Bible Book of the Month: The Gospel of Luke

The author of the Third Gospel was uniquely equipped to be the author of a book recording the history of the Great Physician in a reliable form. Although he was, according to his own declaration in Luke 1:1–4, no eyewitness of the gospel history, he had excellent opportunities to acquire all the authoritative information necessary for his two books, the Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles.

Authorship

The earliest Christian traditions unanimously declare that the author of Luke and Acts is “the beloved physician” of whom mention is made by the apostle Paul in Colossians 4:14, Philemon 24 and 2 Timothy 4:11. From these statements it is clear that Luke was with him while he was in captivity in Rome. This fits in excellently with the data of Acts. For according to Acts 16:10–17, 20:5–21:17 and 27:1–28:16 the author of Acts, after having accompanied Paul on several of his missionary journeys, stayed with him when he was taken to Rome as prisoner of the Roman Emperor.

According to Acts 1:1 the author of Acts is indeed also the author of the Gospel, for both are dedicated to a certain Theophilus and “the former treatise” to which he refers is manifestly the Third Gospel. The vocabulary, style and language of the Greek originals of Luke and Acts also conclusively prove that the tradition is correct in ascribing both books to the same author.

Knowing now that Luke was “the beloved physician” who accompanied Paul on long journeys (from Troas to Philippi, Acts, 16:10–17, about five years later from Philippi via Troas and Milete to Jerusalem, Acts 20:5–21:17, and finally from Caesaria to Rome, Acts 27:1–28:16) and who apparently stayed with him several years in Rome, we realize what excellent opportunities he had to obtain firsthand knowledge regarding the Gospel history.

Search For True Facts

Turning to the first four verses of the Third Gospel, we discover that Luke was well aware of his unique opportunity of discovering the true facts regarding Jesus Christ. And at the same time his statement in these first four verses, written in beautiful classic Greek, reveals the fact that Luke was deeply conscious of the tremendous responsibilities which rested upon him of being the author of such an important book.

He lived in times when to follow Jesus Christ was a matter of life and death. It thus was of the utmost importance that there should be absolute certainty regarding the facts on which his faith and that of his fellow-Christians were based. A man with his scientific outlook on life—one who witnessed so much of the “life and death” struggle between the early Christian Church and her Jewish and heathen opponents—he realized that only when the Christian faith is based on absolutely reliable facts will it be able to win its way in the world. He accordingly wrote to Theophilus, who was probably a well-educated and important person, that after he had from all available evidence “traced the course of all things accurately from the first,” he had decided to write a well-ordered account so that his reader “might know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed” (1:3–4).

During the past more than one hundred years, Luke’s statement in 1:1 that many had already written accounts of the Gospel history by the time he decided to write his more comprehensive and well-ordered narrative was mostly not taken seriously enough. The idea reigned that while the Apostles lived, the spoken word was regarded as practically the only source for knowledge regarding the Gospel history. The truth of Luke’s statement has, however, recently been accentuated by the discovery of the Dead Sea Rolls. These ancient writings have proved beyond doubt that among religious Jewish circles of about the time of the beginning of our Christian era it was customary to have, apart from oral traditions, extensive written reports of what religious leaders said, did and experienced.

In this as well as in many other respects, modern investigations have revealed the remarkable historical trustworthiness of the writings of Luke. In fact there is, apart from other Bible authors, no other historian of antiquity who has been proved to be so remarkably reliable as the Greek physician, Luke, the author of our Third Gospel and Acts.

It is, indeed, the unique characteristic of our Christian faith that it is based not on speculations of theories but on definite historical facts. For spiritually we cannot live on uncertainties or half-truths. All other faiths and philosophic systems are the result of human speculations, and are only a manifestation of the vain struggle of those who try to find along their own roads the way to spiritual rest. In the Gospel of Luke, however, we have the historical account of how the living God in his redeeming grace through Jesus Christ entered into the life of mankind, seeking to save those that are lost.

A close study of the contents of the Third Gospel emphasizes the fact that Luke indeed had access to a very wide range of reliable written as well as oral sources of information. He definitely made extensive use of the Gospel of Mark which he knew to be a trustworthy account. He knew Mark personally (cf. Col. 4:10 and 14, and Philemon 24), and they most naturally would have discussed matters regarding the Gospel history.

Paul himself also would have had a very wide and accurate knowledge of the main facts regarding him in whose service he sacrificed everything—even his own life. Through his intimate contact with Paul, Luke would thus have learned much regarding the Gospel history. At Jerusalem, Caesarea and elsewhere Luke, with his enquiring type of nature and Hellenistic training and culture, most certainly would have made the best use of the unique opportunities to gather as much information as possible also from the original Apostles and other eyewitnesses of the life, death and triumph of him whom he had learned to adore and serve as the Savior of the world.

Comprehensive History

The result of all of this is that by the time Luke wrote the Gospel, he completely mastered his material. We note this in the fact that his Gospel gives the most extensive and comprehensive account of the history of Jesus—starting from the announcement of the birth of His forerunner (John the Baptist) and running right through to the resurrection and ascension. And in Acts, the sequel to his first “treatise,” he gives supplementary details regarding the forty days between the resurrection and ascension of Jesus and then relates the history of how the glorified, triumphant Savior through the Holy Spirit built his Church and used the Apostles and especially Paul to proclaim the glad tidings throughout so great a part of the Roman Empire.

Luke realized that there existed, especially among educated people of the time, an urgent desire for firmly established truth in the field of religion. The different philosophic schools of thought were contradicting each other, rested on mere speculative grounds and left unsatisfied the deepest spiritual needs of people. At the same time the popular pagan religions, with their gross immorality and superstitions, filled the serious minded and educated people with repugnance. Religious men like Luke and Theophilus thus yearned for reliable knowledge regarding things eternal and spiritual. So, Luke addresses himself to the many seekers after firmly established truth; and for all of us he has written his beautiful Gospel in such a way that we are also able “to know the glad tidings with full certainty.”

Aim Of Author

Although Luke had access to the best firsthand sources of information he did not write an ordinary detailed biography of our Lord. He had a definite purpose in mind and made use only of the information which served his purpose. This aim was to proclaim as clearly and as forcibly as possible (in the limited space available in a parchment roll) Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient and almighty Savior of the world. From the very start the light is focused on him. The history of John the Baptist and all other characters that appear in the Gospel narrative is related only because it points to the glorious fact that Jesus Christ is indeed the Son of God who came to the world to save those who are lost.

Luke wrote his Gospel not merely to relate a beautiful story or to satisfy curiosity. His Gospel is a mighty and unequivocal proclamation of the glad tidings that God has indeed fulfilled his promises and has sent his only begotten Son to live, work, die and triumph as the divine Savior. As in no other Gospel we see how Jesus progressively revealed himself as Son of God and almighty Savior of all who take refuge to him. We see him exercising divine authority over nature, over the world of invisible spirits, over the human body and over the spirit of man. We see him even calling the dead back to life and using divine prerogative to forgive sins. We hear God the Father affirming that he is indeed his beloved Son who must be obeyed. And thus right through the Gospel we see Christ living and acting as the One who is indeed human and who entered into the deepest suffering on our behalf, but who is at the same time truly the Son of God and who is thus able to save not only Jews, but also Samaritans, pagans, publicans, sinners and outcasts as well as respectable people, the poor as well as the rich and women as well as men. Luke clearly shows that the redeeming work of Christ is of universal, all-embracing significance. Even the murderer on the cross was given the assurance of eternal salvation when he turned with repentance and faith to the dying Savior.

When this fact is clearly grasped—that Luke wrote his Gospel primarily to proclaim Christ as the one who entered human history to save them that are lost—it becomes apparent why Luke on the one hand left out many details which we would have liked him to mention and why on the other hand he has so much material not found in the other three Gospels. This truth also banishes the idea spread by so many negative critics that the Gospels contradict each other. Far from really contradicting each other, an unprejudiced study of Luke compared with the other Gospels reveals that each Gospel writer deliberately chose to relate certain details and to leave out others because they never intended to write ordinary biographies. On the contrary each, from a certain angle, proclaims the glad tidings of God’s salvation in and through his Son. Accordingly the four Gospels supplement each other and in a manifestly divine manner give, when taken together, a perfect and well-balanced picture of Jesus as our all-sufficient Lord and Savior.

Partial Bibliography

The following are some of the more important commentaries on the Gospel of Luke: J. M. Creed, The Gospel According to St. Luke (Macmillan, 1942); B. S. Eaton, The Gospel According to St. Luke (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1926); A. J. Grieve, St. Luke in Peake’s Commentary (revised ed., Nelson, 1936); F. Godet, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke (T. & T. Clark, 1879); Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, St. Luke in Critical and Explanatory Commentary on the Bible (Eerdmans, 1935); W. Manson, The Gospel of Luke (in The Moffatt New Testament Commentary, 1930); A. Plummer, Gospel According to St. Luke (5th ed., I.C.C., T. & T. Clark, 1922). J. NORVAL GELDENHUYS

(For a detailed discussion of points raised in the above, and for bibliographical details regarding an intensive study of the Third Gospel, readers are referred to: Commentary to the Gospel of Luke by J. Norval Geldenhuys, 3rd edition, 1956, Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids and Marshall, Morgan and Scott, Ltd., London. F. F. Bruce writes of this commentary, “I have much pleasure in commending this work to Bible students who appreciate a commentary which calls for time and thought, and not least to those who, like the author himself, are actively engaged in the ministry of the Word.”

Ideas

U N: Town Meeting? Or Tragedy?

No tradition or practice is more cherished in American life than is the town meeting. It goes to the grass roots of American democracy and dates from the earliest days of the Pilgrims and the Puritans in New England. It is the finest flowering of direct democracy ever to appear in the long course of human history; and even though its institution and implications are not always observed or understood, its principles and prerogatives are jealously guarded by every true American.

No higher claim can be made for the United Nations Organization than that it is the “town meeting of the world.” The question is, therefore, the accuracy of that claim.

The town meeting arose in New England out of the necessity and privilege of self-government. It was the general assembly of all qualified voters in the town or township in which regulations and ordinances were established, taxes levied, appropriation voted and an executive committee of select men chosen to administer the will of the people. It was the privilege of every qualified citizen to speak, to vote and to be a candidate for office. The town meeting was a free assembly of free men for the welfare of all.

The observant de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America declared: “The native of New England is attached to his township because it is independent and free: his co-operation in its affairs insures his attachment to its interest; the well-being it affords him secures his affection; and its welfare is the aim of his ambition and of his future exertions: he takes a part in every occurrence in the place; he practices the art of government in the small sphere within his reach; he accustoms himself to those forms which can alone insure the steady progress of liberty; he imbibes their spirit; he acquires a taste for order, comprehends the union or the balance of powers, and collects clear practical notions on the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.”

Outstanding among the basic elements of the town meeting are a half dozen or more factors indispensable to its effectiveness and continuance. There was of necessity a deep-seated sense of political responsibility on the part of the citizens; and in turn by their select men in the performance of their appointed duties. There was a pride in freedom and self-government, coupled with a public spirit and devotion to democracy and the public welfare.

Of course there was disagreement as to details of policy and practice; but from open debate it was evident that the best interest of the town as a whole was the concern of all. It was the duty of the moderator to see that the proceedings were conducted properly and with propriety, with courtesy and consideration for others. The debate was often spirited, even piquant, and spiced with humor; but personalities were decreased that principle might be increased.

The town meeting was the voice for all the people, voters and nonvoters alike. There was the common concept that freedom could exist only within the framework of law, and that the voice of the majority decided a given difference of opinion.

Of necessity there was honor, honesty and integrity; for any deviation from these on the part of some could be exposed by others to whom the facts were familiar. After differences had been discussed in detail the moderator called for a decision by the voters; and this was followed by action.

The town meeting represented a spontaneous, dynamic, living political reality for the citizens of that community. Should it become static or stilted, and begin to lack public interest and support, it might fall into the hands of avaricious and unprincipled men.

Underlying all of these considerations was the moral basis of the town meeting: a respect for law and for the rights of others, a sense of political responsibility and personal rectitude, all of which in turn were established upon a reverence for almighty God. In matters political, Daniel Webster is often better able to define terms than is Noah Webster; and we recall the former’s earnest and eloquent statement on The First Settlement of New England: “Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.”

Does the experience of the past eleven years affirm the right of the United Nations Organization to be considered “the town meeting of the world”? It does not seem that the record bears out that claim.

On some occasions and by some nations, especially the smaller ones, there has been a sense of political responsibility, but often the contrary has been the case. That the veto privilege in the Security Council has been flagrantly abused is apparent to every thoughtful observer of the United Nations. One recalls the apprehension of Trygve Lie when first Vyshinsky gave his first “Niet”: “This first, almost light-hearted use of the veto that I hoped would rarely be exercised by any of the great powers disturbed me as much as the violence of the debate on the Greek question. Although I did not then foresee the long succession of 50-odd Soviet vetoes cast during my term of office, the great majority for reasons no more substantial to Soviet interests and policy, here was another chilly forewarning of the ‘cold war’ to come—the clumsiness, the rigidity of position, the refusal to participate, even in nonessentials, in the give-and-take and the hammering out of acceptable compromises that are the very lifeblood of politics and diplomacy among the Western democracies.” (In the Cause of Peace, p. 34.)

Such irresponsibility has aroused the greatest dissatisfaction and disillusionment on the part of freedom-loving peoples the world over. As a result, can there be devotion to the UNO when it lacks the first principle of the town meeting?

Instead of discussion and debate to determine the best interests for humanity, these eleven years have seen the continued stubborn Soviet adherence to communist aims and objectives rather than any concern for the welfare of others. Again Trygve Lie: “It is therefore most unfortunate that the Soviet Union and its allies have already declared (1953) that they are unwilling to accept any changes. They have even objected to the collecting of documentary evidence and the presentation of a study of the Charter’s history. If that entirely negative position is maintained to the end, the world will have sad proof that the original adherence of these countries to the United Nations Organization was a matter of political expediency alone, without any continuing sense of responsibility to the needs of a growing world community.”

In the place of courtesy and common decency, evident in any town meeting, the debate in the UNO has been marked by vituperation and billingsgate as crude and coarse as could be found among the most debased elements of society. The frequent reference to “cannibals,” and “scum” and the abundance of similar Soviet cynicism are entirely unworthy of any organization, much less an alleged “town meeting of the world.”

Any town meeting is a proper place for honest debate and presentation of facts, but it is not a platform for propaganda. As early as 1947 Herbert Vere Evatt, Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, warned that there must be “exercise of restraint by all members in order to avoid mere propaganda statements, and the recognition of a duty to cooperate in the carrying out of decisions. This is essential to maintain the prestige of the United Nations as a deliberative body and to make its decisions effective” (The United Nations, p. 140). Even a cursory reading of the deliberations of the Security Council and the Assembly shows that the great bulk of Soviet statements are pure propaganda, without any relationship to principle or fact.

The customary communist use of the “Big Lie,” familiar to every student of foreign affairs, is nowhere more apparent than in the UNO. The experience of these eleven years has given illustrations without number, and apparently without limits as well, as to the immensity and absurdity of the “Lie”; but perhaps none is remembered more vividly than the germ warfare charges made by the Soviet delegation to counteract the evidence of atrocities committed by communist troops in Korea. The Big Lie, however, was less disturbing to thoughtful people than the unwillingness of twenty-two UN members to acquit the United States of the absurd charge of waging germ warfare, and the comment by the distinguished Indian president of the Assembly, who stated, “Very strange things happen in wartime, and sometimes the best people do them.”

In the place of honor, honesty and integrity that are intrinsic in the New England town meeting if it is to serve effectively the interests of the community, the proceedings of the UNO show frequently dishonesty, double-dealing and outright deceit. No organization can operate where suspicion of the integrity of its membership continues, and is justified.

The tragic indecision and consequent inactivity of the UNO, except on rare occasion, is in marked contrast to the decision and action of the typical New England town meeting. There have been crises when the majority of the UN members have risen to the challenge, as in Korea. But even there a leading world power was openly and avowedly on the side of the communist aggressors of North Korea, and the contribution of the UN to the common defense was by no means in proportion to the relative strength of its membership.

Among the most recent illustrations of UN indecisiveness was its inability to agree on a definition of aggression. Despite the fact that nearly twenty-four years earlier a committee of the League of Nations had begun discussions to the end of defining that term, and the responsibility had been carried on by a special committee of the UN, it was reported to the General Assembly on November 12, 1956, that: “In view of the obvious divergence of views, it was decided not to put any of the existing drafts to the vote.” Even in the glare of fires lighted in the Hungarian catastrophe of that very hour the UN did not have enough light and moral courage to define aggression!

In contrast to the forward-moving, dynamic development within the New England town meeting the course of UN action has been dominated by the stubborn, unyielding, strict-constructionist position of the Soviet Union. Even so optimistic a protagonist of the UN as Clark M. Eichelberger is compelled to state with sorrow: “The largest negative factor, of course, is the Soviet Union. The Soviet Government has been a strict constructionist; it has been the greatest defender of the text of the Charter, stripped of growth and development. It has declared illegal practically every step that has been taken to liberalize the United Nations.…”

Despite all these difficulties, which distinctly disbar the UNO from any possibility of being a “town meeting of the world,” the most disturbing is undoubtedly the lack of moral basis in that organization. Although a UN committee declared that “forced labor, employed for political coercion, or punishment for holding or expressing political views, plays a significant part in the national economy of the Soviet Union,” the UN Economic and Social Council would not identify the Soviet Union or any other country where slave labor exists.

The UN has been unwilling to hear evidence of communist atrocities involving at least thirty thousand war prisoners and civilians, including more than six thousand Americans (and the American delegation has not had the moral courage to press the issue). General Mark Clark’s report on the atrocities was never heard.

The list of moral cowardice and complicity grows longer with each session of the UN. Kashmir, Hungary and the long preliminary wrangle on Suez are but a few of the mountain peaks; no, rather, the pools of iniquity in the miasma of moral ineptitude and inaction.

Without a moral foundation of honesty, honor, integrity and willingness to work for the general welfare, the UN is building its tower of Babel on shifting sand stained with human blood. There is need to amend the Charter but even a greater need to mend the ways of the majority of its members. Courage is needed to replace the cunning of unprincipled men and cooperation rather than contemptuous criticism and vilification. There was wistfulness, and possibly wishful thinking, in President Eisenhower’s word to the United States Committee for United Nations Day (September 23, 1953) when he declared: “With all its defects, with all the failure that we can check up against it, it still represents man’s best organized hope to substitute the conference table for the battle field.”

Without moral courage, consistency and constancy, the best of hopes have no substance. Thus far the United Nations, instead of achieving the expected acclaim as “the town meeting of the world,” has been a tragedy in which the world, by the passion or limitations of its diplomats, is being brought to the brink of catastrophe.

Improving The Quality Of Religious Radio-TV

The discussion of religious radio-TV in recent years has mainly concerned the issue of fair assignment of network time to the respective Protestant constituencies. Debate over this issue gained heat when the National Council of Churches intensified its opposition to paid religious broadcasts, while seeking more sustaining or free time (some of it during priority hours) for the Council as the authoritative voice of American Protestantism. Now that this controversy has been aired, and the broadcasting industry has evidenced concern for a fair allotment of sustaining time, the problem will likely be worked out regionally and locally, rather than nationally. Religious forces in the community and the individual station managers will discuss the question of proportionate programming at the local level.

Spokesmen for the radio-TV industry have themselves emphasized that program interest is multiplied when there is a specific relationship to the particular community which the radio-TV station serves. As one station manager put it recently, the television station’s religious responsibility can best be met by the presentation of “local religious programs, conceived locally, produced locally, using local people and remaining in constant contact and consultation with representative bodies of the local spiritual community.”

This trend to local programming need not mark the absolute end of network schedules reflective of the major spiritual outlooks. But it does bring to the fore a problem fully as important as that of a fair distribution of time to the respective religious constituencies, the problem of effective radio-TV programming.

Evangelical broadcasts built around prominent personalities and dynamic preaching can undoubtedly maintain high network ratings. In the sphere of TV programming, however, evangelical effort has been mainly an independent, trial by error proceeding. The evangelicals have lacked the advantages of a national radio-TV commission with salaried leaders working cooperatively with the networks, and this has been their loss. Not that N.C.C. forces have come up with an infallible formula for successful TV presentations. Good programs of a religious nature are still at a premium, as program ratings will attest.

Evangelicals have neglected to give adequate corporate thought to the question, what is good religious programming? While the television industry has been growing to maturity, as one of the most influential mass media of the century, the evangelicals have not spent time in workshops and on basic research, as they ought, in order to use this new channel most effectively to the glory of God. A forward step in this direction has been made by National Religious Broadcasters, who are projecting a radio-TV clinic for the summer of 1958, in cooperation with a modern radio and television station in the Midwest.

The evangelical tradition has features that lend themselves uniquely to effective television programming. But there is a tendency to stop with vigorous preaching or striking musical combinations. The hierarchial churches have their symbolism and dress; the ritualistic churches, their rituals. Have evangelicals seriously inquired what moments in their services lend themselves most dramatically to television? Have they surveyed their resources for good religious programming, and interpreted them in high-level conference to the industry? Thanksgiving morning in the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, Easter Sunday in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena or a night in Madison Square Garden during the Billy Graham crusade—these are spectacles that hold a national interest. And there are many more.

The responsibility for good programming does not belong one-sidedly to the churches, however. Both in government and in the industry today there are highly placed officials who feel that the present prosperity can be utilized to encourage the networks to invest some resources in the effective implementation of religious programs. Once the question of free time allotments is equitably settled, and the various groups are invited within this framework to interpret to the networks their best program resources, the industry itself may well assign technical assistance to develop effective programming. If the churches can bring invisible spiritual and moral forces to the network, the industry can often suggest the best techniques for presenting them artfully. And the churches may well channel into the industry some of their youth with a vision for such vocational service, and may also well pray for the conversion of those who have professional talent but lack devotion to Christ. After all, a Gospel fitted for the television viewer is also superbly fit for the television crew.

Labor Racketeering And The American Worker

The revelations of corruption, vice and financial irresponsibility in one of the major unions have startled the nation and are bringing dismay to labor leaders in general and to the rank and file of honest and law abiding union members.

There was a time when labor as such was an underdog and when legislation was considered necessary to protect the legitimate rights of the working man. Gradually labor accumulated growing political power, and its leadership came to administer millions of dollars in funds.

Yet no controls such as those demanded of other responsible organizations were imposed on the unions. Because of this deference to labor, as in large measure responsible only to itself, the average member of a union soon found himself without an effective voice in controlling those at the top.

To his disappointment, and enlightenment, the American worker is learning that some labor leaders, who have carved their careers out of criticism of the way that big business allegedly exploits the workers, have degraded their own office and responsibility at the expense of the workers they profess to represent. Union members are learning a new truth: that organized labor too, and not management alone, holds within itself a potentiality for the irresponsible use of private power.

In recent years, union members have had to cope with the misuse of their own welfare funds by some union leaders. In the current Congressional expose of U.S. labor racketeering, which is scheduled to look beyond Portland to Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis and other cities, workers see some leaders already charged with entanglement, not simply in shady financial dealings, and the misuse of union funds for selfish gain, but in the seamy spheres of vice including gambling, prostitution and the alleged bribery of officials. In an hour when governmental leaders prize the virtues of democratic government, the nation has seen the sad spectacle, in the effort to get at the truth of union vice racketeering in Portland, of a mayor who flunked a lie detector test, and a district attorney who took refuge behind the Fifth Amendment.

The tempo of indignation is rising among reputable union leaders, who fear that the exposure of shaggy union leadership may reflect upon the unions as a whole. The fact is that the tolerance of such leadership, by leaders with a concern for integrity, has needlessly contributed to this shadow over the movement. And the sooner the unions are rid of labor racketeering, the better for the unions and for the nation. The thesis that big business was especially prone to the exploitation of the worker lay at the bottom of a good bit of pro-union legislation in recent decades. Today the time has come for legislation that will scrutinize union leadership with similar rigidity.

The tide of concern extends also to the rank and file of union membership. And it is high time union members evidence a concern for the preservation of the democratic process within the unions, and preserve the answerability of their leaders to their worker constituencies.

We agree with those in Congress who say that this investigation should not be used to destroy labor. But it is a sad day for the American worker, in his struggle against the fortunes of the Soviet worker, when he must reckon with a lack of democratic opportunities to choose representative leaders and to control his own funds. The time has come when the power accorded any group having a vital role in the nation’s life should carry with it a corresponding degree of public responsibility subject to the same checks and balances obtaining in business of any other kind.

Eutychus and His Kin: April 1, 1957

ALL FOOL’S DAY

April first is no longer honored by street urchins behind a wooden fence holding the string to a purse on the brick sidewalk. The string is now held by soap and vitamin companies and the pursegrabbing is done on television all year round. This new arrangement has many advantages, not only for the vanishing pedestrian but also for the TV contestants, who often keep the purse when the show is over.

In fact, today’s fool is usually a professional. In the Middle Ages any village idiot or dwarf could aspire to be the court jester, but the TV “fall guy” is no fool.

Where then is the fool population? One statistician projected P. T. Barnum’s estimate of one born every minute from the approximate time that famous statement was made through 1956, but since he had no data on the longevity of fools (of course there’s no fool like an old fool), his figure was inconclusive. (This statistician lost his life fording a river averaging 2 feet in depth.)

His work, however, suggests an un-imagined possibility. The fool population has not died out but taken over!

The last sentence is not foolishness. The Bible says a great deal about folly. The wisdom of this world is folly to God. The fool is not a man who merely makes a mistake. His whole perspective is wrong—hopelessly, ludicrously wrong.

In these days when “mal-adjustment” is a capital crime, Christians need a new grip on folly. The citizen of heaven has another perspective from the sages of this world. One or the other is a fool. The apostle was content to be a fool for Christ’s sake since the foolishness of the message of the cross is the saving wisdom of God. Perhaps we should think of All Fools Day as All Saint’s Day, to remember our calling!

EUTYCHUS

A GOOD COAT OF TAN

In a segregated church, what happens to one’s membership if he goes on vacation and comes back with a good coat of tan? Would he be suspended until his skin became white again? A woman spends good money to have kinks put in her hair. A colored friend tells me that his wife pays to have them taken out. Kinks or no kinks, what happens to her membership in a segregated church?

EATON R. BURROWS

Newfield, N. J.

THEOLOGIAN AND PULPIT

Is there a relationship between “the extreme verbosity which has come to characterize the writings of many modern theologians” (see CT, Nov. 12, p. 38) and the modern demand that sermons be brief and to the shut-down-after-20-minutes point? After 20 minutes of preaching (if it may come under that heading) most people are up in arms if they do not hear “Amen” from the pulpit. They wake up at the 20-minute mark, without falling out of a window … Perhaps the extreme verbosity of many modern theologians is a natural reaction to this demand of brevity in the pulpit … A sermon was once considered brief if it consumed only 45 minutes of time. Could it be that these long-winded two-hour pulpiteers have become our extremely verbose modern theologians? Is it as though they were now saying, “You drove me out of the pulpit, I’m taking refuge in my pen?”

KURT CARL HARTMANN

Pflugerville, Tex.

PRAYER AND THE PULPIT

I note a general lament about contemporary pulpit oratory—it’s “unauthoritarian.” … I agree.… I think I know the remedy, however, and am wondering why others haven’t suggested it before: the cell-group prayer fellowships.…

Already Prayer Revival Fellowships are breaking out on the West Coast. Armin Gesswein of Pasadena leads a conference on this cell-group plan at Mount Herman twice each year. Bob Munger of Berkeley assists and opens his church to ministers once a month for a general time of heart-searching and prayer. Cecil Osbom is circulating the idea that cell-groups revolutionize one’s spiritual life; his Burlingame church, already active, is growing by such a plan.…

WARREN LANMAN

First Baptist Church Orland, Calif.

REMORSE AND RECOGNITION

If recognition of Red China by U.S.A. must be refused on moral grounds, namely, that Red China has been an aggressor in Korea … then why should America not only recognize but also accept the Turkish government as an ally, granting it her moral and material support to the tune of more than a billion dollars, forgetting the awful fact that this ally had been and still is an international murderer? Did it not wipe out no less than one million and a half innocent Armenian men, women and children during the first World War? Nay, did it not commit unspeakable atrocities and barbarities against the Greek, Armenian and other innocent minorities in Istanbul and Smyrna as recently as on Sept. 6, 1955?

Certainly it is a Christian virtue to forgive one’s enemy if he repents and makes restitution for the injury he has caused. Has the Turk fulfilled that prime condition? The answer is, Never.… The Turk has shown no such remorse for the crimes he has committed not once but always. That is the real tragedy.

But what is a greater tragedy is that he has been accepted by civilized world and the so-called moral and Christian world as a respectable member and ally. As long as the West contradicts itself, sins against the principles of justice, ethics, morality it preaches so often, there shall be no peace in this old and tired and suffering world.

S. H. HALAJIAN

Los Angeles, Calif.

DELEGATIONS TO RED CHINA

Recently the delegation of Episcopalian clergy returned from Red China and startled the Australian public with their report of experiences and impressions. I was an active participant in the press controversy that developed.

The delegation that visited the Episcopalian Church in Red China comprised three leading evangelicals, Howard Mowll, Archbishop of Sydney, Primate of Australia, Canon H. M. Arrowsmith, Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Australia and Canon Marcus Loane, Principal of Moore Theological College, several other Australian Bishops and an ecclesiastical newspaperman, Francis James, Editor of The Anglican, the newspaper with the largest circulation among Episcopalians in Australia.

The reports vary widely. That of Canon Arrowsmith has been the most favorable and has received the widest circulation in Evangelical circles; Archbishop Mowll has been generally favorable but less voluble while Canon Loane was unimpressed but has limited his critical report to a close circle of friends. Francis James has published a series of articles at once critical and sympathetic.

The report of Canon Arrowsmith is self-negating. He blithely reports as objective fact generalizations which can be nothing but Communist propaganda. Such broad statements as, “The majority of the Chinese people support the Communist Regime,” “The Communists have raised the living standards of the people,” “There is no civil war in China,” trip lightly from his pen.

By what strange and miraculous process did Canon Arrowsmith discover the emotional and mental attitudes of 600,000,000 Chinese people. He cannot speak the Chinese language—his contacts were with a highly selected and minute sample of the population. Those he did meet were at the mercy of a minutely controlled Communist press and radio for the basic national news. The assessment of public opinion is a highly technical process. Vast sums are spent in this country in an attempt to discover it. The minimum essential is a free press and free elections. Both of these are non-existent in Red China.…

Many less-publicized and less favorable aspects of Communist China were drawn from Archbishop Mowll through skillful questioning by the Rev. Malcolm Mackay, leading Presbyterian Minister of Sydney, Australia. Mr. Mackay was Secretary of the World Council of Churches in Australia and had the duty of arranging the tour of Hromodka, the Czechoslovakian pro-Communist member of the Executive of the World Council of Churches. He was appalled by the Communist utilization of the church for their sinister purpose. He obtained an insight into their motives and methods. Courteously yet insistently he elicited such information from Archbishop Mowll and Mrs. Mowll.

1. Everyone in China must register his religion. If he registers as a Christian he is under government pressure to attend church. The reason for this pressure became clear when Francis James reported that the preachers have to meet with the Communist government representative twice weekly to be instructed in the “Political Line” they must follow on Sunday in the services.

2. Everyone in China works very hard. The Mowlls specified from 7 A. M. till 8 P. M. six days a week. Both husband and wife work. Frequently they work in cities hundreds of miles apart. If it is absolutely essential that someone be home to care for the children, the government provides a nurse. This indicates a planned attack on family life. This is diametrically opposed to the Christian ethic. Archbishop Mowll attributes the willingness of the Chinese people to work such long hours in such intolerable conditions as an indication of their patriotic zeal. He apparently ignores the motivating power of the alternative of starvation. The State is the universal employer.

3. A few days prior to the arrival of the delegation in China, one of the Chinese Episcopalian bishops, Bishop Kimber Den, was released from prison. One of his Communist interrogators replaced him in his cell. This bishop had been in prison for nearly four years. He had been kept in solitary confinement. No charge had ever been laid against him. He had never been brought to trial. Under persistent interrogation he had confessed to receiving gold from a missionary. When he was released the Communist who had obtained this confession was jailed in his place. The delegation met him and he assured them his imprisonment had not been “religious persecution!” Francis James visited three Catholic Bishops in prison. They all told him that their imprisonment was utterly justified and expressed great affection for the Chinese Communist government.

4. All Chinese life is lived to the accompaniment of a ceaseless propaganda barrage from loudspeakers placed in every strategic location. The objective picture is appalling. It presents a people ruthlessly regimented; controlled in every detail of their lives, working frenziedly at industrialization while propaganda moulds the mass mind. This frightful tool is being forged by a small fanatical and highly efficient group avowedly dedicated to our conquest and destruction. Equally appalling was the equanimity and apparent approval with which the Primate of Australia disclosed these facts.

The Communist program for the Church is simple: (1) to enslave; (2) to utilize; (3) to destroy.

The process of enslavement is now complete. A hideous reign of terror developed following Communist conquest which decapitated the church of its independent leadership and cowed many Christians. How many Christians were murdered and tortured only eternity will reveal.

The Communist government then forced the churches into a union called the Three-Self Movement and appointed the leaders. Any group that would not join was persecuted and the leaders arrested for some alleged crime—never for their religious acts. One of the published aims of the Three-Self Movement is the promotion of the “World Peace Movement” and the “liberation” of Formosa. With the church leadership politically reliable the persecution ceased. Relative freedom of worship and preaching is allowed. The churches are filled, aided by government pressure; the preachers are favored economically and the delegations are invited who see full churches, with well-paid preachers who chant the refrain “All is well.” The naive are suitably impressed and return to serve the communist cause by their favorable reports.

The destruction of the church can be actively consummated at any time it has fulfilled its purpose. The passive destruction meanwhile continues by the alienation of the youth whose lives are so totally regimented that there is no time or place for church life.…

We are on the verge of a communist offensive with the church as the spearhead. Look for continuing pressure for mutual delegations of churchmen from China and all the free countries with glowingly favorable reports following the trips. Will a new “Red Dean” emerge from evangelical ranks? Will the church cooperate with the forces dedicated to its destruction?…

FRED C. SCHWARZ

Christian Anti-Communism Crusade

Long Beach, Calif.

POTPOURRI

It certainly does not “speak to my condition.”

W. N. WINTER

Baltimore, Md.

I don’t think your staff of amillennialists is half capable of interpreting current events in the light of the Bible.

H. EDWARD ROWE

Dallas, Tex.

With the exception of Billy Graham … and a few other names … I find few that I recognize as leaders in the front ranks who have something challenging and worth while to offer a needy people looking to the Church for guidance.

FRANKLIN E. SCHLUETER

Emmanuel Church Evangelical U. B.

Appleton, Wisconsin

It probably may serve to hasten the apostasy and assist in the dissolution of Christendom and the weakening and disintegration of Christian Civilization.

JAMES E. BENNET

New York, N.Y.

You have not yet rammed the dagger in the back of the World Council or the National Council, but it seems that you have it poised, ready to strike.

EUGENE SCHNEIDER

St. Marks Evangelical and Reformed

Milwaukee, Wis.

As a political Liberal and an orthodox Christian, I resent the fact that Protestantism has been historically identified with the middle classes and their bourgeois prejudices. Max Weber (Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus) and R. H. Tawney (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism) have demonstrated that this is true.…

ROGER WILLIAMS

Louisville, Ky.

Is the theology of the 17th century to be the final theology of the Protestant church, as that of St. Thomas Aquinas is for the Roman Catholics?…

RAYMOND L. WALLACE

Calvary Presbyterian

Newark, N.J.

… Your strict adherence to so-called “orthodoxy” is but a political gesture calculated to secure your own souls within the walls of paradise, where you judge your saints of old to be.… Conservatism appears to me to enjoy almost as much life as the dead past.…

ROBERT A. BARNETT

First Presbyterian Church

Arlington, Va.

A publication that includes an article by Billy Graham in its first issue and one by Ernest G. Manning in its second is hardly to be taken seriously.

W. D. GANT

Anglican Parishes

Black Diamond, Alberta

Too many slow reading articles, and rusty and archaic language.

VERNON E. BERG, JR.

First Presbyterian Church

Titusville, N. J.

I found your magazine interesting … but none of the articles struck me as particularly vital or unique.

Bishop C. COOPER ROBINSON

Diocese of Moosonee

Schumacher, Ontario

… With your paper and the Reader’s Digest before me, I am afraid you are very much an adolescent nation, and such indications rather make us dying folk squirm in acute embarrassment. But what a nation you will be when your growing pains have ended!

WILLIAM HALL

Sheviocke Rectory

Torpoint, Cornwall, England

I cannot feel that a fundamentalist belief such as you stand for has any real contribution to make to evangelism today but is rather a stumbling block to it.… I think my attitude will be shared by many Church of Scotland ministers.

V. C. POGUE

The Manse of Carnock

Dunfermline, Scotland

… If you commence to become an organ for Billy Graham’s ideas, I believe your cause will eventually descend to that of a fundamentalist viewpoint, applauded only by a group of Southern Baptists and other radicals.…

JOHN WILKEY

The Methodist Church

Murrayville, Ill.

Reactionary rubbish.… Nauseating reading.… Send the balance to one of your Gospel Hall or Jehovah’s Witness brethren, but remove my name …

K. N. BRUETON

St. Paul’s Church

Jarvis, Ontario, Can.

Congratulations on “Those who do not speak well of you.” Please enter my subscription.

JOHN VAN PEURSEM

Zeeland, Mich.

I sent you a notice not to send me any more of such “junk.” Now, I want to make sincere apology.… After reading, I found I was entirely wrong.… Count me as one of your subscribers.…

C. V. GARDNER

Columbus, O.

Deep enough for us to pause and dig, but not so deep that we are lost.

JAMES R. ARTHUR

Pine St. Baptist Church

Milford, Mass.

We university people of a conservative theological inclination look with anticipation on a magazine that speaks to our level.…

ROBERT G. COLLMER

Hardin-Simmons University

Abilene, Tex.

… Warmest congratulations on bridging the gap between a heavy theological magazine beyond the vocabulary of most laymen, and a light evangelical periodical which all too often offers nothing in the way of “meat” to its readers.

D. O. ANDERSON

Toronto, Can.

It seems to have both ballast and balance at this needed level.

ARMIN R. GESSWEIN

Pasadena, Calif.

If this is the kind of publication you plan to put out, and if you can retain the standard you have set … it will be one of the best, if not the best, of all religious papers anywhere. Some will say that this field is now crowded. But it is not crowded in the area where Volume 1, began its work. May you succeed gloriously.

R. B. LAVENDER

First Methodist Church

Russellville, Ala.

… Greatly appreciate the historical, biblical, spiritual and theological value of your magazine.…

J. E. PURDIE

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Editorial quality is high, articles on the whole expertly written, subject matter fresh and provocative, and the overall format efficient and attractive.

GILBERT H. VIEIRA

Geneva Ave. Methodist Church

San Francisco, Calif.

Your very first issue displays a rich and deep biblical scholarship that may be able to bring present day Christendom out of its rut … Certainly a new challege is presenting itself to Fundamentalism since theological liberalism has already outlived its day and a new orthodoxy is about ready to hatch out on some unknown camp ground.

T. L. NUSSBAUM

Bergthal Mennonite Church

Corn, Oklahoma

It is encouraging to find the subjects I have been trying to preach about for 40 years being dealt with in such a scholarly and practical way. I hope now such thoughts are being published they may be more acceptable than I have found the spoken Word in my lonely pilgrimage.…

E. V. BRIDGER

Langley Burrell

Chippenham, Wilts, England

CORRECTION

I would like to correct a mistake in “Confusing Reports on Church in Red China.” Dr. Howard Mowll, Archbishop of Sydney, was not a member of the “Cambridge Seven” as he was not born when they went to China in 1885! He did not go to China until 1922, being consecrated assistant bishop on June 24th of that year and was appointed the bishop of the Diocese of West China in 1926.

His predecessor as bishop in West China was Bishop W. W. Cassels who was one of the Cambridge Seven, the others being C. T. Studd (my uncle), Stanley P. Smith, Dixon E. Hoste, Montague Beauchamp, Cecil Polhill-Turner and his brother, Arthur Polhill-Turner.

VEN. C. H. R. BRADSHAW

Archdeacon of Cariboo

Kamloops, B. C.

Cover Story

Offense of the Blood

J. Marcellus Kik

A preacher of prominence attended worship at a church known for its evangelical fervor. With evident distress and displeasure, he listened to a message on the atoning power of the blood of Christ. At the conclusion of the service the visitor said to the pastor, “My God is not the bloodthirsty God that you have pictured. My God is one of love and needs not to be appeased with blood. I have no respect for the God whom you worship.”

This remark, stated with deep feeling and sincerity, not only evidenced complete misunderstanding of the sense in which the evangelical preacher employed the term “blood” but also manifested an ignorance of the God revealed in Scripture. Knowledge of the Scriptures should have shown him that mere blood does not effect appeasement. The term was correctly used as defined by Christ, the apostles and the liturgies of the Church.

A similar misunderstanding was shown by some who followed Christ during his earthly ministry. Jesus startled listeners with the statement, “Except ye eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (John 6:53). Certain disciples understood this in a literal, carnal sense. They were offended even as the visiting preacher was offended at the preaching of the blood. They called it a hard saying and left Christ.

Jesus explained that literal drinking of his blood would not issue into eternal life. There must be a partaking of it in a spiritual way. He called attention to the fact that the Spirit quickeneth and that the words which he spoke are spirit and life (John 6:63). The flesh and blood represented the suffering and death of Jesus. To eat his flesh and drink his blood is to appropriate by faith the expiation wrought by the sufferings and death of Christ. That blood signified atonement Christ himself clearly indicates in the institution of the Lord’s Supper. He said, “Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matt. 26:28).

The eating of flesh and drinking of blood are employed in the sixth chapter of John interchangeably with believing. In verse 35, Christ declared that he was the bread of life, and those who came to him and believed on him would never hunger nor thirst. He concludes his teaching on that theme in verse 64 by saying, “But there are some of you that believe not.” Such belief involves, of course, the realization that Christ’s violent death on Calvary’s cross was as a substitute for the guilty sinner. The sinner partakes of that death by eating his flesh and drinking his blood in faith. When a man believes on Christ he partakes of the flesh and blood of Christ. It is not a gross, carnal eating and drinking but a spiritual partaking by faith that effects eternal life.

Apostolic Witness

Apostolic preaching and teaching place particular stress on the blood of Christ as significant for salvation. Paul writes, “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself” (Col. 1:20). The blood of the cross effects reconciliation. Paul goes on to say that those who were alienated from God and enemies were reconciled in the body of Christ’s flesh through death and were thus presented to God holy, without blemish and unreprovable (Col. 1:21, 22). Thus the blood, which is a vivid symbol of Christ’s violent death on the cross, restores harmony between sinful man and the holy God. No one can doubt Paul’s clear statement that for him the blood accomplishes salvation for the believer.

The classic apostolic passage is 1 Peter 1:18, 19, “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold.… but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” Peter calls attention to the paschal lamb that was slain for atonement of the sins of the Israelites. What the sacrificial lamb indicated to worshippers of the ancient Temple, the death of Christ indicated to believers within the Christian Church. To the Apostle the blood of Jesus Christ was exceedingly precious for it assured him of redemption.

The author of Hebrews, in the ninth chapter, portrays Christ as offering his blood in the presence of God in the heavenly tabernacle. Under the law the High Priest made such an offering with the blood of animals to make atonement for sinning Israelites. This analogy between the blood of Christ and the blood of animals does not oblige us to suppose that Christ, upon his ascension into heaven, literally sprinkled his own blood in the presence of God; but it gives us most assuredly to understand that his entrance into the heavenly Holy of Holies is attended with true effect corresponding to the earthly ministry of the High Priest. Blood sprinkled on the mercy seat of the Temple typified the blood of Christ presented to God in the heavenly Temple. Both signified atonement.

John uses blood in a metaphorical sense when he declares in the first chapter of his first Epistle that the blood of Jesus cleanseth us from all sin. Blood in a natural way would stain and defile. John also uses blood in a figurative way in the seventh chapter of Revelation where he points to the great multitude of those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. No one would suppose a literal washing in the blood of the Lamb. The important significance is that the death of Jesus, of which blood is the symbol, effectively removes the guilt of sin.

Blood stands for more than just the physical suffering and death of Christ. Isaiah in his classic fifty-third chapter indicates that the Servant’s soul was made an offering for sin and that his soul would be in travail for the justification of many (Isa. 53:10, 11). Gethsemane reveals that his soul was exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death (Matt. 26:38). In agony of soul his sweat became as it were great drops of blood (Luke 22:44). Those who limit the significance of the blood to physical suffering and death little realize the agony Christ endured nor the price paid for redemption.

The New Testament abounds with passages on the blood of Christ: “blood of the new covenant for remission of sin” (Matt. 26:28); “this cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20); “the church purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28); “propitiation through faith in his blood” (Rom. 3:25; “justified by his blood” (Rom. 5:9); “communion of the blood of Christ” (1 Cor. 10:16); “redemption through his blood” (Eph. 1:7); “made nigh by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13); “washed us from our sins in his own blood” (Rev. 1:5); “redeemed us to God by thy blood” (Rev. 4:9); “overcame him by the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:11).

Blood, the New Testament reveals, vividly symbolizes remission of sin, ransom, propitiation, justification, redemption, cleansing and victory. Blood brings to mind the expiatory sacrifices of the ancient Temple that were types of the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary’s cross. Blood witnesses to the violent death experienced by the Lord. Blood speaks of suffering of body and soul of the Redeemer. Blood testifies of life poured out in behalf of sinners, for life is in the blood (Lev. 17:14). The whole Bible witnesses that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins (Heb. 9:22).

Liturgies Of The Church

Central in the liturgy of every Christian church is the order for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Scattered through such orders are scriptural statements: “Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us; unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood”; “for as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come”; “the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work”; “the cup of blessing which we bless is the communion of the blood of Christ.” These are but a few passages familiar to all who read the liturgy.

The very heart, however, of the Lord’s Supper is found in the words used as the elements are consecrated and distributed. Take, eat: this is my body which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. This speaks of death and the purpose of it. The central thought is the remembrance of the body broken for the believer. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. This speaks of the design of blood: the remission of sins.

An amazing contradiction is the preacher who abhors the preaching of the blood in the pulpit yet proclaims it in the Lord’s Supper. Though some try to make the primary purpose of the sacrament to be that of a display of Christian unity, yet the very heart of the communion order manifests the union of man with God in and through the broken body and shed blood of the Lord. The very action of eating the bread and drinking the wine declares the partaking (communion) of the broken body and shed blood. The true believer suffers death in Christ.

Beautifully phrased and rich in scriptural meaning is the prayer after communion in the liturgy of the Protestant Episcopal Church, “Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.” Also scripturally expressed is the prayer in the Book of Discipline of the Methodist Church, “most humbly beseeching Thee to grant, that, by the merits and death of Thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in His blood, we and thy whole Church may obtain forgiveness of our sins and all other benefits of His Passion.”

Gross misrepresentation of Scripture appears in the accusation that the blood of Christ is the means of inclining God to be conciliatory and merciful. Scripture does not teach this. Blood is not the cause but results from God’s love and mercy. Love provides the means by which the just and holy God can forgive the guilty sinner. “Herein is love,” states the apostle, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Paul echoes this truth when he writes that “God commended his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Love precedes the shed blood. Love provided the sacrificial lamb.

Those who refuse to preach the blood of Christ deny the symbol which truly represents atonement, propitiation and redemption. They deny that which so vividly reveals the sufferings of the Lord. They remove the heart from the Lord’s Supper. They rob the church of eloquent witness of the love of God. Without blood what is the Gospel?

For a generation, since 1921, J. Theodore Mueller has served Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, as Professor of Systematic Theology and Exegesis. Although he nears his 72nd birthday, his teaching career is not yet over, and he continues on modified faculty service.

- More from J. Marcellus Kik

Cover Story

Luther’s Doctrine of the Atonement

J. Theodore Mueller

In 1930 Professor Gustaf Aulen published his condensed Olaus Petri Lectures, first delivered at the University of Uppsala and then in Germany, on “The Three Chief Types of the Christian Atonement Concept” (Die drei Haupttypen des christlichen Versoehnungsgedanken, in Zeitschrift fur systematische Theologie, pp. 501–538). Ever since, the question has been asked whether the learned Swedish theologian has accurately and correctly presented the “three chief types of the Atonement,” and Luther’s doctrine of the Atonement in particular.

In many respects the modern Christian world owes Aulen, and the whole Lundensian, or Swedish, school of theology as well, a vote of thanks for reviving interest in the study of Christian doctrine, especially that of the Protestant Reformation. Through the investigations and publications of the Swedish school, the sola gratia of Wittenberg and Geneva has once more been made the object of careful study both in Europe and in America, so that this articulus fundamentalissimus of Christendom has had a new chance to assert itself over against the Pelagianism of modern Liberalism.

In English-speaking countries Aulen’s monograph on the three types of the Atonement has become favorably known through A. G. Herbert’s excellent translation, published under the title Christus Victor, which first appeared in England in 1931 and then again in an “American edition” in 1951.

Aulen’s Three Types

The three types of the Atonement that Aulen delineates not only in Christus Victor, but also in many of his other works, in particular in his Christian Dogmatics—known among English-speaking students as The Faith of the Christian Church (Muhlenberg Press, 1945)—are: the patristic, or “classical”; the Latin, or objective (Anselmic); the subjective, or humanistic (Abelardian).

According to Aulen, Martin Luther, following the New Testament and the Church Fathers, espoused the patristic, or “classical,” view. The central thought of this view is that the satisfaction, or Atonement, was made by God and not merely to God, and that it consisted primarily in Christ’s conquest of man’s spiritual enemies: Satan, sin, death and hell. In Christ Jesus, God has proved himself the triumphant Victor over these powerful enemies, from which sinful man was freed through the death of his incarnate Son.

Aulen admits that Luther uses certain typical phrases of the Latin, or Anselmic type, especially merit and satisfaction, though in a quite new and different sense. But the use of these terms, he contends, has led to confusion, in particular to the complete misapprehension that Luther’s teaching of the Atonement belongs to the Latin type (Christus Victor, American ed., pp. 101–122).

Aulen states, in criticizing the view of Anselm of Canterbury, pre-eminent champion of the Latin type of the Atonement, that Anselm, in presenting Christ’s Atonement in his work Cur Deus Homo, starts from the idea of penance, and not from that of agape, or divine love. He concedes that Anselm presents the Atonement, in a sense, as God’s work, since he is the sovereign Author of the plan of redemption. However, according to Aulen, Anselm holds that the actual offering of the satisfaction was made by Christ as man, or from man’s side. In Anselm’s view, therefore, the connection between the Incarnation and the Atonement is not nearly so plain as in the Church Fathers. On the other hand, the order of divine justice is rigidly maintained so that the doctrine becomes juridical (op. cit., pp. 81–100).

Aulen, moreover, asserts that although Luther consistently taught the patristic, or classical, view of the Atonement, his contemporaries and successors, from Melanchthon down to the Lutheran Confessions and the Lutheran dogmaticians of the seventeenth century, went back to the Latin, or Anselmic, type of the Atonement. Misunderstanding his great teacher and friend, Master Philip, in the controversy with Andrew Osiander on the question whether justification is a forensic or a medical act, i.e., whether God for Christ’s sake declares the believer righteous or makes him righteous by the infusion of his essential righteousness through the indwelling Christ, fixed the lines of the accepted Lutheran doctrine and returned to a thoroughly legalistic outlook.

The doctrine of the Atonement in Lutheran orthodoxy was thus dominated, according to Aulen, by the satisfaction of God’s justice. The Lutherans differed from Anselm in emphasizing also Christ’s active obedience, since as our Substitute he put himself under the Law and fulfilled all righteousness for us. Anselm, on the other hand, had centered Christ’s atoning work in his passive obedience, or in his vicarious, sacrificial death (ibid., pp. 123–142).

Humanist View Not Relevant

In this study we are not interested in the so-called subjective, or humanistic (Abelardian), view of the Atonement, of which Aulen states correctly that it was prepared by the Pietists and developed by the Enlightenment. From the latter, it was taken, by way of Schleiermacher, Ritschl and others, into the modern liberal view of the Atonement, though with more or less modification (ibid., pp. 133 ff.). Much more, of course, might be said of Aulen’s presentation of the so-called three chief types of the Atonement, but what has been said may serve as a brief overview of his theory.

Narrow Appraisal Of Luther

Our chief concern here is with Aulen’s description of Luther’s doctrine of the Atonement. As an informed student scrutinizes Aulen’s learned discussion of the subject, he will find himself confronted with a number of important questions. Aulen’s treatise will appear rather one-sided and biased. He evidently has selected certain emphases from which he elaborates his system of evaluating the various types of the Atonement. That is true, in the first place, with regard to Holy Scripture, in particular to the New Testament, which in its many statements on Christ’s redemptive work certainly teaches far more on the Atonement than what Aulen says it does. That is true also of Luther’s doctrine of the Atonement. The Wittenberg Reformer most assuredly speaks of Christ’s atoning work in terms of the Latin, or Anselmic, type; and he uses these terms in exactly the same sense as did the erudite scholar of Canterbury.

Then, too, Aulen scarcely envisions Anselm’s doctrine of the Atonement in its whole scope and purport. Here also he selects certain criteria which he depicts too narrowly, without taking into consideration the Anselmic viewpoints in their entirety.

Luther And The Biblical View

Again, Aulen has failed to observe that Luther never attempted to do what he himself does, namely, elaborate a scientific statement of the doctrine of the Atonement with nice distinctions and subtle analyses. Rather, Luther taught the doctrine as it is set forth in Scripture in plain expressions, which the people could well understand and which his opponents could not misunderstand. Indeed, at times Luther used rather crude illustrations with only one thought in mind, namely, to show that Christ is our true Sacrifice and Savior, in whom alone we have redemption and salvation. This method Luther pursued in his lectures, sermons, hymns, biblical expositions and learned treatises. He applied the divine truth as it best suited his special purpose, always trying to show his hearers and readers what Scripture, as the inspired Word of God, reveals to us.

From Anselm To Luther

Nevertheless, Luther does not contradict himself. He states triumphantly in his entire teaching that Christ, the God-man, as our Substitute overcame Satan, sin, death and hell; but that he did this by laying down his life as a ransom for our sins. Essentially, therefore, Luther’s doctrine of the Atonement does not differ from that of Anselm, though he treats it primarily from God’s love in Christ Jesus, so that his viewpoint is decidedly evangelical.

Benjamin B. Warfield certainly states the matter correctly when he says that “no one before Luther had spoken with the clarity, depth, or breadth which characterized his references to Christ as our deliverer from the guilt of sin, and then, because from the guilt of sin, also from all that is evil, since all that is evil springs from sin” (“Atonement,” in New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 350, Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1908).

Very apt also is the judgment of J. L. Neve on this point: “In criticism [of Aulen’s three types] it must be said that Aulen’s view tends to underrate the religious significance of the Anselmic doctrine of Christ’s work as an expiation for human guilt. He likewise seems to miss Luther’s true view. The Reformer did not one-sidedly follow the Greek fathers. His own teaching is a wholesome synthesis of the best that is contained in both the teachings of the patristic age and the Middle Ages (A History of Christian Thought, Vol. II, p. 186, Muhlenburg Press, Philadelphia, 1946).

In his articles on Anselm of Canterbury and the Atonement, referred to above, Dr. Warfield remarks incidentally that Anselm, by his presentation of the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ, has furnished essentially the church doctrine for all Christendom.

Up to the time of Anselm the doctrine of the Atonement had never been developed in any organized, or systematic, form. From Anselm, Luther later took the doctrine to fill it with a truly evangelical content. On this point Professor C. E. Luthardt writes truly: “Thus the chief thoughts of the Anselmic theory ever more and more, though with biblical modifications, became the general view of the Church … especially the concurrence of divine justice and grace, the satisfaction, and the vicarious bearing of punishment [Strafteiden].These form the substratum also of the [teaching of the] Church of the Reformation” (Kompendium der Dogmatik, 13. Auflage, p. 289 f., Verlag von Doerffling & Franke, Leipzig, 1933).

What has been said of the one-sidedness of Aulen’s treatment of the three chief types does not mean that he willfully tried to misrepresent the three views or that he failed to study the matter carefully. His is rather a scholar’s attempt at classifying teachings, in a scientific way, from a viewpoint that frequently proved too narrow.

Seeberg On Luther’S View

In his immortal work Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (A. Deichentsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Leipzig, 1933), Professor Reinhold Seeberg devotes the entire volume IV1 to the discussion of Luther’s doctrine (Die Lehre Luthers), and here he treats with great thoroughness Luther’s doctrine of the Atonement. The student of his Dogmengeschichte may, of course, not agree with Dr. Seeberg on every detail; but, on the whole, the learned author has conscientiously tried to present to his readers what the Wittenberg Reformer actually taught with regard to Christ’s atoning work. Seeberg’s presentation contains no attempt at Systembildung, since Luther himself, being an expositor of Scripture rather than a systematician in the modern sense, attempted no systematization of this or any other doctrine of the Christian faith.

Professor Seeberg treats the doctrine of the Atonement as presented by Luther, in the main, from the two aspects of satisfaction and reconciliation. That is to say, in summary, that Christ, as our divine-human Substitute, willingly rendered to God full satisfaction for our sins and that he made amends for our transgression of the divine Law by keeping it for us. By this work of satisfaction he secured an objective and universal reconciliation between the holy and righteous God and sinful and condemned man. God freely grants this perfect righteousness of Christ, the Savior of the world, to man through the means of grace, the Word and the sacraments, so that all who, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, believe and accept the divine consoling word of reconciliation (the Gospel) are reconciled to God, for they have received and are in possession of forgiveness of sins and life everlasting, not indeed by human merit but by God’s grace through faith in Christ.

This comforting Gospel teaching of Luther, as Seeberg shows, already appears from his explanation of the Second Article in his Small Catechism, where he says: “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own, and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead, lives, and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true” (Weimar ed., 30. 1, 296; Dogmengeschichte IV1, p. 237).

According to Luther, therefore, as Seeberg points out, Christ has become by his sacrificial satisfaction our Redeemer and Lord, our Priest and Mediator (W 33,101), our Atoner and Intercessor (W 46,94). Luther teaches not only that Christ reconciled the world to God (W 27,105; 29,578), but also that through Christ’s satisfaction God became reconciled to the sinful world (30. 1,9; 20,399). Christ’s redeeming work ended with his triumphant resurrection, which is the beginning of his gracious rule as the risen Lord among men (W 10.1. 1,135 ff.). His vicarious suffering and death were the sacrifice that was rendered to God for our reconciliation and remission of sins. By his resurrection he was exalted to the Session on the right hand of the Father and so through the Gospel to his victorious rule over his elect saints, for whom he makes constant intercession. The purpose of Christ’s redemptive work was to gather sinners into his kingdom of salvation and to renew and bless them through his Holy Spirit. But this purpose he could not have accomplished unless he had first appeased God’s wrath over sin and made satisfaction to God for our condemning transgressions.

In support of this summary statement of Luther’s doctrine of the Atonement, Seeberg quotes from Luther, among others, this following clear and comforting declaration of his faith:

But now God found for this evil [man’s sin] a counsel and he determined that He would send into the world Christ, His own Son, in order that He might shed His blood and die so that He might make satisfaction for [man’s] sin and remove it; and that then the Holy Spirit should enter the hearts [of men] to make those who unwillingly and under coercion did the works of the Law, such as are ready to keep the divine Law without any coercion out of a joyous heart.… Thus God has put away the sins of all men who believe in Christ so that henceforth it is impossible that those can continue in sin that have [accepted] this Savior, who has taken all sins upon Himself and wiped them out [W 12,544].

Satisfaction Necessary

Luther was an ardent defender of the sola gratia, and he continually inculcated in his hearers faith in God’s free and universal grace. Nevertheless, according to Luther, God’s free and forgiving grace presupposes that satisfaction had to be made (by Christ) for man’s sin. Remission of sin could not be granted free of charge, that is, without any satisfaction of God’s justice, or righteousness; for there is no room for divine mercy and grace to work over and in us … but first his righteousness had to be satisfied most perfectly (Matt. 5:18) (W 10.1. 1,121).

It was Luther’s conviction, anchored in Scripture, that God could not justify, or declare righteous, guilty man by any arbitrary imputation (of forgiveness); otherwise Christ’s vicarious suffering and death would have been unnecessary (W 10.1. 1,468 f.). He writes, for example: “If God’s wrath is to be removed from me, and I am to obtain grace and forgiveness, it must be earned by payment [abverdienen] from Him, for God cannot be merciful and gracious over against sin nor can He remove [His] wrath and punishment, unless that has been paid for, or compensation has been made” (W 2,137; 12,544).

This payment, or satisfaction, Christ, in obedience to his Father and in loving service of lost mankind, has rendered to God by his suffering and death (W 1,270; 2,146,691). In willingly doing this, Christ purposed to redeem sinners for his kingdom and to exercise over them as their Lord his redeeming dominion of grace (W 2,97). Christ’s dominion embraces redemption, remission of sins, peace and righteousness (W 37,49; 30.1.1,90; 33,500; 46,44). He rules by the power of his Holy Spirit through the Gospel of the remission of sins (W 19,163).

Shield From God’S Wrath

Luther thus writes: “We should look upon Christ’s kingdom as a beautiful, large cloud, or as a cover which is drawn over us everywhere and veils and guards us against God’s wrath; indeed, as a large and wide heaven in which there shines nothing but grace and forgiveness, and so fills all things that, compared with it, all sins are but as a little drop compared with the large and wide ocean” (W 18,206; 36,367). This is a brief overview of Luther’s doctrine of Christ’s atoning work.

The Wittenberg Reformer never tired of stressing the thought that God’s grace and pardon had to be purchased, and that this was accomplished by what Christ did and suffered for us. He admits that God indeed could have helped lost and condemned mankind in another way had he so willed. But the fact is that God did not will another way (W 52,379). Luther, therefore, criticizes Ockham severely for speculating on the possibility of divine pardon without redemption, or atonement, for then Christ would have done His work “foolishly” and “unnecessarily” (W 10.1.1,468).

On this point Luther writes: “Now, however, He [Christ] took our place and for our sakes He permitted the Law, sin, and death to fall upon Himself” (W 36, 693). Again: “As a Priest He placed Himself between God the the sinners and offered Himself up to God as a sacrifice” (W 40.1, 298 f.). Or: “He has paid for our guilt and made amends for it so that we are rid of it” (W 47,113; 33,310). “In His tender, innocent heart He had to feel God’s wrath and judgment against sin. He had to taste for us eternal death and damnation; in short, He had to suffer what a condemned sinner deserves and has to suffer eternally” (W 45,240). “Let no man think of reconciling God … for God over against man is always the Justifier and Giver” (W 43,607). “God is reconciled through only one and a very unique offering, namely, Christ’s self-sacrifice in death in order that the wrath of God might be appeased and sin might be forgiven, after His wrath has been removed so that we may have grace and remission of sins” (W 8,442; 44,468). “Thus Christ has reconciled the Father for us and earned for us grace. To this we must hold, for He is our constant Mediator and Intercessor, who pledges His perfect holiness and His good conscience for us” (W 36,366).

Christ Our Substitute

In short, according to Luther, Christ is our Substitute. “He is a true sinner, who never committed any sin and yet became guilty of all of them” (W 27,109; 2,692). “But as Christ has freed us from God’s wrath, so also He has redeemed us from the power of the devil, sin, and death. The devil wrongly seized Christ, whose deity was concealed by His humanity, just as the fishhook is concealed by the worm. But the fishhook tore open Satan’s belly so that he had to throw up what he had swallowed” (W 46,556.560; 47,80; 40.1,417). To understand this somewhat crude illustration we must bear in mind Luther’s eager desire to render clear to the common man of his day, against the errors of the Roman Mass, Christ’s perfect redemption from sin, death and the devil. Luther himself stemmed from common stock, and it was in the main for Hans and Grete, representatives of the common people, that he expounded the Holy Scriptures.

Luther went beyond Anselm in teaching that Christ’s fulfillment of the divene Law was vicarious, or substitutionary. He often uses the expression that Christ has put himself under the Law for us, for which as proof he quotes Galatians 4:4,5 (“made under the law”). He found great comfort in the divine truth that Christ kept the Law for him, which he himself had transgressed. He writes, for example: “There stands the Man who has accomplished it! To Him I cleave, for He has fulfilled the Law for me and He graciously grants me His fulfillment” (Erlangen ed., 15,58). Despite his mercy, so Luther teaches, God nevertheless demands that satisfaction must be made for sin and his honor and justice be compensated. In his mercy he sent Christ who in our place procured that satisfaction for us (ibid., 15,385).

Such excerpts from Luther’s writings might be quoted endlessly, for Christ’s merit and satisfaction are central in his evangelical theology. Essentially, therefore, there is no difference between Luther and Anselm in their teaching of Christ’s atoning work. Both use the same terms emphasizing the propitiatory and objective character of the Atonement. Practically, the only real difference between Luther and Anselm is that the Wittenberg Reformer stressed also the active obedience of Christ, or his vicarious fulfillment of the divine Law, whereas Anselm centered his atoning work in his death on the cross. In this also Luther often centers his doctrine of the Atonement, for the vicarious propitiatory death of our Lord was the culmination of his willing obedience to his Father’s will. After all, according to Luther, there is only one atoning obedience of Christ, though it has two aspects, which after all are one: for us transgressors he kept the divine Law, which we had broken; for us transgressors he suffered and died to make satisfaction for our sins.

Such is Luther’s classic view of the Atonement. It is classic because it is scriptural. It may be summed up in the words: He died for us. That is what the Church Fathers believed; that is what Anselm believed; that is what Luther believed; that is what all true Christians believe. And that is what Aulen believes, if indeed he, as a Lutheran, accepts Luther’s Small Catechism; for that, and that only, is the faith of the Christian Church.

The Rev. J. Marcellus Kik, Associate Editor of Christianity Today, served as minister in the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the Reformed Church in America. He is author of Matthew Twenty-four, Revelation Twenty, and Voices from Heaven and Hell.

- More from J. Theodore Mueller

Cover Story

On the Day of the Crucifixion

Leonid N. Andreev

On that terrible day, when the universal injustice was committed and Jesus Christ was crucified in Golgotha among robbers—on that day, from early morning, Ben-Tovit, a tradesman of Jerusalem, suffered from an unendurable toothache. His toothache had commenced on the day before, toward evening; at first his right jaw started to pain him, and one tooth, the one right next the wisdom tooth, seemed to have risen somewhat, and when his tongue touched the tooth, he felt a slightly painful sensation. After supper, however, his toothache had passed, and Ben-Tovit had forgotten all about it. He had made a profitable deal on that day, had bartered an old donkey for a young, strong one, so he was very cheerful and paid no heed to any ominous signs.

And he slept very soundly. But just before daybreak something began to disturb him, as if some one were calling him on a very important matter, and when Ben-Tovit awoke angrily, his teeth were aching, aching openly and maliciously, causing him an acute, drilling pain. And he could no longer understand whether it was only the same tooth that had ached on the previous day, or whether others had joined that tooth; Ben-Tovit’s entire mouth and his head were filled with terrible sensations of pain, as though he had been forced to chew thousands of sharp, red-hot nails. He took some water into his mouth from an earthen jug—for a minute the acuteness of the pain subsided, his teeth twitched and swayed like a wave, and this sensation was even pleasant as compared with the other.

Ben-Tovit lay down again, recalled his new donkey, and thought how happy he would have been if not for his toothache, and he wanted to fall asleep. But the water was warm, and five minutes later his toothache began to rage more severely than ever; Ben-Tovit sat up in his bed and swayed back and forth like a pendulum. His face became wrinkled and seemed to have shrunk, and a drop of cold perspiration was hanging on his nose, which had turned pale from his sufferings. Thus, swaying back and forth and groaning for pain, he met the first rays of the sun, which was destined to see Golgotha and the three crosses and grow dim from horror and sorrow.

Ben-Tovit was a good and kind man, who hated any injustice, but when his wife awoke he said many unpleasant things to her, opening his mouth with difficulty, and he complained that he was left alone, like a jackal, to groan and writhe for pain. His wife met the undeserved reproaches patiently, for she knew that they came not from an angry heart—and she brought him numerous good remedies: rats’ litter to be applied to his cheek, some strong liquid in which a scorpion was preserved and a real chip of the tablets that Moses had broken. He began to feel a little better from the rats’ litter, but not for long, also from the liquid and the stone, but the pain returned each time with renewed intensity.

During the moments of rest Ben-Tovit consoled himself with the thought of the little donkey, and he dreamed of him, and when he felt worse he moaned, scolded his wife, and threatened to dash his head against a rock if the pain should not subside. He kept pacing back and forth on the flat roof of his house from one comer to the other, feeling ashamed to come close to the side facing the street, for his head was tied around with a kerchief, like that of a woman. Several times children came running to him and told him hastily about Jesus of Nazareth. Ben-Tovit paused, listened to them for a while, his face wrinkled, but then he stamped his foot angrily and chased them away. He was a kind man and he loved children, but now he was angry at them for bothering him with trifles.

It was disagreeable to him that a large crowd had gathered in the street and on the neighbouring roofs, doing nothing and looking curiously at Ben-Tovit, who had his head tied around with a kerchief like a woman. He was about to go down, when his wife said to him:

“Look, they are leading robbers there. Perhaps that will divert you.”

“Let me alone. Don’t you see how I am suffering?” Ben-Tovit answered angrily.

But there was a vague promise in his wife’s words that there might be a relief for his toothache, so he walked over to the parapet unwillingly. Bending his head on one side, closing one eye, and supporting his cheek with his hand, his face assumed a squeamish, weeping expression, and he looked down to the street.

On the narrow street, going uphill, an enormous crowd was moving forward in disorder, covered with dust and shouting uninterruptedly. In the middle of the crowd walked the criminals, bending down under the weight of their crosses, and over them the scourges of the Roman soldiers were wriggling about like black snakes. One of the men, he of the long light hair, in a torn blood-stained cloak, stumbled over a stone which was thrown under his feet, and he fell. The shouting grew louder, and the crowd, like colored sea water, closed in about the man on the ground. Ben-Tovit suddenly shuddered for pain; he felt as though some one had pierced a red-hot needle into his tooth and turned it there; he groaned and walked away from the parapet, angry and squeamishly indifferent.

“How they are shouting!” he said enviously, picturing to himself their wide-open mouths with strong, healthy teeth, and how he himself would have shouted if he had been well. This intensified his toothache, and he shook his muffled head frequently, and roared: “Moo-Moo.…”

“They say that He restored sight to the blind,” said his wife, who remained standing at the parapet, and she threw down a little cobblestone near the place where Jesus, lifted by the whips, was moving slowly.

“Of course, of course! He should have cured my toothache,” replied Ben-Tovit ironically, and he added bitterly with irritation: “What dust they have kicked up! Like a heard of cattle! They should all be driven away with a stick! Take me down, Sarah!”

The wife proved to be right. The spectacle had diverted Ben-Tovit slightly—perhaps it was the rats’ litter that had helped after all—and he succeeded in falling asleep. When he awoke, his toothache had passed almost entirely, and only a little inflammation had formed over his right jaw. His wife told him that it was not noticeable at all, but Ben-Tovit smiled cunningly—he knew how kind-hearted his wife was and how fond she was of telling him pleasant things.

Samuel, the tanner, a neighbour of Ben-Tovit’s, came in, and Ben-Tovit led him to see the new little donkey and listened proudly to the warm praises for himself and his animal.

Then, at the request of the curious Sarah, the three went to Golgotha to see the people who had been crucified. On the way Ben-Tovit told Samuel in detail how he had felt a pain in his right jaw on the day before, and how he awoke at night with a terrible toothache. To illustrate it he made a martyr’s face, closing his eyes, shook his head, and groaned while the grey-bearded Samuel nodded his head compassionately and said:

“Oh, how painful it must have been!”

Ben-Tovit was pleased with Samuel’s attitude, and he repeated the story to him, then went back to the past, when his first tooth was spoiled on the left side.

Thus, absorbed in a lively conversation, they reached Golgotha. The sun, which was destined to shine upon the world on that terrible day, had already set beyond the distant hills, and in the west a narrow, purple-red strip was burning, like a stain of blood. The crosses stood out darkly but vaguely against this background, and at the foot of the middle cross white kneeling figures were seen indistinctly.

The crowd had long dispersed; it was growing chilly, and after a glance at the crucified men, Ben-Tovit took Samuel by the arm and carefully turned him in the direction toward his house. He felt that he was particularly eloquent just then, and he was eager to finish the story of his toothache. Thus they walked, and Ben-Tovit made a martyr’s face, shook his head and groaned skillfully, while Samuel nodded compassionately and uttered exclamations from time to time, and from the deep, narrow defiles, out of the distant, burning plains, rose the black night. It seemed as though it wished to hide from the view of heaven the great crime of the earth.

We Quote:

HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK

Former Minister of The Riverside Church, New York

In one staff meeting after another we reiterated the admonition: keep your eyes on individuals; nothing in the long run matters in this church except what happens to them.

This cardinal principle affects everything a church does.… So far as I was concerned, the most intense application of this personality-centered policy came in individual counseling.… My preaching at its best has itself been personal counseling on a group scale.… Indeed, I distrust a preacher to whom sermons seem the crux of his functioning.

The temptations of a popular preacher—if he is only that—are devastating.… Only the grace of God can deliver him—that and a genuine care for persons, so that to him, as to Jesus, all that matters in a crowd is the opportunity to get vitally in touch with some individual.—From the autobiography The Living of These Days, pp. 211 ff.

MASSEY MOTT HELTZEL

Ginter Park Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Va.

This is what the world needs. It needs terribly the solid glories of our faith: creation, incarnation, atonement, … resurrection, ascension. We can almost hear stricken humanity sighing for good news. And the church has it!—In The Invincible Christ, p. 118.

Reprinted by permission from The Crushed Flower and Other Stories (copyright 1916 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., with renewal copyright 1944 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.), is this unusual short story by the Russian writer Leonid N. Andreev. Its moral is pointed: preoccupation with selfish concerns can close one’s mind to the sufferings and significance of the Savior’s death. During the revolution in 1917, Andreev bitterly opposed the Bolshevists, and was forced to leave Russia after losing all his possessions. He died in poverty in Finland.

- More from Leonid N. Andreev

Cover Story

Substitution

G. W. Bromiley

One of the tragedies of modern theology is that the concept of substitution has become suspect and has been so largely abandoned. This has been primarily due to the revolt against biblical and confessional teaching which has been increasingly predominant since the later seventeenth century and especially in more recent times. On the other hand, unfortunate and inadequate presentations of the doctrine have given an appearance of justification to the attack. It may well be asked whether many of those who verbally make much of substitution have really considered its true content, meaning and scope.

A Biblical Motif

There can be no doubt, of course, that substitution is taught in the Bible itself. Prefigured in the vicarious suffering of the servant in Isaiah 53, it is demanded by a strict reading of the New Testament prepositions. In addition, we think of the great passage in Romans 5 where Jesus Christ is portrayed as the representative and head of a new race. Reference may also be made to the “reconciliation” of 2 Corinthians 5, which carries the distinct thought of an exchange, especially in the light of verses 14 and 21. Indeed, it can be asserted with confidence that the Gospel loses its intelligibility and power if we do not accept the truth that Jesus Christ took our place, that in that place he did something for our salvation which we could not do for ourselves, and that the only place which now remains for us is in him.

Life And Death In View

The content of substitution, however, must not be restricted narrowly to the death of Jesus Christ; for the whole purpose of his coming into the world was to effect a substitution. Substitution begins in fact with the incarnation of the divine son—unless we are not to trace it back to the will and purpose of God in eternity. When the Son of God became man, he became man in our place; the true man to whom the whole of the Old Testament had pointed and upon whom all the dealings of God with man were now concentrated. As this man he lived the brief but full life of obedient humility which Adam and all others rejected in their sinful arrogance. He did not need to do this for himself, nor was there any point merely in giving an example which even if we had the will we do not have the capacity to follow. He was the obedient and suffering servant in our stead, living this life as the One for the many. It was a life which necessarily led him to the cross as the fulfillment of identification with sinners—indeed of his replacement of sinners. The way was direct from the baptism of Jordan to the baptism of Golgotha.

But the crucifixion especially cannot be construed just as a death for himself. He was not a sinner that he deserved to die. He was not defeated. He was not concerned only to offer a gruesome demonstration or rather intimidating example. It was a death died in our place and on our behalf. But although in a sense the substitution culminated in the death of Jesus Christ, it did not end there. Otherwise it would merely have been a substitution for death and not for life, carrying a message of despair and judgment and not of hope and salvation. The one who died for the many was raised also for the many and ascended into heaven. This, too, must be regarded as part of his substitution. For in Jesus Christ risen there was introduced the new man who has his place with God and is heir to his eternal kingdom. As the one who has taken our place, Jesus Christ not only tasted death but entered into life, and where he now is there is a prepared place for those who are content to be found in him.

Meaning Of Substitution

But what is the meaning of substitution? Obviously, we must begin by considering its literal sense. It involves an exchange. One person (or sometimes “thing”) takes the place of, or replaces, another. In the case of a person, the one who replaces does something which the other perhaps ought to do but for some reason cannot. Traditionally, this has been seen almost exclusively in a penal context. Jesus Christ has taken the place on the cross which ought to have been occupied by the sinner. And this is a true and central part of the substitutionary work of the incarnate son, although, as we have seen, we must not isolate it from the complementary truths that he lived the life of righteousness which the sinner could not or would not live, and that he was raised to the new life to which the sinner as such could not be raised. The substitution of Jesus Christ did indeed involve his offering “a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.”

Scope Of Substitution

It is not always asked, however, what is really involved in this substitution. It is one thing to conclude, as from one angle we may, that the taking up of the penalty of sin by Christ means its removal from us. But it has also to be realized that there can be no question here of “cheap grace,” since in its fuller and deeper sense a replacement means a displacement. The whole action is now undertaken by the substitute, and the one whom he replaces does not come into consideration at all except in the person of the one who acts in his name and stead. In relation to the substitution of Jesus Christ, this means that God’s dealings are now wholly and exclusively with the One who acts for the many. It is by him that the life of righteousness is lived, on him that the weight of judgment falls, and in him that the new man is introduced. Sinners themselves are, as it were, crowded out. Their place has been taken. They can have a part in the saving action of God only as they attach themselves to the one, identifying themselves in repentance, obedience and faith with his life and death and resurrection and entering into himself and his work in the place which he occupies for us. In this deep and serious sense substitution has no relationship whatever to the caricature of an artistic and rather dubious transaction.

On the contrary, it belongs to the very core of the Gospel in incarnation, reconciliation and redemption. And at the same time it confronts sinners with the whole comfort and challenge of the Gospel: the comfort, because we can be assured that if Christ has taken our place what is done in that place is well done; and the challenge, because unless and until we are in Christ we are “displaced persons” self-excluded from the gracious work of God.

Once we grasp the meaning of substitution, it is only a step to a realization of its scope. Nothing can be more disastrous than to reduce the vast sweep of the replacement which took place on Good Friday and Easter Day in his death and resurrection for sinners. Yet even in face of this great act of substitution the reaction of the sinner is to cling to a place for himself, or at any rate, to keep as much of a place for himself as possible. The Christian, for example, may acknowledge gratefully that Christ bore sin’s penalty, but as far as reason, personality, conduct, gifts, nature or calling are concerned, there is no real difference. He is still, as he thinks, in his place. He lives, speaks, acts and thinks as though Jesus Christ were not his substitute. Business is as usual.

But if Jesus Christ really lived, died and rose again, the one for the many, the old life of the many is rejected, judged, executed and removed in the one, being replaced by a new life. The natural and sinful reason is dead, and they now have the mind of the Lord their wisdom. The old nature of sin is dead, and they are raised up a new man with a new outlook, interests and capacities. Their old personality, gifts and conduct are nailed to the cross, and all things are made new.

This is not just an ideal. It is not just a pious hope. It is not just a theme of exhortation. It is the new fact, the true reality, of the situation; the divinely created fact and therefore the only one which really counts; the fact which we can know in this world only by faith; but the one real fact all the same, because it was accomplished by Jesus Christ and by him on our behalf and in our stead. The calling of Christians is simply to recognize, believe and live out this fact as that which in spite of all appearances to the contrary is their true and present reality in the one who took their place.

The Wider Sweep

There is also, of course, a wider sweep for the nature and life and activity and fellowship of the church, of which we cannot now speak in particular. For example, it gives the church its message, as the proclamation of accomplished new facts rather than religious theory or subjective experience. It gives the church its organization, as the body of those who are transformed according to the pattern of the servant. It gives the church its methods and resources, not as a worldly enterprise with human skills and personalities and plans but as a body of new men equipped with the gifts and graces of the Spirit. It gives the church its unity, not just a spiritual unity and certainly not a mere ideal unity or least of all a man-made and artificial unity, but the unity of those who are the one body of the one who took their place in death and resurrection, the unity of substitution which they are to accept and express as the real fact of its existence.

Seriously to reckon with substitution is indeed a daunting but a necessary and salutary business. We have only to survey Christians and Christian churches to see how little it is really believed and worked out even by those who protest it most loudly, let alone by those who have not even begun to try to understand it. In this deep and comprehensive sense, it demands the true repentance which is self-denial. It can be satisfied with no less than that we really are righteous because God counts us righteous in Jesus Christ. It really believes that the new life is the true life. It recognizes that every sin, every act of the old man, every acquiescence in being the old man, is a contradiction of its true essence. It has to take seriously that both individually and in company life has to be lived as that of the many who are crucified with Christ, so that the life which they now live they live by the faith of the Son of God who loved them and gave himself for them.

To what extent do we really believe and accept substitution? Do we really believe and accept it in any serious sense at all? The answer to these questions is not given in verbal protestations. It is given by the discipleship and renewal in which we genuinely acknowledge that there is no more place for us, that Jesus Christ has taken our place, and that our only place—but a true and eternal place—is now in him.

Preacher In Red

ON THE SAME TEAM

I was absent from my pastorate in Iowa when I received a long distance phone call from the funeral director that a lady in the community had died. Would I return in time to conduct the services? I agreed that I would.

Everything conspired against me at the last moment. I had a blowout. The spare I put on to replace it went flat on a nearly deserted road I had taken to save time. Finally the machine quit altogether. A farmer, whose wife was in town with their car, worked desperately to repair mine. At the very moment the service was to begin I was hurrying up the church steps past a harried undertaker. I went directly to the pulpit and had no opportunity to speak to anyone.

Several times during the brief sermon, I referred to the lady who had departed. Each time I mentioned her, I noticed a remarkable restlessness in the audience, accompanied by a good deal of whispering. After I had spoken several minutes, the mortician stepped quietly up behind me and whispered in my ear.

“Begging your pardon,” he spoke almost breathlessly, “But I think there is some mistake. Her husband is the one who died.”

That was the nearest I ever came to having a double funeral.—The Rev. ROBERT W. SHIELDS, 222 E. Delaware Place, Chicago, Illinois.

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

The Rev. G. W. Bromiley, rector of St. Thomas’ English Episcopal Church in Edinburgh, Scotland, holds the Ph.D. and D.Litt. degrees from University of Edinburgh. From 1946 to 1951 he was lecturer and vice-principal at Tyndale Hall, Bristol.

- More from G. W. Bromiley

Cover Story

The Holy Spirit in the Gospels

W. Boyd Hunt

Oddly enough, a study of the Holy Spirit in the Gospels introduces us to both the first and the last word of the New Testament concerning this doctrine. In the first three Gospels (called the Synoptic Gospels since their contents for the most part are held in common and can therefore be arranged in parallel columns on a page and “viewed together,” i.e., synoptically) the emphasis is primarily on the pre-pentecostal aspects of the Holy Spirit’s work in Jesus’ own life and mission. In the Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, the teaching, though drawn against the background of the earthly ministry, is anticipatory of the future pentecostal work of the Holy Spirit in believers. In the Synoptics the Old Testament idea of the Spirit is in process of fuller definition in the life of Jesus himself. In the Gospel of John the function of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost receives its definitive treatment in the New Testament.

The Synoptics And The Fourth Gospel

No serious study of the Holy Spirit in the Gospels can overlook this basic difference between the Synoptics and John. In the Synoptics it is the earthly Jesus who lives and fulfills his ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit; little is said of either the present or the future relation of the Holy Spirit to Jesus’ disciples. In John the situation is just the reverse; little is said of the Holy Spirit’s relation to the incarnate Jesus, while much is made of what the Holy Spirit’s coming will mean in the experience of Jesus’ disciples and the church.

This is not to say that these emphases are in any sense contradictory. Yet the witness of the Synoptics and that of the Fourth Gospel have often been set over against one another in contrast. Interpreters have spoken of the silence of the Synoptics regarding the Holy Spirit and then have questioned whether the ample references of John have any basis in historical fact. E. F. Scott, for example, bluntly concluded that since the Synoptics have little to say of the pentecostal work of the Holy Spirit in believers, Jesus could not have said what John attributes to him. E. K. Barrett’s scholarly work, The Holy Spirit in the Gospel Tradition, is written with this same general assumption.

This raises the problem of the relation of the Synoptics to John. The history of this problem in modern criticism reflects a wide variety of opinion and a great deal of inconclusiveness. Even evangelical thinking on the issue has been unstable. F. L. Godet, the nineteenth-century evangelical, convinced of the superior historical worth of John, spoke of the Fourth Gospel as supplementing and correcting the history of the Synoptics. The more common idea in the past, however, has been that the Synoptics are more historical, while John is more interpretative.

Current studies recognize that the interpretative element is not peculiar to John. Stress falls on the fact that none of the Gospels are mere biographies, but that the Synoptics as well as John were written as witnesses intending to elicit faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God.

Current study also stresses that the Fourth Gospel is of more historical value than once was supposed. Writers of no less prominence than Vincent Taylor, E. C. Hoskyns and W. F. Howard argue for the historicity of the Johannine teaching concerning the Holy Spirit. They show that the Synoptics leave room for and even prepare the way for the Johannine emphasis (e.g., Matt. 10:20; Mark 13:11; Luke 12:12; 24:49). Thus the essential unity of the different emphases of these two sections of the New Testament writings increasingly is being recognized.)

The Teaching Of The Synoptics

The Earthly Jesus as the Bearer of the Holy Spirit. Critical scholarship, preoccupied with the problem of the alleged silence of the Synoptics regarding the Holy Spirit, tends to obscure the real contribution they make to the doctrine. The burden of the Synoptic teaching is that Jesus fulfills his earthly ministry in the possession and power of the Holy Spirit.

In making this emphasis the Synoptics draw heavily on the Old Testament, where a central place is given to the Spirit in Israel’s eschatological hope. Israel longs for the day when the Spirit will be permanently and universally outpoured. In contrast to Old Testament leaders, who experienced the Spirit only provisionally, there is the promise of the shoot of the stem of Jesse on whom the Spirit will remain (Isa. 11:2). This permanent endowment of the Messiah with the Spirit is particularly prominent in the Servant prophecies: “Behold my servant whom I uphold; … I have put my Spirit upon him; … He shall not fail nor be discouraged” (Isa. 42:1–4; cf. 62:1, 2). The Synoptics interpret this hope as fulfilled in Jesus (Luke 4:18; Matt. 12:18).

Conservatives have neglected the Synoptic emphasis, possibly because it appears to detract from Christ’s essential deity. If his power is mediated by the Spirit, then is he really the Son of God? That this is not a real problem is evident from the fact that the earliest of the Synoptics, Mark, makes a special point at the outset of his Gospel of the close connection between Jesus’ unique Sonship and his special anointing with the Holy Spirit.

Mark commences, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1). First he takes up the ministry of the Baptist, stressing particularly that he fulfills the Old Testament prophecy of a way preparer. Once introduced, the Baptist predicts concerning the coming Messiah, “He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (1:8). Thus the Son of God as Messiah is linked with the age of the Spirit which he inaugurates.

In the account of Jesus’ baptism (1:10, 11), this connection between Sonship and the Spirit is even more explicit. Here, as G. S. Hendry suggests in The Holy Spirit in Christian Theology, the stress is not on the descent of the Holy Spirit, but on the manifestation of Jesus both as anointed by the Spirit and as Son. It is not that Jesus had previously been without the Spirit, nor that he was not the Son until the baptism. But now, as he inaugurates his public ministry, these facts are revealed.

Mark says that after the baptism the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan (1:11; in Luke 4:1, 14, the Spirit’s role is more fully described). There is nothing here of a docetic Christ who had no real moral victories to win. Instead, the ethical reality of Jesus’ special sonship is seen precisely at this point: Jesus is the unique possessor of the Holy Spirit.

Mark 3:7–30, one of the central passages of the Gospel, stresses this still further. Here Jesus’ power over the unclean spirits wrings from them the confession that he is the Son of God. Then Jesus withdraws from the multitudes for the ordaining of the twelve, that he might send them out to preach and to cast out devils. Later, scribes from Jerusalem charge that Jesus casts out demons because he is demon-possessed. Jesus responds by asking, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” and asserts that he has already bound Satan (in the wilderness temptation experience?) and is now spoiling his house. But, most significant, verses 29, 30 teach that to attribute to Satan Jesus’ power over demons is unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Why is this so? Obviously because Jesus casts out demons in the power of the Spirit (Matt. 12:28; cf. also Luke 4:18; Matt. 12:18). Jesus reveals not only the hidden depths of the more-than-human struggle in which he is engaged, but also the fact that his power as the Messiah is the power of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew and Luke trace the relation between the Spirit and Jesus’ special sonship back further than Mark, by recounting Jesus’ miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit and his virgin birth. It is not necessary to set Mark over against Matthew and Luke in a contradictory manner, as criticism does when it suggests that the story of the miraculous conception is suspect since Mark does not mention it. The argument from silence must always be the weakest sort of argument. Suffice it to say that one whose public life is as unique as is the life of the Son of God portrayed by Mark must have been miraculously conceived, as recorded by Matthew and Luke. Conception by the Holy Spirit fits a life uniquely endued with the Holy Spirit.

These references do not exhaust the Synoptic teaching, but they do mark out its main emphasis, which is also supported by the rest of the New Testament (Acts 10:38; Rom. 8:11; Heb. 9:14). Jesus, the anointed of God, is the unique possessor of the Holy Spirit. Before the Holy Spirit is poured out at Pentecost, he is first defined by the life and mission of the incarnate Jesus. Hereafter the Holy Spirit is known as the Spirit of Christ. For believers Christ-likeness and the power of the Spirit have now become synonymous.

The Teaching Of The Fourth Gospel

The Glorified Christ as the Bestower of the Holy Spirit. In the Fourth Gospel, although there are suggestive references to the earthly Jesus as the bearer of the Holy Spirit (1:32, 33; 3:34; 6:63), the emphasis falls on the glorified Christ as the one who bestows the Holy Spirit on his followers. Two passages are of special importance.

In John 7:37–39 Jesus stands on the last day of the Feast of the Tabernacles to offer living water to those who believe. John then explains editorially that Jesus is referring to the Holy Spirit whom believers were yet to receive as the gift of the glorified Christ. The association of ideas here is important; the living water, the Holy Spirit and Pentecost are explicitly connected. This throws light on Jesus’ interview with Nicodemus in John 3, where Jesus speaks of being born of the Spirit and of water; on the interview with the Samaritan woman in John 4, where he speaks of the living water and of worship in spirit and in truth; and on the discourse on Jesus as the living bread in John 6. In each of these instances Jesus’ teaching is projected forward to experiences that were realized by believers only after Pentecost.

John’s climactic teaching is in the great Farewell Discourse, chapters 14–16. In this discourse, delivered in the upper room on the eve of the crucifixion, and recorded only by John, there are five sayings relating to the work of the Holy Spirit: 14:16, 17; 14:25, 26; 15:26, 27; 16:5–11; and 16:12–15. Two distinctively Johannine terms for the Holy Spirit are used in these passages: the Paraclete (or Helper) and the Spirit of truth. These terms, taken in context, constitute the clearest teaching in the New Testament of the personality of the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity.

In these Paraclete sayings, it is the glorified Christ who sends the Spirit, and the mission of the Holy Spirit when he comes is to guide believers into the truth as it is in Christ. Jesus speaks of the “yet many things” that he would say to the disciples, but explains that he cannot say them at the time because they are not yet able to receive them (16:13). He promises that the Holy Spirit will speak these things when he comes.

G. S. Hendry describes the work of the Paraclete in declaring the things of Christ as “unoriginal” and as “reproductive” only. But the best commentary on what Jesus did mean is the New Testament itself, for the New Testament is the record of the Paraclete’s work in leading the disciples into the truth of Christ. Even a cursory comparison of the parabolic and incomplete teaching of Jesus before his death with the clear, ample and discursive witness of the New Testament writings indicates that the work of the Spirit of truth is inadequately described as a reproduction, which is too suggestive of a mere remembrance of a departed Christ.

Jesus’ promise of the Paraclete has a further application which pertains to all believers. It suggests that the truth as it is in Christ, and as witnessed in the New Testament, has the dimension of the Spirit, i.e., that it remains ever new and that we never exhaust it by our interpretations. The living Christ continues to speak to believers and to his churches through the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit.

If the neglect of the Synoptic emphasis on the earthly Jesus as the unique possessor of the Spirit has been costly in inadequate Christological formulations, and in the failure, as in Pentecostal sects, to define the Holy Spirit in terms of his relation to Jesus Christ, how tragic has been the neglect of the Johannine stress on the Spirit of truth as the gift of the glorified Christ. Our present ignorance and impotence are no proof that Jesus has not sent the Holy Spirit as he promised, but they are proof of our neglect of the Spirit. How much there is yet that the living Christ would speak through the Word by the Paraclete!

W. Boyd Hunt has been Professor of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, since 1953. After teaching on the Seminary faculty from 1944–46, he became pastor of the large First Baptist Church of Houston from 1946–53, and then he returned to the campus. He holds the A.B. degree from Wheaton College and the Th.D. degree from Southwestern. He is author of Sixteen to One, a missions study book.

- More from W. Boyd Hunt

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: March 18, 1957

John H. Gerstner

In the numerous periodicals read in preparation for this column, we found one sequence of articles to be among the most interesting and easily the most significant. We refer to Professor James R. Branton’s “Our Present Situation in Biblical Theology” and its several replies. Religion in Life (winter 1956–57) had the liberally-inclined Millar Burrows and the Barthian-inclined James D. Smart and Robert McAfee Brown respond to this lead article. Together these four articles provide something of a mosaic of the non-orthodox or nonconservative or non-creedal or non-evangelical or non-fundamental, or whatever term you use, theology of our day. Their importance is so great that we give the whole column over to a summary of this discussion.

Colgate-Rochester Seminary Professor Branton first speaks of the liberal developments of the last century which listed Harnack and Bacon among its champions and interpreted Christ as merely a social reformer. Albert Schweitzer later pointed out that the liberal school had overlooked some historical aspects of Jesus such as his consuming interest in eschatology. This “new biblical approach moved onto the stage, and accused the older of posing as objective, but of actually being so culturally bound as to involve more eisegesis (reading teachings into the Bible) than exegesis (bring out the Bible’s own teaching).” Barth and Brunner followed this new approach to the Bible itself, trusting its message versus the dictates of culture and reason. G. Ernest Wright, C. H. Dodd and Rudolph Bultmann are also cited as part of this movement which “has placed the Bible back in the center of our thoughts” and made faith, not reason, the faculty by which it is understood and its unity, rather than its diversity, of teaching, a chief characteristic. “For several years now the Old Testament and the New Testament scholars have fallen into step with this school of thought.”

Times are now changing, Branton continues. “But by now this popular revival of biblical theology is itself calling for a serious evaluation. Indeed it has been weighed in the balances of some competent scholarship and, like the liberalism it repudiated, it too has been found wanting.” Professor Branton urges the following criticisms: 1., “It has lost its real rootage in history”; 2., is guilty of some poor exegesis; 3., often approaches the Bible with its own idea of biblical unity; 4., has overworked the mythological idea in the Bible; 5., found a kernel of doctrine in the message (kerygma) of the church that was not always there; 6., did not ground its Christology in sufficient history; 7., has a tendency to cut the nerve of ethics by the knife of theology; 8., has a wild growth of subjectivism; 9., has an “exaggerated emphasis upon eschatology.”

“Already there are signs that the needed changes are on the way. Oscar Cullman in Time Magazine (May 2, 1955) says that ‘there is a trend away from Barth … and there is a tendency on the Continent, as in the United States, toward neo-liberalism in theology.’ ”

A statement to the same effect by Harvard’s Amos Wilder is cited in which we find an interesting contrast between neo-orthodox and orthodox Christology, both of which Wilder rejects: “ ‘The Man Christ Jesus preached by the neo-orthodox is a kind of symbol X, an unknown entity—Christ is preached but it is unreality. The old orthodoxy preaches Christ, a supernatural figure, God himself—’ and neither is biblical.” (We cannot help noting in passing that orthodoxy has not merely affirmed Christ to be God, but equally emphatically has affirmed his humanity.)

Branton then suggests some necessary features of the new emerging theology. It must be thoroughly scientific. It cannot have preconceived notions and see systems where they do not exist. It must not live on an island of irrationality.

In our opinion, Professor Branton politelv kissed neo-orthodoxy good-bye. Yale’s Professor Burrows must have thought the same thing: “Let me say first that I am in complete sympathy with his (Branton’s) main position and applaud his vigorous statement of it.” He proceeds to mention various criticisms, the most interesting of which is this: “The only thing wrong with it (the older liberalism)—was that it did not go far enough. The remedy was to go all the way, not go back again to the beginning.”

Dr. James D. Smart (formerly Editor-in-chief of The New Curriculum for the Presbyterian [U.S.A.] Board of Christian Education) spoke for the theological viewpoint which Branton had described as on its way out. Branton’s position, as Smart sees it, is plain liberalism.

Branton would be justified in rejecting the new orthodoxy, he concedes, if it were guilty of all the sins Branton lays at its door. But Branton was battling a man of straw. “Any use of the term ‘biblical theology’ should take account of the wide variety of phenomena that are to be included within it.” Branton has viewed only one phase. Smart then cites a Jew, a Jesuit, an Anglican and others who are examples of “biblical theologians.”

Dr. Smart criticizes the oversimplifications of Branton’s account of the rise of biblical theology. He then retells the whole story with much more detail and comes to the conclusion that the new theology was not a break away from the old but the adding of a new dimension, the insistence that the Bible scholar had to be a theologian as well as, not in lieu of, being a research scientist. This functioning as a theologian was what led to the discovery of unity in the Bible. “A science that had eyes only for the human phenomena of religion had lost the clue to the unity of Scripture. On the purely human level nothing could be found except the widest diversity. But a science that approached the Scriptures as the record of both divine revelation and human religion began to hear one voice in both Testaments.…”

Union Seminary’s Robert McAfee Brown’s “Is There ‘Biblical Theology’ ” throws its weight, very cautiously, on Smart’s side. He questions the assumption that there is a biblical theology in the Bible and the wisdom of asking the Presbyterian ordained, “Do you sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith of this church as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures?” His comment on this shows the uneasy conscience of such thinkers in conservative denominations: “There are ways by which this question can be answered in the affirmative but the lurking sense of inquiet remains unstilled in many a Presbyterian heart: ‘is Scripture really for the purpose of giving us a system of doctrine?’ ” He refers to (but does not attempt to prove) the “breakdown of fundamentalism” which believed there was such a system of doctrines taught in the Bible. Disposing thus lightly of the traditional orthodox position of the church, Dr. Brown seeks to find some other type of biblical theology.

The problem of authenticating of the Bible is the central problem. Brown considers three answers. First, there is the “encounter” test of the Bible (Brunner). When the Bible speaks to me it is the Word of God. When reading it I have an encounter with God: I know it is God’s Word.

But Brown seems to be disturbed by Tillich’s criticism of this “encounter” view that it leaves no room for the fact of despair about the meaning of life. Tillich suggests “absolute faith” which has no special content. Brown, seeming very unsure of himself, “hopes” that this “contendess faith” can contain the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

Third, there is Reinhold Niebuhr’s notion of “self-authenticating” faith. This turns out to be the self-authenticating faith in parts of the Bible only. And what parts? Well, it seems to depend entirely on the individual whose faith it is. The slaying of the Amalekites, the Second Coming of Christ, for example, cannot be authenticated, according to Brown, who seems not to know that there are millions of people who think they can. Dr. Brown quaintly concludes: “in other words, there is certainly a high degree of discrimination involved in selecting those elements of the biblical perspective which we find to be self-authenticating.” Brown tries to escape the charge of complete subjectivism by saying that men learn something from some of the hard passages of the Bible too.

Still trying to escape this trap of subjectivism, or more accurately, trying to extricate himself from it, Dr. Brown introduces what he calls the principles of the Reformers. The first is the testimony of the Holy Spirit and the second is the doctrine of the Word. The Word turns out to be only the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, “the Word within words.” Acceptance of the words as authentic is bibliolatry, he says. So the reliance on Christ apart from the authority of the words of the Bible is still pure subjectivism in which anyone can make Christ what he pleases.

And the testimony of the Holy Spirit, independently of the words of the Bible, is pure subjectivism in which anyone can make the Holy Spirit what he pleases. So, we say sadly, all those who would reject the Bible theology, which has been historically expressed in the creeds of Christendom, must end up as Brown does, with no “authenticated” saving theology at all.

- More from John H. Gerstner

Books

Book Briefs: March 18, 1957

Biblical Preaching

Protestant Preaching in Lent, by Harold J. Ockenga. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids. $3.95.

The spiritual vitality and fruitfulness of Boston’s famed Park Street Church are undoubtedly traceable to a number of factors. Certainly among the chief of these elements would be the priority given here to the foreign missionary enterprise and the program of solid biblical preaching which is characteristic of this pulpit. The book under review provides a good taste of what this congregation is fed, and in that respect gives us a fresh insight into the importance and the possibilities of the preaching ministry in any church.

Dr. Ockenga is convinced that we Protestants do not make enough of Lent, in the sense of using this season to direct the minds of men toward the meaning of the passion of our Lord. For twenty-five years he has devoted the Lenten season, and especially Holy Week, to series of sennons dealing with Christ and his Cross, and in the current volume, he presents seven such series, of varying lengths. Obviously, the complete sermons are not given here, but on the other hand, neither are these brief outlines. The substance of each sermon is here, together with some of the illustrative material. In addition, each series is prefaced by an introduction, which in some cases gives suggestions as to other sermon themes which might be developed under the same general topic.

This is careful, thoughtful preaching, thoroughly based in the Word. (Many of the sermons preached today in evangelical pulpits are doctrinally sound, yet lack a strong biblical foundation.) Dr. Ockenga’s work shows all the marks of thorough study. His outlines are helpful, and they consistently present a logical development of thought. A whole series of messages on Isaiah 53 comes out of a careful exegesis of the Hebrew text. On occasion, he takes a phrase of Scripture and allows it to be the starting point or the presentation of an important biblical doctrine. An example of this is his sermon on the Kingdom of God, based on the text “Art Thou a King?”

These presentations of scriptural truth are scholarly, but in no sense academic, in the unfavorable sense of that term. Dr. Ockenga is preaching to the needs of his congregation and he is ever insisting on a human response to Divine truth.

The book commends itself for devotional reading, but it should have a further ministry in quickening pastors and other Christian leaders to a more thorough study of the Book, and a more adequate presentation of its truths.

H. L. FENTON, JR.

Lenten Sermons

The Seven Words Front the Cross, Ralph G. Turnbull. Baker, 1956. $1.50.

This compact volume of sermons under the headings of Forgiveness, Assurance, Comfort, Desolation, Suffering, Triumph and Committal contains much source material of value to preachers and teachers. The outlines are homiletically correct and reveal considerable originality and imagination. “The Word of Suffering,” for example, is developed around three simple but striking points: it was Natural; it was Unnatural; and it was Supernatural. Strongly doctrinal in its orientation, the volume abounds in telling illustrations. Certainly the author leaves no doubt as to his own understanding and appreciation of the historic Christian faith. Yet the volume leaves something to be desired from the point of view of finished expression of these ideas. At times Dr. Turnbull’s sentence structure is rather choppy and his choice of words not too discriminating. Greater precision of expression might have enhanced the book’s worth, though the sermons were obviously prepared to be preached rather than read.

ERIC EDWARD POULSON

Antithesis

Speculation in Pre-Christian Philosophy, by Richard Kroner. Westminster. $5.75.

This is the first of three volumes in which Professor Richard Kroner, lately of Union Seminary, now at Temple University, will attempt to explain the entire history of philosophy on the basis of an antithesis between impersonal, objective speculation and practical, personal revelation.

While this antithesis at first sight seems eminently applicable to medieval philosophy, one wonders whether it can contribute to the understanding of the Greek period.

In defense of the thesis that Greek philosophy is a compound of speculation and revelation, Kroner begins with the somewhat enthusiastic assertion that Thales’ speculation is “an analogue to the revealed truth on which Christian thinkers later relied” (p. 10).

After Thales, “from the perspective of the relation between revelation and speculation it is of supreme importance that Anaximander, though on the level of cosmotheism or pantheism, thus approached the biblical conception of the Supreme Being. He anticipated what the Bible and Christian theology mean by the infinite” (p. 83).

Here Kroner tries to argue that Anaximander’s Infinite is not something potential, but a mysterious Actual; and that the ordinary interpretation which views the boundless simply as the reservoir of physical stuff out of which our cosmos developed, “as if only the language were imaginative … is extremely arbitrary and ‘unscientific’ ” (p. 85). Yet the doxographical material supports the usual interpretation, as does the matrix of pre-Socratic philosophy from which it comes. Even if Anaximander’s boundless were infinite in space (a view against which Cornfed has raised sober objections), and still more if the boundless is infinite in the sense of having no definite quality, it would be hard to see any resemblance to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

When further it is said that the stories about Socrates (drinking the rest of the crowd under the table?) “immediately put us in mind of the gospel stories” (p. 133), one is reminded of the Platonic thesis in the Phaedo that that which stimulates the memory need have no resemblance to what is remembered. Here Kroner has given himself over to pure impressionism; and his other assertion that “all historians of philosophy agree that he (Socrates) is the greatest figure in the history of philosophy” (p. 151) is simply false.

A number of times Kroner modifies his first breath-taking statements. “Socrates was a Greek anticipation and counterpart of Jesus Christ” (p. 133); but then adds, “the difference between the Son of God and the Athenian … is so enormous that it makes any comparison absurd and ridiculous.” Quite so! And therefore his prior assertion is absurd and ridiculous.

The constant aim seems to be to picture Greek philosophy and the Christian Gospel as essentially the same. In one place it almost seems as if the New Testament contributed nothing to Christianity. “In Philo, Greek speculation and biblical revelation met … The whole movement of pre-Christian speculation, directed toward a more holy and ethical conception of the divine being than that offered by Greek religion, culminated and terminated in this great event …” And Kroner refers with evident approval to another author who held that “without Philo there would be no Irenaeus, Athanasius.…” Again, “He taught that the ideas are the thoughts of the living God.… Through this simple device Philo threw a bridge across the chasm dividing two spiritual spheres” (p. 237–238).

Aside from the fact that in these lines Kroner denies that Plotinus and Neoplatonism are the culmination and termination of Greek philosophy, this interpretation not only ignores the New Testament as a prerequisite for Athanasius, but it also minimizes the role of the Old Testament for Philo. It pictures Philo’s philosophy as arising, not altogether, but predominantly out of Greek themes. This is most clear in what I take to be a serious failure to grasp the significance of Philo’s making the ideas thoughts of God. This is no superficial transformation of Platonism, no simple device to bridge a narrow chasm.

In the Euthyphro when piety is defined as that which is dear to the gods, Plato asks, Are pious things pious because they are dear to the gods, or are they dear to the gods because they are pious? Now, it is not surprising that Plato chose the second alternative, but it is extremely instructive to note that he does not bother in the least to give a single reason for rejecting the first. Usually Plato gives reasons for rejecting a proposal; but not here. Does this not indicate that Plato was unable even to conceive of a God on whose will morality depends? Instead of a God who legislates, Plato could conceive only of a God subordinate to independent laws.

Philo therefore, rather than having been the culmination of a tendency already in paganism, broke completely with its deepest convictions and insisted on the totally different biblical conceptions of sovereignty and transcendence. No doubt there are similarities between Philo and Plato or the Stoics; but they are superficial. (Cf. my Thales to Dewey, pp. 183–210.)

But perhaps the major defect of the book is its hazy notion of revelation. Kroner’s characterizations are as follows: “Revelation is the work of God; the truth of revelation is practical, personal, and indemonstrable; God does not incline himself to man in order to inform him, but to command, advise, and redeem; such divine actions do not provide theological information; theological information is incompatible with the true relationship between the Creator and the creature.”

These representations partly depend on an incomplete disjunction and partly on a neglect of biblical themes. Of course it is true that God commands and redeems; but this is not incompatible with his giving information to man. When God said to Abraham, “Thou shalt be a father of many nations,” it was information; and when John wrote, “the World was made flesh,” it was information. Now, it may be true that God’s redemptive acts do not of themselves inform; but in addition to the act God has provided us with its explanation. ‘Christ died’ is the act, but ‘for our sins’ is the informative theology. Far from theological information being incompatible with the true relationship to our Creator and Redeemer, this true relationship is impossible without a minimum of information; and the more the better. Like the Athenians we cannot worship an unknown God.

Existential anti-intellectualism is no contribution to Christianity or to Greek philosophy, either.

GORDON H. CLARK

Careful Scholarship

The Life of Our Lord upon the Earth, by Samuel J. Andrews. Zondervan, Grand Rapids. $5.95.

The sub-title of this volume gives an accurate summary of its contents—“considered in its historical, chronological, and geographical relations.” Students of the life of Christ have long treasured this work of careful scholarship. This printing makes use of the revision done by Andrews in 1891. It contains a new feature, a biographical introduction by Wilbur M. Smith which puts readers for the first time in possession of information about a man who deserves to be more widely known. Dr. Smith makes the observation that this is the only scholarly life of Christ produced by an American.

Andrews was well acquainted with continental and British literature in the field, as his bibliography amply attests. His revision necessitated the consideration of a vast amount of material which had appeared in the thirty years which had intervened since the first edition was published. This was carefully appraised and sifted. One must not get the impression that the work is a mere compilation of diverse scholarly viewpoints. The considered judgment of the author is regularly brought forward and presented with modesty and discretion.

The question will inevitably be raised as to the wisdom of printing once more a book which is now more than half a century old. But the truth is that no recent book does for the reader what Andrews does, for modern works are concerned for the most part either with questions of critical methodology or with details of the narrative. Andrews provides a factual, comprehensive approach, with special help in the area of chronology (the book begins with an essay on this subject). With the aid of this volume one is in far better position to evaluate the modern works, for he will understand the basic problems of the text.

EVERETT F. HARRISON

Sources Of Power

Six Mighty Men, by W. J. Smart. Macmillan. $2.00.

Every minister and witnessing Christian longs to experience the life-changing power of God in his life and service, yet all too many of us are conscious of the lack of spiritual power in our running to and fro in the name of Christian service. What is the secret of being effectually and powerfully used by God?

In these short biographies, W. J. Smart has sought to point his finger clearly at the spiritual secret of the passion and power of six men whom God has used in a mighty way. Declaring his aim in the preface, the author says, “My aim in this book has been to catch the passion of the six men about whom I have written, and to locate, as far as possible, the secret of their power and their message for today.”

Lest we fall into the error of longing for the good old days or into the modern mood of seeking something entirely new and different, the lives of these six outstanding evangelicals span the past century. Whether we look at George Mueller, Dwight L. Moody, Hudson Taylor and Samuel Chadwick of the past or at Hugh Redwood and Billy Graham in the present—the answer is basically and fundamentally the same for God does not change.

Variety of calling is seen here—a missionary, two evangelists, a founder of an orphan’s home, a teacher and a newspaper man—but the principles and passion for Christian service are the same. Will these principles work today? These lives remind us that they will as long as the Holy Spirit works to keep the promises of God, and the spirit of God will always work to supply material and spiritual needs when out of earnest, believing hearts anyone seeks to do what God wants him to do.

These biographies are too short to tell much about the lives and labors of these men. If we want that we must turn to other sources. These stories are told with a minimum of well chosen words yet with a maximum of piercing insight focused on their sources of power. What is told of their lives is realistic, free from excessive overstatement, in good taste and characterized by an authentic note.

In our day, masses of people are giving attention to religion yet so many of them do not know what it means when they hear talk about people being surrendered and powerfully used. This small book of 151 pages would be very helpful for general reading by these people or for use as the basis of devotional talks to any small groups.

W. G. FOSTER

New Life

Christian Maturity, by Richard C. Halverson. Cowman, Los Angeles. $2.50.

This is a devotional essay addressed to all that is shallow and superficial in the church and in Christians; a plea that we let our religion “grow up.” In his foreword, Louis H. Evans describes it as a “thrilling answer” to the frustrated longing of multitudes on the spiritual frontier for a Christianity which will bring real power.

The author declares that he is not writing for those outside the fellowship of the Christian faith but to those who, though belonging and participating, may be “fed up” with their inadequate apprehension of those resources which they had expected to offer much more than they are getting. He begins by suggesting that there are—within evangelical circles, indeed—many who are “frankly bored with it all. Their Christian experience has worn thin, the spontaneity is gone, Jesus Christ himself is unreal most of the time, the lift and thrust of a new life has vanished.”

That, we must say, is quite a beginning. And if there is a major flaw in this book (which does not really suffer for having such a flaw) it is that the author does not, after all, address himself to the condition he describes, but rather to the original longing of any life without Christ. It is one thing to point out that “new life” in which there is a stirring “lift and thrust;” it is another to write to those in whose new life the lift and thrust has vanished. The author does the former. And he does it well.

The answer to any inadequate spiritual experience, explains Mr. Halverson, lies altogether in opening the door of one’s life to Christ. Spiritual growth involves progressively opening hitherto unyielded areas of the life over which Jesus Christ must be given control. If the emphasis be put on the imitation of Jesus, he continues, then let it be put upon the central control of his life, not the outward effects. Receive Christ, yield to Christ, walk in Christ. This is spiritual maturity.

This book is a delightful treatment of the golden promises of the Gospel, especially as these may be contrasted with any approach to religion which seeks the answer in anything man can do for himself or anything which can be found anywhere but in Christ. It is the kind of book of which a busy pastor wishes he had more to put into the hands of confused and hungry people.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Careful Exposition

Studies in the Book of Jonah, by James Hardee Kennedy. Broadman, Nashville. $1.75.

Dr. Kennedy, who is professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, has written this book out of the conviction that “for many serious and capable students of the Bible, Jonah offers a study of distractions. Engrossing questions bring positive teaching into eclipse and side issues become dominant” (p. XII). As a result, the author’s paramount concern has been to present the basic teachings of this Old Testament book and to show their relevance for Christian living. He has been eminently successful in accomplishing this aim.

Dr. Kennedy is thoroughly familiar with the various interpretations of Jonah, and he does not hesitate to quote scholars whose point of view differs with his own. But he is thoroughly convinced that here we have a trustworthy historical narrative that has much to say for our own day. His book is a good example of how a careful exposition of the Word of God may meet the needs of the people in the world.

The author has a real gift for sensing the underlying significance of each section of the book. In bringing forth these truths, he does not hesitate to introduce elements of exegesis of the Hebrew text, and while not every preacher will be able to follow him in the fine points of Hebrew grammar, all will appreciate his thoroughness. Many a pastor could learn much from Dr. Kennedy about how to present the Old Testament in the context of the twentieth century. Many a layman will find here that which feeds his own soul and stimulates his further thinking concerning timeless truth.

HORACE L. FENTON, JR.

CT's Week of Giving

Share

Authorship

Search For True Facts

Comprehensive History

Aim Of Author

Partial Bibliography

Share

Share

U N: Town Meeting? Or Tragedy?

Improving The Quality Of Religious Radio-TV

Labor Racketeering And The American Worker

Share

Share

Share

Share

Apostolic Witness

Liturgies Of The Church

Share

Share

Aulen’s Three Types

Humanist View Not Relevant

Narrow Appraisal Of Luther

Luther And The Biblical View

From Anselm To Luther

Seeberg On Luther’S View

Satisfaction Necessary

Shield From God’S Wrath

Christ Our Substitute

Share

Share

We Quote:

Share

Share

A Biblical Motif

Life And Death In View

Meaning Of Substitution

Scope Of Substitution

The Wider Sweep

Preacher In Red

Share

Share

The Synoptics And The Fourth Gospel

The Teaching Of The Synoptics

The Teaching Of The Fourth Gospel

Share

Share

Share

Share

Biblical Preaching

Lenten Sermons

Antithesis

Careful Scholarship

Sources Of Power

New Life

Careful Exposition

Share