Eutychus and His Kin: March 4, 1957

SAINT OF THE SALES-PITCH

Presumably St. Bernardino of Siena is in no position to decline his election as arch-huckster. When the Sacred Congregation of Rites at the Vatican named him patron saint of advertisers recently (see Time, Feb. 4), they appeared confident that he would be gratified by his new duties.

But how would you like this assignment?

For a Life-like appraisal of this development, I suggest a photographic essay on a New York office building. These men are the new Bernardino clients: advertising executives.

Two of them are gloating over a new mesh undershirt they have promoted from coast to coast. On such occasions a patron saint doubtless has to note on their accounts the candles and cigars they burn in gratitude.

Across the page sprawls another group in the throes of a profound decision. One clutches his forehead. Another stares unseeingly over an ash-tray. The third lifts a tense face heavenward with closed eyes. This is no doubt the very situation in which the saint is most frequently invoked. The decision to be guided? Is the sales-pitch the men are hearing on the tape recorder one that will sell bouillon cubes?

What has a fifteenth century saint done to deserve this? Is there any assurance he will not prefer Purgatory and return the advertising game to the former sponsor, Mammon? No, the Rites people have the evidence. He aided a playing card manufacturer by suggesting he switch to cards with the Christian symbol IHS, then plugged their sale in his sermons.

As a solution to secularism, this is at least a cut above bingo at St. Peter’s Parish.

Evangelicals should not smile, however, at the silliness of a patron saint of advertising till they have more to say about how Christian calling is to be fulfilled in a Manhattan office.

EUTYCHUS

EVANGELISM IN SCOTLAND

Rev. Tom Allan’s excellent review of evangelism in Scotland was of particular interest to many of us here and we are grateful for it. In no spirit of criticism but rather in the interest of accuracy … it seems regrettable that Mr. Allan makes no reference, other than by implication, to the evangelistic opportunities presented in our new housing areas. Probably the greatest advance in Scotland in the past 20 years has been made in the new estates. Not only are churches crowded by thousands who did not previously attend a place of worship, but there also we find a sincere and refreshing attitude toward religion. As two-thirds of our population will have to be re-housed, the Church’s great chance in this field cannot be ignored.

JAMES CURRIE

St. James (Pollok) Parish Church

Glasgow, Scotland

ECUMENICAL PROPOSALS

The recent proposal by ecumenical churchmen for a visit by Western churchmen to the Chinese Christian churches demands some serious consideration. This proposal is not simply an isolated event; it is one of a series of political programs periodically sponsored by the leaders of the World Council of Churches. The last such political proposal I recall was the fight to have church leaders from communist Eastern Europe admitted to the United States to attend the World Council of Churches assembly in Evanston. A review of this proposal and the agitation that brought it to victory ought to put us in a sound position to judge the latest political proposal.

If you recall, the State Department was adamant to issue visas to the Eastern European churchmen on the grounds that they were pro-communist agents, and their presence in the U.S. was inimical to the best interests of the United States. Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam of the Methodists Church and Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, called on Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on November 18, 1953, and formally requested that eleven delegates from Communist Czechoslovakia and Communist Hungary be admitted to attend the Evanston assembly as delegates representing their respective churches. The State Department relented to World Council pressure, reluctantly admitting these eleven delegates.

To the best of my knowledge, three groups remained adamant in their hostility to the extension of full-Christian fellowship to these Communist-sponsored delegates. Congressman Bentley of Michigan was the most important political leader who insisted that the State Department should not have relaxed its ban. He said the admission of these Red-delegates did not serve the legitimate interests of either the U.S. Government or the Christian churches. He carefully set forth his reasons in the July 22, 1954, Congressional Record. A House sub-committee continued to show its hostility by holding hearings while the Evanston meetings were in progress. They called several witnesses: The Rev. Lazio Vatai, a Protestant pastor who fled Hungary in 1947; Dr. Juraj Slovik, former Czech ambassador to the United States; a former member of the Hungarian parliament; and probably others. These witnesses testified on the basis of personal experience that there was no religious freedom in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and that the communist-delegates were apologists and spokesmen for the Red regime and did not serve the churches or the people they were supposed to represent. Mr. Vatai testified with almost prophetic insight: “If passports were issued to all who asked for them, Hungary would be a country without people.”

Exiles from these countries picketed some Evanston meetings in an effort to gain voice for their position. Members of the Alliance of Czechoslovakian Exiles in Chicago carried placards denouncing Hromadka as “traitor to Christianity” and “friend of the Red Henchmen.”

… The World Council turned a deaf ear to both these sources of information. They preferred to get their information from pro-communist spokesmen and to formulate policy which would not antagonize these same spokesmen. Why did the World Council of Churches refuse to put any confidence in the Christian clergyman Vatai, preferring instead Hromadka, Peters and others? What makes Mr. Vatai’s right hand of Christian fellowship any less desirable than another Hungarian? What is the reason for the World Council’s hostility to the information the House Committee for Un-American Activities and the refugee groups supplied? Why does the World Council prefer to make common alliance with communist governments against the U.S. State Department? Mr. Vatai insisted that there was a deep cleavage within Hungary, with the people and their church on one side and the communist government on the other. He said that the communist-appointed church leaders had betrayed the interests of the churches and the people and were in fact shameless collaborators. The World Council leaders studiously ignored this information as they tried to build an all-inclusive World Christian Fellowship that indiscriminately embraced sincere Christians and those who used Christianity to serve communist causes.

There was a third group that was equally unrelenting in its opposition to the World Council program, the fundamentalist International Council of Christian Churches led by Dr. Carl McIntire of Collingswood, N.J. He charged, as he has consistently, that the World Council was betraying the Christian cause when it sought such Christian co-existence and linked its political irresponsibility to its theological indifference.

Thus there were three small groups that stubbornly resisted the World Council policy toward Eastern Europe. They still opposed even after the State Department had relented to the pressure of ecclesiastical politicians and when Red collaborators were in fact, already in the country.…

Then came the amazing revolt in Hungary. In spite of all the past efforts of communist leaders and pro-communist Christian leaders to conceal it, the revolt revealed a great dichotomy between the peasants and workers and their communist rulers. It was evident to even the most stubborn communist apologist that the people were desperate, or they would not attempt a revolution that could not possibly succeed. Only desperation makes men fight tanks with bare hands. The revolt of the Hungarian people proves conclusively that the truth lay with the House committee-refugee Christian-fundamentalist minority, and not with the lying communist spokesmen and the World Council. Bromley,’t Hooft and other World Council leaders are exposed as seriously ill-informed and dangerously naive about real conditions in communist countries. Is their ignorance by chance or by design?

Let us put a spot-light on the Hungarian revolt and see what happened. One of the communist delegates to Evanston, Bishop Janos Peter of the Hungarian Reformed Church had a very difficult time. In the brief period of anarchy before Soviet troops restored communist control the Hungarian Reformed Church summoned an emergency synod. They forced Peter and other proregime clergymen to resign their church positions, charging that they were the worst kind of Stalinists. Peter was forced out of his bishopric and virtually out of the church. His communist friends came to the rescue, and the Kadar government appointed him head of the Cultural Relations Institute. Nomination to the government post is regarded in Budapest as definitely ruling out his return to the episcopal office (see New York Times, Jan. 2, 1957).

This puts us in a very curious situation. Hungarian Christians in a moment of freedom repudiated Bishop Peter as a communist collaborator and a betrayer of the church. Yet he is the same person the World Council accepts in the name of Christian fellowship as a spokesmen and representative for the Hungarian Reformed Church. This puts the refugee Hungarian pastor Vatai and the Hungarian people on the one side and the World Council, Soviet tanks, the Kadar regime and Bishop Janos Peter on the other. How do you think Hungarian peasants feel about this World Council of Churches? What chance does World-Council Christianity stand when Hungary is finally free again?

This painful and unpleasant Hungarian review would not have been necessary if the World Council had learned anything from its sad experiences. But now Dr. MacKay proposes exactly the same type of alliance with regard to China. American Christian leaders are to establish relations with the communist-appointed leaders of the Christian churches in China.

The World Council must first learn whether the same dichotomy between workers-peasants and communist rulers exists in Communist China that existed in Hungary. Have the communist-appointed leaders of the Chinese churches ever betrayed the legitimate interests of their constituents, as did Bishop Janos Peter, to serve the communist government? This problem can be studied. There are Christian refugees in this country to testify as truthfully as did the Hungarian Christian Vatai. Episcopal Bishop Quentin Huang would be worth listening to. There are missionaries who have lived in communist China; they should be consulted. And there are still the same fundamentalist Christians. One of them, Samuel Boyle of Hongkong, cannot be ignored with impunity.

Unless the World Council can exhibit more wisdom and less haste with regard to China than it did with regard to Hungary, it is headed for a similar disaster. If the same kind of reckless, pro-leftist political leadership prevails in the future as it has in the past, Protestant Christianity will eventually die discredited with the communist bed-fellow it chose, when people are finally free.

PAUL B. DENLINGER

Seattle, Wash.

• An Episcopal priest, the Rev. Mr. Denlinger served as a missionary in China from 1946–50, and is now a graduate teaching assistant in the Chinese and Russian Institute of the University of Washington.—ED.

ANOTHER SIDE OF THE DESK

I was disappointed in “The Glass-Top Desk” by Kermit Eby. Just what is Mr. Eby disturbed about? That the churches have gone “plush,” or that the laborers and labor unions have done so?… There is a painful amount of misinformation about the Peabody Seating Company of North Manchester.… The accusations made are, to put it mildly, unkind and unjust. He says that the company is paternalistic: “A relationship between company and the employed involving care and control suggestive of those followed by a father.” This is bad? Or does it suggest a family relationship which involves a companionship and comraderie making for cordiality? He says the employees are in “pitiful” condition. As a matter of fact approximately seven out of every ten of these people own their own homes; most of them drive nice new automobiles and own television sets. We remember, too, that some years ago Mr. Peabody distributed more than a hundred thousand dollars in bonus recognition of the faithfulness and loyalty of his men.…

The strike called against the local company was not the result of a controversy over wages or hours, but was a part of the effort of organizers to force a closed shop upon this community. The idea is absurd on the face of it. Peabody’s is a community enterprise. Men who own farms or have other work which may, at times, release them for part time work in the factory have found a ready welcome in this factory. There has been cordial cooperation with the local college and many of the students put in part-time working to pay their way through school. (In fact, Mr. Eby’s own son was one of these part-time employees.) These should belong to the union?

As for the glass-topped desk, perhaps it was not as expensive as the leather-top which Mr. Eby loved, and certainly such a desk is more sanitary! Perhaps the church he condemns for air-conditioning rather than to employ a fulltime director of education needed the air conditioning to compete with Sunday golf.…

It seems to me the article did a marked disservice to a company manned by employers of unquestioned integrity and completely loyal to their community and to their churches.…

FRED R. CONKLING

North Manchester, Ind.

Ideas

On Meeting Changing Issues

A clear and effective witness for Christ in the name of evangelical Christianity will evidence a number of things. It will, of course, largely be positive and constructive rather than negative and destructive. For we have something to offer as well as something to protect and defend.

But even when evangelical Christianity witnesses positively and constructively, it will ever be conscious of the clamoring voices of competing theologies. And its witness will reflect the fact that it realizes it has competitors for the hearts of men. Evangelical Christianity will, therefore, be wisely apologetic. It will often be aggressive. And it will remain on guard against attack. To do all this and win converts in a revolutionary world is not easy. It requires the scriptural wisdom of serpents—and more.

But this wisdom has not always been evident in the witness of evangelical Christianity. There have been times when we lost more friends than we won. And we have not always been granted even that measure of civilized respect which our competitors seem willing to accord each other in the world of scholarship and learning. Too often our best reception has been an amused indulgence like that which a sophisticated city-slicker might grant his country cousin gawking at his first sight of an escalator. When evangelical Christianity has been given a hearing it has been an audience like that which the bored directors of a large corporation might grant some small stockholder who has claimed his legal prerogative of speaking at the annual board meeting.

Now we are not altogether blameless for the lack of respect which we have been accorded in many circles. For one thing, we have been a little aloof ourselves. We often have drawn our dignity about us like a garment and, in the exercise of our calling, we have stalked ahead heedless of the competing clamor like a proud great Dane frostily ignoring the yapping of mongrel terriers at his heels. But with even more embarrassing consequences, we have occasionally undertaken to do battle for our honor, without first making sure we were meeting our opponents on even terms. We have jousted with weapons unsuited to the style of combat, or we have made ourselves a spectacle by undertaking to do battle against opponents that were not even there. And we have been justly received with the regard due a Don Quixote.

Evangelical Christianity represents, generally speaking, theological stability. Our competitors, on the other hand, are noted for their adaptability and changeableness. Most of them seldom stand for the same essentials for long. As a matter of fact, a principal plank in their theological platforms is their theory of the impermanence of theological systems. The overall problem which results from this difference is that we, who expect an issue to stand still until it is resolved, must adapt our witness to an opposition for whom issues are seldom long the same, with the often disastrous consequences mentioned above.

Now the positive witness of evangelical Christianity to the Truth of God must always remain essentially the same, of course, for the Gospel is eternal in its verities. But it must also adapt itself to the contemporary situation in a manner suited to the occasion. That is, the negative aspects of that positive witness must change with the prevailing nature of the conflict. That aspect of our witness which meets conflicting views must always be shifting and adjusting to meet new and changing ideas: for human schemes and interpretations change with the prevailing winds. We are always in danger of assuming that because our conclusions are permanent, those of our competitors are likewise permanent.

Nor can we afford to treat the opposition with the unconcern which we think his views often deserve, defining the issue on our own terms in order to keep them more easily within reach. For if it is our purpose to speak convincingly to those who disagree with us, we must speak to their understanding of the problem, not to ours.

Thus we are always in danger of being denied a hearing, not only because the human heart is sinful, but also because we may be exercised about something which the other side does not recognize as an issue or no longer considers an issue, having modified its views or passed on to something else. This is a real problem, even though we may rightly recognize in the new issue or viewpoint the essential fallacies of the old.

So the lack of respect with which the evangelical Christian is often met may be due to his failure or disinclination to recognize and to keep abreast of the world on the other side of the fence. “Progressive” theologies can differ from each other widely, without losing their fundamental regard for each other. But the evangelical is met with contempt. Recognizing other reasons, we are also convinced that a part of the reason is that the evangelical often does not command the respect of his opponents by speaking coherently to the point.

But what of specific examples? There are many. Take the issue of “liberalism,” for one. Liberalism, in some respects, is a dead issue. Most informed “liberals,” as a matter of fact, no longer consider themselves “liberals.” They point to the fact that the former optimistic view of the nature of man, of the capacity of man for self-improvement and of an inevitable utopia, have been surrendered by most serious thinkers. They speak of “liberals” with the zeal of an evangelical, for their theology has returned to a “new” orthodoxy, to a new “realism.” Those theologians who once preached the innate goodness of man now affirm the reality of original sin. Those who once denied to man any savior but himself now proclaim our need to walk with the Living Christ. And those who stopped with some vague affirmation of life after death now declare that only the Resurrection can adequately explain God’s sovereignty over death.

This does not mean that the liberal has turned orthodox. Not at all. It simply means that the issues have changed. Now the question is: What does “original” mean? And “living”? And the “resurrection”? The unbeliever is still an unbeliever. But the evangelical who continues to blast all “liberals” with the same fervent heat as of yore stands to lose his audience except for those who, like himself, have failed to perceive the shifting emphasis of the opposition.

Of course this brings up the question of terminology, which is always a difficult one. The proper terms can help or defeat a campaign. But in this field the opposition seems always to have the upper hand. His language is respectable. Ours is usually outdated. “Heretic” is now a word in universal ill repute. (“Fundamentalist” has become a word of reproach and many resent the snide implications that have become associated with a term which once signified courage and integrity.) “Modernists” was badly chosen in the beginning, but is still half-heartedly used. Unfortunately, it implies something intrinsically bad about the word “modern,” which is wholly respectable in other usage. The word “progressive” may be a good one and recent political connections have given it the flavor of radicalism and reactionism—to coin one. “Radical theology” has a very satisfactory sound. Perhaps it will do.

But there is another area which comes to mind, in which modern realistic (pardon us, radical) theology and evangelical Christianity fail to meet on fair terms. This is the area of the social application of religion, and here it is not a matter of terminology. It seems to be a matter of interest. The opposition has almost made good its claim to exclusive jurisdiction within the area of social concern. He has well-nigh convinced the world that love of neighbor in a true fellowship of reconciliation is found in him alone. The evangelical, for whom “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” means the same thing, has not been able—or has not cared—to translate his theology into down-to-earth, practical Christian ethics. And the radical triumphantly carries the field.

Our faith has historically been an informed one as well as a reformed one. If we are to have a maximum effect for Christ in the world, our witness must be intelligently informed about competing theologies as well as about its own. And it must get down to earth in the marketplace and at the crossroads of life.

Spiritual-Moral Unity Wanes In United Nations

A new form of world power politics is finding its forum within the councils of the United Nations, and its implications for international morality are grave. For several generations the so-called “great powers” exercised their will through imperialistic and colonial policies. Where this was enlightened and constructive it unquestionably served a useful purpose, developing backward peoples to the point where personal expression and self-determination made policies of exploitation impossible.

But now, using the United Nations as both a forum and a fulcrum, the smaller nations have themselves developed a form of power politics that threatens to project future international relationships on an entirely new concept. The Afro-Asian bloc now dominates the United Nations under the leadership of neutralist India. In the tug of opinion, a double-standard of international morality has arisen. The United Nations has been contemplating sanctions against Israel while declining to employ them against Russia. This state of affairs requires an urgent and sober reappraisal of America’s hitherto unqualified enthusiasm for the United Nations.

The veto power exercised by Russia 79 different times has again and again made a mockery of the United Nations as a court of consistent usefulness.

Christians everywhere need to take account of their stewardship as citizens, and to express their concern and exercise their influence. What gives American Christians the greatest cause for uncertainty is the fact that the control of that organization now rests in the hands of nations totally lacking in the moral and spirtual concepts basic in the Judeo-Christian heritage.

Six years ago President Eisenhower is reported to have written a friend: “I want to make it clear that I am not an ‘internationalist’ in the sense that I am willing to trust America’s welfare to an international congress of just any kind.”

We hope the President holds the same viewpoint today. We believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans do.

Confusing Reports On Church In Red China

A break-through has been achieved in the effort to establishes relations between churches in the Free World and churches in Communist China, and the results are very confusing. The contact has been made by an eight-man Anglican delegation that spent seven weeks in Red China. The delegation was led by Dr. Howard W. K. Mowll, Archbishop of Sydney and Primate of the Church of England in Australia, a vice-president of Inter-Varsity Fellowship. Originally one of the “Cambridge Seven” who went as missionaries to China, he was for some years Bishop of West China. The delegation included another churchman of conservative theological views, Canon H. M. Arrowsmith, Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Canon Arrowsmith’s report, in which Archbishop Mowll concurs, speaks of impressive social and economic reforms (improved living standards, absence of civil war, a stable and reliable government, a new motivation for progress and a measure of moral reformation) through the communist regime. He contends, moreover, that claims of religious freedom by leaders in the Three-Self Reform Church (the government-approved national church) are to be received as trustworthy. “It is open to people to treat these statements as insincere and … for the consumption of the visitors. But I am convinced that these tributes were genuine.… It is better to err on the side of being naive and trusting than to treat our fellow Christians with cynicism and mistrust.” Even Clause 88 affirming that “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief,” must not, we are assured, be taken as excluding “full religious activity as distinct from belief,” since the Consituation assures freedom of speech, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.

Because of the social reforms in China, Canon Arrowsmith remarks that some leaders are prone to speak of “elements which impart to communism the quality of a twentieth-century Christian heresy.” And he adds: “If I may make a personal confession, it is that I went to China fully expecting to find that the Church had come to terms with the government. This is clearly not true. It rather seems that the State has come to terms with the Church.… I am an unblushing admirer of the Church in China today.”

In another dramatic turn of events, rumor from China indicates that Pastor Wang Ming-tao, imprisoned in August, 1955, after 30 years of faithful ministry as an evangelical preacher and writer, was released after signing a confession that he had engaged in anti-government political activities. Wang is rumored to be giving the Three-Self Reform Church full support. All reports are fragmentary, however, and charges and countercharges of brainwashing and deception prevail.

What are the Western churches to believe? Doubtless mistrust of communism runs deeps, and the worst possible view of events is easily taken. Even Canon Arrowsmith, replying to an Eternity magazine inquiry, admits “another side of the picture”: frightening regimentation and persistent indoctrination, collective conformity prone to damage personality, censorship of press and radio. China’s youth are virtually absent from church. Christian scholarship is distressingly low.

Canon Arrowsmith’s added words on Church-State relationships in China are more important. He thinks it not “necessarily and uniformly wrong” that Chinese Christian leaders are cooperating with their government, in view of the New Testament emphasis on loyalty to the “powers that be.” Canon Arrowsmith does not think the Three-Self movement holds “any quality of political capitulation.… The Three-Self Movement is not wrong.… I do not think that it is loyal at the cost of a disloyalty to the Christian principle.… Christian leaders in particular regard themselves as being free to criticize the government. But the Church also seems to me to be eager to exercise a certain creative influence upon the processes of government and the principles upon which they are based.” Christians are “not necessarily called upon to agree with the communists in their philosophical assumptions.” While the government requires church loyalty to the new regime, Canon Arrowsmith points out, the Church may criticize within that loyalty.

In Eternity the Canon speaks more guardedly of “a high degree of religious freedom.” Evangelistic and expository preaching within the churches is unimpeded. Although noting “a shameful record” of “severity, cruelty and persecution” during two years of the communist regime, Canon Arrowsmith thinks no Christian has been persecuted by communists during the past five years for religious reasons. He states: “I am assured by Christian leaders (I met thirteen Bishops and the leaders of the Baptist Church of Christ in China, Methodists, C.I.M., Salvation Army, Little Flock S.D.A., etc.), that in recent years there has been no known case of a persecution of the Christians purely on religious grounds.” Yet the Canon admits that “open-air preaching and public evangelism outside the churches is discouraged,” and that the present religious policy is probably a matter of government whim, though not capriciously so (not likely to be altered tomorrow). Canon Arrowsmith would even assure us that, while the government has dissociated itself from Christianity, nonetheless “the State has come to terms with the Church in China.” ^PIt would be premature to evaluate the foregoing developments dogmatically. The reports of the Australian delegates are to be qualified by the fact that their informants came mainly from a limited circle of churchmen representing the Three-Self Reform movement, and hence may reflect subtleties of communist propaganda. But aside from this, the report deals unsatisfactorily with two central issues, the relation of Church and State, and that of religious freedom. Canon Arrowsmith confuses religious tolerance—or suspension of religious worship and propaganda upon the will of the State for its temporary or permanent survival—with religious freedom, which denies the State’s right to interfere with religious belief and activity. Nor does he indicate how the Christian conscience can pledge genuine loyalty to a State whose foundations are anti-God, identifying the right with the will of the State alone—even when such a State allows Christians to criticize the State within this assumption. Where these issues are not clarified, most evangelical observers fear that an atheistic state, instead of coming to terms with the Church, is dictating highly subtle terms under which the Church in China may survive.

Joint Moscow-Peking Threat Calls For Christian Realism

There has been an ominously mild reaction in America to the joint statement from Moscow and Peking with reference to threatened intervention in the Middle East. The general world situation and internal difficulties made such a stand almost inevitable and its execution a strong possibility.

The free world is in grave danger of being led astray by a feeling of false optimism. Heartened by the continued resistance of patriots in Hungary, with stories of heroism and devotion continuing to come from that tragic little country; unrest in Poland; uneasiness among students, even in Russia itself; revocation of communist ruthlessness with attendant revulsion of former fellow travellers; too many have been encouraged to believe that communism will become extinct.

That communism, with its terrors and suppressions, may have within it the seeds of its own destruction does not mean that this much hoped for event is in the immediate offing. Just the opposite is a strong probability. Here we have desperation and the potential for a large scale war in the hands of those who control Moscow and Peking. History shows that such a combination has often led to acts of folly.

No longer are her European satellites Moscow’s trusted vassals. However, China’s leaders remain consistent partners and command a reservoir of trained or available man power unequalled anywhere else in the world.

While Krushchev and others associated with him may hesitate to start a full scale war in the West the unpleasant truth faces us that they most certainly would welcome a resumption of hostilities in the Far East. This places South Korea, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, one or all, in danger of aggression. An explosion there, engineered from Peking, would cause such diversions in the West that Russia might well use the occasion to take over the oil-rich Middle East and in so doing trigger World War III.

Terrible potentialities confront the West. Nuclear warfare and its horrible consequences deter men who love and want peace. To the criminally inclined such possibilities have no restraining effect, particularly if they see that the long-range course of events may portend their ultimate undoing.

The great danger gives added responsibility to the thinking and reactions of Christians, particularly in America where now is centered so much potential power and world leadership.

Partisan politics should be no determining factor. World containment on the basis of utopian ideals is out of question. We live in an age of international lawlessness and anarchy. We have temporized with communism and communist nations to the extent of dealing with them as though led by responsible and honourable people.

We maintain firm convictions that Christians need to pray on the one hand and act with realism and decision on the other. That we in America have been spared the physical ravages of war until now does not mean that we are less deserving of God’s judgment, nor that such an eventuality may not be tragically near. Our future can well rest with our decisions of the present.

Peace does not result from man’s desire. Peace results from men and nations ordering their affairs in line with God’s holy and righteous will. The spreading licentiousness and intemperance and lawlessness in America demands judgment.

God has affirmed in his word that righteousness exalts a nation and sin drags it down. Whether the salt and light of true Christian living in America are quantitatively and qualitatively adequate to save us is known to God alone. But of this we are confident—a genuine wave of nation-wide repentance and turning to God for forgiveness and mercy and to His Son for cleansing is our one great hope.

Such a spiritual rebirth is imperative and with it a willingess to determine our internal and external policies on the basis of righteousness and not expediency. Christian principles not only are consistent with but actually demand preparations to restrain evils that are inescapable in a world society.

To that end we believe Christians should work and pray for the preaching and teaching and living of the gospel message on the one hand while with the other they maintain the weapons necessary to deter evil men and nations and the will to exercise those means if necessary.

We are not sure how the prophetic words, “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them,” will be fulfilled. Of this we are sure; today there is neither peace nor safety and it is a time for Christians to work and pray.

Oversimplifying The Remedy For The World’S Woes

The evils and sorrows that afflict the earth have called forth many suggested cures. A simple remedy offered frequently by evangelicals is the proclamation of Christ and him crucified. This has been termed by some an oversimplification of the answers to world problems. Such criticism has justification since the Scriptures clearly indicate that more is required than simply preaching the atonement. Application of the Gospel to the various evils and problems of society must be made.

Paul informed the Corinthian Christians that he determined not to know anything among them, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. By this the Apostle indicated what was basic and fundamental to his theology and message. However, in his letter to the Corinthians he makes careful application of the Gospel to individual, ecclesiastical and social life. He warns the individual of strife and lust. He admonishes the church on Christian liberty, idolatry, worship and love, and discusses social questions of marriage and poverty.

The Gospel affects all the powers and capacities of the individual and extends to all relations and conditions of human life. The Gospel does not leave the convert kneeling at the altar; it follows him into every avenue of life. The Gospel speaks to the church on doctrine, worship and government. The Gospel has a message for the sciences, the arts, and every social institution. The Bible does not deal with the individual in isolation from society.

The evangelical has often hobbled the Gospel un-biblically. He has not shown that a Christian is a new moral creation destined to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. He should humbly accept criticism for his neglect and endeavor to rear a superstructure of social justice and righteousness upon the foundation Christ Jesus. He must work out his salvation in its various relationships with fear and trembling.

The evangelical, however, rightly discerns that nothing short of supernatural faith in Jesus provides an effectual remedy for the disease of sin. His basic message must always be Christ and him crucified. Only this message delivers from sin and, attended by the Holy Spirit, carries the necessary power to cleanse the world from evil and error.

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: Genesis

David W. Kerr

The average church-goer does not hear many sermons from Genesis these days. Writers of Sunday School materials seem to handle the earlier chapters rather gingerly where these cannot be avoided altogether. The opinion is expressed in many quarters that the older parts of this first book of the Bible are interesting fables of a bygone era.

Literary criticism of the kind which separates the books of the Old Testament into supposedly earlier documents began first with Genesis. The majority of the commentaries which have been written since 1825 have dealt in some way with this divisive type of criticism. Many commentaries openly advocate the documentary theories and to the extent that they do so they often cease to be commentaries on the actual meaning of the text. Most graduates of the better seminaries since 1875 have been acquainted with the views of Julius Wellhausen, who declared that large sections of Genesis are completely fictional.

The Importance Of Genesis

The effects of a rationalistic handling of Gensis have been felt in every part of biblical studies including that of the New Testament. A surprisingly large amount of New Testament teaching is built upon the foundation laid in Genesis. Luke’s genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ traces the Saviour human ancestry back to Adam through the patriarchs listed in Genesis. The principle of justification by faith is the life and experience of Abraham, who believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, Genesis 15:6. The doctrine of human sin as set forth in Romans 5 may not be understood apart from Genesis 3. The paradise which is regained in Revelation 21, 22, with its tree of life for the healing of the nations, is obviously the eternal counterpart of that which was lost in the Genesis narrative. One’s understanding of the whole biblical revelation will undoubtedly be colored by his understanding of Genesis.

The Structure Of Genesis

The style of Genesis indicates even to the casual student that the book as we have it comes from one hand. There is, for one thing, the unusual structure of the book. After the account of the creation which is given in the first chapter, there appears in Genesis 2:4 an expression which introduces the remaining parts of the book. It is said, “These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created.” There are nine other sections given over to “generations.” There are the generations of Adam, of Noah, of the sons of Noah, of Shem, of Terah, of Ishmael, Isaac, Esau and Jacob.

The structure of the book is progressive. The writer carefully traces the rise of the nation of Israel, the covenant people of God in his day. He shows how God kept alive the knowledge of himself in the great apostasy before the flood and the ignorance after it. With the calling of Abraham in chapter 12 there began the selective process by which God chose a people for his own possession. An individual, a son of idolatrous parents, is called to be a child of God. Yet the choosing of the individual is to result in universal blessing for the promise is, “Through thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Whenever it is necessary for the writer to go beyond the limits of God’s chosen line as he does, for example, when he traces the families of Cain, Ham, Japheth, Ishmael and Esau, he returns abruptly to the children of God. He is like a navigator on a river who may for a short time explore its tributaries, but who returns to follow the main stream to its mouth.

The book of Genesis is plainly supernatural in its viewpoint although there are certainly fewer miracles recorded in it than in the gospel accounts. The objections which may be brought against the supernatural elements in Genesis may be brought with almost equal force against all that is miraculous in the Christian faith, including the casting out of evil spirits by our Lord Jesus Christ or even his resurrection.

Those who are convinced that God was working in all the events of past ages to introduce his plan of redemption will find that there is growth in the Messianic hope and promise in Genesis. The seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head, 3:15. The promise here might refer to any human being. Yet the line of blessing is narrowed among the descendants of Noah to the family of Shem, 9:26, 27. The calling of Abraham and later the blessing of Jacob narrowed the line still further. In Genesis 49:10 the tribe of Judah is selected as the one through which the purpose and kingdom of God will be wrought.

Aids To The Study Of Genesis

There are several commentaries on Genesis which will prove rather sterile since they devote their pages to a documentary analysis rather than an effort to elicit the message of the book. The best helps to the pastor and teacher are those works which recognize that Genesis was written for a theological purpose. The Interpreter’s Bible in its first volume contains a commentary on Genesis. Although the exegesis is marred, in this writer’s opinion, by documentary divisions, there are many useful insights into the meaning of the text. Several of the introductory articles in the volume will be found helpful although the position of some writers is a refinement of that of Julius Wellhausen and is highly subjective at many points. The text is divided into exegesis and exposition. The latter is sometimes rather imaginative. The writer, Walter Russell Bowie, shows a vast acquaintance with literary material which may serve for purposes of illustration.

One of the most valuable of recent commentaries is that of H. C. Leupold, An Exposition of Genesis (1953). Leupold gives a verse-by-verse interpretation of the text but he attempts to deal with a number of archeological problems as well. An older commentary which has recently been made available through reprinting is that of Robert S. Candlish, Commentary on Genesis. Candlish does not give a thorough exegesis but rather devotes himself to an exposition and application of whole passages. His work is really in the nature of a biblical theology of Genesis which is a distinct advantage in our day. Not the least valuable aspect of this commentary is the fact that it relates Genesis to the rest of biblical revelation. Other reprints which rank high in scholarship are available to the pastor who is willing to dust off his Hebrew Bible. Among these are the commentary by Franz Delitzsch in the famous Keil and Delitzsch series and that of Otto Zockler in the Schaff-Lange series. The student who has had no instruction in Hebrew will find such commentaries a bit more cumbersome than others but still very helpful. An up-to-date, one-volume work on the whole Bible is The New Bible Commentary (1953). It is uniformly conservative but necessarily brief.

No student of the Old Testament should rely upon commentaries alone. Genesis is largely historical. The movements of the patriarchs and the peculiarities of their culture may best be understood with the use of a good atlas and a Bible dictionary. Several excellent volumes are obtainable. The Westminster Historical Atlas has been revised as recently as 1956. As a companion volume the Westminster Bible Dictionary is not as complete as the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia or the recently revised Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, but it is somewhat more convenient. J. Howard Kitchen is the author of a fine historical geography of the Holy Land entitled Holy Fields (1955).

Finally, it would be foolish to ignore the bearing of archeology upon our understanding of Genesis. The number of books on this subject is almost endless. Two come to mind as being particularly readable and helpful. These are Light from the Ancient Past (1946) by Jack Finegan and Archeology and Bible History by Joseph Free. The latter is well-known in evangelical circles in America. The former contains some conclusions which are influenced by an attitude toward the Bible with which some readers will not agree, but it is well-documented and has a moderate approach.

Anyone who comes to the book of Genesis expecting to find in it a revelation of the timeless purpose of God’s grace will see the book open before him in many surprising ways. He will draw from it treasures new and old, to enrich his own life and experience as well as those of his hearers.

- More from David W. Kerr

Gold Coast Celebrates Independence

Christianity in the World Today

Five million people on Africa’s West Coast will explode with merriment on March 6—the historic day marking the Declaration of Independence on the Gold Coast.

Feverish activity marked preparations for the great day. New highways were slashed through jungles. Modern buildings were pushed up. Publicity trucks roared through the country telling villagers how to celebrate.

U. S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Britain’s Duchess of Kent, along with other leading world figures, are scheduled to be on hand for the significant event.

The Gold Coast, now to be known as Ghana in memory of an ancient West African empire, has not been marked by the bitter anti-white nationalism of other emerging countries. There has been increasing inter-racial harmony since 1951, when British Governor Sir Charles Arden-Clark released American-trained Dr. Kwame Nkrumah from a two-year sentence (for leading an illegal strike) and made him Prime Minister. Now, after a century of British rule, the all-African Parliament has voted to remain in the British Commonwealth.

The new Ghana will not be without its internal troubles, however. Until January, the threat of civil war shadowed the country as Ashanti tribesmen held out for minority safeguards. The economic life largely depends on a single crop—cocoa. Corruption in the national government was revealed last year by a public commission.

Politicians face such problems. Church leaders also have problems to face. Religious freedom is guaranteed under the new Constitution, but the Church must combat the growing nationalist idea that Christianity is a Western religion and should be curbed in a self-governing African country. They must resist the “synthesis theory” that traditional pagan customs should be merged with the teachings of Christ to make a “national Christianity.” Official weight was given to this theory when the Prime Minister attended both an Anglican Church service and a pagan sacrifice ceremony to give thanks for independence.

Above all, Christian leaders see the need of challenging their people that evangelism should be the responsibility of national Christians, especially in a self-governing country.

“To solve problems in the church, we must get the people back to the basic truths of Christianity through preaching the Word of God,” said the Rev. Peter Kwei Dagadu, secretary of the Ghana Christian Council. “We should not give the people intellectual sermons and politics—but should get down to the faith, backed by Bible knowledge, in which all true knowledge is found.

“In a self-governing country, the church has ever greater responsibilities. We must remind the people that righteousness exalts a nation.”

—W.H.F.

Yale Impressions

(Five students from Princeton Theological Seminary decided to visit Yale and see for themselves the impact of Dr. Billy Graham in his sermon series to the students. One of the Princeton men was James H. Morrison Jr., a graduate of the University of Tennessee and Fuller Theological Seminary. He wrote his impressions for the Chattanooga News-Free Press. Excerpts follow.)

“A very small part of the audience was townspeople; nearly all were students at Yale. One was greatly impressed by the simplicity of the program.…

“The address on Tuesday night was ‘The Challenge of the Cross.’ Using Galatians 6:14 as his text, Mr. Graham said the cross signified at least three things: (1) It is an expression of human iniquity; (2) it signifies the love of God, and (3) it is the only means of salvation.

“… The message received careful and thoughtful attention.

“Mr. Graham then asked all those who were interested in learning more about Christ and becoming a Christian to remain and for the rest to leave quietly. It was a thrilling surprise to see about 500 remain behind. The how of becoming a Christian was carefully, lucidly and briefly explained. Those who knew very definitely that they wanted to accept Christ as Lord and Saviour were asked to stand quietly and then sit down. It was a joy to see close to 100 college men rise to their feet with one accord. Mr. Graham waited in silence for any others that might want to stand, and some 15 or 20 more stood in the few minutes he waited. He then urged them to do four things, explaining each: Read their Bibles, pray, witness and attend church and become active in it.

“Wednesday evening Mr. Graham spoke on ‘The Mystery of Conversion,’ using Matthew 18:3 as his text. He defined ‘conversion’ by showing, first of all, that it is used in nearly every realm of human experience—banking, mathematics, law, psycho-analysis; so also in the spiritual and moral realm. ‘Conversion,’ he said, ‘is a changing of directions.’ He then said, ‘I want to ask you a question straight out. Have you been converted?’ He paused and the vast hall was completely silent.… He continued by showing there are at least three elements in the process of conversion: Repentance, faith and regeneration. Each of these elements was clearly expounded and illustrated.

“Once again those interested were invited to remain.… 700 to 800 remained. Not so many stood to make decisions (probably 75 or 80), but interest was there. That could not be doubted.

“The students at the Yale Divinity School were, in general, either aloof or hostile towards Mr. Graham and his method, if not his message.… A few openly admitted a change in attitude towards Mr. Graham specifically and towards evangelism in general. Here, indeed, is an impact which cannot possibly be measured in terms of the number who stand to make a ‘decision for Christ.’

“A number of the resident missioners in each of the 10 colleges of the university were ministers of the New Haven area. Some frankly stated their ministry had been transformed from participating in the 1957 mission at Yale. Effects such as these may have far greater impact than even the men who stood, not that we would in the least detract from the thrill of seeing college men come to Jesus Christ.

“What is Mr. Graham like in a situation like that at Yale? One would perhaps expect him to have less emphasis on ‘the Bible says’ in a university mission than in a city-wide campaign. This however, is not the case. He used Scripture freely.… We were also impressed with the simplicity, skillfulness and aptness of his illustrations. His rate of delivery was much slower than usual; in fact, he was almost deliberate in places.… His messages were simple and to the point. They were not intellectual; neither were they anti-intellectual. There was no emotionalism or pleading for decisions at any time. There was a refreshing emphasis on the need of a commitment of the totality of the person and upon the fact that many problems will yet face the person who accepts Christ, but there would be a new peace and hope.”

In recent weeks, in addition to appearances of Dr. Graham at Yale, Amherst College and the University of Massachusetts, missions were conducted at Harvard by the Rev. John Stott of London, and one at Princeton by the Rev. Bryan Green, also of England.

Dr. Graham addressed 10,400 students at the four meetings of the Student Mission, besides speaking to 150 students at each of four fraternity houses.

“I did not find the trick questions one used to hear,” said Dr. Graham. “Instead, I found the students asking sincere questions indicating a deep spiritual hunger.” About 300 students made “commitments to Christ.”

‘Lust For Unity’

Religious liberty in the United States is threatened by a “growing lust for unity at too low a level,” Methodist Bishop Gerald H. Kennedy of Los Angeles recently declared.

Decrying “the popular contemporary idea that all separation is bad,” he declared that Protestantism’s division into many sects demonstrated its strength rather than its weakness.

Segregation Status

A survey of Protestant churches in four boroughs of New York City classifies 51 per cent as segregated, 25 per cent as non-segregated and 24 per cent as integrated.

The Rev. Paul W. Rishell, executive secretary of the Department of Christian Relations of the Protestant Council of the City of New York, defined a segregated church as one where the membership and attendance are predominantly of one race; a non-segregated church is one where there is a “reasonable percentage” of persons from minority groups in the membership or attending the church; and an integrated church is one where members of minority groups serve as officers and on boards and committees “to a degree that indicates minority groups are participating in the church’s leadership and activities.”

500Th Anniversary

The Moravian Church, reported to be the oldest Protestant group in the world, begins this month a year-long celebration of its 500th anniversary.

A highlight of the observances will come in August at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, when the General Synod of the Worldwide Moravian Church will meet for the first time in the United States.

Much of the colorful history will be told and retold in the months ahead. It happened like this, according to the Rev. Bruno Schreiber in the 1957 annual of North American Baptists (facts supplied by Moravian Office of Public Relations):

“In the year 1415, John Hus, a Catholic priest, was tried for heresy, condemned, and burned at the stake. His attempt at reform was not altogether in vain. But it was not until the year 1457, 60 years before Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door of the Wittenberg Cathedral in Germany, that a little company of Hussite followers organized a little church in the Province of Moravia, presently known as Czechoslovakia.… In a comparatively short time, more than 400 congregations came into being, numbering about 200,000 members in Bohemia, Moravia and Poland.

“Then came terrible persecutions. For the next 100 years no Protestant was permitted to live in Bohemia.… During the Thirty Years War, which was brought on by religious dissension, they were almost wiped out.

“… Their hope and prayer were that the ‘hidden seed’ would survive. For the next 150 years they were a bewildered and confused people. Without consecutive leadership or adequate instruction, they held on to one great central conviction—the reality of their experience with God.

“In 1722 a group fled into Saxony, where shelter was granted them by Count Nicholas Ludwig Zinzendorf, a generous and devout young nobleman … their ancient unity was again restored.

“So great and earnest was their missionary zeal that, although the total Moravian community in all the world consisted of no more than 600 souls, their missionaries were already at work in 13 different countries … even today their record for missionary endeavor is without parallel in the history of Protestantism. Whereas the congregations of the home church number no more than 65,000 members, the convert members on their mission fields total over 200,000.

“If there was a creed expressed in the Moravian Church, it was simply, ‘Christ, and Him Crucified.’

“In 1736 Count Zinzendorf was banished from Saxony because of the disturbance created by his evangelical zeal. After a number of years of evangelical labors on the continent, in England and in the West Indies, he made his way to Pennsylvania in the New World.…

“Freedom of worship and the opportunity of finding a new home led other refugees to follow Zinzendorf … George Whitefield, who purchased a tract of 5,000 acres in eastern Pennsylvania, offered 500 acres to the new community … On Christmas Eve, 1741, the new community was named Bethlehem.…

“A few years later the first Moravian house of worship was built. To this chapel came Martha Washington, Maruis Lafayette, Benjamin Franklin, Count Pulaski and other prominent figures of the Colonial Days. It is still used for special occasions.…

“The Moravians were also pioneers in education. John Amos Comenius, a bishop in the church, is commonly referred to as ‘the father of education’.… As one of the outstanding educators in world history, he was offered the presidency of Harvard College in 1642.

“… It was during a dreadful storm at sea that John Wesley’s life was first influenced by the Moravians. Many of the passengers had given up all hope of ever reaching land alive. While the small vessel pitched and tossed dangerously upon the stormy sea, the frightened Wesley stared at a little company of 26 Moravians on the same ship gathered around their bishop, David Nitschmann, quietly engaged in singing and praying as if all unaware of the terrible tempest.

“After anxiously inquiring about the secret of such courage and peace, he heard for the first time about a religious faith that could take the spirit of fear out of a man’s heart. The strangest fact about his sea voyage was that he was on his way to preach to the American Indians while he himself was desperately in need of salvation. It is no wonder that his mission proved to be a dismal failure.

“It was not until he returned to London and came into contact with another Moravian preacher, Peter Boehler, that John Wesley again became anxious about his spiritual condition. He began to probe for the secret of which he had become aware on board the little ship.…

Medical Humbug

“Doctor Advises Beer for Princess,” read headlines across the nation.

Grace Kelly Rainier’s physician had recommended a glass of beer at each meal because “it’s good for convalescing mothers and she loves it anyway.”

Ten newspaper ads carried announcements from Pabst about a foamy gift, Monaco bound. Budweiser jumped on the beer wagon for all it was worth.

Six pediatricians in the Washington, D. C. Medical Society debunked special benefits from beer as new mothers rushed for the grocery shelves.

Milk is better, agreed the doctors.

“About three weeks later in a private meeting in which some Moravians were present, John Wesley experienced what he later called ‘a strange warming of the heart.’ ”

Cut In Clergy Fares

The second commercial airline to file a tariff schedule with the Civil Aeronautics Board offering reduced fares to clergyman is Cordova Airlines of Anchorage, Alaska.

Cordova, which connects a number of cities in Alaska by daily air service, proposes cuts of from 47 to 52 per cent.

Bonanza Airlines of Las Vegas, Nevada, recently put into effect a 50 per cent reduction for clergy, with CAB approval.

Urgent Need

Bishop Richard C. Raines of Indianapolis, in an address to Methodist leaders, listed the following “urgent” needs:

Each year, 1,200 pastors for replacement, 500 for new churches, 275 for chaplaincies, 450 for multiple ministry associates, 375 for circuit churches, 350 missionaries, 280 directors of religious education, 255 campus religious workers and 4,000 student nurses.

Nation’S Oldest Church

“Old St. Luke’s,” the oldest church in America, will celebrate its 325th birthday anniversary on May 15.

Visitors from many points of the world will visit the small rural church, four miles from the town of Smithfield, Virginia. The occasion will be part of the Jamestown Settlement Festival, commemorating the 350th birthday of this notable event.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, is expected to visit the United States to take part in the celebration.

Now a national shrine, St. Luke’s was in a state of collapse as late as 1954, but has been restored to its rightful place of honor by an alarmed Restoration Committee.

President Dwight Eisenhower, taking note of the effort, sent the following letter to Henry Mason Day, committee president:

“All those who have helped toward the restoration of historic St. Luke’s, known to America as ‘The Nation’s Oldest Church,’ have preserved for generations to come a great symbol of our spiritual heritage.

“This monument to the founders of our country is in truth a national shrine. Visitors there, inescapably, will be reminded of the deep religious convictions of the first settlers, their faith in God and their faith in themselves as children of God. St. Luke’s, more than a time-hallowed relic of the past, will be an enduring witness to the spirit that animated them, for within its walls our forefathers gained new courage, firm perseverance, abiding strength to make of the wilderness a home for themselves and all who followed them.

“My congratulations go to you and to all associated with you in the campaign to restore St. Luke’s, and my warm thanks to all who helped with their contributions.”

In writing of the church’s great history, James Grote Van Derpool, president of the Historical Architects of America and chairman of the Restoration Committee, said:

“Not only is it the oldest extant church of English foundation in the United States, but it is the only original Gothic church remaining within the confines of our great country. The traditional and widely accepted date of its construction is 1632. Even so, it may well be the second church on this venerated site, replacing a temporary chapel which was served by the Reverend William Bennett, who was minister of Warrosquyoake Parish in 1622–23.

“The present church follows in spirit of design the delightful small parish churches of Essex, England, from whence came in 1619 various of the earliest settlers of this region, which was orginally named for the Warrosquyoake tribe of Indians inhabiting it at the time of the arrival of the first English settlers in Virginia in 1607. The name of the region was changed about 1637 to Isle of Wight, the name it still bears as a Virginia county.

“Set in the rolling acres of its venerable churchyard, Old St. Luke’s stands both as a symbol of the living faith of our forefathers and the devotion of their descendants. Fire and strife of war have spared it, while other churches of comparable dating have long since been lost to us. However, the hands of time and zealous restorers have not left it unscathed. The wonderful old timber trusses were renewed and then concealed in the eighteenth century by plaster vault. The floor level was changed on two successive occasions as the earth about the church rose to higher levels with the passing of the years. A series of minor alterations and repairs necessary to the maintenance of any building in the course of its life, accumulated.

“A severe storm in 1887 inflicted such heavy damage to the church that an extensive repair program was initiated, without which the church would doubtless have passed into complete ruin. Its active function had been largely transferred to the town of Smithfield, when Christ Church was built there between 1832–36. Since that time, the use of St. Luke’s has been sporadic and since 1926 only occasional services have been held there.

“By 1951, the walls had begun to bulge ominously, and in 1954 the foundations of the church were discovered to be in such dangerous condition that collapse of the whole structure appeared imminent.

“Alarm spread througout Newport Parish, throughout Virginia, and so on through the nation itself … Could a generation which had seen the construction of engineering triumphs like the Panama Canal, vast harbor installations, powerful dams, great skyscrapers and a whole sequence of incredible scientific feats leading up to nuclear fission, stand quietly by and allow the destruction of one of the most exceptional monuments of our civilization?

Department Of Peace

Legislation to create a Department of Peace, designed to carry out the prayers voiced by President Eisenhower, has been introduced in Congress by Rep. Harold C. Ostertag (R-N.Y.).

The bill, H.R. 4298, calls for a National Peace College as a spiritually strategic counterpart of the Army War College. It also calls for consolidation, under a Secretary of Peace, of International Cooperation Administration (ICA), the U. S. Educational Exchange Program and the U. S. Information Agency.

Rep. Ostertag, in a statement for CHRISTIANITY TODAY, declared:

“You will recall that Emerson said of battleships … ‘By an idea, the battleships were created; by an idea, they will disappear.’ Today we are in peril of annihilating ourselves for lack of an idea to make them (the battleships) disappear. A Department of Peace may not be the priceless idea, but it might well be the seedbed for it.

“At this time, when the motives of the United States are widely misunderstood and are being misinterpreted by the communists for their own ulterior ends, it is doubly appropriate that we create by statute a Department solely to wage peace.”

“Almost as if it were a part of some great design, a loyal Virginian, Henry Mason Day, descendant of one of the original settlers of the region, a man whose business judgment had been directed in furthering great business enterprises, both in Europe and America, returned from New York to visit the home of his forebears.”

Day was inspired to spearhead a restoration movement and his feeling that it should be a national project struck a sympathetic response.

The task proved successful.

Thousands will pause on the scene May 15 and thank God for the great spiritual heritage.

Musical Clue

Thieves took $3 worth of candy and 2,000 copies of sheet music from the car of Albert H. Neinz, chaplain for the Columbus, Ohio, police department.

The sheet music was titled, “Not Mine, But Thine.”

‘Beulah Land’ Rock

The National Association of Music Teachers heard a suggestion recently that such hyms as “Beulah Land” and “There’s Honey in the Rock” should be blacklisted for church use because of their rock and roll effect.

Dr. William C. Rice, fine arts division chairman, Baker University, Baldwin, Kansas, made the suggestion. He commended such hymns as “Holy, Holy, Holy” and “Faith of Our Fathers.”

Memorable Things

Many important things were said and done at the recent annual conference of International Christian Leadership in Washington, D. C. Here are some that impressed the memory:

A prayer, by Richard C. Halverson, associate executive director of ICL—

“Our Father in Heaven, we gather in this warm, comfortable fellowship while there are millions who know neither warmth nor comfort nor dare to gather in thy name. We meet here with respect and affection for our national leaders, to pray for them, while there are millions who live in fear and hatred of their rulers. We enjoy these benefits of food and drink while there are millions who never know the luxury of a full stomach. We live in a dispossessed refugee world, yet our prosperity has so insulated us against the world’s misery that we are barely aware of it.

“Deliver us from the complacency that takes these blessings for granted. Cleanse us of the sins of pride and self-seeking. Grant, O God, that this breakfast may be a testimony to the world that we take Jesus Christ seriously, that America’s leaders accept their role in human affairs to be ordained of God, and so receive our gratitude and dedication here this morning for thy glory, in the name of thy son and our savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen.”

A challenge, by Dr. Billy Graham—

“This is the golden hour for the church. The present moment has no parallel in the history of Christianity. Scientists, students, sociologists and politicians are beaten and baffled by life’s problems and are saying to religious leaders: ‘Come and help us.’ ”

A warning, by Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY, against a “secular surge” in educational institutions—“… the effectiveness of the faith nurtured in our homes and churches is constantly threatened and depressed from above. Advanced and professional instruction instead of nurturing faith, impoverishes it, and the highest strategic grades of our vocational training have been placed largely in the hands of an intelligentsia that is in revolt against our Christian heritage.”

A word of support, by Vice President Richard M. Nixon, for the New York City Crusade of Dr. Billy Graham—“This is one of the most courageous spiritual ventures in our generation.”

(Boyd H. Leedom, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, was elected president of ICL. He succeeds Governor Price Daniel of Texas. Senator Frank Carlson [R-Kans.] was reelected president of the International Council for Christian Leadership, the world body with which the American group is affiliated. ICL was founded in 1935 at Seattle, Washington, by Abraham Vereide, who still serves as executive director. More than 230 groups meet regularly throughout the world.)

Clergy Ailments

Seven ailments most common to ministers are listed by the Rev. J. A. Davidson in the Observer, official United Church of Canada paper:

► “Shrader’s Neurasthenia—a listlessness and apathy brought on by prolonged meditation over a Life Magazine article entitled ‘Why Ministers Are Breaking Down.’

► “The Schlegenheimer Compulsion-drives victims to speak and write gobblegook. Some victims also suffer from the strange delusion that to be unintelligible in the pulpit is to maintain the prestige of the ministry.

► “Parson’s Red Face—the result of wearing a clerical collar half-a-size too small and not of secret tippling, as some cynics suggest.

► The Dick-Gestetner Syndrome—symptoms include ink-poisoning, hands blistered by constant cranking, twitching of the eyes caused by watching hundreds of sheets of white paper flit by … mucilage-induced toxic inflammation of the mouth and stamp-licker’s tongue.

► “Theologian’s Strabismus (or squint)—comes from too much reading of italicized rubrics in old prayer books.

► “Mark Tapley Neurosis—a strange state of persistent and sometimes violent jolliness.

► “Saturday Night Thumb—the result of spending every Saturday night thumbing through back numbers of Pulpit Digest … the nothing-to-preach jitters.”

New Moody Series

A new series of children’s Bible adventure films for television, produced by the Moody Institute of Science, are scheduled to be shown by stations this year.

Favorable public reaction was reported after a first viewing on 66 stations across the country.

Heart Patients

Comforting visits by clergymen are beneficial to heart patients.

That was the conclusion of heart specialists, psychiatrists and clergymen at a seminar sponsored by the Chicago Heart Association.

The symposium, first of its kind in the Chicago area, was attended by 125 ministers and rabbis.

“We ministers have long wondered whether we should step in immediately when a member of our congregation suffers a heart attack,” said Dr. Granger Westberg, professor of religion and health at the University of Chicago. “We have considered whether our presence at such a time would be the cause of additional shock. Doctors tell us ‘no.’ In fact, the minister becomes the most important person in the patient’s life at that particular moment.”

“The comforting visit of a clergyman is helpful,” said Dr. George V. Le Roy, associate dean of the University of Chicago’s division of biological sciences.

Staggering Title

The nation’s capital should change its name to Washington, D. T., a Methodist minister suggests, because the city has “the highest rate of alcoholism in the world.”

In a speech at the annual meeting of the Methodist Board of Temperance, the Rev. Howard J. Clinebell Jr., Great Neck, N. Y., said Washington’s 49,450 alcoholics, averaging 7.8 per cent of every 100,000 male adults, is well ahead of the national rate of 4,390 alcoholics for every 100,000 men.

Dr. Clinebell said that of the 12 countries “whose rates of alcoholism have been estimated with some accuracy, the United States is so far out in front that she has lapped the field.” France is the nearest contender, he said, with a rate of 2,850 alcoholics per 100,000.

“Since our country leads the world in alcoholism and Washington leads the country, it seems to me that the city has a clear claim to the title of ‘alcoholic capital of the world,’ ” he said.

‘Laddy’S’ Hunch

“Laddy” McKillop, 10, has recovered a prized possession because of a “hunch.”

It had been feared that his Bible had been consumed in flames that destroyed his parents’ home in South Lancaster, Mass. The Bible was cherished as a Christmas gift from his pastor.

Days after the fire, the boy developed a conviction that the Bible had escaped destruction. Largely to humor his son, the father drove him to their former home. Among the charred timbers and other debris they found the Bible beneath a collapsed chair. Its contents and cover were unharmed by fire or water.

“Laddy” wants to be a minister some day.

“They don’t make much money,” he said, “but they do an awful lot of good.”

Worth Quoting

“Nothing short of a leadership led by God is adequate for the present crisis.”—Abraham Vereide, executive director, International Christian Leadership.

“We have the best and most modernly equipped army in the world. I pray each night that it will never be used, and I tell you that all of us had better pray.…”—Secretary of the Army Brucker.

Far East

5,422 Decisions

The largest evangelistic crusade ever held in the Philippines, with 5,422 decisions for Christ from nightly crowds of 6,500 and a closing rally of 15,000, has brought new hope among evangelicals in the predominantly-Catholic country.

Dr. Bob Pierce, president of World Vision, was the speaker for the three-week crusade. The choir numbered 600.

An off-season tropical thunderstorm broke over the meeting site prior to one service. On his arrival, Dr. Pierce found 3,000 people sitting in the rain, waiting for the meeting to begin. A total of 125 responded to the invitation that evening.

Cooperation for the crusade was a splendid example of spiritual unity among Protestant forces at work in the Philippines. The only group which openly opposed the meetings was the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, with an expressed view that “God could not bless” a crusade when such as the Philippine Independent Church and other denominational groups were identified on the platform and on the sponsoring National Evangelistic Strategy Committee. (An identical point has stirred a controversy in connection with Billy Graham’s coming New York campaign.)

New Slant In Asia

The religious awakening in the United States is having a “profound effect” on non-Christians in Asia, according to Dr. E. Stanley Jones, noted 73-year-old Methodist missionary and evangelist.

“Many of the intellectual leaders of Asia have scoffed at religion,” he said. “They have felt all that is necessary for their people’s well-being is to raise their standard of living.

“Yet here they see the richest and most prosperous country in the world declaring openly that material possessions are not enough to give happiness and satisfaction in life.

“This is impressing Asians.”

Kermit Johnson, Orient Crusades missionary, is directing the follow-up work. Four classes, held immediately after the end of the meetings, were attended by 900. An estimated 65 Manila churches are now engaged in a systematic visitation program.

Twenty-eight per cent of the decisions were non-Protestant. President Magsaysay invited Dr. Pierce and his team to Malacanang Palace. Before leaving, the evangelist led in a prayer. The President later remarked to a friend what a great inspiration it had been.

Ambush In Philippines

It was the custom of Philip Watts, Christian lumberman from America, to leave his home in Zamboanga each Sunday night, travel by ferry and trail to his camp, work until Thursday and then return home.

The homecoming was always a joy, with a good wife and five wonderful children to greet him. On the weekends, he advised young people in church work and taught Sunday School. As a soldier in the Philippines during the war, he had determined to come back and help the people. He aided in establishing a church at Davao City.

On a Sunday evening in late January, Watts left for the lumber camp, accompanied by a friend, the Rev. Raymond Clemmer, Christian and Missionary Alliance missionary, and a Mr. Ybanez, the company paymaster. They arrived at Ipil at 4 a.m. after traveling on the little ferry for six hours. A jeep was waiting to take them over the rough trails cut through the jungles for lumber operations. About three kilometers inland, as they were making a turn, a burst of gunfire shattered the quietness. Watts shifted into low, for maximum speed in going up a hill, and stepped on the gas. The firing increased. Watts turned to Mr. Clemmer and said, “I’ve been hit.” A few seconds later he was dead.

The missionary grabbed the wheel and tried to get a foot on the gas pedal. With the body of his dead friend in the way, this didn’t work and he had to feed the gas by hand. One tire was flat and the jeep weaved wildly from side to side, but the camp was reached. Mr. Ybanez had a payroll of 9,000 pesos with him.

Police said later, after an investigation, that the ambushers had pursued for about 90 meters and intended to follow their custom of cutting victims into pieces. The missionary was creased on the hip by a bullet.

Despite the injury, Mr. Clemmer conducted a funeral similar to those in America, but without a pretty parlor and polite director.

Mrs. Watts and the children no longer look forward to the joyful homecomings on Thursday. Said the oldest girl, “It’s hard to take, but his grace is sufficient.”

Britain News: March 04, 1957

‘Profound Impression’

An outstanding Mission was held recently in the Queen’s University of Belfast under the leadership of Canon Bryan Green, Rector of Birmingham Parish Church.

Canon Green’s evening lectures at-traded audiences of over 1,000 and made a profound impression on many students.

Young People’s Conventions have been held in three of Ireland’s four principal cities—Belfast and Londonderry in the North and Dublin in the South. The movement began nearly 30 years ago as a result of the religious quickening in Ulster.

Underpaid Clergymen

Many British clergymen cannot buy new clothes for their families or provide them with enough food.

The Poor Clergy Relief Corporation, a Church of England organization, reports that 6,763 of the 11,387 Anglican Clergymen in Britain get less than $1,820 a year. Only 401 have salaries above $2,800.

From these salaries they must meet such personal expenses as telephone calls and bus fares to visit parishioners. Some even have to pay rent.

One minister said he had been unable to buy his wife a winter coat for 12 years. Another said his teen-age boys had gone without coats since they were little more than babies. A third said “our children are not adequately fed and often rise from the table actually hungry.”

Europe News, March 4, 1957

Mission In Berlin

A lot of violent history has unfolded around the City Mission in Berlin, scheduled to celebrate its 80th anniversary this month with evangelistic services led by outstanding speakers.

The Mission was founded by Hofprediger Pastor D. Adolf Stoecker in 1877.

Pastor Wilhelm Brauer is now director of the Mission.

‘Without Parallel’

A lot of spiritual indifference has passed under the bridge in Norway, but a visitor can’t tell it these days.

Congregational visitation campaigns, patterned after American methods and described as “without parallel in Norwegian Church history,” are bringing new life to churches.

In Oslo, during one week, 1,200 church members visited 20,000 homes. In the district of Rogaland, about 40,000 homes were visited.

The motto—“Bring Christ to the people and the people to Christ.”

French Version

A guitar-strumming priest has become France’s version of Elvis Presley.

The Rev. Aime Duval’s latest album of records is a best seller and he will headline a show at the Gaumont Palace Cinema in Paris this month.

The priest sings gay hymns to catchy rhythm tunes used as dance music.

Deaths

The Rev. Dr. Clarence E. Macartney, 77, pastor emeritus of Pittsburgh’s First Presbyterian Church, noted author and contributing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY; February 20.

Mrs. William “Ma” Sunday, 88, widow of famed evangelist “Billy” Sunday, in Phoenix, Arizona, also on February 20.

Dr. John Elward Brown Sr., 77, founder of John Brown University at Siloam Springs, Ark.

Dr. Everett Carleton Herrick, 80, president emeritus of Andover Newton Theological School, Andover, Mass.

Books

Book Briefs: March 4, 1957

Useful Collection

The Ministry in Historical Perspectives, edited by H. Richard Niebuhr and Daniel D. Williams. Harper, New York, 1956. $5.00.

Making surveys is one of the most popular scholarly occupations of our day. It is a relatively painless way of educating not only the surveyed but the surveyor. Sometimes it is pointed at one, sometimes at the other, but usually both benefit if there is any organization at all in the undertaking.

The theological seminaries of the United States and Canada have recently been undergoing such a survey. It has been under the direction of the two editors of this present book and of James M. Gustafson. Some preliminary results appeared in a series of mimeographed bulletins and the final statements are now appearing in three books. The volume under review is the second of the three to appear. It has less to do directly with the survey than either of the other two but may prove, in the long run, to be the most useful of all. Judgment on that point must be reserved until the third appears and time has passed to note the effects. In any case, this volume is a real bonanza for anyone interested in the ministry and how it has reached its present state.

The editors of the volume are not among the contributors, most of whom are professors of church history in American theological schools. They include, in order, John Knox who deals with the ministry in the primitive church, George H. Williams who covers the ante-nicene and patristic periods, Roland H. Bainton for the middle ages and Wilhelm Pauck for the Reformation. Edward R. Hardy deals with modern priestly ministries, Winthrop S. Hudson with the Puritans and Sidney E. Mead and Robert Michaelsen with the American scene.

The post-apostolic age always leads to speculation on the actual course of events, since our sources of information are very limited and do not provide all the desired answers. Knox is a little bolder and more radical in this speculation than is necessary or, in fact, than is likely, in the light of what we do know, to represent the real state of affairs. For example, by considering the Pastoral epistles as non-Pauline and by holding the book of Acts to be “considerably later than Paul” (p. 20), he is able to discuss the offices of bishop, deacon and others at considerable length without introducing the subject of the presbyter or elder. The treatment of the latter follows in a separate section. This results in what seems to me to be a distortion of the picture. There are, however, great excellencies in the clarity of presentation and the use that is made of many of the sources.

The other periods are better provided with source material and the authors, therefore, are able to walk on surer ground. The attractiveness and vivid character of the style varies from contribution to contribution but taken as a whole they are a brilliant and most useful coliection. There is nothing else just like this and nothing as good as this at present available. Williams handles his material in masterly fashion. Bainton is not as technical but is marvellously evocative of the medieval situation. Pauck supplies much information not otherwise generally available concerning conditions at the time of the Reformation. Hardy is concerned to present the ideal as well as the actual. I am not sure that Hudson is quite up to his usual level though he gives a competent review of the Puritan period in England, but Mead has a splendid analysis of the distinctive American scene. It does not push the evidence too far, as Mead has sometimes done. Michaelsen’s characterization of the fundamentalist minister, unfortunately, is on the cheap side (pp. 258 f.).

Almost every institution and office can only be understood if its history is known. The contemporary ministry is no exception to this rule. This book could make some ministers twice as effective.

PAUL WOOLLEY

Facing Decay

The American Sex Revolution, by Pitirim A. Sorokin. Porter Sargent, Boston. $3.50.

Dr. Pitirim A. Sorokin is Chairman of the Department of Sociology of Harvard University and former President of the International Institute of Sociology. He is the author of some thirty books on sociology and is a recognized authority in his field. Thus speaks one who knows.

The thesis of The American Sex Revolution is so challenging and startling that it is well to know it is advanced by a capable authority and not by a religious reformer. Dr. Sorokin claims that the conclusions which he reaches in his American Sex Revolution are reinforced by his many works in sociology, to various ones of which he refers for the evidence to support different declarations. The deterioration of sex attitudes and mores in American life is another proof we are in the sensate state of culture, in a downward process that must be arrested by the sane leadership of this nation or our culture will go the way of that of ancient Egypt, of Greece and of Rome. The student who is familiar with Sorokin’s The Crisis of Our Age will follow the application of Sorokin’s cyclical view of history to morals in the American cultural pattern.

Birth, marriage and death are declared to be the most important events of an individual life and, as viewed by society, of more importance than other events because of the way they are hedged in by laws, mores and traditions. Of these three, marriage is by far the most important because it is the transition from the child to the wife-mother or to the husband-father. The family becomes the most important school for the child, it fulfills the creative urge in humanity, it secures immortality for the individual and the race and it satisfies the demand for fellowship. No illicit sexual relationship can do what the family relationship can do. Sex viewed in the responsible relationship of the family is a healthy and helpful experience, ennobled and beautified in the language of Sociologist Sorokin; but sex in extra-marital relationships or pre-marital relationships or without discipline and control is viewed as a crime, a sin and a symptom of degeneration. Recognizing this, Sorokin declares that a revolution is taking place in the American way of life pertaining to sex. He gives the evidence in the preponderant practice of pre-marital sex relationships and the increasing number of extra-marital sex relations that are resulting in divorce, desertion, orphanaging of millions of children, illegitimate children, abortions, the skyrocketing of the sale of contraceptives and the resultant physical and mental diseases. The statistics presented by Professor Sorokin are impressive. It is his belief that sex promiscuity leads to sex addiction, that such addiction is encouraged by sex reaching its saturation point in pulp magazines, in realistic novels, in the entertainment field of the legitimate stage, the movies and television, in newspapers, in bathing beauty contests, in advertising of every article of life, in present legal practices and enactments and even in science. This, joined with the weakening of taboos on promiscuity in sex by religious, legal and social authorities, has resulted in the present revolution.

Professor Sorokin boldly proclaims that this revolution is having its effect upon the deterioration of physical health of our nation, the increase of mental tensions and derangements, the reduction of creativity, the interference with longevity, the breakup of integrity and the destruction of happiness. He shows that mental illnesses increase proportionately with the sex freedoms. This sex freedom produces tension in the life of the individual in his relationship to his spouse, or to the relatives of the person with whom he has had relations, and with society. These tensions tend to increase and have a disintegrating effect upon society itself.

Out of his vast knowledge of and familiarity with the history of past civilizations, Professor Sorokin demonstrates that the same process took place in the old kingdom and middle kingdom of Egypt, in the change from a strict and puritanical family life to one of freedom, to one of license. He believes that the rigorous restraints upon sex in the family life of the puritanical period result in a creative burst of life. Simultaneous with the creative burst of life the restraints are released, then within two generations they become license, and the culture begins to deteriorate. Proof is also adduced from the history of Greece, of Rome, of Italy and of modern Europe. Sorokin believes that America has passed through this cycle of continence, of creativity, of freedom, of looseness and is now facing decay. He believes that inevitable doom awaits this nation without a moral regeneration in the form of sex continence. To assist the transition from sex anarchy to sex order, he advocates the practice of total love, in pre-marital relations, in courtship and in marriage. Sex-love is only a small part of the total love of human beings. Sorokin challenges present leadership to change society by changing persons, changing practices of our culture and changing institutions.

Here is a magnificent negative preparation for the Christian Gospel standard of morals, teaching on sex and transformation by the power of God. Professor Sorokin has done America a great service to analyze the trend of our present society, to raise warning signals and to summon the nation back to standards of purity. Christians will rejoice in the thesis of the book and will agree, at least 95%, with the book which is not particularly written from a Christian standpoint.

HAROLD JOHN OCKENGA

Social Implications

All Ye That Labor, by Lester De Koster. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids. $1.50.

This book, which bears the subtitle, “An Essay on Christianity, Communism and the Problem of Evil,” contrasts the approach of Christianity with that of communism, as religions, to the problem of social evil. It compares in a delightfully effective way the explanations these two systems offer to the existence of an imperfect world, effectively criticizing the explanation of Communism.

All Ye That Labor is the first of a series of monographs, called Pathway Books, which Eerdmans intends to issue on important subjects within the general province of the Christian faith. From Authority to Archaeology, the Pathway series will offer the best available evangelical thought on questions of current religious interest. If the others compare favorably with this first volume, the series will be a valuable one.

The author takes his departure from the assumption that Western man has surrendered his dreams of utopia and is once again engaged in a quest for an explanation of the malignancy he recognizes in society. Point by point he contrasts Communism’s affirmation that man will inevitably save himself with Christianity’s supreme affirmation that God can save man. He finds that Marx’s insights (for instance, that society is sick, a conclusion reached during a period of universal optimism) do not necessarily validate the conclusions drawn therefrom. He establishes, in telling fashion, that man, nature and God are not what Marx thought them to be and that evil is not simply the result of ignorance and of ancestry, inevitably destined to disappear in a classless society.

The author defends but does not worship Capitalism. He acknowledges that Capitalism produces social evil, but he insists that the source of the evil is not in the system but in human sin. This is a profound insight frequently missed by critics who assume that the problem may always he found in the system itself and who look for the evils of Capitalism in its premises rather than in man. On the other hand, argues the author. Communism is wrong as a system, and in the hands of sinful man the evil is compounded. Capitalism is based upon premises that are essentially good and benevolent. It produces evil only as human greed and selfishness add their corrupting influence to a philosophy which otherwise would offer freedom and defend the individual without destroying natural differences.

This book, despite its economic theme, is a masterful apology for the Christian view of man, sin and salvation. It also constitutes a strong argument for the fact that Christianity has social implications. The author’s insights are frequently profound. They are generally phrased in simple and delightful language.

Untreated, however, are at least two important considerations. The first, how human greed and selfishness form the dynamic of Communism instead of an impersonal dialectical materialism. The author declares that Communism’s dynamic is demonic, but he doesn’t point out how this dynamic is, in action, man’s selfish search to improve himself at the expense of those who allegedly exploit him. Secondly, the book says nothing of the relation (if any) of Democracy to either of the systems discussed. Most Americans, at any rate, assume that some form of Democracy inevitably complements Capitalism. At least a statement affirming or denying this assumption would have been helpful.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Strong Meat

Red Dragon Over China, by Harold H. Martinson. Augsburg, Minneapolis, 1956. $3.50.

This is a book which should not be read by those who would like to ignore or forget the political ineptness or worse, that permitted China to fall into the Communist Camp. Nor should it be read by those who contend that the unrepentance of sins and atrocities of communism should be overlooked. This book is strong meat. It revolts because it is true. It depresses because it gives the downward course of a great and once friendly nation and tells of the agonies of her people after their “liberation.”

The author was born in China and after receiving his education in America returned to the land of his birth as a Christian missionary. He is not a fanatic but an honest reporter of facts. He does not write of his opinions but of tragic happenings. He writes with care and documents his statements with a generous bibliography.

Mr. Martensen states in his preface: “This book is presented to the public more from a sense of duty than from a sense of choice. Having witnessed at close hand the workings of communism, I feel constrained as a Christian to inform, to warn, to arouse as many as possible against this terrifying blight.”

“In all my research I have not come across a single satisfactory survey of the rise of communism in China.”

With a thoroughness and a clarity that satisfies even though the details are so utterly depressing, the author proceeds to give a running account of communism’s take-over of China. After the establishing of the red regime he proceeds to give case histories in a chronological order of repressions, brain washings and wholesale murder.

One pathetic illustration is an actual photograph of a great throng of people kneeling just prior to their execution. Their one crime was that they had owned a little land.

Here in the peace and quiet of America there is danger of being lulled into a feeling of security, or of feeling that the evil days and ways of the communists have passed. That we have been spared the horrors of war and wholesale atrocities is soon forgotten.

Red Dragon Over China brings one back with a jerk. We see communism for what it was when China was lost to the free world. We see it as it is today. This book should be read by politicians, by church leaders and by any misguided Americans who feel that one can do business with either the system or the adherents of communism.

L. NELSON BELL

Enough Of Barth

Christ and the Conscience, by N. H. G. Robinson, D.Litt., Professor of Systematic Theology, University of St. Andrews, Nisbet & Co. London.

The purpose of this book is difficult to define. The author has quite clear views of his own, and it would have been most welcome to his readers if he had expounded these positively and constructively. Instead of this valuable exposition the reader is supplied with yet another book on Barth. Interesting and stimulating though Barth is, have we not enough of him? The present reviewer would much rather be reading Dr. Robinson in Dr. Robinson’s book. Barth, Brunner and Niebuhr are all weighed in the balances by our author and found wanting! Dr. P. T. Forsyth is shown on this occasion, as on many others, to have been a fore-runner of Barth’s spiritual emphasis but at the same time to have been far more scriptural and certainly far less paradoxical.

The author’s main concern is to draw attention to the absence of the truly ethical element in Barthianism. He contends that theology must take within its sphere not only the setting forth of the truth about the Divine communication of revelation, but also those truths which belong to man’s reception of that revelation. “Theology cannot escape the responsibility of considering the response to revelation as well as the revelation itself.”

Dr. Robinson does not like Barth’s contention that “the response of faith is utterly given” as a kind of creatio ex nihilo. Dr. Robinson argues rightly that Barthianism is evangelically deficient in that it either pays no heed to the realm of man’s moral action or even violates its sanctity. He writes, “Underlying the movement way from Barth by those closest to him there is at bottom … a desire and a search for a more ethical evangelical theology, and theological presentation of the Gospel which does not violate, not indeed the moral realm to which the Gospel is sent, but the larger moral realm to which it belongs, the realm of God’s grace summoning man to salvation.”

Dr. Robinson’s work is valuable in its avowed “preliminary but indispensable task” of defining and defending the standpoint of ethico-evangelical theology. May it be hoped that, the preliminaries being completed, the author will proceed with the development of his own contribution.

ERNEST F. KEVAN

The Good Life

Christian Personal Ethics, by Carl F. H. Henry. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1957. $6.95.

This book is an important contribution to the literature of moral philosophy, and especially to formulations from the point of view of religious faith as it is affirmed in the Bible. It includes an extensive and thorough exposition of systems of speculative moral philosophies together with a penetrating evaluation of their merits and their inadequacies. It argues that “the impotence and sterility of speculative ethics derive largely from a self-enforced segregation from the ethics of revelation.”

The fairness with which the author states philosophies is one of the praiseworthy features of this fine book. Another such feature is the clarity of its style and the consistency of its thesis that “ethical ideas underlie the whole” of the Bible and “are capable of systematic presentation.” The author of this book has indeed achieved such a systematization in an admirable and convincing manner.

This book is a scholarly, yet easily understood argument in support of the conviction that “Christian ethics is the ethics of … redemptive religion.” It should be included in the small but indispensable library of ministers, theological students and college students who are interested in studies of religion and in philosophies of religion. This book is strongly recommended for courses in Christian ethics.

BEN KIMPEL

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: March 04, 1957

G. C. Berkouwer

In the year 1956 at the 70th anniversary of the famous Swiss theologian Karl Barth, many theologians published articles on the significance of the theology of Barth. That was to be expected, since Barth since 1920 has dominated the field of dogmatic theology in several countries.

Barth started the dialectical theology as the theology of the Word of God together with Thurneyson, Brunner and Bultmann. In 1933 came a deep split in the dialectical movement. Since that time we see divergences between Barth and Brunner, Barth and Bultmann, and so on. Only Thurneyson and Barth have remained theological friends from the beginning.

Barth’s largest work is his Kirchliche Dogmatik, now published in ten big volumes. The work is not yet finished. We still expect, if he will have the opportunity to finish it, two parts of volume IV (reconciliation) and the last volume on the eschatological theme.

In 1956 was published a book of 960 pages, wholly devoted to articles on the person or the work of Barth. The authors were theologians and philosophers from many countries and continents. Several important articles dealt with the doctrine of the image of God in Barth’s theology, his doctrine of preaching, Barth and the Heidelberg Catechism, the laughing Barth, Barth and the Roman Catholic Church and the relation between Gospel and Law. This latter theme does not surprise us in this work, because in recent years this relation has become more and more the central theme in Barth’s own theology. There was criticism exactly on this point from the Lutherans, because Barth talked of the law as the form of the Gospel and was attacked on this point that he had no real and important place for the specific significance of the law. Important also is the article of his friend Thurneyson, who wrote together with him the famous commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Romans in the beginning of the dialectical theology in 1918. Thurneyson writes on the contacts and correspondance between him and Barth in that first time. This was an important article as far as orientation is concerned on the origins of this movement.

It will be interesting for American readers to hear that in this book there is also an article from the pen of Emilio E. Castra on the theological situation in South America and on the theology of Barth. He mentions especially the controversy with Rome and the contradiction between fundamentalism and modernism. It might be interesting to write afterwards more broadly on this article, since not everybody will have the opportunity to read this book of nearly 1000 pages!

The last article I mention is from Gempo Hoshino on the relation of Buddhistic thinking and the theology of Barth. Many readers will be surprised by it. Is there any relation between Christianity and Buddhism? The writer tells us of a large influence of Barth’s ideas in the scientific circles of the largest Buddhistic sect in Japan and he tries to analyze the problem of the point of contract. I don’t know if Barth will be happy with this article; the comparison is, as far as I can see, rather superficial.

Besides this big book several other articles also appeared in connection with Barth’s anniversary. In England was published a book, Studies in Christology. It is not a book on Barth’s theology. But when they gave it to Barth on his visit to England last year, he said that it was the theme he judged the most important. Everybody who reads Barth’s book knows how strong the Christological impact has become on Barth’s theological thinking.

In Switzerland the Theologische Zeitschrift (Basel) devoted two numbers in honor of Barth. Some of the articles handle a special theme of Barth’s theology, the sovereignty of God. Especially important, although it does not concern Barth immediately is the article of Oscar Cullmann, Professor in New Testament in Basel and a colleague of Barth on a very important subject: the of the soul and the resurr dead in the witness of the New Testament. This is a theme discussed in the Western European theology of the last 30 years, especially in connection with the question whether the immortality of the soul is a product of Greek thinking or belongs to the New Testament witness. I have the impression that after a long period of criticism of the doctrine of the intermediate state we are now on the way to rethinking this problem. And the remarkable thing is that this is not originating from an egotistical motive (our human importance) but from the message of the New Testament according to the blessed hope, of which the New Testament is speaking. It will be extremely interesting to follow the discussions when Barth, in his fifth volume, will handle the problems of eschatology. That does not mean that we do not know anything about Barth’s views on eschatology. In my book, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, I tried to analyze the eschatological triumph in Barth’s thinking. I know—not only from his books but also from personal encounter—how important he estimates the problems of his last volume to be. They are not only important for theologians but for the whole church of Christ. If there is any point where the discussions of theology touch the church in her faith, it is surely the expectation of the Church, the character of the Christian hope.

The discussions of theology are not to dominate the church. Surely theologians do not have a special privilege for entrance into the kingdom. They also have to listen to the word of the Lord: “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes,” (Matthew 11:25). But they are not excluded either if they want to serve the Church of Jesus Christ. In that service, everything becomes important, even difficult problems coming up not out of the depth of our autonomous thinking but out of the unfathomable depth of the word of the Lord.

This review of live spiritual and moral issues debated in the secular and religious press of the day is prepared successively for CHRISTIANITY TODAY by four evangelical scholars: the Rev. Phillip Hughes of England, Prof. William Mueller of the United States, Prof. G. C. Berkouwer of the Netherlands, and Prof. John H. Gerstner of the United States.—ED.

- More from G. C. Berkouwer

Cover Story

Liberalism as a Mirror of a Secular Invasion

Andrew K. Rule

When Adolph Harnack based his interpretation of Christian history upon the principle that the Gospel, in any time and place, must have a “contemporary integument,” his principle was sound though his application of it was faulty. Without taking on the thought forms and the language forms and some other forms, from the contemporary culture, the Gospel could not be apprehended by the preacher or by his hearers. The difficulty and danger are that these forms were created for, and normally express, a culture that did not have Christianity as a formative influence within it and, as it stands at the time, may be quite antithetical to Christianity. For example, in the first century the Gospel had to be expressed in popular Greek—a language which somewhat perpetuated the pagan culture of classical Greece and which at that time embodied the pagan culture of the Mediterranean basin. But it had to be made to express Christian meanings. The results show that the New Testament writers achieved amazing success. Not so, however, the Alexandrian theologians. And Nygren’s study, Agape and Eros, shows clearly that the problem persisted. Taking on the contemporary integument means, in practice, that either the Gospel will be accommodated to the contemporary culture and lose its distinctive significance or the culture will be baptized into the spirit of the Gospel or there will be a mutual accommodation. Whenever a Christian seeks to proclaim his faith, he and his hearers are faced with this problem and exposed to these hazards; for both he and his hearers must put the same Christian meaning into the borrowed forms or no real communication will result.

The thesis of this paper is that nineteenth-century liberalism was, on the whole, an earnest attempt to express the Gospel in terms of one strand in the European and American culture of that era; that the culture of that strand was a naturalistic humanism; and that in spite of the sincerity and the ability of the creators of that form of liberalism, the authentic Gospel was finally submerged by the naturalism.

It is sometimes stated quite sweepingly that the culture of the nineteenth century was secularistic, and that it was this culture which invaded Christian theology. In view of the character of the missionary movement for which this century should always be famous; in view of the revival of the Roman Catholic Church and of its increasingly conservative spirit; in view of the continuing evangelical revival within Protestantism; and in view of the highly cultured and scholarly resistance to liberalism among the Protestants; in view further of the faith of rank and file Christians, confused but not captured by liberal propaganda—in view of such facts as these it is not true to say that nineteenth-century culture was secularistic. But nineteenth-century liberalism was an attempt to appeal to the culture of certain highly vocal people, the “intelligentsia”; and their culture was secularistic. We are not condemning that attempt. What Christian dare say that none of them may be included among the elect, and that we need make no serious attempt to win them for him? However, they must be won for him. Their culture must not be dressed, essentially unchanged in vague, Christian-sounding terms and the result be offered to the world as “progressive Christianity.” The latter, unfortunately, is what happened. Read, in this connection, Nathaniel Micklem’s article, in an early issue Christendom (Vol. I, No. 5, Autumn, 1936) on “The Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion.”

Decline Of True Liberalism

We have been using the qualifying term “nineteenth century” as a not very precise way of indicating that it is not liberalism as such that we have in mind. Since “His service is perfect freedom,” we would contend that authentic Christianity is true liberalism, and we are heartily in favor of it. Indeed, our objection to “nineteenth-century liberalism” is that it is not really liberalism all but abject and soul-endangering slavery to an alien philosophy.

But it is one thing to say that it was not really liberalism; it is a very different thing to say precisely what it was. For example, one of the spokesmen for the movement, (D. S. Robinson, in his The God of the Liberal Christian) begins by assuring us, as many another did, that liberalism or progressive Christianity is not a body of doctrine but a method and a spirit; but then he proceeds to give a fairly definite statement, doctrine after doctrine, of central-trend liberalism in its distinction from the liberalism of the social theologians. That would seem to suggest that liberalism was more than a method and a spirit; it was also a coherent body of doctrine. But, if so, what can be made of the following facts? Schweitzer, at least in his The Quest of the Historical Jesus, apparently reserved the term “liberal” for the doctrines of Harnack. Others would characterize Schweitzer’s own views as liberal. In their conceptions of the historical Jesus, at least, these gentlemen flatly contradict one another. And that is fairly typical.

What, then, was liberalism? Was it a body of doctrine to which “all competent scholars agree”? Or was it a method and a spirit without any necessary agreement as to doctrine? Or was there some minimum of doctrine essential to it? If so, what? In answer, perhaps one could do no better than follow the late Dean Willard Sperry. In his little book, Yes, But—the Bankruptcy of Apologetics, addressing his fellow liberals, he maintained that authentic liberalism, wherever you find it, sacred or secular, has a brief creed, the first article of which is “I believe in man.” By calling it the first article, he means that it is the controlling article. Any other article in the creed is either derived from it or held only in harmony with it. But that certainly means that liberalism is always humanistic, and that the humanism, even if it goes on to include a belief in God, is first and basically naturalistic. There you have our thesis in a nutshell.

Humanism At The Crossroads

A thoughtful Christian surely will not object to a certain kind of humanism, in the right place. The fact is that the Reformation did for man exactly what the humanists wanted done. For it discovered or rediscovered the value and dignity of the individual; and it presented man in nobler colors, based more firmly, than humanism ever was able to do. But it did so indirectly, not directly. It did not vaunt man’s inherent qualities and his superiority to the natural creation, though it did not ignore or minimize them either. The humanists did, and that way lies soul-destroying pride. The Reformation saw the glory of man in the gracious purpose of God—a much greater glory, which nevertheless cultivates the virtues of gratitude and humility. Thus, what Dr. Sperry tells us that liberalism essentially does is precisely what authentic Christianity refuses to do. Indeed, that is, for it, the essence of sin.

According to authentic Christianity, God made man, because he is love, to live and grow in filial dependence upon God; and he equipped man with those qualities in which the liberals found man’s greatness to consist in order that man might be capable of such a relation to God. Man’s whole life was to be “begun, continued and ended” in God. Sin is man’s prideful effort to realize his potentialities in his own way, in dependence upon himself alone. If God is permitted to enter the picture at all, it will be only upon man’s terms, to do what man thinks his right but not within his power. In short, “I believe in man” is the first article of the operative creed of the sinner. But, according to Dr. Sperry, “I believe in man” was the first article of the liberal creed. To such an extent had the spirit of a sinful, secular culture invaded the thinking of men who regarded themselves as Christian.

Theological Road To Pride

But, let it be clearly noted that we are here characterizing a theological expression. We are not bringing any charge of immorality and sin against the persons who adopted and advocated this theological expression. As far as any human being is capable of judging in such matters, we would gladly insist that these men were no more immoral or sinful than the rest of us. We earlier recorded our judgment that they were sincere and highly capable. How then, it may be asked, did such men come sincerely to adopt a theological expression that constitutes sin and that logically generates pride? In answer, we would draw attention to two things—the peculiar character of nineteenth-century life and thought and the way in which naturalism crept up on the theologians gradually and unsuspected.

The life and thought of the nineteenth century were like the life of a tropical jungle, teeming but chaotic. Before men had a chance to orient their thinking and conduct to one new idea or invention, a dozen others came leaping upon them. The constant and increasing overstimulation might have caused resignation or frustration, and it probably did in many cases; but in many others awakened an unbridled enthusiasm for the new and sensational. One thing it did not foster. It did not encourage men to take time to make a calm and balanced evaluation of their attainment and direction. We have seen how liberals could flatly contradict one another. In that burgeoning century, individuals could flatly contradict themselves, and apparently be blissfully unaware of the fact. It would be ungenerous and presumptuous to deny the genuine Christian status of all of these liberals, yet their thinking certainly was seriously out of harmony with Christian truth.

A Creeping Naturalism

And naturalism crept up on them gradually, without their suspecting its true character. When Justin Wroe Nixon, in 1925, drew the attention of his brethren to the real character of the principles upon which they had been building, they reacted with horror and dismay; and the contemporary era came upon American theological thought. For they then saw that their principles led to pure naturalism. Why had they not seen that previously? It had overtaken the movement gradually. How it proceeded in every area may be seen by studying as an example the way in which it penetrated Christology; and Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historcial Jesus will picture that for us with sufficient accuracy and vividness. It began, as he shows us, as an ill-defined discomfort with regard to particular supernatural actions attributed in the Gospels to our Lord and as an effort to suggest a natural explanation. The rationalists tried that in one way; Strauss tried it in another. By the time of Schleiermacher, this naturalism had become a highly skillful dialectic, which might almost have been expressly designed to conceal from the reader just what that great thinker did believe about the miracles. In Harnack, Jesus was forced within the limits of human genius, and “miracles do not occur.” Most of the liberals went approximately as far as that; but they did not go along with the spate of volumes that presently presumed to diagnose the mental ill health of the man named Jesus. What had happened was that, in that century of rich confusion, the desire of Christian scholars to get away from the woodenness of eighteenth-century theology and to make Christianity appeal to contemporary thinkers opened the way for an alien “camel” to get its nose into the Christian tent. That camel, the naturalistic humanism of contemporary university life, pushed itself further and further in, always most graciously and plausibly, until finally the owner of the tent was outside in the storm without ever discovering, until it was too late, what was happening to him. When that discovery was finally made, in the second decade of the present century, a new theological era was upon us. Liberalism was, indeed, a mirror of the secular invasion of a Christian country.

A native of Australia, Professor Rule has an international education: M.A., University of New Zealand; B.D., Princeton Theological Seminary; Ph.D., University of Edinburgh. Since 1927 he has served as Professor of Church History and Apologetics at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary.

- More from Andrew K. Rule

Cover Story

Peter’s Confession

R. V. G. Tasker

MATTHEW 16:13–17

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them “But who do you say that I am?” Simon replied “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him “Blessed art thou Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven.”

When a great personality appears on the stage of history, the opinions about him held by his contemporaries are often diverse. It is certainly true that the views held about Jesus of Nazareth by the men and women of his generation differed widely. All of them, rabbis and rulers, priests and peasants, were agreed that here was an astonishing person; but only a very few could say with truth as well as conviction who and what manner of man he really was. Some, to be sure, imagined that they had found the clue to the understanding of him; but for the most part their attempted explanations were at best inadequate and at worst little more than the products of ignorance and prejudice.

Verdict Of Contemporaries

Those who disliked him most, the scribes and the Pharisees, forced as they were by the evidence to recognize his supernatural power, concluded that he was a dangerous sorcerer in league with the prince of devils, regardless of the lack of logic such a verdict involved; for how could Satan cast out Satan? On the other hand, the ordinary folk among whom his early life had been spent, baffled by the mystery of his person and behavior, dismissed him as abnormal and eccentric. “He is beside himself,” they said. Moreover those of a more jealous nature could not forget that he belonged to their own level of society. “This is the carpenter’s son,” they complained, “whose father and mother we know”; and the implication was that he was obsessed by an exaggerated idea of his own importance. Whatever the views men came to hold about him, one thing was certain; here was a man who made others conscious of the impact of his personality and compelled them to attempt some answer to the question “Who do you say that I am?”

Jesus was no doubt aware of much that was being said about him; but one day when he was alone with his disciples in the district of Caesarea Philippi, when they were free from the danger of interference from the partisans of Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, at a time in his ministry when he was anxious (if they were at all ready to receive it) to tell them about the necessity for his own submission in the near future to a criminal’s death, he felt constrained to question them about what men were saying of him. What in fact was the gossip they had heard about him in the synagogues, the bazaars and the country towns of Galilee? And in reply they gave him three specimen answers, typical no doubt of the more thoughtful and less superficial views that were current. “Some are saying,” they answered, “that you are John the Baptist risen from the dead; others that you are a second Elijah; and others that you are another Jeremiah.” All three suggestions had two things at least in common. They all identified Jesus with a figure of the past instead of acknowledging him as unique, someone whose like had never been seen in this world. And they contained dangerous and misleading half-truths; for, though Jesus possessed some of the characteristics of each of these three great men, he transcended them all.

Greater Than The Baptist

But, we naturally ask, why should some of his contemporaries ever have imagined that Jesus was the martyred John the Baptist returned to life? We cannot be sure of the answer. We only know that John made a very deep impression upon his fellow countrymen when he first appeared in the desert of Judea. People flocked to hear him, and all sorts of people responded when he called upon them to repent and return to the Lord their God, in view of the impending judgment. Soldiers, tax collectors and many others came to him for practical advice as to how they ought to conduct their lives in this critical time of waiting. John, moreover, in true prophetic tradition, had boldly rebuked vice even when he found it in royal circles and rebuked it with such effect that Herod, who had somewhat reluctantly given the order for his execution, never forgot the impression that this martyred prophet had made upon him. When subsequently news reached him of what Jesus was doing, he was ready enough to believe the rumor that Jesus was John, the troubler of his conscience and the disturber of his dreams, restored to life. “This is John the Baptist,” he said to his servants, “he has been raised from the dead; this is why these powers are at work in him.”

There was, it is true, some likeness between John and Jesus. Both were children of the divine wisdom. Both had vital parts to play in the working out of God’s plan for man’s salvation. But the difference was far greater. Many, who knew both men better than Herod did, had been quick to observe this difference both in their behavior and in the way they exercised their ministry. John, they noticed, lived an ascetic life typical of the holy man of the east; Jesus came, as they put it, “eating and drinking.” John moreover ministered away from the haunts of sinners, Jesus was known as “the friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Jesus to be sure repeated, with equal emphasis, John’s call to repentance, but he also did what John could never do. John could prepare men to receive the reign of God in their hearts, but he could not enable them to receive it. He stood on the threshold of the kingdom of God: Jesus was the door alone through whom men could enter the kingdom. The truth was that sinful men and women had need of a Saviour, himself human and divine, who could make atonement for their sin, as no ordinary man however pious could ever make it and restore them to fellowship with the all-holy God—and that Saviour John could never be. Some said “John the Baptist”—but they were wrong.

Greater Than Elijah

But others were saying, “Jesus is another Elijah.” It is perhaps less difficult to understand how this identification should ever have arisen; for Elijah had come to occupy a unique position in Jewish thought. As the earliest of the great prophets of Israel, his name had become representative of the entire prophetic revelation, just as Moses represented the entire revelation embodied in the sacred law. The blows that Elijah had struck for true religion at a most critical period in Israel’s history were both mighty and decisive. He had been indeed “the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof” glorified in his mighty deeds; and according to biblical tradition he was translated to heaven without experiencing death. So wonderful did the achievements of Elijah seem to subsequent generations that he was regarded as more than human; so much so that James (as we read in the Epistle in the New Testament which bears his name) when he wished to hold up Elijah as a supreme example of what a man of prayer can effect, had to remind his readers that Elijah was in fact no demigod or superman, whose example they could not be expected to follow but a man of like nature with themselves.

There are real parallels between Elijah and Jesus. Both were men of prayer; both performed supernatural works of healing; and both waged triumphant war against false religion. But the victories of Elijah were won by physical force, while the victory of Jesus was won not by shedding the blood of others but by allowing his own blood to be shed. One day his impetuous disciples requested him to command fire to come down from heaven, as Elijah did, and consume the inhabitants of a Samaritan village that had refused him entrance. But the answer of the Master came swift and sure: “Ye know not of what spirit you are. The Son of Man came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

Elijah, moreover, wavered in his vocation, but Jesus set himself consistently and steadfastly to accomplish the work he had come into the world to do. Single-handed, Elijah defied 850 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel; but a little later we find him cowering in a cave at Mount Horeb, crushed by a sense of futility and failure, a victim of an almost suicidal self-pity, wincing at the thought of his own spiritual isolation and requesting, even though his work was unfinished, that he might die. Jesus, on the other hand, learned not self-pity but obedience through the things he suffered. He was faithful to him who had appointed him, faithful even unto death. He endured to the end, despising the shame. Some said “Elijah”—but they too were wrong.

Greater Than Jeremiah

But others were saying, “Jesus is another Jeremiah.” This estimate was perhaps nearer the truth than the other two. For of all the historical characters of the Old Testament Jeremiah approximates most closely to Jesus himself as an outstanding example of patient endurance of undeserved suffering. He was known to subsequent generations of Jews as “the prophet”; and they looked back to him for inspiration and courage in their own trials and persecutions. This hypersensitive, warm-hearted patriot, commissioned by God to proclaim a succession of divine messages to his countrymen that were unpopular because they were of necessity pessimistic, who was so sympathetic with others in their sufferings, was himself beaten, put in the stocks, imprisoned in a dungeon and thrown into a cistern by the very men he gladly would have saved, had that been possible, from the doom that awaited them. Surely this weeping prophet, whose eyes ran down with tears day and night for the sins of his people, was indeed akin to the divine Man of Sorrows, who, on a spring morning over five hundred years later, wept over the faithless city of the children of his people, the city outside whose walls within a week he himself was destined to be crucified.

But for all the nobility of his character, Jeremiah remained a prophet and no more. He foretold the new covenant, by which men with their sins forgiven would be given a direct knowledge of God, but neither he nor any prophet like him could ever bring it into being. For all his sympathy and patience he was not good enough, as Jesus was good enough, to pay the price of sin, by allowing his own blood to be shed in the only perfect sacrifice by which the way was opened for sinners to draw nigh boldly unto the throne of grace.

Some said “Jeremiah”—but they too were wrong.

Verdict Of Disciples

What then did Jesus’ own disciples think about him? The answer they would give was of vital importance. For if their estimate of their master had not risen to a higher level than the answers of their contemporaries, he could never have gone on to teach them the most vital truth that they had to learn. Men may do many things for other men. They may die for other men as so many in our own lifetime have done. But no man may deliver his brother from the penalty of human sin or make atonement to God for him: that was precisely what Jesus had come to do. And it was the fact that he was divine as well as human that alone could give infinite value to all that he was to suffer as man on behalf of men. Simon Peter’s answer to the great question, however, did not disappoint him who had asked it. However slow and even unwilling Peter was to prove in accepting the further truth that Jesus was now to unfold to them about the necessity for his death, his confession at least showed that he understood one thing very clearly. The age of prophecy was over because the hour of fulfillment had come. Peter knew there was no need for another John the Baptist, another Elijah or another Jeremiah, because he to whom all these prophets had been pointing was standing there before him. He knew that Jesus was not just another in the long line of prophets to whom the living God had spoken in many and various ways in the past but the Son of the living God who knew, as only such a Son could know, the mind and purposes of his father. And because his Master was the Son of the living God Peter knew that he need not—nay he could not—look elsewhere for salvation. “Lord to whom shall we go?” he said to him on another occasion when some were turning away from him; “Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

Christ The Son

This great confession of Simon Peter (as the last part of our text reminds us) was no wild leap in the dark: he did not make it on the spur of the moment as if “stung by the splendor of a sudden thought.” Nor was he voicing at second-hand an opinion learned from some other human being. Flesh and blood, as Jesus told him, had not revealed it unto him. On the contrary, ever since that day when he first stood before Jesus and felt compelled to say, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” and yet in spite of that reluctance had found himself irresistibly led to respond to Jesus’ call and leave his nets and follow him—during all the time that he had witnessed his master’s mighty works and listened to the words of eternal life that fell daily from his lips, the living God, the God who acts and intervenes in the affairs of men, had been leading him to see that Jesus was indeed his Son—his Christ or anointed one, anointed to bring the Gospel of salvation to sinners. In consequence, there was only one answer that Peter could make. It was: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

And Jesus pronounced him blessed, just because his heavenly Father and no one else had made this confession possible. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

And the way by which Peter was led to make this confession is always the way by which men are led to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God. No man is even led to this faith solely as the result of human reasoning or solely through the example of others or solely through hearing the Gospel preached. All or any of these things may play, and do play, a vital part in the process by which men are brought to Christ. But unless the Spirit of the living God is at work in the human heart, the deductions of reason, however convincing, will not lead to a life of active discipleship; the example of others, however inspiring, will have but a temporary influence; and the message of the Gospel, however faithfully proclaimed, will fall on soil where it takes no permanent root. Only the Holy Spirit can take of the things of Jesus and so reveal them to us that we are led to make with Peter the great confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

So may I put to you the question that Jesus put to Simon Peter: “Who do you say that I am?” It may be that you have tried to answer it in the past, but that your answer has not risen much higher than the answer given by so many of Jesus’ contemporaries. It may be that to you, as to them, Jesus may have been just one more, even though perhaps the greatest, of the prophets. But it may also be that the Holy Spirit of God is leading you to a fuller confession of faith. And it is certain that if you listen to his voice, you will be able to say what only a Christian can say: “The life I now live I live in faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me” and you will be counted among those blessed ones, who, though they have not seen Jesus as Peter was privileged to see him, yet have believed.

For twenty years the Rev. R. V. G. Tasker, M.A., B.D., has served King’s College, University of London, as Professor of New Testament Exegesis. The sermon printed here was preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London.

- More from R. V. G. Tasker

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A Creeping Naturalism

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Greater Than Jeremiah

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Christ The Son

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