Theology

Bible Book of the Month: The Gospel of Mark

Ralph Earle

One of the great responsibilities of the preacher is to make the Bible come alive for his listeners. A careful study of the Gospel of Mark will help much in the fulfilment of that task.

The early church gave meager attention to this Gospel. Commentaries were written on the other three. But Victor of Antioch in the fifth century wrote that he had not discovered one commentary on Mark. Augustine and his successors held that Mark’s Gospel was merely an abbreviation of Matthew’s.

In the last century the tide has turned. It is now generally recognized that Mark was the first of the Gospels to be written and that Matthew and Luke used Mark. About ninety-five per cent of Mark’s material is in Matthew and/or Luke. Of the 661 verses in Mark the substance of all but 31 will be found in the other two Synoptics. Furthermore, in the order of events Matthew and Luke sometimes differ with each other but they never agree together against Mark. It is rather obvious that Mark’s Gospel furnishes the historical framework for the other two.

The Author

That John Mark was the author of the Third Gospel is questioned by very few scholars today. The tradition of the early church is unanimous on this point. It would be difficult to explain the assignment of authorship to a non-apostle except on the basis of reliable tradition.

The early fathers are also emphatic in saying that Mark derived his material from Peter. The statement of Papias (ca. A.D. 140) is well known. But it is echoed by a host of others. Justin Martyr (ca. A.D. 150) quotes from this Gospel as “Peter’s memoirs.” Irenaeus (ca. A.D. 185) says: “Mark the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also transmitted to us in writing what had been preached by Peter.” Quotations can be given from most of the patristic writers to support this view.

John Mark was probably too young to follow Jesus. But he started out with his cousin Barnabas and Paul on the first missionary journey. In spite of his unfortunate defection on that trip, he later made good and even won from Paul the accolade: “He is profitable to me for the ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11).

Characteristics

The Petrine background goes far to explain the outstanding characteristics of this shortest Gospel. Rapidity of action, vividness of detail, picturesqueness of description—they all reflect the personality of impulsive Peter.

No other Gospel moves so rapidly from one scene to another. While John’s Gospel gives us a studied portrait of the Master—the lines drawn with loving care by one who had lived long in close fellowship with his Lord—and Matthew and Luke present a series of colored slides, Mark’s Gospel is a motion picture film of the life of Christ. One can almost feel the rapid movement from place to place. This is accented by Mark’s favorite word euthys—“Immediately, straightway”—which occurs over forty times, as well as by the constant use of “and,” especially in the opening chapters. As Vincent so aptly puts it, “His narrative runs.”

Although Mark’s Gospel is the shortest he often gives vivid details not mentioned by Matthew or Luke. Thus one can form a mental picture of the scenes in Christ’s life more fully and clearly by reading this Gospel. The looks and gestures of Jesus receive unusual attention. The preacher who wishes to make the Master stand alive before his audience will do well to look long at the Gospel of Mark.

While every good thing can be abused, there is a type of dramatic preaching which will add tremendous effectiveness and interest to anyone’s ministry. We do not mean stage props and artificial scenery. Nor do we refer to a sickly and sickening operatic performance in the pulpit. What we are saying is that if a preacher will read carefully Mark’s account, for instance, of the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage and the raising of Jairus’ daughter—spending hours filling in the background from the best commentaries and other reference works, and then meditating on the psychological reactions of the persons involved in the story—he will get an entirely new thrill in Bible study. Furthermore, the next Sunday morning his listeners will sit wide-eyed with amazement as the figure of Jesus among men becomes sharply vivid before them. If the writer may be allowed a word of testimony, that is exactly what happened in his first pastorate when he learned the simple secret of true dramatic preaching. By such means Calvary and Easter, for instance, can and should be made very real to our congregations and study groups.

Peter’s love for picturesque words found a permanent outlet in Mark’s Gospel. A keen observer of the out-of-doors, the big fisherman vividly portrayed the scenes of Jesus’ ministry to his hearers. In recounting the feeding of the five thousand he recalled how the people seated on the green grass of the hillside, dressed in bright Oriental garments of red and yellow, looked like “flower beds.” Mark is the only one who uses this term, as well as the only writer to mention the green grass. This is just one example of the many vivid touches in this Gospel.

Its Message

The first verse, which is the heading, hands us the key to unlock the message of the book. There it stands: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

In our critical age it has been customary to hold that John’s is the theological Gospel—and hence of no historical value—while the Synoptics, especially Mark, are primarily supposed to be history—whether authentic or not. But with the current revival of biblical theology a new insight has been gained. It is now commonly asserted that Mark’s purpose was basically theological rather than historical.

Even Liberals who deny the deity of Jesus admit freely that Mark’s Gospel teaches it clearly. While the inducing of belief in the deity of Jesus Christ is the avowed purpose of John’s Gospel (John 20:31), it is now apparent that Mark wrote with much the same objective. He was not interested in Jesus as just a historical figure but as Son of God and Saviour. In other words, Mark’s aim was theological rather than biographical.

In this connection it is of interest to note that one of the strongest passages on the Atonement is to be found in this Gospel (Matt. 20:28–Mk. 10:45). It reads: “For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” The Greek word for “ransom” was used regularly for the redemption money paid to free a slave, as Deissmann has shown in his epochal work, Light from the Ancient East.

So the main emphasis of “ransom” is on redemption or deliverance. Also Moulton and Milligan in The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and other Non-Literary Sources have stated that in the first century “by far the commonest meaning of anti (for) is “instead of.” On that basis it may be asserted that this passage teaches the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. Certainly this Gospel is more than a mere chronicle of events. It is history interpreted—theologically.

Outline

The Gospel of Mark may be divided several ways. Since Mark presents Jesus as the “Servant of the Lord” one possible outline would be as follows: I. The Filial Servant (1:1–13); II. The Conquering Servant (1:14–13:37); III. The Suffering Servant (cc. 14–16). Perhaps a better outline would be: I. The Period of Preparation (1:1–13); II. The Galilean Ministry (1:14–9:50); III. The Perean Ministry (c. 10); IV. The Judean Ministry (cc. 11–13); V. The Passion Narrative (cc. 14–16).

As is the case with the other Gospels, Mark may be considered a drama of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The hero is presented to Roman readers as the great conqueror—over disease, death and demons. He alone could still the storm by two words uttered on the Lake of Galilee. Master of every situation he met, he fed the hungry multitude with five little barley biscuits and two small fish. He was the greatest Conqueror of all time.

Yet his friends misunderstood him and his enemies conspired against him. Finally came the climax in his crucifixion and burial. The one who offered himself as Messiah on Sunday morning was five days later condemned to death and hanged on a cross. The end had come.

But it was not the end—nor even the climax. The latter came in his resurrection, when he showed himself conqueror forever over death and hades. He stepped out of the grave into a new life—for all who would follow Him in eternal life, here and hereafter. So for the believer there is no end to “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Mark, as he says (1:1), just records “the beginning of the gospel.”

Tools For Exposition

One of the best commentaries on Mark is A Practical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Mark, by James Morison. Here one will find a thorough discussion of every passage and almost every phrase. Long out of print, it can sometimes be secured from used book stores.

As with all his works, Joseph Addison Alexander’s volume on Mark is rich in expositional and devotional material. Fortunately it has recently been reprinted. Among the better recent commentaries on the English text is Lenski’s Interpretation of St. Mark’s Gospel. In The Interpreter’s Bible the exegesis by F. C. Grant is meager and disappointing. But the exposition by Luccock is excellent. Here one finds fresh preaching material beamed to the problems and situations of our day. While the old standard commentaries are still unsurpassed for their presentation of the great principles of scriptural truth, the preacher should have a few recent commentaries to help him in making his applications pertinent. Incidentally, of course, the newer works are also needed to bring one up to date on matters of geography, chronology and archaeology, as well as on significant items of historical and textual criticism.

For a thorough study some commentaries on the Greek text are absolutely indispensable. The old standard work by Swete has been somewhat superseded by Vincent Taylor’s recent monumental volume, The Gospel According to St. Mark. It will be a long time before this is surpassed in thoroughness and scholarship.

Of more immediate value to the average preacher is Alfred Plummer’s volume in the Cambridge Greek Testament (new series). All of Plummer’s many commentaries are superior. A. B. Bruce writes on the synoptic Gospels in The Expositor’s Greek Testament. The present writer has found this set of five volumes to be the best single commentary series on the entire New Testament.

For a satisfactory study of any of the Gospels a harmony is needed. The best on the four Gospels is that by A. T. Robertson or the recent Gospel Records by A. C. Wieand. On the synoptic Gospels we recommend Gospel Parallels, published by Nelson.

RALPH EARLE

Cover Story

Dare we Renew the Controversy?

The Editor

The Fundamentalist Reduction

Fundamentalism counteracted the modernistic philosophy of religion from the standpoint of supernaturalistic Christianity. Certain essentials that had come under special attack dictated its test for orthodoxy: the authority of Scripture, the deity of Christ, his virigin birth, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection and literal return. The temporary test of assent to these specific tenets served its purpose well, for fundamentalism thereby exposed unbelief by boring beneath evasive declarations about the Bible and the supernaturalness of Jesus.

Nonetheless, concentration on “the fundamentals” often displaced doctrinal responsibilities of the church in the wider dimensions of historic creeds and confessions of faith. Evangelical pulpits resounded with “the fundamentals” supplemented periodically with “the case against evolution.” The importance of other theological indispensables became tragically marginal. The norm by which liberal theology was gauged for soundness unhappily became the summary of fundamentalist doctrine. The inevitable result was a premium on creedal brevity. This, in turn, brought further dangers. The organic relationship of revelational truths was neglected. Complacency with fragmented doctrines meant increasing failure to comprehend the relationship of underlying theological principles. Individual doctrines were reduced to simple cliches, without much thought of their profounder systematic implications.

Twentieth Century Movement

The fundamentalist movement became a distinctly twentieth-century expression of Christianity, characterized increasingly by reaction against liberalism. While adhering to “the heart of the biblical gospel” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:1–4) in evangelism and missions and Christian education, in its campaign against the so-called “social gospel” fundamentalism tended to narrow “the whole counsel of God” and felt little obligation to exhibit Christianity as a comprehensive world and life view. In becoming other-worldly in spirit, fundamentalism not only neglected the exposition of Christian philosophy and constructive personal and social ethics, but even became distrustful of such interests. Because it failed to relate the Christian revelation to the broad concerns of civilization and culture and narrowed the interests of religion to personal piety only, fundamentalism—to borrow Dr. G. Brillenburg Wurth’s phrase, ran the danger “of degenerating into a morbid and sickly enthusiasm” (“Theological Climate in America,”—Christianity Today [Feb. 18, 1957], p. 13). Beneath this pietistic tendency lay an uncritical antithesis between the heart and the head to which most fundamentalist educators and ministers subscribed their schools and their churches. This belittling of the intellect and the phrasing of religious experience primarily in terms of the emotional and volitional aspects of life is a tendency actually more in accord with the anti-metaphysical temper of modernistic theology than with biblical theology. Nevertheless, many fundamentalists uncritically followed this distinction despite their insistence on a core of objective spiritual knowledge. In his work on the history of philosophy, Thales to Dewey (Houghton-Mifflin, 1957), Gordon H. Clark criticizes Protestant liberalism as a caricature of historic Christianity, but indicates as well fundamentalism’s disparagement of intellect.

Areas Of Neglect

Fundamentalism lacked theological and historical perspective. Calvinism and Arminianism it embraced side by side, not alone in polemics against the secular climate of the day, but in an intentional moratorium on discussing doctrinal differences. The result was scant devotion to the dedicated enterprise of theological study and research. Impatience and disinterest deterred precise formulations of doctrinal details.

Fundamentalism neglected the production of great exegetical and theological literature and derived a borrowed academic strength from reprints of the theological classics of the past. This failure to produce scholarly books was due in part to the staggering task of carrying forward on traditional lines the Christian program of missions and evangelism bequeathed by the modernist defection. Another reason was modernism’s capture of strategic educational leadership and facilities, while fundamentalism, in its distrust of higher education, did little to encourage and support scholarly study.

Furthermore, fundamentalism veered at times to antidenominationalism rather than to interdenominationalism. Not content with the promotion of rival nondenominational, interdenominational and superdenominational fellowship and cooperation, it gravitated frequently into caustic criticism of denominational effort. The rift between fundamentalists and modernists be especially pronounced just after the First World War and reached its bitterest extreme during that decade. The devout effort to preserve the Christian churches from paganizing influences through a searching and scholarly analysis of the alternatives drifted into a reactionary current. The World Christian Fundamentals Association, formed in 1918, although carrying on a positive spiritual program of missions, evangelism, Bible conferences, Bible institutes and Christian colleges, nevertheless engaged more and more in vitriolic polemics.

Neglect of the doctrine of the Church, except in defining separation as a special area of concern, proved to be another vulnerable feature of the fundamentalist forces. This failure to elaborate the biblical doctrine of the Church comprehensively and convincingly not only contributes to the fragmenting spirit of the movement but actually hands the initiative to the ecumenical enterprise in defining the nature and relations of the churches. Whereas the ecumenical movement has busied itself with the question of the visible and invisible Church, the fundamentalist movement has often been preoccupied with distinguishing churches as vocal or silent against modernism.

Many fundamentalists, moreover, identified Christianity rigidly with premillennial dispensationalism. Some even were prone to label non-dispensationalists as incipient modernists. Doubtless the premillennial spirit was already in evidence in the very beginnings of the fundamentalist movement eighty years ago, when the Niagara Bible Conference in 1895 first proposed the “fivefold test” to determine ministerial attitudes toward the fundamentals. But it was not until after the First World War that fundamentalism became largely a premillennial enterprise.

These fundamentalist features—neglect of the organic interrelations of theology, of the bearing of the Christian revelation upon culture and social life, and of the broader outlines of the doctrine of the Church—exacted a costly historical toll. When the classic liberal theology was at last overtaken by an inevitable judgment and collapsed, fundamentalism, with its uncompromised regard for the authority of Scripture, saw the theological initiative pass not back to the evangelical forces but rather to neo-orthodoxy, a movement fearless to criticize liberalism in terms of both internal philosophical and external biblical points of view. However unsatisfactorily its principles of the theology of the Word and of the witness of Scripture were applied, neo-orthodoxy nonetheless earnestly and aggressively produced a vigorous commentary and dogmatic literature.

A Classic Heritage

In surveying fundamentalism’s eighty-year life cycle, one must regret today’s contrast to an earlier stature of positive, profound influence. At one time fundamentalism displayed a breadth and concept of theological and philosophical perspective, a devotion to scholarly theological enterprise not characteristic of the present movement. The twelve-volume set, The Fundamentals, distributed to the ministry in 1909 as the gift of two evangelical lay leaders, and reaching ultimately a circulation of three million copies, illustrates the fact. A cursory examination of the booklets discloses many evidences of evangelical strength. Here one finds polemic without bitterness, and a concentration upon great issues besides evangelism and missions, important as these are.

James Orr of Glasgow discusses the virgin birth of Christ in the opening article of Volume One. He enriched the evangelical outlook on both sides of the Atlantic both through significant books and as general editor of The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Benjamin B. Warfield, one of America’s ablest exegetical scholars, wrote the second article, on Christ’s deity. His meticulous theological works still serve the evangelical cause. The third essay, “The Purposes of the Incarnation,” is by G. Campbell Morgan, one of the finest Bible expositors of the past generation. It is noteworthy that both postmillennialists and premillennialists supplied opening articles, united in an evangelical witness to the person and work of Christ. Today’s fundamentalist movement, in its present reactionary position and mood, could hardly rally the participation of such representative and distinguished scholars and leaders as the contributors to The Fundamentals. With A. C. Dixon and R. A. Torrey as editors, the participants (besides those already named) included W. H. Griffith Thomas, Melvin Grove Kyle, William G. Moorehead, Handley C. G. Moule, E. Y. Mullins, George L. Robinson, and George Frederick Wright, among others.

High View Of Scripture

No sense of pressure or panic shifts their whole emphasis to the inspiration of the Bible, important as this theme was for contributors like Orr and Warfield, who even prepared separate books on this subject. An article on higher criticism, near the end of the first volume, carefully avoids blanket condemnation of higher criticism as such, and in fact vindicates a positive role for higher as well as for lower criticism. This first volume, indeed, does not end without a resounding emphasis on “the authority and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures,” a conviction infusing the entire series. All the contributors believed that the sacred Hebrew-Christian writings must be referred to a special divine activity of revelation and inspiration; all emphasized that in matters of doctrine Scripture is the only reliable and authoritative canon. Yet they were not required to agree “jot and tittle” in their expositions of inspiration, as anyone familiar with the writings only of Orr and Warfield will recognize at once. The fundamentalist movement’s later uniformity and rigidity in formulating inspiration resulted from reliance upon cliches more than upon a readiness to define its fuller doctrinal implications. This development contributed needlessly to liberalism’s prevailing misunderstanding of the evangelical view of Scripture.

Only uncritical and unrepresentative expositions, however, supplied the slightest basis for ascribing to fundamentalists such straw views as belief in a specially inspired King James Version, or in the veritable divine dictation of Scripture. Truly representative fundamentalist expositions, while upholding the normative and trustworthy character of Scripture, refuse to sketch divine inspiration in terms of sheer dictation. The contributors to The Fundamentals, however, retained creative liberty to expound the witness of Scripture to its own inspiration. No premium, of course, rested on disagreement and difference. But Scripture ever remained the conspicuous final authority by which fundamentalist expositions were to be governed and judged. The older apologists appealed confidently to the lordship of Christ and to the witness of the Spirit, being less inclined than recent evangelical thought to rest everything on the bare inerrancy of Scripture. This did not imply their displacement of objective revelation by subjective considerations, for fundamentalism has always resisted modernism’s substitution of immediate for mediated revelation. But whether the self-authenticating character of an inspired and authoritative Scripture is derivable from objective indications alone, or whether this self-authenticating character involves also the witness of Christ by the Spirit, was the issue in debate. The older apologetic was less hesitant to begin with Christ—not because it sought to detach Christology from bibliology, but because it sensed the danger that biblicism might seem to ascribe superiority to some principle other than the Christological.

The Larger Perspective

Something of the earlier fundamentalist range and perspective comes from a hasty glance at other volumes in The Fundamentals series. The second book, in support of biblical as against critical views, sweeps into the field of archaeology and closes with a doctrinal essay on justification by faith. An article on inspiration, which begins the third volume, is followed by the testimony of a seminary professor who has rejected his earlier concessions to negative criticism. Between these chapters are essays on the moral glory of Christ, on Christ’s revelation of the fatherhood of God and on the significance of Christian experience. Other volumes present science and Christian faith, the weaknesses of Darwinism, the knowledge of God, the Holy Spirit, sin and judgment, the science of conversion, the nature of regeneration, salvation by grace, the nature of the Church, the efficacy of prayer, the sanctity of the Lord’s day, the Christian use of money, Christianity and socialism, competitive cults and religious movements like Christian Science, Mormonism, Millennial Dawnism, Spiritualism and Roman Catholicism. The essays indubitably differ in quality, but when one recalls that The Fundamentals sought a rather general reading audience, the series creditably reflects a scholarly competence, a refreshing range of interest, an application of biblical Christianity to the wider problems of life and culture and an avoidance of restrictions and negations frequently associated with fundamentalism in our times. A delightful absence of caustic apologetics and polemics pervades these writings. Restraint is shown toward men of dissimilar views; no attempt is made to depreciate their abilities and skills.

Christianity And Science

In the matter of Christianity and science, the early fundamentalists quite carefully avoided a dogmatic dismissal of the whole scientific enterprise as perverse speculation. Contributors to The Fundamentals doubtless agreed on the inadequacy of any explanation of the universe and man in merely evolutionary terms; in this respect they anticipated the dangers of the naturalistic-communistic view of life better than those apostles of “Divine immanence” who merely baptized evolutionary theory with a capital E. Genesis the early fundamentalists regarded as an inspired account of beginnings; they deplored its dismissal as legendary and mythical. Some contributors more than others deferred to scientific opinion in supplementing the creation narrative. The message of The Fundamentals centers in the great affirmations of the creation narratives. Its support of Christian supernaturalism is wary of whatever threatens biblical theism, and it is certainly not proevolutionary. At the same time the writers are neither suspicious nor distrustful of science. They are open to the facts, but unconvinced that all the facts have been introduced.

Fundamentalists questioned the factuality of development rather than exposing the inadequacy of evolution. This disposition, to exclude scientific explanations, rather than to evaluate their adequacy, has maneuvered fundamentalism repeatedly into a tardy and retarded awareness of the constantly changing scientific scene. Some fundamentalist popularizers boldly disparaged scientific studies as a whole, using sarcasm and ridicule to reinforce their deficiency of logic. More cautious spirits, however, refused to dogmatize against every possibility of development in nature, and inclined to agnosticism rather than to skepticism in relationship to evolutionary theory. Some evangelicals in America requested of science only that it refrain from tampering with the reality of the supernatural, with the role of transcendent divine power in creating the graded levels of life and the essential uniqueness of man. They did not feel called upon to exclude a scientific supplementation of the Genesis account of beginnings. The main thrust of the fundamentalist interest in science, however, had become mainly anti-evolutionary. Nature as a divine laboratory in which men may read the plan and thought of God and science as a sphere of divine vocation where Christian young people may facilitate the control of nature to man’s purposes under God were all but lost as motivating concepts.

Decline Of Dignity

Outside conservative theological circles, especially among unchurched people and among members of many liberal churches, the word “fundamentalism” became a term of reproach. Secular newspapers and magazines use it today, quite in the Fosdickian spirit, as a badge of obscurantism. This is less than fair to the traditions of the movement as a whole. To dismiss the fundamentalist as an obscurantist is a strategy often appropriated by those hostile to belief in the supernatural. It gains credibility in liberal circles through the reactionary spirit of some present fundamentalist groups who seem to align themselves against higher education, science and cultural interests.

Such reactionary tendencies in fundamentalism, therefore, caused men of profound biblical loyalties to hesitate to identify themselves with the movement as such. Aware of the undesirable connotations of the term fundamentalism, they prefer to be called conservatives or evangelicals. Already by 1923, when Machen wrote his penetrating critique of modernism, Christianity and Liberalism, men of his theological acumen preferred to call themselves evangelicals.

The real bankruptcy of fundamentalism has resulted not so much from a reactionary spirit—lamentable as this was—as from a harsh temperament, a spirit of lovelessness and strife contributed by much of its leadership in the recent past. One of the ironies of contemporary church history is that the more fundamentalists stressed separation from apostasy as a theme in their churches, the more a spirit of lovelessness seemed to prevail. The theological conflict with liberalism deteriorated into an attack upon organizations and personalities. This condemnation, in turn, grew to include conservative churchmen and churches not ready to align with separatist movements. It widened still further to abuse of evangelicals unhappy with the spirit of independency in such groups as the American Council of Churches and the International Council of Christian Churches. Then came internal debate and division among separatist fundamentalists within the American Council. More recently, the evangelistic ministry of Billy Graham and of other evangelical leaders, and efforts whose disapproval of liberalism and advocacy of conservative Christianity are beyond dispute, have become the target of bitter volubility.

This character of fundamentalism as a temperament, and not primarily fundamentalism as a theology, has brought the movement into contemporary discredit. Doubtless it is unfair to impute this mood of rancor and negation to the entire fundamentalist movement. Historically, fundamentalism was a theological position; only gradually did the movement come to signify a mood and disposition as well. Its early leadership reflected balance and ballast, and less of born bast and battle. Only later did a divisive disposition show itself, plunging the evangelical movement into internal conflict.

The recrudescence of fundamentalism during the Second World War involved a diversification within the movement. On one side were those eager to detach the great theological affirmations from a recent negative reactionary spirit and to strengthen constructive theological and ecclesiastical activity; on the other, those who add to reactionary spirit by multiplying divisions and by disowning brethren in the former category. The first group insists that fundamentalists of the latter definition are severing themselves from the spirit of historic evangelical Christianity; the second group claims that evangelicals of the former category are making a subtle retreat to a compromised fundamentalism.

Call To Repentance

By mid-century, fundamentalism obviously signified a temperament as fully as a theology. Despite its belligerency, many evangelicals courageously stayed with fundamentalism, remembering rather its contribution to Christianity’s age-old battle against unbelief. Others, however, weary of the spirit of strife, wrote off a pugnacious leadership with the declaration that “fundamentalism is dead.” None, it should be noted, showed the same courage and earnestness in calling fundamentalism to judgment and repentance as did Barth and Brunner in approaching classic liberalism. Should evangelical leaders as candidly admit the excesses of fundamentalism as have neo-orthodox leaders relative to the prevailing liberalism? They dare not do less. The growing revulsion toward the fundamentalist temperament is but one evidence that orthodoxy is being chastened in our day. A renewal of biblical Christianity will involve not only a restoration of the fundamentals, but also a revival of fundamentalists imbued with a new mind set and a new method in ecclesiastical life.

If modernism stands discredited as a perversion of the scriptural theology, certainly fundamentalism in this contemporary expression stands discredited as a perversion of the biblical spirit.

TO BE CONTINUED

Ideas

Natural Law and Revelation

The Editor

The Fourth of July is an appropriate time to consider the basic problems of politics.

In the Declaration of Independence the American people accused the British government of abuses, usurpations, despotism and tryanny. The King had exceeded his just powers. He had forbidden his governors to execute important laws until his assent had been obtained; he had repeatedly dissolved duly elected legislatures; he had made the judiciary dependent on his will; he had erected a harassing bureaucracy; he had made the military superior to the civil power; he had imposed taxes without the consent of the people; he had deprived them of trial by jury and transported them beyond the seas to be tried for pretended offenses.

Evidently the colonists thought that there were some things a government had no right to do.

So also when the Constitution brought into being the United States of America, a bill of rights had to be written into it. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.… The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.… The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Liberty today more than ever needs to be defended from totalitarian encroachments. Not only is there the brutality of reducing a populace to the level of abject slavery, with a controlled church to applaud its atheistic rulers; but also in western lands the burdens and budgets, the regulations and controls, become constantly more onerous. The tenth article of the bill of rights is almost a dead letter.

Can limitations on governments, can the protection of minorities from majority action, can individual rights and liberties be rationally maintained? Or does democracy mean mob rule?

Some of the colonists, Thomas Jefferson, for example, were deists. Jefferson regarded Jesus simply as a good moral teacher. Nonetheless he founded individual rights on a sort of theology. After referring to the laws of nature and of nature’s God, Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident! that all men … are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

The Thomistic philosophy of the Roman Catholic church also bases its (all too totalitarian) political theory on the idea of natural law. Maritain has said, “There is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which human reason can discover.… The unwritten law, or Natural Law, is nothing more than that.” And if Maritain has not, others add that this unwritten law is the minimum religious premise because it means that the universe is not indifferent to man’s individual life.

Thus the law of nature is considered superior to the statutes of a state; it is a norm for legislation; and a state is under theoretical obligation to confine its legislation within the limits prescribed by nature.

In this discussion the important point is whether or not human reason can discover in nature an order of morality that sets the norm for statutory law. Are Jefferson’s unalienable rights self-evident? The argument does not center on individual rights as such, nor on the existence of a Creator, nor on the Creator’s authority to judge the nations. The point at issue is whether or not these propositions can be proved by an observation of nature. Perhaps they can be obtained only by special revelation.

It is instructive to note that political theorists who were untouched by the Christian revelation, almost without exception, advocate totalitarianism. If Plato was a communist, Aristotle was a fascist. Private parental education is forbidden because education has as its aim the production of citizens for the good of the state. The number of children a family may have is controlled by the government, and surplus children are to be fed to the wolves. And everybody must profess the state religion. Rousseau is equally totalitarian: “There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles.… If anyone, after publicly recognizing these dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe them, let him be punished by death.”

If individual liberties were as evident as Jefferson said, would not Rousseau have recognized them? If they could be learned by observing nature, would Aristotle have missed them? And in any case, would there not be a fairly wide-spread agreement on what in detail these laws are? Jefferson thought that all men are created equal; Aristotle believed that some are born to be slaves. Aquinas argued that all things to which man has a natural inclination are naturally apprehended by reason as being good; but Duns Scotus replied that this leaves no method for determining whether an inclination is natural or unnatural.

Hume and Mill also, in their criticisms of the argument for God’s existence, throw doubt on the theory. In those passages where they emphasize the injustices in the world, and Mill in particular does this vigorously, they show clearly the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of discovering by human reason any perfect justice in nature.

Although Hume and Mill are in bad repute among devout Christians, their attack on natural theology may prove to be a blessing in disguise. At least, their insistence on observable injustice and misery is a recognition, however unintentional, of the existence of sin in the world. Too often philosophers with optimistic blindness ignore or minimize sin.

Now, one of the theoretical deficiencies of natural theology and natural ethics is its assumption that human reason has not been depraved or distorted by sin and remains a competent and unbiased observer. An orthodox Christian has no wish to deny that God at creation wrote the basic moral law on man’s heart. Even yet this conscience acts after a fashion. For example, experiences of guilt occur, though they may occur too infrequently; self-commendation also occurs—with greater regularity; and both are often improperly assigned. Natural political law and personal moral law can therefore be barely discerned, if at all.

Thus, Caesar, Napoleon and Stalin can take pride in their crimes. Looking carefully on nature and seeing it red in tooth and claw, they can conclude that the universe is indifferent to the fate of any individual and that it is the law of nature for the brutal to rule the meek. There are natural inclinations for domination and a will to power. And if Aquinas says otherwise, he can’t see straight and reasons like a bourgeois gentilhomme.

If now one turns from nature and reads special revelation, ambiguity and confusion are replaced with clearly stated principles. In such contrast to the heathen nations surrounding Israel—such a contrast as to be unintelligible to Jezebel—Ahab could not legally expropriate Naboth’s vineyard. Here for one instance there is the divine sanction on private property, and therefore the rights of individuals, and a limitation of government. In another instance Daniel defied the religious laws of Nebuchadnezzar. And Peter said, “We must obey God rather than men.”

These brief considerations indicate that the theory of natural law is not a satisfactory theoretical defense of minority and individual rights. Human reason, that is, ordinary observation of nature, leads more easily to totalitarianism than to anything else other than anarchy. But an acceptance of God’s word justifies a limited government.

Unfortunately this is a theoretical justification only; it is not a civil guarantee. It does not, it actually has not prevented tyrannies in history. What is needed to protect our unalienable rights is a popular acceptance of biblical principles. Only in so far as a determined and vocal segment of the populace forces power hungry politicians to curtail their ambitions, only in so far as the will of the people can reduce budgets, relax controls, and eliminate pork barrels, only so can the twentieth century trend to Communism be slowed down.

Long may our land be bright

With freedom’s holy light;

Protect us by thy might,

Great God, our King.

Government Service As A Christian Vocation

One of history’s greatest philosophers, Plato, voiced the verdict that democracy cannot survive. The interest and trust of the Western world in popular government have been encouraged for a century and a half by the American form of government, a republic within a democracy. Since World War I, however, faith in the democracies has waned. Fears are deepening that, apart from a vigorous rededication to spiritual and moral values, even the American form of democracy must decline and decay.

One can therefore sympathize with all efforts to infuse American governmental life with Christian principles. The past history of the West attests that the Christian religion supplied a new moral earnestness and excellence and furnished a spiritual framework that unified the masses in their devotion to the right. American state affairs in colonial and revolutionary times were Christian in temper at least, and the concern for separation of Church and State arose within this disposition. The loss of Christian principle and perspective in recent generations, however, has produced a withering sense of religious and ethical priorities. Today the attempt to temper national affairs with Christian principles is resisted by secular forces hostile to supernatural religion and ethics and is resisted also by some agencies spiritually and morally aggressive yet fearful of ecclesiastical dominance in state affairs by a single voice like the Church of Rome.

The Roman Church, at any rate, has a specific philosophy of political action. Its militant concern for religious government gains sympathy from the drift of the Communist world to irreligious government. Pressures behind the Iron Curtain drive Christians out of government leadership. Soviet disregard of justice and moral law, with its enthronement of deception and the lie, has pricked the Free World’s conscience. Can Christians, whatever their communion, be blamed—ought they not indeed to be lauded—for seeking to inspirit American politics with Christian leadership?

Roman Catholicism encourages political service, and implements such encouragement. It sponsors a training program for government leadership in which the Edwin A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University plays a leading role. Admittedly, somewhat less than half of Georgetown’s graduates are Roman Catholic; about one-fifth are Jewish. But the curriculum reflects the viewpoint of the Vatican. From the halls of Georgetown, Roman Catholic alumni in significant numbers find their way into diplomatic service.

Roman political gains in the United States are increasingly evident. In the state of Rhode Island, Catholics have a majority, 52 per cent of the population, and only one Protestant now holds state office there. Increasing Catholic strength in Congress is clear. This year for the first time Catholics number second in the religious census of Congress, outnumbering Baptists, and narrowing the lead of Methodists. One Washington news correspondent thinks it “almost inevitable” that within five or ten years Catholic congressmen will take the lead, and that, once they gain control, that lead will be irreversible. Catholic maneuvering for a presidential or vice-presidential candidate has been an obvious phase of recent party conventions. Catholic policy includes the objective of a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, preferably Roman Catholic. In Roman Catholic lands like Latin America, where a disproportionate number of Catholic consuls represent the American government, visas for incoming Protestant missionaries have frequently been opposed as disruptive of the unity of those lands. The Catholic program of encouraging government careers and of equipping candidates for those careers with a specific philosophy of government is politically efficient.

This way of stating things, however, is reactionary, for it tends to an anti-Catholic mood. In a democracy, after all, no citizen is less a citizen because of the religion he espouses. Catholic forces are not alone in a religious political vision for America. Across the years, Protestant ministers’ sons have found their way in significant numbers into State Department service, some inspired in past decades by the untenable “social gospel” vision of a christianized government. Protestant lay leaders are conspicuous in Cabinet and congressional posts; Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Director of National Security Harold Stassen, Congressman Walter Judd are three of a great many. In the Department of Agriculture, Mormons reportedly have been in full harvest in recent years. Methodist leaders, determined to translate church influence into political life, are projecting their own costly school of foreign service in the District of Columbia.

Roman Catholic citizens have seized opportunities that other American religious groups have neglected, and for this they ought rather to be envied than blamed. It would be sheer prejudice to exclude an American citizen from public office because his private worship and witness fall into some particular religious communion. The real concern, however, is Rome’s official philosophy of politics. The Roman Catholic conception is that every government (the United States included) is the temporal arm of the Roman Church. History is too clearly written to ignore the fact that Rome utilizes the democratic framework to subordinate national interests to the totalitarian religious and political goals of the Vatican. It would doubtless be uncharitable to suspect every Catholic in politics of being an agent of the Vatican’s foreign policy. But the only way to determine whether a candidate does or does not share the official view of the hierarchy that the State is the temporal arm of the Vatican is to press for a personal statement.

Evangelical Christianity is apprehensive about direct church influence in politics, whether that influence be Catholic or Protestant. The minister and church in politics threaten the principle of separation of Church and State by entangling the Church in government, and reviving the ogre of the medieval church-state.

Yet evangelicals have been spurred to a new look at the political arena. The major motivations for this growing interest in government are two: a reaction to the growing power of Romanism, and the evidence that political neglect abandons this area of life to secularism. The slogan “the best politics is no politics” breeds inferior politics. Politics has its seamy side, as someone has remarked, because so few Christians are in it.

What evangelical Christianity lacks today is a philosophy of Christian social action which sets political responsibility and activity in a consistent and compelling frame of thought and action. Good politicians are not only men of high principle and moral courage, but men of political insight and consistency. Evangelical interest in politics lacks the motive drive of a full-orbed outline of social duty. For that reason evangelical action tends to be needlessly reactionary, to be stirred to activity only on grave issues, to be one-sidedly competitive as a parallel effort. Its creative contribution and dynamic are impeded through this lack. There is the danger of enlistment only in short-term programs, of premature commitment to excessive positions, of effort wasted in programs of enthusiasm. Whoever has moved in evangelical circles during the recent decades has sensed their interest in headlines more than in study commissions in social ethics.

What is needed today, as a background for virile evangelical political action, is a renewed interest in the study of comprehensive principles of Christian social ethics governing the whole of life and culture. It will take more than salvage and patchwork to arrest the decline or democracy today.

Theology

The Bible

L. Nelson Bell

The most up-to-date book in all the world is the Bible. It goes beyond scientific speculation to God, the Creator of the universe; it unfolds the revelation of man’s need and God’s provision for that need; it is man’s only infallible guide for both faith and living; and it gives an unerring glimpse into the future, into eternity itself.

But how much do you know about the Bible? Have you assigned it to a place of major importance in your life? Do you appreciate the fact that the Bible contains solutions for your multiplied daily problems? Have you met and surrendered to the Christ revealed to us in the Bible?

There are many things that we learn by experience or observation. Others we discover by experimentation, reason and deduction. But, beyond these, there are truths in the spiritual realm that man could never discover for himself. They must be revealed by God, and this he does in the Bible.

To illustrate: We pick up our morning newspaper and read of murder, theft, rape, disputes and litigations. We read of the results of pride and envy and greed in the hearts of people. And we know there is something seriously wrong.

The Bible tells us what this is; that it is a disease of the soul with which all men are born, and calls it sin. But the Bible does more than this; it declares that the wages of sin is death, that sin separates man from his God both now and for eternity. Best of all, the Bible reveals what God has done to free us from the power and penalty of sin—it tells of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior.

Without the revelation of spiritual truth, found in the Scriptures, man has a warped perspective. He values “things” more than truth and looks at this world in terms of the present rather than in the light of eternity.

Man needs to know that he is a transient in a transient world and that human wisdom is relative while divine truth is absolute.

Through the Bible we learn to see time in the light of eternity and material things in the light of spiritual values. Here we learn of the way to eternal life.

All of us are aware of the unending conflicts in the world, the pressures for and against right and the ebb and flow of opinions on every hand. Little wonder that life is filled with frustrations and complexes, for a life without Christ is a life without lasting meaning.

In the Bible we learn of Christ, the eternal Son of God, who wishes to become the center of our faith and worship and the companion of our daily lives. In the Scriptures we are given basic principles relevant for every generation and applicable to every contingency of life. While written nearly three thousand years ago, the book of Proverbs is a relevant treatise on personal living and, if heeded, the greatest deterrent to juvenile delinquency to be found in print.

In every generation the Bible has had its detractors. The old phrase “Yea, hath God said?” is always current. But the Bible remains and its truth continues to be the foundation of knowledge and its teachings as impregnable as Gibraltar before a pea-shooter powered by a rubber band.

The unanswerable fact is that the Bible works. Let anyone accept it at face value, letting it speak for itself, trying by God’s grace to follow its teachings and live its truths and promises he will discover that the Bible works.

Let the Bible give its own estimate of its message; let it tell of its origin in the revelation of God to man; let it become a part of one’s thinking and way of life. Then its complete reliability and basic authority will be found to be unanswerable.

Sit down and read the Bible and soon we find it speaking to our hearts as no other book can ever do. It pierces between the cracks and seeps into the pores of life. We see ourselves, not as we would like to think we are, or as we portray ourselves to be before others, but as God sees us. The Holy Spirit, speaking through its pages, shines the white light of divine conviction into our hearts and minds and we stand naked before the one to whom all men must answer.

This supernatural power in the written word brings a consciousness of sin, a conviction of sin and a repentance for sin. This same divine power leads us to God’s answer to the sin question—his only Son.

The Apostle Paul warns the Christian that his life is a daily battle and that the enemy is Satan with all his wiles. He then goes on to tell us the necessity of wearing the God-given armor, taking in one hand the shield of faith and in the other the “Sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

When our Lord was tempted in the wilderness he gave us a perfect example of its use as a sword. Three thrusts, three relevant quotations from the Scriptures, and Satan left him.

Little wonder that the Devil hates the Bible. Little wonder that he has sought to destroy its influence. Little wonder that he interposes every possible excuse to keep us from reading it and making it a part of our lives. Satan does not fear holy water, nor secular knowledge that may banish many of the material and physical ills of man. Rather he dreads the Bible because he cannot stand against its power.

For those who question how God could give a revelation of divine truth through human channels, it is satisfying to let the Bible speak for itself. There we find that God prepared men through background, training and experience; then the Holy Spirit led them to speak and write according to his will, not as stenographers but as responsible agents moved by the Spirit.

The Apostle Peter wrote: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not of old time by the will of man: but Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

Our Lord, after his resurrection, said to his questioning disciples: “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” And later: “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.”

A study of Christ’s references to the Old Testament scriptures reveals his implicit trust in their reliability and authority and gives us full confidence as we read them for ourselves.

We do not worship the Bible. It is the Book which tells of God and we worship him. But we must study the Bible, make it a part of our daily lives, make it our unswerving rule of faith and practice.

We need to study the Bible. Books about the Bible have their place but the Bible must come first and it must be permitted to speak for itself.

In all of this we should pray for the guidance and teaching of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who spoke to those who wrote the Book will speak to the hearts of those who read it if they will but heed.

Set aside those first minutes of each new day to pray to God and let him speak to us through his word.

Eutychus and His Kin: June 24, 1957

MINISTER CHEEVY

(With profound apologies to Edwin Arlington Robinson)

Minister Cheevy, man of cloth,

Grew sleek while he assured the matrons.

He feared no wardrobe-eating moth

For he had patrons.

Reverend Cheevy loved the sight

Of crowded pews at Sunday service.

His rhetoric was at its height

When he was nervous.

Pastor Cheevy could obtain

Rapport with tense, neurotic people.

The soothing of his manner sane

Was like a peace pill.

President Cheevy always ran

Church meetings with a smooth decorum.

The board would somehow choose his plan

In open forum.

Rotarian Cheevy could relax

With all the boys at business lunches.

He knew the art of slapping backs

And pulling punches.

Doctor Cheevy wrote a book

That traced the road of human progress.

An author, father, husband, cook,

He ran for Congress.

Minister Cheevy filled his roles

With balanced poise beyond aspersion.

This guide of souls met all his goals

—But lacked conversion!

EUTYCHUS

LIBERAL CHURCH UNION

The watchword of the Ecumenical Movement … is “Organic Union.” Steps toward mutual understanding, recognition, or agreement between Christian churches which do not make “Organic Union” their ultimate objective are disparaged by the leaders of this “Liberal Ecumenicism.” They have no compunctions about jeopardizing the results of every other kind of approach to unity. They plainly consider intercommunion or mutual recognition valueless. To them, Organic Union is all.

How remote this is from the biblical picture! In the New Testament we see organically separate churches, according full recognition to one another. There is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, but not one organization. All are accountable to the Apostolic Council, but the Council is called because the Churches desire it.… The Church must be an organism organically united to its Head, who sits at the right hand of the Father. As soon as it is organically united to a single earthly head, it begins to cease to be united to the heavenly. This is the general aspect of the problem. I want to mention a specific one.

The “Church of South India” is the most successful experiment to date of the liberal ecumenical movement. It is a union of Methodist, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches. We are here criticising one feature of this experiment, but we do not mean thereby to imply that there is nothing good about the South India achievement, for other features are independent of our criticism.

The distinctive feature of the “Church of South India”, which includes about a quarter of the Christians in the area, is that it accepts an Episcopal form of church government, but without “any particular view or belief concerning orders of the ministry” (Constitution, Chapter II, Section 11). Though it sounds innocent enough to say that no particular view or belief is required, the effect is the same as if every view or belief were forbidden.

No view may be taught authoritatively. Any person who advocates a definite view will be accused of attempting to destroy the union. The denominations which have joined to form the Church of South India have had to abandon the principle of loyalty to Holy Scripture in order to do this. The former Anglicans have had to do it in one way, and the former non-Episcopalians in another. The former Anglicans previously accepted and continued the Episcopate because they taught and believed that it was scriptural (see the Ordinal in the Book of Common Prayer of the Protestant Episcopal Church, pp. 529 ff.).

Now, those who have gone into the South India Union retain the Episcopate, but by the terms of the Union must relinquish the claim that it is scriptural. They must in practice teach their spiritual descendants that they have the Episcopate, but that it is not required by Scripture.

Those who went into the Union from non-Episcopal churches are in a corresponding predicament. They formerly believed that Scripture taught the parity of ministers. Now they accept an imparity but without any claim that it is scriptural. It would not have been wrong in principle if they had accepted the Episcopal form of government because they had become convinced that the Reformers were wrong, and that Scripture did not, after all, teach the parity of ministers. Nothing of the kind happened, however. They accepted the Episcopate without having any such scriptural reason. What is worse, the giving of such a reason is specifically excluded. That would be “a particular view or belief concerning orders of the ministry.”

A more cynical attitude towards the Scriptures could scarcely be imagined. Had all the uniting churches come to the explicit conclusion that Scripture had nothing definite to say about Church government, it would have been less cynical. But even that seems to be excluded as a “particular view or belief!”

Many Evangelicals find that in the matter of theology the South India Constitution and Basis of Union are even more cynical. The “Basis of Union”, having commended the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds states, in a footnote (Section 3) that “The uniting Churches accept the fundamental truths embodied in the Creeds as providing a sufficient basis of union; but do not intend thereby to demand the assent of individuals to every word and phrase in them.…” The cynicism concerning the Creeds here expressed in words is similar to the cynicism about the Scriptures expressed in actions with respect to the ministry.

The Liberal Ecumenicist concept of the church fails because it leaves out the middle term of the description “one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism.” Faith is left out to make room for the term “one Organization.” It is worse than left out, for by eschewing any “particular interpretation”, a liberal ecumenical union in practice requires a vague or lax interpretation of both Scriptures and Creeds.

The insistence on “one organization” is certainly not a Reformation concept. We have indicated above that it is not a New Testament concept. Where, then, does it come from? It is a characteristically and specifically Roman Catholic concept. Liberal ecumenicists have unconsciously, almost instinctively clung to this non-biblical, un-Protestant concept. Ironical it is, for that is the very concept which was back of the trouble the Reformation sought to remedy. Liberalism has the same root disease, with the difference that where Roman Catholicism is a bureaucracy for the maintenance of a distinct and vigorous (albeit mistaken) faith, the liberal ecumenical church would be a bureaucracy for the propagation of no faith at all.…

The end result of the liberal ecumenical movement would be a Protestant Pope ruling over a doctrinal blob. No doubt the “Pope” would be a committee, not an individual. So much the worse! Scripture shows a better way.

ROGER GEFFEN

Church of the Good Shepherd

Wakefield, Bronx, N. Y.

WHAT SCRIPTURE FORBIDS

I certainly appreciate … CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Your articles and features have been thought-stimulating … a wedding of the spiritual and intellectual much needed today. Keep up the Gospel approach. No magazine has the right to the name Christian which does not present the message of our Lord and Master. Yours certainly does.…

I would like to comment on “The Headship of Christ” (April 29). The author states: “Without a scriptural warrant she (the church) can make no requirement binding the consciences of men.… We multiply error when we first make our own laws and then use the church of God to enforce them. Accordingly, nothing ought to be regarded as a matter of offense or as a cause for discipline in the Church except that which can be shown to be contrary to the word of God.” This has always been the determining factor in the Lutheran Church, regarding both faith and practice. We dare not command nor forbid, where God has not already done so.

Yet in the paragraph following the author gives the obscure impression that this is not so in the Lutheran Church. In the Reformation period we retained much that was ancient and good, such as altars, vestments, church music and gothic architecture, simply because there was no scriptural warrant for discarding them. Today many reformed churches are returning to these age-old “customs”—for the same reason. Anything that enhances worship, that directs the worship away from self toward God, that centralizes the worship in the message of God rather than in the individual participant—is good.

As for the Bible being a “book of Common Worship,” that is impossible. No order of worship could be devised entirely on the basis of Scripture. Here Christian judgment and the needs of the people must decide. Worship must be living and vital. It must be orderly and dignified. “Let all things be done for edification, for God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.”

R. J. MARTENS

Messiah Lutheran Church

Carlyle, Ill.

Thank you very much for letting me see the interesting letter from the Rev. Robert J. Martens. I hold his great Church in the highest esteem and certainly hope that you will publish his letter, or at least such part of it as corrects any misapprehension which my article may have carried concerning the Lutheran Church.

The historic positions of the two sister denominations of the Reformation were that the Lutheran Church rejected everything in the mediaeval worship which the Scripture condemned, while the Reformed body sought to introduce nothing into the worship but what the Scripture authorized.

Our Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., states that Christ as King has given to his Church officers, oracles and ordinances and has especially ordained therein his system of … and worship, all which are either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary inference may be deduced therefrom, to which things he commands that nothing be added and naught taken away. This, it seems to me, can be put in popular language by saying that the Bible is our Book of Worship. Of course, I give to Dr. Martens the privilege of differing with our position and hold him in high regard as a Christian brother and fellow minister of the Gospel.

WM. C. ROBINSON

Decatur, Ga.

SLAYING THE GIANT

Edward John Carnell asks … “Can Billy Graham Slay the Giant?” (May 13 issue). Why doesn’t this author have the simple courage to say … precisely what he means? Dr. Carnell does a neat little job of shadow-boxing in the field of semantics, “straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” … All the “fundies” with their bibliolatry … are making such desperate efforts to elevate themselves as impeccable leaders who “traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”

C. SUMPTER LOGAN

First Presbyterian Church

Henderson, Ky.

The crux of Dr. Carnell’s article … is the sentence “But it so happens that sick people are more anxious to get well than … to learn how sick they are.” No one questions but that granite towers will offer little final resistance to the message of Billy Graham. But having cast out devils without all the diagnostic skill available are we certain that seven devils will not return to occupy the room of one? The aftermath of revivalism has before this brought us into a spiritual condition worse than before … Something must be done with the Paganism of New York City, God knows. But has Billy’s God the answer?

R. HULBERT

Pilgrim Heights Community Church

Minneapolis, Minn.

During the past week two papers have come to my desk, each of which contains articles attacking the person and evangelistic ministry of Billy Graham. The writers are professional evangelists.… Our Lord suffered this same jealousy and divisiveness among his own disciples.… May we today forget organizations and personalities, and fall on our knees, beseeching the Holy Spirit to move in a mighty way.…

R. E. HOOK

First Baptist Church

Canon City, Colo.

Dr. Carnell perhaps raises more interesting questions than he realizes … There is some justification to the criticism that Christian realism could stand to be more realistic about redemption … But, as Dr. Carnell almost comes to the point of saying, Christian orthodoxy must also become more realistic about the realities of the human situation. If theological justification for this sort of realism is needed, it might be remembered that in the definitive act of revelation the Word became flesh, not doctrine; we have to do with an incarnation, not an inscription.…

It seems as though contemporary orthodoxy has fallen into what a psychologist might call an “Elijah complex” … “I, even I only, am left …” (1 Ki. 19:10). Christian realism sees here, mixed with admirable dedication, something it calls pride. And its analysis pretty sharply hits the nail on the head. It is my feeling that Christian orthodoxy could profit from this insight.

PAUL MCKAY WRIGHT

First Presbyterian Church

Timnath, Colo.

Cover Story

What Can Southern Baptists Do?

H. H. Barnette

Southern Baptist pastors, denominational leaders and seminarians are burdened about the racial issue because they see a basic contradiction between our ideals about human relations and our practice of segregation and discrimination. They have the conviction that the Supreme Court’s decision to desegregate the public schools is in harmony with both Christian and democratic principles. But they honestly ask, “What can we do about it?”

Those of us who have lived in the South know that no shortcuts to the solution of the race problem are to be found in either legislation or Christian social action. But this should not deter the preacher in his efforts to achieve better race relationships.

One thing is certain: the Southern Baptist pastor cannot remain neutral any longer concerning the race question in the South. For two reasons: (1) He must face up to this problem honestly in order to live with himself. Recently, a Southern Baptist pastor accepted a call to a church in the South. Before he arrived to take up his new duties, the church in business session revised its constitution to prohibit the pastor from preaching on the race issue. With much prayer and tact the pastor got this prohibition stricken from the constitution of the church. He confided: “In order to live with myself I have to be free to preach my convictions on any issue.” (2) The race issue is a moral one and the preacher must take the lead in its solution.

Must Be Informed

In the first place, it is imperative for the preacher to be informed as to the nature of the racial issue. There is no place for consecrated ignorance at this point. For one thing, the white preacher must become acquainted with the Negro himself. He knows almost nothing about the Negro. Beyond Booker T. Washington, Dr. George Washington Carver and Joe Louis, most white Christians are ignorant of the Negro people in America. Even the textbooks for children say nothing prejudicial about the Negro—they just say nothing! Consequently, white people have grown up in ignorance of their colored neighbors.

Dare the white person forget that the Negro is a person made in the image of God? He is a person with emotional problems. He has emotional reactions when he is herded to the rear of buses, when he is forced to wait in the doctor’s office until all the white patients are cared for, when he is refused admittance to the State University, when he is denied his basic rights in the courts, when unkind epithets are hurled at him. It is a revelation to know that the Negro reacts just as a white man would under similar circumstances.

Again, the preacher must avoid a paternalistic attitude toward people of other races. The idea of working for rather than with Negroes is offensive to them. Any attitude of condescension repels people of other races.

Beyond getting better acquainted with the individual Negro, the preacher should study the local situation. He should find out how the Negro lives in his community, what his grievances are, what is being done, and what can be done about his situation.

Christian Attitudes And Actions

People are more influenced by the preacher’s pattern of life than they are by his moral preachments. When there is a discrepancy between what he preaches and what he practices, his words are not taken very seriously. The most effective way the minister can help to bring about a better understanding in race relations is to be Christian in his own attitudes and actions. An earnest Christian came to Mrs. Mary McCleod Bethune shortly before her death and asked her how he could help to bring an end to segregation in southern schools without the violence which has marked the attempt in other sections of the South. Among other things Mrs. Bethune suggested that he first live up to God’s requirements as outlined in the Bible. She went on to point out that the Christian of today must be willing to disregard the traditions of the past and have the courage within himself to live up to the requirements of mankind as stated in the Golden Rule. To put it another way, there must be a correlation between what we believe and the way be behave.

Recently I served on an ordination council examining a young candidate for the pastoral-preaching ministry. After the traditional questions as to his conversion, call to preach, and doctrinal soundness, someone on the council asked the young man, “What is your attitude toward people of other races?” I had never before heard this question put to a candidate for the pastoral-preaching ministry. But it is a question which is asked of all of our foreign missionary volunteers; failure to answer in terms of goodwill toward minority groups is a considerable factor in their rejection for mission work. Certainly no person aspiring to be a preacher of the Gospel should be ordained to this high office if he harbors unChristian attitudes in his heart toward other races. For the preacher must set an example of Christian brotherhood in all of his dealings with all races and classes of people.

Dr. A. C. Miller, Executive Secretary of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, tells an interesting experience which illustrates the meaning of brotherhood. A few days before Christmas (when he was pastor in a southern town) Dr. Miller went into the post office to mail some Christmas cards. He stood at one end of the high writing desk in the lobby placing on each envelope a Christmas tuberculosis seal. A Negro woman stood at the other end of the desk using the same kind of seals on her Christmas cards. She opened a conversation with Dr. Miller. “Brother Miller,” she said, “I am glad to see that you use the tuberculosis seals.” The Negro woman went on to point out that many people of her race had tuberculosis and that these seals helped them in their struggle for health. Dr. Miller thanked her and after some further conversation mailed his cards and left. Some days later he saw this woman in one of the stores. She approached him somewhat uncertainly and said, “The other day after our talk at the post office, the postmaster called me to the window when you had gone and told me I owed you an apology because I had addressed you as ‘brother’.” “You owe me no apology,” Dr. Miller replied, then went on to say, “Two things I hope you will ever remember: first, the Postmaster is not a Christian and does not understand the relationship that should exist between Christians; and second, I am your brother and you are my sister through Jesus Christ, our Elder Brother.” This is an excellent example of a preacher practicing brotherhood in his daily living.

Articulating Biblical Principles

It is the task of the preacher to lay emphasis upon ethical principles of conduct rather than codes and rules of living. By emphasizing biblical principles the preacher can avoid semantical problems which grow out of the use of emotionally explosive terms as “integration” and “segregation.” This is not compromise, but an effort to reach the hearts and minds of the people with the spirit of the Gospel. It is easy for “ethical snipers” who are far removed from an issue to sit in judgment upon others who do not use their terminology and techniques in approaching that problem. To be honest, the preacher must proclaim principles rather than specifics about the race problem. For the Bible does not contain proof texts to support either segregation or integration. But the preacher should be fully aware that unbrotherliness, discrimination and injustice in human relations are not in harmony with Christian love by which he should be motivated and by which he must seek to live.

The biblical principles of human relations are found throughout the Bible. For example, humanity is one by creation (Mal. 2:10; Acts 17:26). Thus there is the unity of humanity in the order of creation. Again, God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). We are all one in Christ (Gal. 3:28). Thus humanity is not only one in the order of creation but one in the order of grace. Paul points out that God is creating a new man, a new commonwealth, the members of which enjoy the equality of citizenship (Eph. 2:11–22).

Again, there is the principle of the value of the individual (Mark 8:36; Matt. 12:12). Also there is the unqualified command to love everyone, even our enemies (Matt. 5:43–48; Luke 10:25 ff.). Moreover, Christians are to practice the Golden Rule, doing unto others as they would have others do unto them (Matt. 5:12). Again, Jesus set the example in race relations. He crossed racial barriers and challenged his disciples to follow him. His disciples were astonished when they discovered him talking with a Samaritan woman because the Jews and the Samaritans had no dealings with each other (John 4:8, 27).

Dr. C. Oscar Johnson, pastor of the Third Baptist Church in St. Louis, Missouri, believes that the fundamental scriptural passage about race relations in the New Testament is John 12:32. When two of his disciples brought certain Greeks to him, Jesus said among other things, “And I if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” Some scholars think that what Jesus means by “all men” is “all kinds of men.” Be that as it may, Jesus does draw all kinds of men to himself into a fellowship of the redeemed with equal rights and privileges in the kingdom of God.

Finally, the Holy Spirit makes no distinction but comes upon all people who open their hearts to him. Peter, who was filled with race prejudice, was bidden by the Spirit to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, making no distinction (Acts 11:12). He witnessed the falling of the Spirit upon Gentiles, notably Cornelius and his friends. Peter then concluded: “If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” (Acts 11:17). Thus Peter perceived that it was not race but the action of the Holy Spirit in response to faith which determined participation in the fellowship of the church of Christ.

Pay The Price Of Conviction

Some Southern Baptist preachers who are paying the price for preaching their convictions have had to give up their pastorates because of their stand on race relations. They have found it necessary to go into the chaplaincy or into pastorates in the North or into some other kind of work.

The cost to the clergyman for acting on his convictions may be that of bodily harm. For example, a Southern Baptist pastor was severely beaten by a mob of white men after he had escorted six Negroes to the public school in Clinton, Tennessee. Fortunately, this incident served to bring about the re-establishment of order in a disorganized community. The high school was reopened on an integrated basis. And candidates for public office opposed to desegregation in the public school were overwhelmingly defeated at the polls.

At the peril of losing his pulpit the Southern preacher must discover positive ways of dealing with racial injustice. Preachers of Henderson County, Kentucky, discovered strength and effectiveness in a united effort to uphold law and order. The whole association of pastors concertedly attacked a movement to block integration in the public schools and won the battle. (“Henderson Pastor’s Diary,” The Christian Century, Oct. 24, 1956.)

Again, through personal and group counseling, study courses in his church and cooperation with the forces of righteousness in his community, the preacher can effectively work for the achievement of better race relations in the South. While some of these suggestions may seem to be too mild, some Southern churches will dismiss their pastors for implementing them.

A prophet of God must constantly challenge sin and injustice in every area of life. One of his great temptations is to preach to please. When the great preacher Hugh Latimer was about to preach before the king, Cardinal Wolsey drew him aside and said, “Latimer, Latimer, remember that today you are to preach before the high and mighty King Henry VIII who has the power to take your life. See that you do not displease him. But Latimer, Latimer, remember also that today you preach before the King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts, see that you do not displease Him.”

Paul warned preachers against this temptation when he said that those who are put in trust with the gospel must speak “not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts” (1 Thess. 1:4).

Where there are cases of discrimination against children, the Supreme Court has decreed that our public schools must be desegregated. This is the law of the land. As citizens of the Kingdom of God and of the state, Christians must uphold the laws of the land which are in harmony with the Christian view of love and justice. God’s key man in achieving this goal is the preacher.

END

Henlee Hulix Barnette is Acting Dean of the School of Theology and Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, from which he holds the Th.M. and Th.D. degrees. He was Assistant Professor of Sociology at Howard College, Birmingham, Alabama, from 1946–47, and Professor of Religion and Sociology at John B. Stetson University in Florida from 1947–51.

Cover Story

The Moral Sag in France

André Lamorte

The French drama is in effect a moral drama. But the meaning of the epithet reaches beyond the framework of frivolous morals, of which France no longer has the monopoly. It concerns a religious form of thought, of feeling, of action, and of reaction which determines the internal structure of the individual and which survives even when the individual has ceased to believe or to practice his beliefs.

A Nation’S Moral Shame

The moral revolt in France is largely written in contemporary life. Evidences may be found in the wide-spread religious indifferences and atheism, in social evils, in the increase of mental illness and in other aspects of the national life.

In a population of 43 million, according to the latest figures, there are, at most, less than 10 million “believers”—if that term dare be applied to the 9 million who are baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, and the 800,000 on Protestant church rolls. One fact is clear: three-fourths of the population, or 33 million persons, live on the fringe of the Christian churches.

Social evils are rife. Before 1914, there were 35,000 divorces annually; today the figure is 250,000, and some estimates lift it to 350,000. This is a direct consequence of religious indifference, for the home is no longer secure when divine law is unrecognized and when the church exercises no salutary influence upon it.

Alcoholism is a stigma upon the nation’s life. According to official statistics of the Minister of Finance, France has 450,000 liquor stores, or 10 to each baker shop—one for every 86 persons. In 1951 France produced about 1,276,000,000 gallons of wine, 484,000,000 gallons of cider, 176,000,000 gallons of beer. The average consumption annual per capita is high: for all adults 20 years and over, 34 litres; adult men, 54 litres; adult women, 18 litres. These figures far exceed the rest of Europe.

The causes of alcoholism in France are numerous, but three are especially prominent: the hovels, or poor housing conditions, with which inhabitants must often contend; nervous anxieties due to privation and suffering during the war and postwar years; and habit or custom. Public authorities have sought to improve housing, but the hovels are many. Liquor shops open to the working man divert and distract him from the burdens of insufficient income. Many alcoholics are nervously afflicted, resorting to alcohol to quiet their fears and to find a feeling of abundance. But most addicts are victims of education and custom: to drink is to evidence manliness. The masses believe that wine and alcohol are necessary for work and even for sanity.

In 1940 the population of psychiatric hospitals numbered 110,000. During the war legislation and lowered supplies of liquor brought a noticeable reduction in numbers. Since 1945 the increase of patients has resumed at an alarming rate: in 1954 the figures of 1939 were almost reached again. The increased number of liquor shops and their legal tolerance or approval are regarded as contributory factors.

Child delinquency is another sign of the decay of national life. There are more than 100,000 known delinquents. Most of the strayed youth have seen nothing but homes of quarreling, vice, violence and injustice; family life is deficient. Alongside the problem of environment is that of heredity; alcoholism, syphilis and tuberculosis are important factors.

Prostitution is a common vice, for which statistics cannot be easily obtained. In 1910 the Chief of Police estimated that 60,000 women in the Seine area alone lived more or less entirely by prostitution. The 1946 legislation, requiring registration, was exclusively for sanitary regulation, not for policing. The number of registered prostitutes in 1952 was 8,000; of these, 3,000 registered in Paris. These figures by no means tell the full story, for these are far outnumbered by a legion of clandestine offenders who escape control.

There are other evidences that the moral atmosphere vanishes, and law is bypassed, when spiritual checks no longer guard the national life. Pandering is a tragic phenomenon in the large cities, and is caused by traffic in dope. Bawdy literature, of the “Paris-Hollywood” type, is sold in a quantity of two million pieces monthly. Even sports have become an end in themselves, often serving as a pretext for indulgent eating and drinking after the game. Many old rugby players and boxers maintain tavern patronage in their associations with old comrades.

Origin And Causes Of Crisis

Because this writer sees in the religion to which the majority of the French people still adhere the fundamental explanation of the crisis France is passing through, he, though French by nationality, has agreed to write these lines. Other Frenchmen, better qualified than he in the sociological and political realms, have already analyzed the situation, as, for example, in the captivating book by Frederic Hoffett, Protestant Imperialism (Flammarion, 1948).

Romanism has pressed its mold on freethinkers as well as on believers. This invisible background alone can give a valid account of the actual behavior of the nation that was long called “the eldest Daughter of the Church.”

The crisis France is enduring commenced when she rejected the Reformation.

In other countries the “Protestant man” was prepared for liberty and thus for a natural adaptation to democracy; the “Roman Catholic man,” always submissive to the church’s direction, remained inadequately prepared for modern forms of political life. (Let us remember what Brunetiere said: “What I believe? Ask it of Rome.”) Hence the discipline of the Protestant, to which he freely consented (which explains the evolution and astonishing success of the Anglo-Saxon nations), contrasts with the revolt and complexities of the Roman Catholic man and with the germs of political instability and moral decline in the Roman Catholic nations.

Thus two factors of religious origin are at the basis of the decline of the French nation: persecution and the order of the Jesuits.

The opponents of French Protestantism admit themselves that the Reformation, at its beginnings, had conquered a quarter if not half of the kingdom. Neither the mind nor the French temperament was hostile to it. What arrested its salutary expansion, and what explains why French Protestantism today is a weak minority, is persecution. The latter was the work of the church. For under the cloak of a royal authority, frightened of liberty, one can discern the guidance of Roman inspiration. The history of three centuries of martyrdom and the heroism of epic Huguenot believers are the irrefutable proof of this fact. With consummate skill, the Roman church multiplied its efforts to win over the princes; she overcame their hesitations through seduction or through terror; she promised her support in the realization of their designs of despotism, and she held over them the threat of the mysterious and poisoned weapons of her occult authority. Thus the kings who, for a moment, had inclined toward the Reformation, finding in the latter no furthering for their tyrannical projects, nor for their vices and their passions, turned from the Reformation and became the executors of the church, implacable toward heresy, but smiling upon crowned corruption.

So it came about that fanatical popes, such as Paul III and Paul IV, depending on the intimate union between Church and State, managed to transform heresy into crime, and on those grounds were able to undertake the most serious measures against the Protestants. At their instigation, Francis I in 1542 proclaimed his intention to pursue heresy “until the foundation and the root of this pest should be exterminated and abolished,” and he ordered in the year 1544 “that one should proceed with all diligence to seize, chastise and punish those who propagate the Reformation.” In acting thus, the kings conformed to the will of the popes. Thus we find Pope Pius V writing to Charles IX at the time of the St. Bartholomew massacre: “Your Majesty must pursue the enemies of religion until extermination.” At his crowning, Louis XIII, who consecrated his reign to exterminating heresy, offered his crown and his sword to the Virgin, in so doing imitating the Spaniard Don Carlos who had placed his person and his army under the sovereign protection of Mary. “I will only reign if you reign,” said Louis XIII in calling on the Virgin.

Persecution exterminated with the Reformation every possibility of spiritual renewal, and at the same time political and social renewals, the latter revealing themselves strictly bound to the former.

But to open violence, a more baneful force was added, perhaps through the insidious work of moral and intellectual fragmentation of the French soul: the Jesuit power.

Havings made their entry as “timid foxes” to Paris University in the sixteenth century, the Jesuits came to “reigning there as furious lions” (the expression is from Etienne Pasquier, himself a professor of Paris University).

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which was to deprive France of her most fruitful spiritual substance, was the work of the Jesuits before it became that of Louis XIV.

Xavier de Ricard wrote that in order to break the Huguenots, Jesuitism “had invented, noted, classified, co-ordinated all the proceedings, all the maneuvers, all the intrigues, all the learned wiles and all the skilful violences prepared in cold blood which by a slow and successive extenuation, culminated in radical and legal extermination …” (The Political Spirit of the Reformation, 1893, p. 4). One can but read again the immortal “Letters to a Provincial” by Blaise Pascal, which edify one singularly on the pernicious work of the Jesuits and their machiavellian maneuverings for the education of men and nations.

“Radical and legal extermination,” said Xavier de Ricard. Extermination of bodies when the temporal gives its consent. But in every way—extermination of will, of conscience, of righteous judgment—through the substitution of a soul simultaneously servile and given to low desires clever and brutal, deceitful and inconsistent.

Persecution and Jesuitism have been the educators of modern France.

The Present And The Future

France has known the Revolution of 1789. The latter culminated in the formation of new and generous principles. But the idealists who conceived them, if they changed the facade, were not able to regenerate the soul of the nation. For the Revolution was above all an explosion of hatred against the joint despotism of the king and the church.

The political and social upheavals which have agitated France since 1789 and which led her in turn from the Republic to the Empire, from the Empire to the two most recent Republican Constitutions, did but powerfully underline the moral uneasiness of a long clerical regime. Men may change but the spirit remains. To royal absolutism the bureaucratic dictatorship succeeds; the separation of the church from the State has given the French clergy a wider liberty of action. The priest is no longer the holder of civic and legal authority, but the church is always present in the private counsels of those in authority and in the official organisms through her individual commands. Her voice is not alien to the solutions of compromise, to the dilatory maneuvers which characterize French political laws or French diplomacy.

As to the Protestant fraction, it was easily carried away by the current. Worn out by centuries of suffering and clandestine existence, deluded by the tolerance engendered by the well-being and buoyancy of a new-found peace, it accepts many fatal compromises. It suffices to read the collection of sermons of the nineteenth century to understand the obsequiousness of the Protestant clergy, who with bewildering suppleness were able to praise in turn the imperial prestige and the benefits of the Restoration. Today, with the exception of a few centers authentically Calvinistic and biblical by tradition, the Protestant mass has well accommodated itself to the moral, political and social standard of the nation. Its leaders seem more inclined toward “Reformed clericalism” than toward a return to the principles of the Reformation. The nostalgia for church union has silenced all problems of doctrine.

One is amazed to see how much certain churches which pretend jealously to maintain Calvin’s conception remain bound to the sacramental practices of Rome. For fear of alienating a vast number of Protestants with Roman Catholic tendencies, their heads, though evangelical, disapprove of pastors who refuse to baptize indiscriminately the children of the faithful and the children of unbelievers. The synodal assemblies bring forward again and again the question of the sacraments. Concerning this question, an uneasiness weighs on these communities. One realizes that one day one should put an end to these practices of “baptisms” and of “confirmations” which are nothing more or less than Roman Catholic. But one does not dare to make a change. On the other hand, these same synodal assemblies integrate into the pastoral body with disconcerting ease and without previous tests former priests newly converted.

Persecution seems to have eliminated the true Huguenot substance of France, and Jesuit education seems to have weakened the conscience of the sons of Huguenots. The Jesuit order is the determinating factor in the political and social life and general behavior of the French people.

The constant changes of government, the social upheavals, the periodical scandals such as the Stavisky affair, under the Third Republic, the “leakages” affair under the Fourth Republic, can only be explained by the moral deviations of clerical education. In the same way, the reproaches addressed to the French—lack of seriousness in the handling of affairs, lack of civic spirit—must be attributed to this same education.

The success of the French communist party is above all imputable to clericalism. Our Anglo-Saxon friends, whose hysterical fear of Communism sometimes warps their perspective, should realize this fact. The Frenchman, barring some exceptional cases, is not Marxist. He is attached to his small property or to the small capital which is the fruit of his labor. Social laws in France are as advanced as in the most democratic of foreign countries. The economic standard is not below that of neighboring nations. Communism in France is chiefly anticlerical reaction. Its advance in the recent elections is chiefly owing to the collusion, more or less avowed, of the different republican parties with clericalism. This explains why the communist party, which in the National Assembly is the most numerous, in the nation itself plays but a fairly effaced role. Its opposition is always justified on philosophical grounds. It does not justify itself on the plane of social progress.

Hope For Renewal?

We believe there is hope for straightening out the situation in France, if past experiences are taken into account and if men act with courage and without delay, relying upon the elements of promise which are as yet uncontaminated.

The ill being essentially of a spiritual nature, the redress of France may be a spiritual redress.

The failure of the Reformation in the sixteenth century should not augur a new failure. The constitutional and social conditions of the nation are today totally different.

On the other hand, however marked the French people are by the pharisaical turn of mind, they show themselves more and more detached from Roman Catholic practices. The people are psychologically open to a spiritual renewal. Religious meetings, stripped of all ecclesiastical stamp, are generally well attended, and sects of diverse kinds attract followers more than ever. The churches have lost all credit with the masses, but the Bible, almost totally unknown, is favorably accepted.

Therefore we are convinced that the hour has come to launch into France missionary teams of evangelists and scholars whose task will be the conversion of souls and the study of the Word of God. This work must be carried out by the French, but with the indispensable cooperation of believers from abroad.

Those who believe in the power of a new life through the Bible and in regeneration through the blood of Christ, and who do not want France to perish but who desire her renewal, take an interest in the evangelization of the French, and make this the subject of their prayers.

END

On The Late Hungarian Massacre

The blood of our brothers cries out from the ground,

As Rachael our mother weeps over her slain,

Fallen at Kilian. Again we are bound;

And alone we tread out the winepress in pain.

In words, multitude, the nations now clamor,

Resolve, passing censure against the oppressor,

While thousands desert the dread sickle and hammer

At the frightful exposure. They seek a confessor.

But the foe, crafty, taunts us, “Men forget past events,

And your plea, ‘Come and help, lest you suffer our fate,’

Will be drowned in the din of new world ferment.”

Even now in our ranks some murmur, “Too late.”

Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by,

That a people, a nation, for freedom now die?

F. MARK DAVIS

Dr. André Lamorte served for 15 years as Dean of the Faculty and as Professor of Theology at Aix-en-Provence in France. More recently he has been active in “France Evangelisation,” a movement aggressively interested in Bible study and evangelism. He holds the Th.D. degree from Montpellier and in 1954 was named attache to the National Center of Scientific Research.

Cover Story

Psalms: Heart of the Old Testament

J. Kenneth Grider

Here you have words that have soul in them and that lift up the soul. Words that have music in them and that set one’s spirit soaring. Words that have tears in them and that talk it out with you when you have dark days.

The thoughts in the Psalms are as warm as sunshine, as human as a baby, as personal as the next door neighbor’s greeting. They are living experience written out with incandescent words. Men sensitive to God’s marvelous works are stirred to their depths so that they think high thoughts about holiness and low thoughts about sin.

With the whole heart men poor in spirit here enter into Yahweh’s secret place and lose themselves in wondering adoration. They adore him as one many-sided in mercy, right ready to help all who pass through deep waters.

Not the shallow, fat-witted optimism that looks at troubles and laughs them off. Not that, here. Here you have candid camera shots. You see man as he is: sometimes in his midnights and sometimes in his noondays. And in his midnights you see him with his deep disturbed—really disturbed. Disturbed to the core, so that he hurts—out loud. Not with forced smiles does he look up, but with tears and sobs and anguish. He crys out to Yahweh. Crys out with wailing. And the Lord hears and delivers: hears and succors him; hears and shepherds him; hears and sets him singing—singing out of real victory and not out of a conjured up mental attitude that knows deep down it is not actually so.

A hymnbook sure enough. Lyrics and harmonies, rhythm of ideas and feeling—here you have them all. David, the Sons of Asaph, the Sons of Korah, and others—but mostly David—wing their way into the heavens here.

They Help The Persecuted

The Psalms were used in temple worship long ago. But they were soon loosed and given to the whole wide world.

At the Last Supper, just before the rendezvous with Judas, Jesus received strength for the gathering storm by the singing of a Psalm with the eleven.

These Hebrew songs that open the soul up on its Godward side helped Paul and Silas, jailed securely in Philippi. At midnight they broke out with psalms and God broke in with release.

The early Christians, dauntless in persecutions, hid the Psalms away in their hearts. Those who wrote the New Testament quoted them frequently. Of the 287 quotations from the Old Testament in the New, 116 are from the Psalter.

Martyrs through the centuries have been bolstered by the Psalms during their last moments. In the early days young and old faced lions in Roman arenas singing: “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Ps. 34:1).

John Huss, a Protestant before there were any, was condemned to death in 1415 by the Council of Constance. He walked to the stake reciting Psalm 31, a part of which reads: “For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.… Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth” (vv. 3, 5).

And Savonarola. Mutilated in body, but with his right hand left him so that he could write a confession of conformity, he lay in his cell and composed a meditation on Psalms 31 and 41.

And take Martin Luther. As a professor in the University at Wittenburg he lectured for many years on the Psalms. He also preached from them often in the church he pastored in that city. He considered them to be the Bible in miniature. How he relished these pantings after God! He adapted several of them for a “New Churches” hymnal. Some have not realized that he first found justification by faith in the Psalms and only later saw its full orbed teaching in such New Testament books as Romans and Galatians.

Luther had his share of persecution. After his excommunication he was fair game for anyone. And the Diet of Worms in 1521 added its authority to his death sentence. With the German populace four to one for him it was thought unwise to execute the sentence. But until his natural death twenty-five years later it remained. In his trying times Luther’s strength was “renewed like the eagle’s” when he turned himself to the Psalms.

Protestants by the hundreds of thousands, during a century of persecutions, died for Christ. As they went to their death on the scaffold or in the flames many of them sang, “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 118:24).

Their Use Otherwise

The Psalter was “the first book which the early church put into the hands of her young converts, the primer of her religious teaching: and no man could be admitted to the highest order of the clergy unless he knew the Psalter by heart” (James Robertson, Poetry and Religion of the Psalter, pp. 7, 8).

John Paterson says, “No other book appears to have entered so deeply into the general life of humanity” (The Praises of Israel, p. 8). Many noble families of England have lines from the Psalms inscribed on their coats-of-arms. Sundials, coins, and even sword blades have been engraven with passages from this literature. Of their wide use F. B. Meyer writes: “In palace halls, by happy hearths, in squalid rooms, in pauper wards, in prison cells, in crowded sanctuaries, in lonely wilderness—everywhere they have uttered our moan of contrition and our song of triumph; our tearful complaints, and our wrestling, conquering, prayer” (F. B. Meyer on the Psalms, p. 7). Samuel Terrien summarizes his wide studies in the Psalms to say of them: “No other book of hymns and prayers has been used for so long a time and by so many diverse men and women” (The Psalms and Their Meaning for Today, p. vii). And one cannot forget that T. H. Robinson declared: “No other part of the Old Testament has exercised so wide, so deep, or so permanent an influence on the life of the human soul” (The Poetry of the Old Testament, p. 107).

A Psalm prepared Wesley’s inwardness for Aldersgate. We all know that his heart was “strangely warmed” as he heard the reading of Luther’s preface to the Epistle of Romans. But in his Journal, in the paragraph preceding the account of his conversion one evening, he tells us that that afternoon at St. Paul’s he had heard an anthem from the Psalms which had contained these words: “If thou, Lord, will be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it? But there is mercy with thee; therefore thou shalt be feared. O Israel, trust in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his” sins.

Luther and Calvin fostered Psalm singing, along with hymns like Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” But English-speaking Protestants long sang only the Psalms, considering that in worship services all words sung should be from the Holy Scriptures. They made metrical versions of the Psalms, for something had to be done to align them with the requirements of their developing sense of music. That way there was rhyme; but more important, there was definite meter so that the Psalms could be fitted to tunes. With Isaac Watts, however, there developed a new practice: that of singing paraphrases of the Psalms. This was done so that more New Testament teaching could be included in them.

Soon Watts, Charles Wesley, Toplady, William Williams, and others were writing hymns. These hymns were often based on Scripture, and frequently on the Psalms. Take Isaac Watts’

Jesus shall reign where e’re the sun

Does his successive journeys run.

Psalm 72 inspired it, verse eight of which reads: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the rivers unto the ends of the earth.” Can we proceed without mention also of Watts’, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past?” Psalm 90 had helped him on that one. Watts had read, “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations” (v. 1).

A Concluding Word

In the Psalms, surely, you have the heart of Old Testament religion. In them deep calls to deep, souls speak out in their dark nights, spirits have their sinews strengthened. From the Apostles to Wesley, and onwards, we have rightly cherished this inward heart-history of Israel as an integral part of our Christian heritage. Let modern Hegels and Schleiermachers discard them if they must. But we will keep them near, even in physical proximity to our New Testaments in many pocket editions. For while we might not want to baptize them into Christ, we nevertheless find in them the language of which hallelujahs and amens are born.

END

God’S Dimension

When mankind lays the age of time to sleep

By his methodic questing after cause

Of death, the single tenuous strand that draws

A screen across the Chalice true men keep,

Then God’s eternal watch beyond the deep

Of years will bring to focus all the flaws

Humanity has sanctioned by her laws

And Christ will be the Shepherd of His sheep.

Each soul will rise reclothed in his new face

To greet that dawn of ever-lucent day

Beyond earth’s old dimensions, time and clay.

And all will see the aureole God gives

To men whose faith in His unceasing grace

Proves God’s long-sought-for Kingdom ever lives.

JOHN RENWICK TAYLOR

J. Kenneth Grider is Professor of Systematic Theology at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City. He holds the B.D., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees, the latter from Trinity College, Glasgow. Formerly, he taught in Pasadena College.

Cover Story

Christian Ideals in Foreign Policy

Joseph Simonson

The Christian is not a Christian alone by himself in a vacuum. Christian faith and practice call first of all for an individual and intensely personal and subjective surrender to Christ. But if it stops with this, Christian faith ends. The effective and dynamic Christian must live and witness in fellowship, in community. His community is the family, the neighborhood, voluntary, business and labor associations, his city or rural area, his state and nation, and the family of nations.

In the political realm, national and international, there is, however, a threatening menace which this concept of man living in fellowship, in community, spawns. Historically, we have seen the rise of an exaggerated statism that insists that the state is the fellowship, the community, or certainly the master of the community, instead of only the police force of the community of society. A free fellowship of any purposeful life is possible only when its members individually and collectively recognize responsibility to God. Without the Christian corrective of personal worth, dignity and destiny in Christ, the community degenerates either into license or frozen conformation to a dictated pattern.

Four Views Of Society

There are four different approaches to the world of human affairs. We may regard the world, in which we must necessarily live a social life, as something meaningless, entirely without rhyme or reason, fighting each our own way to what success we can grab, or, failing that, at least achieving survival. Secondly, one may think of the world as entirely physical, governed by mechanical law. Everything, including man himself, is caught in the throes of mathematical patterns, with moral decisions and responsibility unnecessary, or, at best, futile.

Probably not many thinking folk hold either of these two views seriously any more, though both have had their devotees. They certainly are not Christian views of the universe. Of most validity for us today are two other ways of regarding the world, conflicting with and opposing each other: the secularist view and the Christian view.

The secularist sees life only in terms of this present world of sense and physical objects, pleasures, creature comforts, the accumulation and enjoyment of many things. Indeed, the Christian also is not insensitive to God’s bounties placed at man’s disposal. He will want to use them all. But therein lies the difference: the materialist finds money and all it can buy in this world to be ends in themselves and actually permits himself to be enslaved; the Christian uses God’s gifts to honor his Creator and to serve his fellow-men, thus making himself, under God, the master of money and things. All of this surely can be seen to have the most meaningful application in determining and carrying out foreign policy.

Of course, the secularist is opposed to any form of religious faith and practice, not merely to religion in its Christian form. To be sure, the Christian can make common cause, in a broad sense, in the field of foreign policy with other world religions. To this degree he casts his lot with others who, believing in a god or gods, at least discard a purely fatalistic, mechanical and materialistic approach to the life of the peoples and affairs of the world.

Christianity And Human Values

But we are here concerned with the much higher ground which must be taken by those of us who know the God our Lord and Savior came to reveal. He is not only a Supreme Being, but absolute Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Maker, Preserver and Governor of this creation we know and in the midst of which we live and work. We affirm that we may know him and his will for us personally and collectively. We are loved by him and we may love him. And what is more, we may love and serve him in loving and serving our fellow-men.

To the Christian human values are far more important than property values, though he does affirm that to own property is an important and basic human right. He sees men and women and children as immortal souls, whose chief purpose and end is to know God and enjoy him even here on earth and gloriously in all eternity. Obviously, such a scale of values makes a great difference in the way we treat peoples and governments of other powers in the world, both great and small.

By nature we humans are too weak to fulfill our destiny. Man must be redeemed from failure, by God’s grace in Christ given a supernatural strength. So God in Christ came into history, into the world of human frailty, and has lived and worked dramatically ever since in the dedicated lives of obedient followers. And as to Christ when he was here upon earth, nothing of man’s hopes and aspirations, his sorrows or joys, was foreign, so his devoted disciples must not neglect the smallest need of men anywhere.

Principles In Foreign Policy

In realizing Christian principles, even in the complicated pattern of today’s foreign policy and its execution, we may be assured of God’s aid and enlightenment. “Be ye perfect” is the Lord’s admonition. There is supreme value in obedience to the unattainable, surrender to the impossible. The Christian is not satisfied with what is better; he is seeking the best, the perfect. The better has too often been a deceiving half-way house on the road to the best. The Christian’s Leader bids him fix his goal as nothing less than the perfect, asks him to sacrifice toward its achievement, and leave the result to the Heavenly Father. Frustrations and failures must not be allowed to deflect our course.

Christian principles in foreign policy are not essentially different from those which govern relationships in other personal or social situations, though some would have greater relevance in international relationships. I do want to suggest, however, some Christian standards which need to be raised particularly in the area of dealings nation with nation.

One is that right thinking and conduct are positive, dynamic and creative, not negative, vapid and lifeless. The Christian must rid himself of a negativism which merely opposes, pointing the finger in condemnation and horror. He must be an informed, active participant in the determination of his country’s foreign policy and vigilant watchman of its execution. He does not wait for others less guided and illuminated to chart the course and then stand on the sidelines to criticize. He does not merely applaud from the bleachers if the fight is going well, but he is down in the arena doing battle.

That man always and in every condition is to be regarded as an end and not a means or instrument is another Christian principle of the highest order in foreign relations. This principle is closely allied to the concept and conviction that every individual person is precious in God’s sight. But this end-man and priceless person flowers perfectly only in sacrificial service for God’s honor and glory and the welfare of his brothers. The good and purposeful foreign policy must have room in it for the development of the individual’s fullest destiny as God’s highest creation.

The Power Of Love

The over-riding Christian principle in our relations with other powers is that love is stronger than force or hate. What difficulty we have practicing it! As someone has said, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has only been found difficult and not tried.” But do we not have from Christ’s own life the example of love as the only redemptive, creative way of life? Of course, I am not speaking of love as something sickly and sentimental, but rather a strong thing of the will. I am not speaking of love as a Christian principle to apply in foreign relations because of desiring or expecting man’s love in return, but because when man is true to God and to God’s will and purpose for him, man cannot help but love, serve and give. Remember, we live in fellowship, or we do not live. We are not really human when we do not love. A fellowship of anger, conflict and hatred is unthinkable. Anger, conflict and hatred separate and isolate.

Foreign relations are often thought to be profound and complex. They are really simple. People all over the world, as well as those in the United States, want only simple things. They want to worship God according to conscience. They want to exchange opinions with others and freely choose what is reasonable and morally right. They want to live in their homes and communities with family, friends and associates without fear. They want to develop religion and morals, culture and tradition, arts and sciences, drawing upon the heritage of all peoples everywhere, both that life might be richer for them in the present and for their children in the future. They want to work productively at congenial creative tasks of their own choosing. They want to enjoy the fruits of their labor. They want government to which they consent.

International misunderstanding, distrust and tensions deny these simple wants to altogether too many people. It is the dedication of our President and our country to strive by all means to realize a world climate which will make these simple wants of all people to thrive and bear fruit.

In a deeply fundamental sense, the achievement of these simple wants is a moral and religious objective and the motivation must come from religious and moral sources. The love of God, the love of country, the love of others—will last always and win the final victory, because the Creator implanted a sense of divine origin and personal dignity in every human being. So, even as we face realities in the world about us, especially those of us of the Christian persuasion and practice must seek to make the world a better place, knowing that this shall be accomplished only as we humans surrender to the will of God and accept his guidance and help.

Draw The Sword Humbly

Peace with liberty and freedom is the over-riding issue of our times. Because of his own mixed nature of good and evil, man dare not throw away the sword, but he would do well to draw it humbly, knowing that the very deed is proof that he has failed once more in a better wisdom. Right here, however, you and I have a personal responsibility. We assume altogether too naively that peace will come without effort and cost. Of course, peace will cost us something. But does not war cost infinitely more, not only in money, men and material, but in lost happiness, liberties and purposeful, creative use of our talents? All of us can contribute to peace in our own thought, word and action. And we all must do so if we are to have peace. It grows out of our lives, hopes and aspirations.

Make no mistake about it: every one of us is involved. War diminishes life for each one of us and peace enlarges it. Therefore, we each have a private stake and a private responsibility. The world in arms spends not only money. It spends the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the aspirations of its artists, the faith and spirit of its religious thinkers and doers, and the hopes of its children.

We have in the United States not only a great and good life, but because of it, also a vast responsibility. Whether we wished it or not, we have come into world leadership. We can’t shrug off the responsibility of that by saying as does Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “The world is out of joint, O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right.” It is not easy to be a world leader and possess great power. To know the pleasures of power we must inquire of those who seek it, but to know its pains we need only ask those who have it. America did not seek world power, but, having it, we have no choice but to play the role with dignity, patience and strength.

I plead that each of us learn the lesson from our founding fathers that the center of good government is in the heart of the good man. The good man is assured and made bold and strong to face his problems through the conviction that he is always in the hand of God. Every human life is of divine concern. This defies fatalism or the philosophy that man is a helpless pebble on the beach. Too, this prevents man from looking for ease and security, for which he often has bartered away his individual freedom and liberty. There is no security in this world, only opportunity. Recognition and practice of such principles of trusteeship and responsibility made and have kept this country strong, free and great.

I am asking you, with me, to emulate those who have gone on before us in leading lives of discipline, believing in our religion, our country and our children’s future. I want you to accept the role of a responsible member of your family, your community, your state, nation and world. I want you to be a responsible employee or employer, a responsible supporter of your home, church and school. Acceptance of such responsibilities by other Americans before us has made our country great. It can be kept great only if we in our time do likewise.

END

Preacher In The Red

“HIS EXCELLENCY …”

Many years ago the famous radio preacher, Dr. S. Parkes Cadman of Brooklyn, N.Y., addressed a great men’s meeting in Center Congregational Church, New Britain, Conn. The pastor, Theodore A. Greene, introduced the celebrated cleric with a sudden burst of oratory.

Dr. Greene said he had been backstage in a great radio station and had looked upon the electrical equipment, the batteries, generators, had witnessed the sparks, lights, powers of the air.

Increasing in eloquence, the New Britain pastor cried:

“Think of the radio ministry of Dr. Cadman and his incredible ministry across the air-waves of the nation every Sunday afternoon, the millions who listen in spellbound! I have introduced many prominent speakers to this Church, but I am happy on this occasion to introduce the king of the electrons, the ruler of the airways, in fact, the prince of the power of the air!”

Dr. Cadman arose as a man staggered; he hesitated as he moved toward the sacred desk. It was a strange moment, and Dr. Cadman wordless. Finally he found his voice:

“Gentlemen,” he gasped, “I have been introduced to many audiences with many compliments and sometimes with criticism; but this is the one and only time I have ever been released upon any audience as his majesty, the devil!”

—THE REV. PHILIP JEROME CLEVELAND, Canterbury, Conn.

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.

Joseph Simonson served as United States Ambassador to Ethiopia from 1953 to 1957. For twenty years he pastored Lutheran churches in the Midwest and then became Director of Public Relations for the National Lutheran Council from 1951–53. He holds the B.A. degree from St. Olaf College, Th.B. from Luther Theological Seminary and the LL.D. from Concordia College. His special interests, he remarks, are “preaching, politics and poultry.” In this article, he deals broadly with the first two.

Cover Story

The Christian View of the State

Joseph M. Dawson

To ascertain an authentic view of the state held by Christians is not as easy as might at first appear. The difficulty arises primarily from the fact that the New Testament, which forms the basis of the Christian belief and practice, is not a political book. It affords only a scant handful of passages which could be said to supply the Christian with a clear idea of what the civil state is and what his responsibility to it and participation in it should be. Again, in accounting for prevailing concepts we must allow for the continuing influence of the Judaistic tradition which preceded the Christian formulation, for the undoubted abiding influence of surrounding pagan philosophies and for effects of historical events which have tended even among Christians to alter or change the original Christian view.

In beginning with Jesus, we note the classical reference to his saying, (Matt. 23:21; Mark 12:17), “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” From the context we know he spoke of the obligation of men to pay taxes to the existing government. In the light of Paul’s detailed admonition to the followers of Jesus to support civil government, found in Romans, chapter 13, we construe the Apostle’s words to include more than payment of taxes, or an obligation to “render to all their dues, tribute to whom tribute, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.” This injunction is based by Paul on the prior premise (verse 1) that every one must be subject to the higher powers, civil powers being ordained of God, there being no power but of God.

The State Is Necessary

Neither in Jesus nor in Paul is there any direction that obedience shall be conditioned on the form of government, whether monarchical, democratic or any kind whatsoever. In other words, theirs is a definite recognition of the necessity for the state as a means to social order. Very few Christians—with exception of the Quakers at one time—have ever held to a stateless society. Christians universally have stood against anarchy. Paul offered his argument for this position in Romans 13:3, “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.” Peter likewise argued, 1 Peter 2:13–14, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governor sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.” Although Jesus and the apostles lived under very corrupt governments, they counselled submission to them rather than risk anarchy, which would be worse. This rejection of a stateless society differentiates Christianity from communism, for communism in theory looks to a time when “the state will wither away” and there will be no need for its police power to coerce. (U.S.S.R., A Concise Handbook, Edited by Ernest J. Simmons, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1947. p. 164).

It is significant that Jesus and Paul made their pronouncements before organized Roman persecution of Christians began, while Peter entered his in the midst of the severest persecution. John, in Revelation 13, confronting the worst of government hostility toward his faith, suggested only passive resistance, not political or military resistance. This would show a fixed Christian idea concerning the state.

The Right Of Revolution

The latter Scripture, however, may have contributed to a later interpretation of these cited passages for supporting the doctrine of the right of revolution. Revelation 13, if the common identification of the “beast” mentioned with the Roman Empire be allowed, unquestionably permits rejection of the empire and its rulers, if indeed it does not sanction overt action against them. The later upspringing acceptance of the right of revolution under sufficient provocation grew to expression when the specific scriptural injunctions came to be considered in the light of the entire body of Scriptures. The New Testament as a whole does not countenance the absolute state presently denominated totalitarianism. It limits the state by the words, “there is no authority except from God.” It is not possible to conclude from Romans 13 that there is divine sanction for every existing order or that such cannot be changed, for the authority of the state is always subordinate to the over-riding authority of God. Therefore the Christian conscience finds voice in Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than men.” In this connection it is appropriate to quote John C. Bennett:

The warning against anarchy has often been understood in the sense that the most that Christians should ever do by way of resistance to even the most tyrannical and lawless state is to refuse to obey and to take the consequences in the form of punishment and persecution. Even Luther and Calvin, who were not passive by nature, had great difficulty in suggesting anything more than passive resistance to the most tyrannical authorities. Both, however, in different contexts did provide for active resistance on the part of lower political authorities against higher authorities. The loophole for active resistance, even for violent revolution, became a major factor in the history of Calvinism; and as a result, Calvinism helped to inspire revolutions in many countries, including Scotland, England, Holland and the United States. In the period of the National Socialist state, many Lutherans approved of active political resistance in Norway, Denmark and Germany. Roman Catholics have in general had less difficulty than Protestants in approving active political resistance where political authorities have threatened the life or freedom of their church. (The Christian As Citizen, New York: Association Press, 1955, pp. 49–50).

Separation Of Church And State

On the other hand Protestants, particularly the left-wing Puritan independents, took the lead in disestablishing the church and in separating the church from the state. Baptist Roger Williams was moved by dislike of the state controlling the church, while Episcopalian Thomas Jefferson revolted against church control over the state, with the result that the American Republic set the pace for separation of church and state for most modern countries. Both Williams and Jefferson agreed that the membership of a state and a church are quite different, the constituency of the state being the population and that of the church being those gathered out of the population by reason of their spiritual qualifications. They also agreed that the functions of the church and those of the state being secular are under enforcement of police powers. Those contending for church-state separation assert that it has lessened corruption which has characterized union of church and state wherever such has existed. The United States Supreme Court has declared that in America separation of church and state has proved best for the church and the state. Thus convincing proof by historic experiment has been given against the hoary contention that union of church and state is essential to national unity.

Although advocates of church-state separation frequently give Jesus’ words, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” as authorization for their belief, it is only fair to point out that the real reason for the new order originated in the struggle for freedom, both in the battle for religious liberty for believers and in the demand for political freedom on the part of citizens upholding the state. This is not to affirm that the plan is contrary to Christianity. Quite the opposite, adherents believe that while not explicit in the Christian system, it is implicit in the Christian teachings.

Secular State Is Modern

It is a fact, however, that the differentiation between the purely religious nature of the church and the essentially secular functions of the state is a comparatively modern development. No differentiation was seen in Babylonia, Egypt and the most ancient civilizations. Josephus wrote:

Some legislators have permitted their governments to be under monarchies, others put them under oligarchies and others under a republic form; but our legislator (Moses) had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordained our government to be what, by a strained expression, may be termed a theocracy, by ascribing the authority and power of God. (Against Apion, Book II. paragraph 17, in Complete Works of Josephus. New York: World Syndicate Publishing Co. X, p. 500)

The Hebrew Repudiation

It will be remembered, however, that the Hebrew theocracy gave place to monarchy under King Saul, and that after the Exile of the Jews, fearing control of their religion by the heathen states in which they lived, forever thereafter renounced union of church and state. Those same heathen states long before and for a millennium after, maintained union of church and state. In primitive Greece, as elsewhere, there was no distinction between the religious and the secular. The king, in his capacity as head of the state, was also the chief priest and the guardian of religion. Unity of religion and the state was observed in the Greek city-republic. Socrates was condemned to death for religious heterodoxy. In pre-Christian Rome the ancient mixture of state and religion obtained, and in the later empire the emperors were deified and worshipped, to the horror of the Christians.

Considering world-wide practice, it was not surprising that when Constantine the so-called Great in 313 A.D. accepted Christianity, he prescribed it should be the religion of the state and that he forthwith commenced to persecute all dissenters unto death. While it must be admitted that by the stupendous event of Constantine’s conversion the Christian church acquired immense prestige and grasped unmeasured opportunities, it nevertheless suffered tragic deterioration in quality and impairment in its fundamental principles. Tertullian when persecuted preached, “It is a right and privilege of nature that every man should worship according to his convictions;” but he subsequently argued, “Heretics may properly be compelled, not enticed to duty” (Religious Liberty: an Inquiry, by M. Searle Bates. New York: International Missionary Council, 1945, pp. 137–138). Augustine, when a youth in North Africa pleaded fervently for freedom of of conscience, but later in Rome his position on religious liberty may be truly described in the maxim sometimes (perhaps erroneously) ascribed to him, “When error prevails, it is right to invoke liberty of conscience, but when the truth predominates, it is just to use coercion” (ibid., p. 139). For a thousand years thereafter history records the shameful conflict as to which partner, the church or the state, should control the other.

The Welfare State

In earlier parts of this discussion, emphasis was placed on the Christian view that the state was God-ordained to prevent anarchy and preserve social order. More recently Christians have widely insisted that the state, in addition, has the responsibility of extending Christian love to those aspects of public life which affect for good or ill the welfare of one’s neighbors. This may either be approved or condemned as “the welfare state,” according as one is pronouncedly liberal or conservative. Those who supported this view during the 11th to the 15th centuries urged it, not on biblical grounds, but as “an uneasy compromise between the agape of the New Testament and the world powers of feudal society.” Bennett says that it partly tamed this world but at the price of identifying Christianity too closely with the culture of the times and of encouraging too much that was unjust in society. Increasingly in varying degrees, governments have come to regard the principle.

It is proper to introduce at this point the view expressed by the World Council of Churches at Evanston.

Those who make true justice must be made sensitive by love to discover needs where they have been neglected. Justice involves the continuous effort to overcome those economic disadvantages which are a grievous human burden and which are incompatible with equal opportunity to people to develop their capacities. Justice requires the development of political institutions which are humane as they touch the lives of people, which provide protection by law against the arbitrary use of power, and which encourage responsible participation by all citizens. (Evanston Speaks. Reports of the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, second section, “Social Problems—The Responsible Society in a World Perspective”)

Translated into particulars, governmental extension of love might cover social security, retirement benefits, assistance to the unemployed, aged and disabled, funds for veterans, housing, public health and care of the sick and mentally ill, soil conservation, agricultural subsidies, restraint of monopolies, regulation of public carriers, free education and the many other benefits.

At the outset of our discussion we conceded that Jesus and his followers prescribed no specific form of government for the state. It must be insisted, however, that democracy seems to be inherent in Christianity. Jesus himself has been called the great democrat. The implications of democracy are unmistakable in the Christian teachings. To the extent to which Christianity prevails in the world democratic government is likely to arise, for it has long been recognized that government tends to assume the pattern of the religion which prevails in a given society. An authoritarian religion produces a government akin to absolutism, and a voluntary religion encourages a government in which freedom is cherished. It becomes increasingly clear that Christianity initiated democracy in the world. Arnold Toynbee declares that democracy is a leaf torn from Christianity, although half emptied of its meaning by being divorced from its Christian context.

We conclude with the assertion that the rule of the people means the recognition of human rights—the right of the ignorant to education, the right of slaves to freedom, the right of the employed to fair wages, the right of the child to be well born, the right of all men to justice. This warrants the establishment of hospitals, schools, orphanages, a free ballot and a free conscience. Under the idea of the worth of man, we have never thought it necessary to claim that all men are equally endowed with gifts, or that they can get equal results; the idea demands only that all men shall be entitled to the same considerations under the law. It asserts that capacity and dignity are not conferred by station or possession but are inherent in the submerged as well as in the fortunately placed. Democracy recognizes that man’s personality is the highest value in the universe and society is to be organized in a manner to minister to his true life. Treatment of man is the test of merit in all institutions, systems, laws, philosophies. “What does it do to man?” is the validating question to ask of any government.

END

We Quote:

HOWARD E. KERSHNER

Author and Editor of “Christian Economics”

The Ten Commandments are the basis of satisfactory economic relationships as well as of morals. Coveting, stealing, untruthfulness, and murder are just as much violations of economic law as of moral law. Such practices in business or government can no more be made right by majority vote than the moral law itself can be changed by that method. One who does not establish a reputation for honesty and truthfulness rarely succeeds in business. The commandment against bearing false witness lies at the very heart of a successful business career. It is a question of morals, to be sure, but equally a question of economics. It is good economics as well as good morals to love one’s neighbor as oneself.—In God, Gold and Government, p. 49 (Prentice-Hall, 1957).

Dr. Joseph M. Dawson has served Southern Baptist causes effectively for more than a half century. Born in 1879 in Texas, he received the B.A. degree in 1904 from Baylor University, which conferred the D.D. in 1916 and is now proposing the J. M. Dawson Studies in Church and State because of his interest in this field as first director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. Dr. Dawson was cited in 1955 by Protestants and Other Americans United for his contributions to religious liberty. He is author of America’s Way in Church, State and Society.

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