strongly affirm the fact of Incarnation, emphasizing God’s initiating Incarnation into human nature. It is Mary’s humanness as revealed in the Gospels and Acts and not the method (virgin birth) of conception that is important to Paul and John the Evangelist.

Mr. Clark evades this question by saying that Paul’s silence about the triumphal entry or John’s about Peter’s confession means that their silence about the virgin birth means nothing; however, in the above two passages either or both would have included the virgin birth if it was as important as the Incarnation. But it wasn’t. Their common interest is in God’s action through human nature in the particular woman, Mary.

Mr. Clark cannot say that I find the virgin birth too much as a miracle, for he knows as well as I that the Incarnation and the Resurrection are both such drastic miracles that all others are minor by comparison. I am raising only one question, and this on the basis of the two above passages, how can the virgin birth be equated with the Incarnation as equally important in any way? The Incarnation is essential fact or we become Unitarian in view, but let us only affirm and declare with Paul and John that Christ was born of the woman Mary.

Mr. Clark in his dealing with the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke neglects the important discoveries of 100 years of scholarship. These two narratives are not part of the foundation of our Gospels, which foundation is the kerugma and the Passion narratives. Attached to this essential structure, which of course, presupposes the Incarnation as a postulate, are the various pericopes, most of them very important, but some as the birth narratives showing a less important interest and emphasis.…

JOHN YEAMAN

Edison St. Methodist Church

Fredericksburg, Tex.

Paul in Gal. 4:4–5 does not state and cannot state all that is essential to the Gospel. Nor can John, who in chapter one of his Gospel has selected the preexistence of Jesus as his topic and not his human birth. We cannot legitimately expect everybody to say everything.

Further, the question of the letter seems to depend on lack of attention to what I wrote. A belief in the Virgin Birth is not essential to one’s salvation. The thief on the cross knew nothing about it. At the same time I maintain that the fact of the Virgin Birth is essential to God’s plan; and further, a belief in the Virgin Birth is essential to a worthy ministry. The kerugma, or that which must be preached, is not some small part of the New Testament: it is the whole of the Bible; as Paul indicates in Acts 20:27.

I am not ignorant of the “important discoveries of 100 years of scholarship.” The destructive critics “discovered” that Moses could not have written the Pentateuch because writing had not been invented in his time. They “discovered” that the Hittite nation had never existed. Wellhausen “discovered” that the culture reflected in Genesis was the culture of the Babylonian captivity. Orthodox Christians have always known that this scholarship was mistaken.

GORDON H. CLARK

Indianapolis, Ind.

FOR MEN ONLY

I did not notice a single woman’s name connected with your publication.… It is probably an act of chivalry on your part to keep the menfolk in the vanguard army.… I can’t find any record in the New Testment of a woman deserting, or being displeased with Christ. Even the Magdalenes tagged after Him without seeming to unruffle His composure, so you see it should be a measure of your divinity if you can allow the company of “sissies” in your very dignified columns without losing composure.

E. N.

Norwood, Mass

The roster of masculine names in CHRISTIANITY TODAY follows from the fact that contributing editors and correspondents were largely chosen from among the clergy. But the magazine spearheads no anti-feminine movement. The current issue contains one of a number of articles to appear by lady penmen.

—ED.

ON THE EDGE OF GLORY

The solution of the problem … (“Preaching on the Edge of Desperation,” Dec. 10, 1956) lies in a thorough study and application of the Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul and of Acts 6:1–4. If we ministers could and would, as we should, follow the guidelines there laid down—and how many congregations specify as much in their calls?—… we’d have a chance to grow professionally.

E. P. SCHULZE

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer

Peekskill, N.Y.

NO INTEGRATION

I feel the need of commenting … It is said that “Organic Church Union could be represented in its most intense form by the National Council.…” If the verb “could” is supposed to mean “is”, I can only express amazement: the NCCC has never even had a Department of Faith and Order in its structure! And as to the NCCC’s being “integrated” within the framework of the World Council of Churches, I feel that too strong a verb has been chosen. There is good cooperation, but hardly integration.

J. ROBERT NELSON

Commission on Faith and Order

World Council of Churches

Geneva, Switzerland

Both editorials “The Perils of Independency” and “The Perils of Ecumenicity” are excellent! Anyone who objects … reflects the confirmed bigotries of his “camp.” Continue on this high level. God condescends to work on such a plateau.

RICHARD T. SMITH

Princeton Baptist Church

Princeton, Me.

Your twin articles … pertinent and timely … were written kindly and penetratingly.

JOHN EUMURIAN

Angelo Community Church

Sparta, Wis.

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