Cover Story

The Church and Social Problem

H. Van Riessen

The church is often numbered, with the capitalists and the social system, among the culprits of the last century. It is accused of being blind to social needs and conservatively in partnership with the ruling and property class. The church is, therefore, deemed responsible for her own apostasy and accused by some for the rise of communism. Even churchmen have made such a charge. The accusation that the church has failed is voiced so systematically, with such generality and onesidedness, that one cannot help asking whether there is something ulterior behind the charge.

Much indeed may be blamed on the church and on its membership, too, for that matter. It is not my intention to create the impression that the church did all that she could. Far from it. Sometimes she was helpless because of her subordinate position to the state, as in Russia and Scandinavia. In England this was true of the established (Anglican) Church and in the Netherlands of the Dutch Reformed Church. An independent formulation and critique of the social situation, which in such a case had to be directed against the state as well, was practically impossible. In addition it must not be forgotten that some churches were preoccupied with internal troubles and schisms. Wanting in its protest and falling short in love, the church was saved from going down ingloriously only through the protecting care of her Lord and Saviour.

Has the church failed to make a true effort to solve the social problems brought about by the industrial revolution of the past century?

It is well to take cognizance of several factors that have been given little consideration. First of all, such one-sided criticism loses sight of the fact that the church was also caught by surprise by the tempo and the radical character of the industrial development. Within the church people were disposed to think that no solution of the problems was possible. Moreover, the prevailing distress must be estimated by a comparison with most unfavorable social conditions of former times. One should put himself in the time in question since hindsight is always easy.

Not Without Protest

Before general charges are made that the church was indifferent to her obligations, evidence should be brought forth that the pulpits of the day were completely without protest. Many nineteenth-century Christians did indeed voice their alarm, and the pulpit was not so silent as some critics contend.

Task Of The Church

When the church is reproached in this connection, it must be borne in mind that many assign her a much broader task than that to which she has been divinely called. Critics frequently ignore the fact that the enlarging denial of the Christ of the Scriptures had produced decay and impotence in the church of the nineteenth century. It is a striking feature of pagan criticism that the secular world is always excused. Humanism, socialism and even communism are held up to the church that she may learn how social problems should be handled. The message of Christ is reduced to just a gospel of social justice. To ease the pain of such criticism the observation is offered that if the church would really tackle the question, she would do it “much better.”

The delimitation of the message of Christ to social justice is related to the breakthrough propaganda (the de-Christianization of hitherto Christian organizations) and the high-church movement, which looks upon the church as a national, all-embracing institution.

When irrationalism and dialectical theology obscure the clarity of the Bible concerning believers, and when the radical character of the biblical message against apostasy is forgotten, it is not difficult to cling to the idea of a church for everyone and to eradicate the boundaries between the church and the world, between Christian and so-called neutral activities. Then the sympathetic concern for social problems and the anxiety about the cultural decline, point the way. The church becomes the fulcrum, social justice becomes the goal, and socialism carries the standard of honor. Some would add characteristically dialectical statements in which the exception becomes the rule, e.g., “A man who turns his back upon the church, may by that very attitude be saved religiously”; “The church must learn from socialism”; and “A humanist may very well be a better Christian than the man who goes to church twice every Sunday.”

Of course not every follower of Barth nor every adherent of neutralization and secularization of organized life subscribes to such reasoning. The taste for paradoxes is specially reserved for extremists. Nevertheless such views do prevail, and their adherents believe that the church of the previous century was the chief culprit in the prevailing social misery.

Christian Community

Much of what we have said here applies to the Netherlands. In the United States the idea of a Christian organization (or, more generally, an organization based upon a particular view of life and the world) is unknown. An important reason for this lack of explicitly Christian organizations is the strong sense of solidarity prevailing among the Americans, due to necessity as much as to the desire of the people to be a nation in the face of the diversity of origin among Americans. This sense of solidarity is intensified by the fact that they are a young nation and an enthusiastic and dynamic people.

Social Justice Derivative

Many Christians who turn to socialism seem to discover in the Bible only one subject: the social problem and the demand for social justice. This theme does indeed play a great role in the Old and New Testament; and yet it is but one of many (Exod. 21; Gal. 5; Col. 3). Besides, it is a derivative motif. The Bible does not view social injustice by itself but as the consequence of a greater evil, the source of all evil, namely, that men do not fear God and do not keep His commandments but bow down to idols (2 Kings 17). (The present idols seem to be man and society.) Such is the fountainhead of life’s errors, the source of humanism, irresponsible capitalism, social distress and the impotence of socialism.

Some may argue that the root cause of our difficulty is not forgotten. But the fervor of their argument and their systematic neglect of certain aspects of the problem makes me fear that this knowledge is cerebral and that their heart lives in the social issue only. Such are aroused when trangressions of the eighth commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” and the tenth, “Thou shalt not covet,” are viewed as a commandment meant for others. The level of the socialists is thus indeed reached, but the Gospel is forgotten as something inseparable from the exordium: “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee up out of the house of bondage.”

Allow me to put it most boldly. The whole social problem is absolutely of no importance when compared to the command to fear the Lord. Any Christian that places human relationships on a par with the relation between man and God, or regards the human sphere as separate and independent of the latter relation, thereby discloses that his Christianity has been infected by humanism.

The Chief Commandment

The command, “Love thy neighbor,” is a Christian precept, but when detached and removed from the framework of the great commandment, “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart …,” it ceases to be such, in a very real sense. It is likewise erroneous to think that compliance with the command to love one’s neighbor is at the same time a fulfillment of the chief commandment to love God.

The humanizing phenomenon is so frequently encountered. In it the call of God and the obligation to serve him as an individual and in a group is replaced by the call of the other man and finally by the call of man himself, of his needs, the only source of his motivation. The process of humanizing reality has also influenced Christian circles. When Sargent, considering the challenge to the church, looks for basic concepts of the Christian action, he states: “The first of these basic concepts is the biblical idea of human dignity and individual personality.” This is, however, an unbiblical statement of man and a mere profane view of life.

Consider also a few quotations from Kuylaars (Werk en Leven), 1951, pp. 20, 36): “Labor is a realization of self.” “In industrial enterprise the laborer is central and primary. Capital is simply an aid; it occupies a secondary position, together with those who supply it.” This statement is intended as a reply to liberalism but this answer is wrong; the laboring man is not central. In this case the fruits of labor as the fulfillment of the cultural task are central.

It has been maintained that the aims and purposes of the communal life must be directed toward man. Aberrations of this kind are surely not innocent. They put Christians on the wrong track in their planning and their deeds. For example, Pedersen writes: “If ever peace and righteousness are to exist among men, then their material necessities must be satisfied, so that distress and want shall disappear. But this can be done only with the help of technique” (God en de Technick, p. 153). Peace and righteousness, however, come when man is reconciled to God. Both may be present even when distress and want exist. Both may be lacking, as in today’s secularized world, when distress and want are in fact relieved. Such is the Christian outlook on life an outlook which is the direct opposite of socialism.

END

Dr. H. Van Riessen, a professor at the Delft Institute of Technology in the Netherlands, holds a Doctor’s degree both in Engineering and in Philosophy. He is active in political, social and economic movements in the Netherlands, and during the German occupation participated in the underground movement. He is author of a major scientific and philosophic work, Philosophy and Technique. His article reflects the viewpoint of a forthcoming volume, The Society of the Future (David H. Freeman, translator), in which he opposes the Christian to the Communist philosophy of society.

Books

Review of Current Religious Thought: July 08, 1957

John H. Gerstner

This column customarily restricts itself to current periodical literature. This time, however, we are devoting the page to a book—or more accurately a series of books—The Works of Jonathan Edwards. (Perry Miller, General Editor. Volume I, Freedom of the Will, edited by Paul Ramsey, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1957. 494 pp.; $6.50). This definitive edition is a matter of the highest importance and significance. Inasmuch as we have a personal interest both in Edwards and in this edition we feel compelled to give it the attention that it demands.

First a word about Edwards himself, and then a word on this whole edition, with incidental references to the first volume which has just appeared. Born in 1703 this child of a Connecticut manse early exhibited an intellectual precocity never surpassed in history. Well-trained by his father at home, he finished his academic discipline at the head of his class at Yale, where a college is today named for him. Possibly the two most important events in his intellectual life occurred here as he came under the influence of the British empiricist, John Locke, and as his conversion was occasioned by his yielding to the doctrine of divine sovereignty. Domestically speaking, he became acquainted with Sarah Pierpont, who later entered into one of the happiest of marriages with him, and began that line of descendants which is usually cited as America’s most distinguished.

For twenty-three years he preached the doctrines of the Bible to the Congregational church in Northampton, Mass., with a thoroughness and profundity that has never been matched in the annals of the Christian pulpit. It was during this period that the revivals occurred which have caused him to be regarded as our most eminent early evangelist, and, together with William James, our most distinguished psychologist of religious experience. The occasion of his dismissal, his insistence that persons not be admitted to the Lord’s Supper until they had given reasonable evidence of conversion, was to become ultimately his greatest ecclesiastical triumph.

In relative retirement, although still very busy, during the next six years at the village of Stockbridge, he produced the works on which his philosophical and theological fame largely rest. The most famous of these is the first to be published in the new edition, although under the abbreviated and misleading title, The Freedom of the Will. Edwards died, as serenely as he had lived, after serving only a few months as president of the college that today is called Princeton University. He lived the same number of years as Thomas Aquinas, whom he rivalled in religio-philosophical acumen, and John Calvin, with whose theological brilliance his own compares—fifty-five. Two hundred years have elapsed since he died in 1758.

Since Edwards was the first American to gain international reputation as a thinker, it is not surprising that his works have often been published, and some of them in many languages. The first edition of his works, though by no means complete and hardly worthy the designation “critical,” appeared fifty years after his death. Other such editions appeared but the last general one was in 1874. Now two hundred and fifty years after his birth comes the first edition that shows promise of becoming definitive and nearly exhaustive. This is a period in which Americans are again digging the wells that have been dug—going back to see the early foundations on which our history has been laid. It is fitting that at the same time that definitive editions of one of America’s earliest men of affairs, Benjamin Franklin, and one of her most influential early political figures, Thomas Jefferson, are being made, her first great theologian should be adequately presented.

The nature of the present undertaking is significant in more ways than its definitiveness. Not only is it being done by the careful Yale Press and subsidized by the Bollingen Foundation, but the makeup of the editorial committee is tell-tale. For one thing it is not an “Edwardean” committee in any theological sense. So far as we have noticed there is not one full-blown Calvinist of the Edwardean stripe on its roster. Indeed the committeemen are not all theologians. The general editor, for example, Perry Miller of Harvard, is a highly detached and somewhat skeptical student of puritanism who admires Edwards as its purest expression. Norman Pearson is a professor of English literature and culture at Yale who is probably even less interested in Edwards as a theologian and more interested still in him as an historical and literary figure. Paul Ramsey, editor of the first volume, is professor of Religion at Princeton University. John A. Smith, who will edit The Religious Affections, teaches at Yale University and is a recognized philosopher. All the other members are probably ordained men, but only one is a practicing minister, the Rev. Vincent Daniels of Greenwich, Conn. The significance of all this is that this new interest in Edwards is coming largely from a liberal and cultural source. Those of the conservative tradition may rejoice in this fact so long as these men, and the other editors they secure, permit Edwards to speak for himself, or give as Miller promises, “a clear and fair exhibition of his thought.”

Apart from the editorial committee there are at least two things of note about the edition itself. First of all, each volume, or group of volumes, will be introduced by its editor. If Ramsey’s is typical, these will be learned monographs giving an adequate critical, historical orientation that is invaluable to an understanding of the eighteenth century context. Such monographs have never been provided by previous editions. Where necessary, footnotes accompany the text.

A second feature is the use of the manuscripts themselves or the collation of published texts where the manuscripts are not available. The first volume had to follow the second alternative as the important manuscript on the Will, unfortunately, is among the missing. Ramsey has labored to give the best text possible in its absence. Fortunately, most of Edwards’ works are extant in manuscript and they are to be used. This is certain to yield a much less polished but much more idiomatic and authentic Edwards, inasmuch as he had his own colloquialisms and style and frequently did not re-work his material, not intending publication. Also many of the manuscripts have not previously been published. This is especially true of the sermons, only about sixty-five out of more than a thousand of which have previously been printed. But the most important manuscript corpus, and in the opinion of many Edwardean scholars his most important work of all, the Miscellanies, will soon be forthcoming from the extremely competent hands of Professor Schafer of Duke University.

While every minister and theological student should utilize these volumes whether from an interest in theology, philosophy of religion, church history, revivalism, psychology of religion, or church government; as we have noted, and as the composition of this committee indicates, Edwards belongs to the cultured reader in general.—JOHN H. GERSTNER

Eutychus and His Kin: July 8, 1957

BOTH SIDES OF THE SIGN

It’s worth the toll on any turnpike to escape the rushing barrage of highway signs and view towns and broad farms unhidden by a poster palisade. The motorist who is annoyed as the endless commercials of our billboarded countryside flash past is not the chief sufferer. Think of the farmer who must work week after week in the fields commanded by the unblinking gaze of “Miss Pale Beer of 1957,” her model smile glowing with paralysis from dawn till dusk!

The motorist who has had to endure a billboard at close range may look with sympathy at those who live beneath them.

My eye is caught by every sign, and I did not miss the great black letters, THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH. I also noticed that the sign dominated a bedroom view from the nearby brick house—presumably the manse for the adjoining colonial church.

For five miles I mused on the experience of living beside that sign. A modern novelist would savor the symbolism of a preacher’s son raised in that bedroom of doom.

Only on the trip back did I see that the sign was painted on the other side. To southbound traffic—and the other front bedroom—the sign declared, THE GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH JESUS CHRIST.

The parable is sufficiently plain to be included in 1006 Sermon Illustrations, and suitably cross-indexed under “One-sidedness,” “Whole gospel,” etc. Evidently the sign was designed for the round-trip commuter who would see both sides in the right order, with time for heart-searching between.

Unfortunately the traffic today all seems to be southbound. At least most preachers go that way. Anyone who is not “biblicistic” will stop to airbrush a haze of pious uncertainty over the other side of the sign—the grim New Testament warning of eternal death. Yet it is a blessed thing to live in the faith which sees both sides of the sign.

EUTYCHUS

VISION IN EDUCATION

My immediate purpose in writing is to express … indignation over the May 27th article on “John Dewey and the American Spirit”.… I have 18 books bearing his name on the shelf next to me.… I doubt if any of them would justify either the general conclusions about what Dewey taught, and certainly the inferences would be challenged.… I hope Dewey will receive better treatment in the hostile environment of your constituency.

FRANK C. FOSTER

University of Maine

Orono, Me.

I wish to congratulate you especially … on your articles on “Christian Responsibility in Education” and “John Dewey and the American Spirit”.… Also it seems to me our seminaries ought to be examined.…

F. G. SMITH

San Francisco, Calif.

Fervent congratulations on your very excellent article: Chrisitian Responsibility in Education. Say it again … and again … and again.

JAMES DAANE

First Christian Reformed Church

Los Angeles 44, Calif.

WESLEY TO GRAHAM

The articles by J. C. Pollock was certainly heart warming.… It would be interesting to know why Evangelist Charles Finney was not so much as mentioned …

W. L. MCLEOD

Transcona, Manitoba

I note that J. C. Pollock, in his resume of the aggressive line of evangelists … does not give two very typical and surely outstanding men … the earlier one, the unusual character of Gypsy Smith.… Also a later firebrand among the Lord’s evangels … is the very famous Billy Sunday of the more modern era.…

C. WILLIAM PUNTER

Friendswood, Tex.

Just to keep the record correct: … the sentence opening the third paragraph is just wrong way around. Whitefield preached in the open air near Bristol Saturday Feb. 17, 1739, and regularly thereafter. Wesley wrote in his diary April 2 of the same year: “At four in the afternoon I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the open air the glad tidings of salvation” …

C. H. JOHNSON

United Church of Canada

St. John, New Brunswick

REVIVE THE CONFLICT?

I have just finished your first installment on “Dare We Revive the Modernist-Fundamentalist Conflict?” I certainly hope you won’t.… Many of us are, and have, long since said, “A plague on both your houses.” The extreme left, so-called fundamentalism, seems self-righteous and legalistic for all its pious words. The extreme right, so-called modernism, is vapid and humanistic, out of proportion to the historic faith.…

SAMUEL GREGORY WARR

Westminster Presbyterian

Youngstown, Ohio

I wonder why you took a neo-agnostic like Fosdick … and spent so much space covering unbelief in God.… I heard Fosdick in his pulpit when a student at Columbia and … wasted two hours.… But went down to the McCauley Mission at night and heard Sam Hadley preach the real gospel to men who wanted to hear about God, like people in New York are going to hear Billy Graham.…

NEWTON E. DAVIS

Ashland, Ohio

I, too, believe in a church inclusive enough to include people of many variant theological convictions.… The same spirit which asks people who do not agree with Graham’s theological position to support him because of the obvious good he is doing, should also, it seems to me, ask those who do not agree with the conclusions of men like Fosdick to support them because of the obvious good they are doing. Is that asking too much?

HOWARD L. ORIANS

Madison, Wis.

Dr. Fosdick has had his day. He has been retired both professionally and in the thinking of most of us.…

S. W. SMITH

Evangelical U. B. Church

Massillon, Ohio

The first installment of your series … was superb.… As a chastened fundamentalist, I have felt that the time has long since passed for judgment to begin with our movement.… I am shocked by our movement’s contentiousness and total unwillingness to acknowledge and repent of its glaring weaknesses.…

PAUL R. EDWARDS

Presbyterian Church

Stewartsville, N. J.

CHRISTIANITY OR LIBERALISM

Your publication is currently serving a vital purpose in my own ministry. I must confess that the point of view is often one I cannot accept, but overall the articles are challenging. In particular, I am grateful over the fact that you can take issue with the liberal writers of the day without the violent characterizations of other conservative publications I have read. There must be this patient, gracious spirit.…

JULIAN L. HOUSTON

Iroquois Presbyterian Church

Louisville, Ky.

Is your magazine soft on apostates?… For your Professor Stonehouse, in a nicer, but for that reason a more subtle way, follows the practice of your Professor Rule. By the juxtaposition in which he places the apostates of which he writes with true believers, in his final paragraph, he creates the impression that they are but two similarly erring groups, blanketed together by a “pathos” that descends to bathos. The sins of apostates cannot be excused by the shortcomings of saints.…

ELBERT D. RIDDICK

Church of the Good Shepherd

Portland 11, Ore.

Too long people have seen no difference between vital, evangelical, biblical Christianity and obscurantist Fundamentalism. CHRISTIANITY TODAY in its sound editorial policy is making this distinction clear. In many instances ministers have veered toward an indefinite liberalism largely as a reaction from evangelical Christianity as represented by extreme Fundamentalism.

H. CORRY MARTIN

United Church of Canada

Ulverton, Quebec

With much appreciation I have observed that your basic purpose has not been to enjoin certain controversial causes but to present … articles and news items from an unbiased viewpoint. I have been especially appreciative of your impartial coverage of the National Council of Churches; too often evangelicals have taken unwarranted potshots at the NCC.…

E. ALEXANDER LAMBERT

Immanuel Baptist Church

Minot, N. D.

From my contacts I would judge the Protestant ministers in this country to be better than 80% evangelical. The fact is I can count on my fingers the liberals who are attracting significant attention in this country at the present time. The deep sinfulness of human nature, the utter need for a powerful salvation and the deity of Jesus Christ were listed at the Ocean Grove Minister’s School as points in which American theologians were in substantial agreement.

HAROLD PAUL SLOAN

Browns Mills, N.J.

Your magazine … ought to voice the opinions of more than … the fundamentalists and … ought not to become an organ for the sole purpose of expressing the ideas of Billy Graham.

I do not mean to condemn the Southern Baptist movement (April 1 issue, p. 19).… When I speak of them as “radical,” I use the term only in the theological sense as being right wing, or very conservative.… I should have used the word “conservative”.… I do not use “radical” in the derogatory sense.

In regard to Mr. Graham, I do not wish to condemn him or his thoughts, even though I cannot agree wholeheartedly with him.…

JOHN WILKEY

The Methodist Church

Murrayville, Ill.

GIANT CHURCH

The recent article “Do We Want a Giant Church” by Gilbert Savery is a masterpiece.… The larger the organization the smaller the voice of the layman. I believe the answer lies in the New Testament … emphasis on the autonomy of the local church. The word “ecclesia” … appears 112 times.… 90 times the word is used to … refer to the local church. The New Testament makes the local church the important feature and not … strong denominations and mergers.…

ROBERT G. FALLT

Trinity (Evan. Free) Church

Ludington, Mich.

May a Catholic be permitted a word …? One does wonder where Mr. Savery finds his authority for equating democracy and Christianity in so many ways. His statement that “a centralization of religious organization and thought is as dangerous to Protestantism as similar trends are to democracy in the realm of civil government” can only mean, it would seem, that he regards the Protestant denominations as no more under the guidance of the Holy Spirit than the civil government. Since I doubt that he intends this inference to be drawn, I wonder on just what reasoning the statement is founded. Protestant worship has certainly done more by proxy (the minister) than democratically, since democratic worship would require the congregation’s praying and responding as much as, or more than, the minister.…

CHARLES-JAMES N. BAILEY

Christ Episcopal Church

Richmond, Ky.

Books

Book Briefs: July 8, 1957

William Hendriksen

Religious Authority

The Pattern of Authority, by Bernard Ramm. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1957. $1.50.

In this book the author, who is director of Baylor University department of Graduate Studies in Religion, again shows his ability to handle his subject in a way that is both interesting and attractive. Chapter One sets out his proposition: “First, I shall describe what I think is the true interpretation of religious authority; secondly, I shall briefly review a select number of competing interpretations.” This reviewer feels that he has succeeded on both counts. This volume is the second in Eerdmans’ Pathway Series, and for clarity, conciseness and contemporaneousness, could well be recommended for translation for the churches on the mission field, where I serve.

Ramm is aware of the various aspects of the problem of religious authority and he speaks forcefully to it and especially as it reflects the question of the authority of Scripture. His view is that of the informed Evangelical.

Especially interesting is the author’s treatment of the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiration. Describing the balance of priority which must prevail, he warns of the “subtle temptation to appeal to the Scriptures in isolation from the ministries of the Holy Spirit. That which awakens the soul to the divinity of the Scriptures is the internal witness of the Spirit. A catechetical method of proving the inspiration of the Scriptures is appropriate in its place, but the evidence of the verses cited does not compel till first the soul tastes of the life-and light-giving action of the Holy Spirit.”

The admirable brevity of this monograph is helpful and good, except perhaps when such brevity leaves the author open to misunderstanding. An example is his dismissal of the cultists in these words: “… they do not have the right principle of authority. The Holy Spirit does not speak in the Bible to the cultists. Because the Holy Spirit does not live in their midst nor speak to them in the Scriptures they fail to understand the Bible.” Further elaboration would have been useful especially as the Protestant Principle of Authority is, for the author, “… the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures, which are the product of the sprit’s revelatory and inspiring action, …”

There is a need for clear, easily translatable and contemporary writing, in English, which is applicable to the church world-wide. It is the aim of Pathway Books to, “… make relevant to modern man the basic affirmations of the Christian faith through consideration of those questions which have come to the foreground of the modern scene.” If the publishers can convince their authors that this can be done in simple language, then laymen as well as ministers will be attracted by these books. Unfortunately, Dr. Ramm finds it difficult to stop talking like a theological professor.

A large amount of the confusion in theological thinking today is perhaps due to what has been called, “theological jargon”—the specialist’s lingo in spiritual things. The average non-professional reader knows little of original source material. He reads what someone said someone else meant, and, as a result, he often becomes confused. Thus, for example, when a Hollander’s views on Barth, in the German, are translated into English, and further translated by an American missionary and his assistant into Japanese, there is more than a slight possibility of misinterpretation. In a totally non-Christian context it is often disconcerting to a young missionary to refer to Scripture as objective authority, when the listener has no concept of the Bible as anything but a philosophical treatise.

HAROLD BORCHERT

Old Master

Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, by John Eadie. Zondervan, Grand Rapids. $5.95.

Another reprint! Yes, all that and more—an old commentary (2nd. ed., 1861) resurrected and given another opportunity to speak its message to a new generation.

Not as well known as Lightfoot, Swete and other great interpreters of the New Testament, John Eadie, preacher, teacher and Scotsman, has qualities of mind and of spirit that put him in the category of the best exegetes of modern times.

His commentary on Ephesians (one of several written on Paul’s epistles) deals minutely—and in some places quite exhaustively—with the Greek text. This is not a “popular” work, since, among other characteristics, it cites profusely (without translation!) from Greek and Latin authors. However, there are many places where the comments will be readily understood by the non-linguistic reader. But only the person whose Greek is not entirely antiquated will receive the greatest satisfaction from this work of an old master.

Eadie was conversant with the views of many other commentators from ancient to modern times. These views are listed critically on every knotty problem of interpretation. In one place (on 3:18) ten different views are examined.

In the 485 pages of comments on this epistle one will find very few places where he will demur to the commentator’s judicious conclusions. Eadie, Calvinist and conservative, upholds the plenary inspiration of the Bible, and has little patience with those who impute a lapsus memoriae to Paul in a debated quotation (p. 388). But the reader will always find Eadie’s views sensibly and cogently defended. He is no mere dogmatist, nor is he an obscurantist. He receives help from many but calls no man his master. He is as likely to disagree with Calvin as with De Wette. Eadie lets nothing but the Word of God as grammatically exegeted determine his meaning of the inspired words of Paul.

WICK BROOMALL

Evangelical Scholarship

Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: The Epistles of Paul to the Thessalonians, by Leon Morris. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1957. $2.00.

The General Epistle of James, by R. V. G. Tasker. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1957. $2.00.

“What is the best textbook in Arithmetic?” someone asked. The answer was, “That all depends upon what you mean. Are you asking about the best textbook for John who is in the fourth grade or for Mary who is in the seventh?”

So it is also with commentaries. The question, “What is the best commentary?” can be annoying. It should be given a definite context. If one is looking for a commentary that is to be used by a person who wishes to make a thorough study of the text, the Tyndale series will probably not be the answer. The thorough student will be looking for such things as a good, present-day rendering of the best text, a real and satisfying discussion of the problems which arise in connection with almost every verse, a synthesis of the whole after careful exegesis, etc. The amount of material that is presented in the two books under review is too scanty to do justice to such demands.

However, there are readers who lack the time for such detail and thoroughness. They are satisfied with a minimum of argumentation and proof. They look for conclusions rather than discussions. To such a reading-public I heartily recommend these two books. Evident on every page is the fact that the authors are scholars, and what is more, that they are men of warm, evangelical scholarship. The style, moreover, is lucid.

To give an illustration of the type of comments found in these books, let us take Morris’s explanation of “the man of sin” (2 Thess. 2, p. 127):

“Paul does not use the term Antichrist, but it is Antichrist that he has in mind; and this being will not be revealed until the end is near.”

Now, though such a comment offers little in the way of proof, it has the virtue of being correct!

Tasker’s volume on James is excellent in the same sense. In order to see what the author does with a difficult passage, one turns naturally to the reference to prayer for the sick and anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord (James 5:14, 15). One finds that the conclusion reached by the author is in harmony with the context and with common sense. In the very limited amount of space at the author’s disposal he could not very well have done better than he did.

WILLIAM HENDRIKSEN

The One Theme

The Invincible Christ, by Massey Mott Heltzel. Abingdon, Nashville, Tennessee. $2.00.

This is a volume of 13 sermons by the minister of Ginter Park Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia. Before taking this pastorate in 1955, Mr. Heltzel was pastor of the Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia—attended by President and Mrs. Eisenhower on their trips to Georgia.

The first sermon this young pastor ever preached was on the text, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today and forever.” His 17 years in the ministry have strengthened his conviction that the preacher’s one theme is Christ. He writes this book as a plea that Christ be placed at the heart of preaching and living. Each chapter in this volume deals with some aspect of the person and work of the Lord in history and in contemporary life.

The first chapter, “The Fascinating Christ,” appeared in the June 1954 issue of Reader’s Digest under the title, “The Central Character of the Centuries.”

The author uses illustrations skillfully. He is obviously a student of hymnology and well-read in classical and contemporary works. But while these aids to presentation are used so well, they do not dim the central figure—the saving and kingly Christ.

FRANK LAWRENCE

Lessons from the Garden

L. Nelson Bell

The Crusade in Madison Square Garden is having an influence and implications that reach far beyond the suburbs of Manhattan.

Any preaching of the Gospel that fills and overflows an arena holding nearly 19,000 persons night after night and week after week needs careful analysis.

Christian effort that is reported day after day in the secular press and week after week in secular magazines carries with it a significance far beyond the normal influence of the Church.

Those who try to explain that which is taking place in New York naturally do so in terms they understand from within the confines of their own experience. Such explanations are to be had on every hand—from the theatrical world in terms of box-office appeal and sustained interest; from the business world in terms of cost; from the social set in terms of surprise that the Christian message and messengers can be so personally attractive and socially acceptable; from the narcotics addict and dreary prostitute in terms of a new life and a new hope; from men and women in every field of endeavor as they hear of something many have wanted and never found—peace with God and hope for eternity; from the rock ’n roll teenager who is led to stop and realize that being a Christian can be both challenging and joyous.

Another group also stops to evaluate and analyze, and at the same time to engage in heart-searching. This group is within the Christian ministry.

Of course there are those who dismiss the entire matter as an emotional binge and a passing fancy. Some see in this campaign a distressing return to the (to them) outmoded fundamentalism of a past era. And, there are some who, having largely discarded the supernatural concept and accepted a philosophical and humanistic viewpoint of Christianity, decry the emphasis on sin and salvation, heaven and hell and most distasteful of all—the thought of an instantaneous work of the Holy Spirit through which conversion takes place.

The Garden Crusade and the preaching that maintains such sustained interest, and obviously touches the hearts and lives of thousands, is bound to have a profound effect on many ministers of the Gospel.

Some of the more obvious aspects of this preaching give serious food for thought.

American pulpits have been vying one with another to proclaim impressive messages. Catch titles, great social issues, clever phrases, wide quotations from secular writers and a host of secular subjects have often crept in to crowd out the Gospel message itself. At the Garden we witness the appeal of the simple Gospel. As one cab driver remarked: “This is the first time I ever knew what a preacher was talking about.”

Regardless of the social applications of the Gospel and the prophetic visions of the minister, men and women know that they are going to die and want a faith to believe and an assurance for eternity. Many forget that man cannot live as he should until he knows how to die. Many have forgotten that our Lord’s preaching and teaching looked at this world in the light of eternity and that He came to give eternal life to those who believe.

Texts can be cleverly contrived springboards from which minister makes a graceful dive into the pools of humor, clever phrases and worldly wisdom. Modern topics may entertain but rarely do they edify. No man has yet contrived either a philosophy or an essay that can match in power and in effect the simple preaching from the written Word. Few are sufficiently acquainted with the words of Scripture to quote them fluently and appropriately. Few seem willing to base their messages on a simple, “Thus saith the Lord,” leaving the effect to the Holy Spirit. The messages at Madison Square Garden demonstrate the often forgotten fact that God empowers the preaching of the Scriptures.

Why are there so many church members among those going forward to make a decision for Christ? One answer is that within the church there are many who have joined an organization but who have never had a personal experience with the living Christ. There are many synthetic Christians, men and women who make the outward motions of being Christians but who, when face to face with reality, know in their hearts that they lack something vital. Out of this demonstration a new realization is coming of the necessity for public surrender and commitment to Christ as Savior and Lord.

For decades sin has not been a popular topic for sermons. Too often there has been the philosophy that men are the victims of social and economic and personality handicaps that may be solved by education, raising of economic standards and psychological adjustments. Deep down in their hearts people know they are sinners, estranged from a loving God and in need of His redeeming grace. When faced with the fact of sin in their lives and of salvation through the Cross men still respond as they always have.

No one would be so foolish as to infer that Mr. Graham’s preaching is the only type needed. But, for winning men to Christ and for making plain their condition and their need, repetitious preaching is necessary. Few are those who hearing the Gospel message immediately grasp either its scope or its significance. They need to hear the story again and again. Entirely too much is taken for granted.

Many who sit in the pews on Sunday are utterly ignorant of the plan of salvation. To make part of each sermon a repetition of man’s sinfulness and of God’s redemptive work requires a humility some have not thought necessary and to which others have been unwilling to submit.

We do not believe that the sole effect of the preaching in Madison Square Garden will be found in the thousands who are making a public profession of their faith in Christ. We believe a far greater impact will come in the months and years ahead, when from many pulpits there will come for the first time, or after a long silence, the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all of its simplicity and power.

Bible Text of the Month: Matthew 5:8

Oswald Dykes

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8).

Moses’ blessing encircles the tribes of Israel; this encompasses disciples of every nation.—R. GOVETT.

There is nothing in which mankind more generally imagines happiness to consist than in the uncontrolled indulgence of their passions. It is probable that among those who looked for the establishment of the Messiah’s kingdom, many pleased themselves with the idea, that his victories would open to them a way for multiplying captives to any extent, and consequently for the unlimited gratification of their corrupt appetites. To counteract such absurd notions, and to evidence the spiritual nature of his kingdom, our blessed Lord declared, that happiness was to be found, not “in assimilating” ourselves to the brute creation, but in purity of heart and life.—CHARLES SIMEON.

Pure In Heart

Pure in heart denotes the moral blamelessness of the inner life, the center of which is the heart, in conformity with the view that “Every sin puts a foul mark on the soul.”—H. A. W. MEYER.

This was opposed to the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees. They made clean the outside of the cup and platter, while their inward part was full of ravening and wickedness (Luke 11:39). But Christ demanded purity of heart, for when the heart is impure, the whole man is defiled.—JOHN J. OWEN.

Pure in heart. May be taken either specifically, as denoting freedom from particular impurities, or more generically, as denoting freedom from the polluting influence of sin. On the former, which is the more usual supposition, the particular impurity denied is commonly assumed to be what the Scriptures call uncleanness, comprehending all violations of the seventh commandment, in heart, speech, or behavior. Some, however, who admit the specific import of the phrase, apply it to hypocrisy, deceit, and falsehood, and by pure in heart understand sincere and guileless; while a third interpretation gives it the generic sense of sinless, holy.—J. A. ALEXANDER.

The idea of a pure heart was for the hearers no new idea. The Psalmist had required that he who would approach the sanctuary should have a pure heart (Ps. 24:4). This pure heart distinguished the true Israelite from the false (Ps. 73:1). And David had prayed for a pure heart (Ps. 51:10). The question arises, as to whether the Savior understood the expression in the Old Testament acceptation. Now, in Psalm 73 it is evident that the purity of heart spoken of is in opposition to that impurity which manifests itself in appearances inconsistent with the truth of things. Then in Psalm 24 after purity deceit is expressly spoken of; and in Psalm 51 purity is identical with sincerity.—A. THOLUCK.

How little has this purity of heart been regarded, by the false teachers of all ages! They have taught men barely, to abstain from all such outward impurities, as God hath forbidden by name. But they did not strike at the heart; and by not guarding against, they in effect countenanced inward corruptions.—JOHN WESLEY.

The sensual appetites, when unlawfully indulged, have this bad pre-eminence among sins, that they stain the purity of the heart and put out its spiritual eyes faster and more surely than any other forbidden thing.… All unregulated passion has a disturbing and discomposing action. Peevishness, hot temper, envy, malign displeasure, excessive pursuit of gain, the puffed-up vanity of possession, and ambition, are all so many evil breaths blown into the heart, to dim the tender purity of its motives, divide the singleness of its aim, and obscure its vision of divine and heavenly things. The heart cannot be pure if, in its loyalty to the will of God, there mix some interested purpose of its own, or some secret homage to another Lord, or some restless wish to have the will of God other than it is. It is fatal to the simplicity, and therefore to the purity, of the soul to be seriously divided betwixt two desires, one righteous and one wrong.—J. OSWALD DYKES.

Beholding God

To see the face of one, or to be in his presence, were, among the Jews, terms expressive of great favor. It was regarded as a high honor to be in the presence of kings and princes, and to be permitted to see them. (Prov. 22:29; 2 Kings 25:19). Those who saw the face of the king were his favorites and friends.—ALBERT BARNES.

The fact that the pure in heart shall see God shows that not physical but moral vision is meant. Just as a person with a mean character will never be able to understand a person with a beautiful character, so the impure man will never be able to see God, the Pure One.—W. HENDRIKSEN.

He who has his heart crammed with furious desires, with earthly ambitions, with carnal pride and with all the lusts which convulse this ant-heap of the earth, can never see God face to face, will never know the sweetness of His magnificent felicity.—GIOVANNI PAPINI.

Foul hearts make dim eyes God-ward. To clear the eye we must cleanse the heart. Only purity has any idea of God, or any true vision of him. It is a great reward to be able to see God; and, on the other hand, it is of great help towards being pure in heart to have a true sight of the thrice-holy One. There are no pure hearts on earth unless the Lord has made them so, and none shall see God in heaven who have not been purified by grace while here below.—SPURGEON.

They shall see him in his ordinances, while others are altogether unconscious of his presence. They shall see him in their secret chamber, where he will draw nigh unto them. They shall see him in all the works of creation, and in all the dispensations of his providence. They shall see him in every comfort and in every cross. His wisdom, his goodness, his love, his mercy, his faithfulness, are ever before their eyes.—CHARLES SIMEON.

To ‘see God’ now must forever mean nothing else than this: to see His ‘truth and grace’ mirrored in the face of that Man, who alone of all men on earth ‘is of God, and hath seen the Father.’ This deepest and sweetest of Christ’s beatitudes seized the souls of his two noblest scholars.

Paul and John alike found in it their ultimate expression for the enraptured communion of the perfected state. To see ‘face to face’ (1 Cor. 13:12) is the expression of the one; to ‘see him as he is’ of the other (1 John 3:2). In all its stages, whether as begun now or as hereafter consummated, this vision of God is a moral act, made possible by the moral condition of the man.

It is the act of the soul. So long as we are ourselves proud lovers of evil, with a conceit in ourselves greater than in any other, or possessed by dark, selfish, or vicious passions, we cannot see God’s goodness to be good. We may speak of it, indeed, with praise; but we lack the indispensable moral condition for feeling its beauty and divineness.—J. OSWALD DYKES.

Cynic, Sophisticate or Seeker?

The Editors

A Dean in one of our great Western state universities recently pointed out that students need a cause, something in which they can believe and to which they can commit themselves. Disillusioned with social panaceas and scientific messianism, and faced with the realities of an incipiently self-destructive world, the modern student finds himself in a vacuum. “The next few years,” said the educator, “will determine what will fill that vacuum.”

The student world today is much like the Roman world of the first century when the gods of the Pantheon were dead, and hearts were ready for the living Christ.

Students are impatient with anything which they feel is not relevant to their individual lives and to the world they face; this makes them seem cynical. They build their defenses against being “taken” by anything that promises much but produces little; this makes them seem sophisticated. In reality, they are seekers—for security in an insecure world and for personal meaning in a vast universe.

What an ideal climate for the confrontation of the seeking student with the searching Savior!

University Confrontation

The experience of Billy Graham in universities has indicated that where the confrontation takes place, the results are miraculous.

Two years ago Dr. Graham was aboard the S. S. United States crossing the Atlantic, his destination the area of the greatest concentration of intellectual pride in the British Empire: Cambridge University. In daily prayer meetings Dr. Graham and the assistant missioned faced the problem: How to reach a student mind and heart characterized by the cynical phrase, “I couldn’t care less?” To attempt to make an intellectual appeal would put the message on the ground of the unbeliever, and one slip would rule out the whole presentation. Still, the appeal could not be anti-intellectual or merely emotional. Dr. Graham decided to benefit from what the Apostle Paul had learned the hard way at Athens: he too would go to his Corinth determined to know nothing among them save Jesus Christ.

Consequently, for the eight nights in the liturgical Anglican setting of historic Great St. Mary’s Church of Cambridge, Dr. Graham made the simple confrontation: the fact of sin and of judgment; the need for repentance and faith; the reality of the new life of Christ.

The crowds at Harringay and Glasgow and Wembley had responded. What would be the reaction of the student world? Each night Dr. Graham, at the close of his regular message, invited those who wished to respond to the claims of Jesus Christ to remain in the center section. Shortly he would return and explain the steps of salvation. Hundreds stayed for the after-meetings, and over 400 recorded in writing their clear cut decisions and were carefully counseled by the assistant missioners. One student expressed his evaluation of the mission in these words, ‘Whatever critics may say of Billy Graham’s visit to Cambridge, all agree that when he left, Cambridge was a different place. The challenge of the living Christ through Billy’s life and ministry deepened the faith of Christians and disarmed the scepticism of unbelievers.”

Underneath the seeming cynicism of Cambridge there was a sincere seeking—and a genuine finding of the living Lord.

The Mission At Yale

This year, February 10 through 15, Dr. Graham was invited by gracious University Chaplain Sidney Lovett to Yale University, probably one of the greatest centers of collegiate sophistication in America. As Thomas F. Ruhm described the situation (in Ivy Magazine, written and published by undergraduates of the Ivy League): “In spite of the week of preparation it is doubtful that Mr. Graham realized the full magnitude of the problems that confronted him on the Yale campus. His experience with the more vibrant intellectual curiosity of Oxford and Cambridge students and the consequently large crowds that he drew at the English universities did not prepare him for Yale’s cultivated, general indifference towards religion.”

“Official indifference was reflected by the scheduling of an important oratorical contest in competition with Graham’s third meeting. Reasonably typical was the action of the fraternity heads, who while graciously inviting Mr. Graham to visit some of the houses, also set up a compulsory meeting for all spring rushees at the time of one of his talks. Undoubtedly these were unwitting mistakes, but they revealed a lack of thought that could only have been caused by a basic unconcern with religion.”

The tension was heightened by an uncertainty on the part of assistant missioners, graduates of Yale and now pastors of churches, who frankly questioned the success of anything but an objective discussion approach to the Yale mind.

A Week Of Decision

Let another Yale student describe the week.

“On Monday evening a suspicious yet sensitive crowd of undergraduates poured into Woolsey Hall for the first of four addresses to be given by Billy, this one entitled, ‘The Christian Answer to the World Dilemma.’ Many of the students, from what I could gather from their remarks beforehand, expected to hear some hysterical ‘hell-fire and damnation’, and it was obvious that many came to the meeting in order to be amused and entertained, yet Billy calmly and eloquently spelled-out in uncompromising but simple terms the Christian answer and hope for our sick world in a manner which clearly affected every person in the hall. Many of the more sceptical students left the meeting with a genuinely changed view of Billy Graham and the Gospel he represents and were noticeably impressed with the man’s humility, personal charm and courage. The Yale Daily News carried the following lead headline on Tuesday: ‘Graham Calls Individual Sin Root of World’s Political, Social Crises’ and also made the following editorial comment: ‘One was almost struck by the intensity of his statement, the almost embarrassing honesty and energy he seemed to be putting into his message.’ Following the meeting, sixty to seventy-five students remained in the front of the hall to hear Billy speak about what is involved in a Christian decision. Many requested further counselling, and within the next twenty-four hours about forty students made decisions or re-committed themselves to our Lord.”

“On each evening following the address, an informal gathering was held in one of the nine fraternities on the campus. At my own fraternity on Wednesday night, our large living room was jammed with students and their friends who wanted to meet Billy and to question him further about The Faith. He eloquently spoke to a barrage of questions which covered everything from eternal damnation to Kierkegaard, and never once did Billy avoid the intellectual prying which would have shaken many of Yale’s most learned professors. When Billy spoke of God’s love and the cross, I saw a close friend of mine, a self-styled agnostic, come to tears and to a new understanding of the love of Jesus Christ. There were many at the meetings and ‘bull-sessions’ who wept, and I would have to take issue with some of my sophisticated friends who see all of this as ‘dangerous’ or ‘unnecessary’. I think that these tears were prompted by the love of God and not by Billy Graham and consequently represented a wholesome and natural kind of release. No one ever objects when people cry at the movies or at a family reunion. Why do people look sceptically upon a young man who is reunited with God through Jesus Christ!”

“All over the campus during the week there was a steady hum of conversation about the mission and about the Christian faith. Everyone faced up to basic questions, for the content of the previous night’s message was practically all anyone talked about. Billy, the assistant missioners, the college pastors and the denominational chaplains were swamped with requests for interviews from Tuesday through Friday. I saw Sam Shoemaker’s appointment schedule for Wednesday, and it was enough to scare a man half his age right out of the ministry. In addition to leading discussion groups after the evening meetings and handling the pastoral interviews, Sam and the others spent more hours ‘talking things over’ with the undergraduates at meals and over endless cups of coffee and tea. The discussion group meetings were wonderfully ‘open’ and relaxed, with plenty of sharing, witnessing and honest searching.”

“Generally these meetings were attended by students seriously considering the claims of Christ and looking for a personal faith and dedication. One had the feeling throughout the mission that these men were hungry for faith, hungry for something to believe in rather than for something to observe and study intellectually. Billy had emphasized time and time again in his addresses that faith cannot be secured intellectually but can only be given by God after repentance—and then partially understood by the mind. Many observers of the mission had been critical of Billy for his alleged ‘anti-intellectualism’, but were impressed with his statement that being a good Christian also means being a good student. Naturally, many of the points made in the main addresses had to be re-interpreted and clarified by the discussion leaders, but a very healthy balance was maintained between the mind and the will—both essential ingredients of faith.”

“The most significant feature of the mission, though, I believe were the meetings held in Woolsey Hall after the address. Each evening Billy asked those seriously considering giving their lives to Christ to come forward to the front of the hall after the others had left the meeting for further instruction and prayer. The first night about eighty remained behind, the second night perhaps two hundred, on Wednesday evening about six hundred stayed for further instruction, and on the last night when the building was bursting at the seams, about fifteen hundred remained. Following a short, instructive talk, those who wanted to make decisions were asked to stand for a moment and then be seated again. On Tuesday night roughly one hundred stood for prayer; on Wednesday two hundred and twenty-five rose; and on the final night, over four hundred stood to declare their faith in Jesus Christ. The students who left early on Thursday evening were struck dumb when they were told about what had happened, along with many of the faculty members, who never question a student’s right to search for truth but wiggle in uneasiness when he dedicates his life to it. Most of those who stood made an initial commitment; some stood in order to re-dedicate their lives to their Lord; a few found this an appropriate time to amuse their friends. However, on the following Sunday at a Service of Dedication held in Battell Chapel, most of those who stood joined their fellow Christians in offering praise and thanksgiving to God for his gift of Jesus Christ. I have seen many of these new Christians reading their Bibles, joining in worship with their respective churches and putting into good order their relationships with their girls, families and fellow students.”

Another great result was in the spirit of unity and rededication that came about among the assistant missioners, some of whom said their ministry would never be the same after the mission at Yale. “Uncle Sid”, genial chaplain at the University, summed up the results, “As an aftermath, we have contacts with some three hundred youngsters who stayed for the after meeting following each public address and in some cases stood up and actually committed or recommitted themselves to a life of Christian inquiry and service. Many of them are now holding weekly meetings in their respective colleges, devoted to Bible study and prayer. Those of us on the permanent staff here feel that we have got quite a bit of useful work cut out for us in the weeks ahead. In short, I would say that the Mission exceeded my expectations, and any apprehensions I may have had beforehand were completely allayed.”

Underneath the seeming sophistication of Yale was a sincere seeking—and a genuine finding of the living Lord.

All of this has caused Billy Graham to feel that the two weeks at Cambridge and Yale were the greatest of his ministry in the significant reaching of the leadership of tomorrow for Jesus Christ. He feels the challenge of giving more of his time to that ministry, in order that the vacuum in the lives of our future statesmen, educators and business and professional leaders may be filled with Jesus Christ.

Dr. L. David Cowie is minister of University Presbyterian Church, Seattle, which carries on a vigorous church-centered student program at the edge of the Univeristy of Washington campus. He is a member of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., and has completed two preaching missions around the world during the past five years. He was one of the pastors invited by Dr. Graham to share in the mission to Cambridge, Oxford and Yale, where he gave long hours of the day and night to effective spiritual counseling of students.

Preacher In The Red

AROMA

At a farewell reception in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a city noted for its fish processing, when the time came for me to make my remarks I spoke of our ministry in that city and church, how much we had enjoyed our work with the people, etc. In my enthusiasm I said I did not even mind the characteristic fish smells. Then, since my wife’s sense of smell had been somewhat impaired, I said, “Of course these don’t bother Mrs. Mazzeo at all. She doesn’t smell so good!”

After a split-second silence the audience snickered a little and then burst into hilarious laughter. That was my stopping place. I was done!—REV. FRANCIS J. MAZZEO, Robinson Memorial Methodist Church, Malden, Mass.

WORLD NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Billy Graham, taking time out from the biggest and busiest undertaking of his life in the New York Crusade, was addressing a private luncheon of business and spiritual leaders of the city. The meeting was sponsored by World Vision, Inc., a social organization with a heart that reaches around the world to touch the lives of orphans, lepers and others in need of help.

Dr. Graham serves as chairman of the board of World Vision, and the work is close to his heart, but he had some other things to say before describing some of the needs.

He said:

“Gentlemen, there have been three major crises in America since our forefathers came here to find freedom of religion—not freedom from religion as some today would have us think. World Wars I and II were not among the major crises. America was never seriously threatened in those great conflicts.

“The first crisis in the future of America came in the Revolutionary War. Our nation could have died before it was born. General Washington had 22,000 cold and starving men at Valley Forge. Three thousand of these died and 11,000 deserted.

“I walked around Valley Forge one day with President Eisenhower, and he remarked, ‘This is where they got it for us.’ We saw the spot where Washington knelt in the snow as he prayed to Almighty God. His strength was in God, not men and resources. The Continental Congress passed an appropriation of $300,000 for the purchase of Bibles. Can you imagine that? The Constitutional Convention was being torn apart by dissenting factions when Benjamin Franklin went on his knees in prayer. Our nation was born from a prayer meeting and faith in the Word of God.

“The second great crisis was the Civil War. Again the nation was torn, with brother fighting brother. Things could have happened from which America would never have recovered.

“Someone asked the great southern general, Robert E. Lee, if he didn’t pray to God for victory. And Lee replied, “No, I don’t pray for victory. I pray that God’s will be done.” Lincoln said he was not so concerned as to whether God was on his side as he was with the hope that he was on God’s side.

“On both sides the leaders prayed. God heard the prayers and healed the wounds of America.

“The third great crisis is the one in which we are now living. We are threatened with destruction as a nation. Communists have more fervor than Christians. And they have nuclear weapons capable of destroying civilization as we know it today.

“No American will be able to live with the assurance of peace in our lifetime.

“Certainly, we must be able to defend ourselves, but the answer to our problem isn’t the power of armaments. The answer is whether we will turn to God, as our leaders did in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

“I wouldn’t give the snap of my finger for any of your businesses unless a genuine spiritual awakening takes place in the next few years. Some people have the mistaken idea that Americans are God’s pets. Don’t you be fooled. God will punish America unless we truly repent and seek to do his will, no matter what the cost.”

Television is expected to play an increasing part in all of Billy Graham’s Crusades.

The incredible response to the series of nationwide sermons from Madison Square Garden in New York City has been far greater than expected. A growing audience of some 7,000,000 to 10,000,000 persons has been watching each Saturday night. Madison Square Garden would have had to be packed each night for a year to equal the total for one week reached by television.

An avalanche of letters and testimonies indicate that the message loses little of its impact as it is carried into homes throughout the nation.

Wrote a college graduate:

“During this past week I was graduated from college. The culmination of my education, plus the prospects of a successful future in my chosen profession, should have been a high-water mark in my life. Instead, however, I was depressed because of the pointless clamor of society and the immorality which is to be found at every turn. Tonight I saw and heard your message on TV. I have come to realize that joy is to be found only in God. I have received Christ and will earnestly strive in my small way to forward his cause.”

Wrote another:

“Thank you for helping me to renew my faith in Christ through your television broadcast on Saturday evening. I was a believer but not a receiver. Thank you, and thank God, for helping me to realize that this was my moment for truly receiving Christ.”

More television plans are being made for the San Francisco Crusade next spring and for the meetings beginning at Charlotte later that year. If nationwide telecasts aren’t possible, the meetings will cover a radius of at least 100 miles from the cities once a week. Viewers will be asked to call designated counsellors in cities over the area for spiritual help. The counsellors will be assembled at central locations, where batteries of telephones will be available.

Those who respond will be encouraged to become affiliated with churches. Helpful literature will be mailed.

Much valuable experience in the television-telephone ministry has been developed in New York. Five nights a week a 15-minute telecast entitled “Impact” is beamed over a powerful station. It features the singing of George Beverly Shea, a short newscast about the meeting and a personal testimony by someone who found Christ. At the close of the program, the announcer invites viewers to call a certain telephone number if they have problems and wish to talk with a counsellor.

Within seconds, the phones start ringing and continue past 2 a.m. Many callers have made decisions for Christ.

Billy Graham is taking advantage of every opportunity to tell people what the Bible has to say claiming God’s promise that his Word will not return void.

Testimony from ministers:

Clearwater, Fla.—“When our pastor, Dr. O. E. Burton, made his report of the New York Crusade to our congregation, it seemed that the same spirit which is operative in the crusade there was present in our midst and when he gave the invitation at the close of the service 14 came forward to receive Christ.”—John Welch.

Portland, Indiana—“I announced in the local paper that on Sunday night I would give my report of the New York Crusade which I recently visited. Our sanctuary was crowded to capacity, which is unusual in itself. While I told the story of God’s workings in New York, a spirit of conviction fell upon the audience and nearly a score responded to the invitation to accept Christ. I was amazed at the response and can only credit it to the direct work of the Holy Spirit. Could it be that the crusade there is creating an atmosphere conducive to a general awakening in our land?”—Rev. C. A. Fisher.

Renewed Devotion

Rep. Brooks Hays (D-Ark.), new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has pledged himself to renewed devotion of time-honored Baptist principles—emphasis on the Bible, religious liberty and evangelism.

Before the Convention’s Executive Committee at Nashville, Tenn., Rep. Hays said:

“I’m going to study my Bible more than I ever have before because the Bible is our chart.” The time has come, he said, to measure Southern Baptists’ progress not only in numbers and church extension but also “in the depth of life of the people.”

He asserted that this “depth of life” must include Bible reading, prayer life and daily Christian living.

A member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, Rep. Hays said he would strive to aid the cause of religious liberty in countries abroad. In an interview after the talk, he mentioned Spain and Colombia.

On another matter of interest, Rep. Hays said he “hopes Congress (this session) will pass a law to ban serving of beverage alcohol on flights.”

Memorial For Trotman

A memorial service was held for Dawson E. Trotman on June 18 during the Navigators East Coast Conference at Schroon Lake, New York.

The Word of Life Camp, host to the conference, has dedicated its new auditorium to the memory of the founder of the Navigators who drowned there on June 18 last year while saving the life of a girl who could not swin. Participating in the service were Lorne C. Sanny, Navigators’ president, Jack Wyrtzen, director of Word of Life Camp and Mrs. Dawson Trotman.

Mrs. Trotman, who has joined the Billy Graham team at the New York Crusade as women’s speaker and special counsellor, traveled to Schroon Lake for the memorial service. It was at this same conference last year on the night of her husband’s death that she spoke to the conferees, telling them that “although God has taken my dearest possession, He makes no mistakes.”

Lorne Sanny, along with Robert D. Foster, vice-president of The Navigators, spoke during the week-long conference.

A special memorial service with the Navigators staff will be held at Glen Eyrie, the international headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on the opening night of their Staff Conference, July 23.

People: Words And Events

Teen-Age Beliefs—Purdue University’s opinion panel, in a nationwide poll, has found out that more than 50 per cent of American high school students are “suspicious of democratic processes, contemptuous of politics, distrustful of the people’s ability to govern themselves and hostile toward the civil liberties for which our forefathers fought.” Fifty-six per cent of teen-agers agree that large estates should be whacked up as farm lands and handed over to the poor.

Little Brown Church—One hundred years ago, Dr. William S. Pitts sat down and dashed off the song for which the little country church near Nashua, Iowa, is celebrated, “The Little Brown Church in the Vale.” The centennial observance was held Sunday, June 16, with the Rev. Douglas Fox of Sydney, Australia, delivering the sermon.

Word From Science—Atomic scientist Arthur H. Compton told the 100th anniversary graduating class of Lake Forest College that “to win real peace the hearts of men must themselves be changed.” He called for a “great venture of faith” to break the deadlock of selfishness and lack of cooperation in the world.

Public Brainwashing—The Methodist Board of Temperance charged in Washington, D. C., that liquor advertisers are spending more than $400,000,000 a year to “brainwash the American public” into believing that liquor is beneficial and acceptable. “Think what it would mean in rehabilitation of the nation’s 4,500,000 alcoholics, what untold slaughter could be avoided by a multi-million dollar campaign against drinking-and-driving.” said Dr. Caradine R. Hooton, general secretary of the board.

Religion and Education—No one who ignores religion and the possibility of coming under its “life-giving influence” can claim to be educated, Dr. Nathan M. Pusey, president of Harvard University, said in a baccalaureate address. “The fruits of intellect unsupported by faith are not necessarily richer life but more often superciliousness, fastidiousness, or even lacklustre and despair,” Dr. Pusey said.

Wonderful Thing—Dr. E. Stanley Jones, 73-year-old American missionary and evangelist, on speaking tour of the Far East, said, “It’s the most wonderful thing in the world to be an evangelist, but if evangelism stops with the evangelist, that’s all wrong.… Evangelism must be the work of every Christian.”

Whopper Loans—A plan under which the Presbyterian Church in Canada would form eight corporations to borrow $60,000,000 over the next 10 years to finance new churches has been approved by its 83rd General Assembly. Each of the church’s eight synods was authorized to establish a corporation to float large loans from banks, trust companies and insurance firms.

Ten Commandments—New York Assemblyman William C. Brennan Jr. says he will introduce a bill in the next session of the legislature requiring every school in the state to post the Ten Commandments in its classrooms. Brennan announced he was “furious” at State Education Commissioner James E. Allen Jr. for his ruling which barred a Long Island school district from posting an “interdenominational” version of the Commandments in classrooms. “It may stir up dissension and bitterness among atheists and agnostics,” the legislator said, “but certainly it doesn’t stir up dissension or bitterness among any religious group.”

Clergy Refund—Many clergymen may be able to claim refunds for taxes paid on housing allowances in the years 1954–56 as the result of new regulations issued by the Internal Revenue Service. The regulations give a liberal interpretation to legislation passed by Congress in 1954 permitting ministers to deduct for income tax purposes an allowance given them in lieu of a parsonage or other housing as part of their compensation.

Obscenity Bill—Sen. Everett Dirksen (R.-Ill.) introduced a bill in the Senate which will make it a crime to “knowingly” take from, or deposit in, the U. S. mails any obscene material. It provides for a fine of $5,000 and a prison term of up to five years. Present law makes it an offense only to deposit such material in the mails.

Union Approval

The following special report was written by Dr. Cary N. Weisiger III, pastor of Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church and a contributing editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The 99th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, held recently on the campus of Muskingum College, New Concord, Ohio, took actions affecting its work across half the world.

Climaxing a year of debate, the Assembly voted to unite in 1958 with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. The vote was 162 to 124 in favor of union. This confirmed the voting that had gone on in the presbyteries during the preceding 12 months. Percentage-wise, the Assembly ballot was almost identical with the 57 per cent majority which prevailed over the 43 per cent minority in the presbyteries.

There was no debate over another far-reaching action of the United Presbyterian commissioners. Without arousing opposition, the standing committee on Foreign Missions carried its recommendation to establish the Synod of the Nile as an independent church in Egypt. The new body will be called The Coptic Evangelical Church of Egypt. After a century of missionary effort, it has a membership of 26,600 and is the largest Protestant church in the land of the pyramids.

The Assembly opened with a spirited contest for the moderatorship. On the first ballot, however, Dr. Robert N. Montgomery, president of Muskingum for 25 years and dean of college presidents in Ohio, carried the day. Rival nominees were Dr. C. T. R. Yeates, pastor of the 3,500-member Westminster Church in Des Moines, Iowa and Dr. John E. Simpson, stewardship leader and pastor in Skokil, Ill. Dr. Yeates was elected vice-moderator.

Some observers at the United Presbyterian conclave saw the merger vote as a victory for two currents of feeling in the denomination—one current being the pull for Presbyterian unity which has flowed for decades in the church but which was blocked in a test in the mid-1930’s and again in 1955 in a three-way test which failed because the Presbyterians in the South defeated it. The other current of feeling is the urge for ecumenical expression of the oneness of all Christians.

Opponents of union have claimed that while the Plan of Union, incorporating the same scriptural and confessional standards that the two denominations have always had, presupposes a oneness of conviction, yet in practice and policy the United Presbyterian Church has been and is more consistently orthodox.

Debate at the Assembly lasted only about one hour and was unmarred by heated outbursts. Dr. R. W. Gibson, retiring moderator and president of Monmouth College, Illinois, leader in union negotiations, spoke in favor of the merger. He was supported by Dr. Samuel C. Weir of the Littlefield Boulevard U. P. Church, Detroit and Dr. Richard W. Graves of the New Wilmington, Pa., U. P. Church.

Speaking against the merger were Dr. Henry O. Lietman of the Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, U. P. Church, Dr. John H. Eastwood of the First U. P. Church, Hammond, Ind., Elder George Royal of the Tabernacle U. P. Church, Youngstown, Ohio and the Rev. F. D. Henderson, retired missionary of Wooster, Ohio.

After the vote was announced by the stated clerk, Dr. Samuel W. Shane, opponents of the union made a conciliatory move by offering a resolution that all enter the new church “with faith, hope and love, and the prayerful purpose of making the union a happy and effective means of advancing the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.” It passed unanimously, and Moderator Montgomery called upon the Assembly to sing the Twenty-third Psalm. He then introduced Dr. Harold R. Martin, moderator of the 169th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., who said, “I rejoice more than I can express.”

The Plan of Union calls for consummation of the merger next May in Pittsburgh. Both denominations will meet separately in the General Assemblies the first day and after that will convene as one body. Membership of the new body, to be called the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., will be about 3,000,000.

On the final day of the Assembly, several leaders of the pro-union party made speeches praising the spirit of the losers in the merger battle and calling upon the whole church not to violate the spirit shown at the Assembly. A motion prevailed requesting Moderator Montgomery to write a letter to all pastors in the denomination urging unity and good will.

The action to make the U. P. Synod in Egypt independent came as the result of anti-western pressures in the Near East. It was felt that the Evangelical Church in Egypt would be relieved of embarrassing ties and that by taking the ancient designation “Coptic” would become identified as truly indigenous to Egypt.

Religious Affiliations

Thirteen of the nation’s 48 governors are Methodists, according to a survey of their religious affiliations.

Baptists are next, with eight governors, followed by seven Episcopalians, six Presbyterians, five Roman Catholics, four Lutherans and two Congregationalists. One governor is Jewish, one a Mormon and one lists no affiliation.

A similar check of members of Congress earlier this year showed that Methodists lead with 105 (18 Senators and 87 Representatives), followed by 94 Roman Catholics, 68 Baptists, 68 Presbyterians and 60 Episcopalians among the top five groups.

Spreading The Word

There are about 80 languages in which short passages or collections of passages have been published, but they are not customarily counted in the total.

Three complete Bibles were published for the first time last year in Bemba (spoken in North Rhodesia); Nimbi Ijo (Nigeria) and Marovo (Solomon Islands).

An estimated 1,000 languages and dialects have no written form.

Ideas

Dung and Scum

The Editors

Some of our present day politicians have accustomed us to the unedifying practice of unmeasured and unrestrained public abuse. Such elegant and descriptive terms as “stinking skunk,” “lousy rat,” “yelping hyena” and “fascist beast” are choice and characteristic examples. The result, of course, is the degradation of our public life. “It must distress all who are concerned with the preservation of ordinary decencies and customary civilities,” writes the Dean of Melbourne, Dr. S. Barton Babbage, “that the language of Parliament should so often be the language of the gutter, and that vituperation and abuse should so often be regarded as a substitute for reasoned argument and debate.” The observation is relevant far beyond its British concern.

Today refutation is no part of controversy and discussion. It is no longer necessary to prove how a man is wrong: it is sufficient to explain why he is wrong. This is a game which Freudians and Marxians delight to play. For example, the Freudian will tell you that your thoughts are “psychologically tainted.” The Marxist will tell you that your thoughts are “ideologically tainted,” and that you only think freedom a good thing because you are one of the bourgeoisie (C. S. Lewis, “Bulverism” in the Socratic Digest, June 1944, p. 16). In this game you assume that your opponent is wrong—without further discussion—and then you distract his attention by explaining why he is wrong. You do not examine your opponent’s matter; you examine his motives; you substitute abuse for argument.

There is an amusing description of this process in an article by C. S. Lewis.

In the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it Bulverism. Some day I am going to write the biography of the imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third—‘Oh you say that because you are a man.’ ‘At that moment,’ E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong, or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.’ That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century (ibid., p. 17).

It is the Russians who have carried this practice of defamation to the greatest lengths. In the new Soviet Textbook of Law the victims of purges are no longer called “Social Defaulters”: they are described by such emotion-laden words as “mad dogs, rats, vermin, hyenas, dung and scum” (Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar and Other Essays, London, 1945, p. 173). The consequences are at once apparent: if you regard your enemies as wild animals, then you will have no compunction about destroying them; for we shoot mad dogs. It is not surprising that, in Russia, with such a philosophy, the practice of “liquidation” has become a science.

Arthur Koestler has written a vivid autobiographical novel entitled, Scum of the Earth. It describes the inhuman brutalities which he experienced as the unhappy inmate of a French concentration camp. He says that those who today survive “wear the old school tie in the shape of some scar on the body, or an ulcer in the stomach, or at least a solid anxiety neurosis” (ibid., p. 85). The victims, who were drawn from many nationalities, were treated as “the scum of the earth”—in the strangely contemporary phrase of the Apostle, as “the filth of the world and the offscourings of all things” (1 Cor. 4:13). Koestler describes the daily indignities and the sadistic brutalities. Many were beaten and battered to death, so that there was a mounting daily toll of suffering and suicide. The camp cemetery, Koestler says, probably contains “the most cosmopolitan collection of skulls since the mass graves of the Crusades” (ibid., p. 93).

Peter the Great subscribed to the view that men are “dung and scum.” He was reproached for the prodigal waste of human life in the construction of St. Petersburg. He made the laconic reply: “We must break eggs to make an omelette” (Quoted, A. T. Pierson, Godly Self-Control, Barkingside, N. D., p. 37). The question is whether men are simply eggs to be broken, irrespective of whether or not a man is a “bad egg” or a “decent egg.” For Peter the Great men were “expendable material”; manure to fertilize the ground for the future.

Today we are beginning to see that everything depends upon our conception of man. Is he simply a tool, a thing, a cog in a machine? Or is he a creature made in the image of God? Is he simply an object or is he an active subject? J. S. Whale, in a series of memorable lectures before the undergraduates of the University of Cambridge, once said:

What is the truth about the nature and the end of man? This is the ultimate question behind the vast debate, the desperate struggle, of our time. Ideologies—to use the ugly modern jargon—are realy anthropologies; they are answers to that question which man has not ceased to ask every since he began asking questions at all; namely, what is Man? (Christian Doctrine, Cambridge, 1941, p. 35).

And J. A. Mackay, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, has said the same thing: “The titanic struggle now raging in the world may be regarded as at bottom a conflict between opposing views of man and his status in the universe” (Heritage and Destiny, London, 1945, p. 38).

The Christian conception of man is based on two simple and fundamental propositions: that man is created by God and redeemed by Christ.

In the first place, Christians believe that each man bears upon him the impress of God’s handiwork. After the conversion of the Emperor Constantine legislation was passed abolishing the branding of criminals and debtors on the face, since it is the image of divine beauty. Each man, so Christians affirm, is to be reverenced and respected as the creation of God.

It was this fact which moved the early Christians to utter their impassioned protest against the universal practice of infanticide—the heartless exposure of unwanted children on the mountainsides to be mauled and devoured by wild beasts. It was Adolf Deissmann who discovered on a piece of papyrus a letter by an Egyptian laborer addressed to his wife. She was expecting a baby, and this is what he wrote: “If it is a boy, let it live; if it is a girl, cast it out” (Light from the Ancient East, London, 1927, p. 168). Within three hundred years the Christians had swept this evil from the world—and orphanages and hospitals showed a more excellent way.

In the second place the Christian faith affirms that, for the world’s redemption, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16a). Our attitude to each man is necessarily conditioned by the costly and sacrificial nature of God’s love for us. “If God so loved us,” the Apostle says, “we ought also to love one another” (1 John 4:11).

In the year 1554 the scholar Muretas lay desperately ill. The surgeons proposed to operate. They were not primarily concerned with the success of the operation, but rather with the nature of the operation, which, in any case, was more like an experiment in vivisection. They were interested in the nature of his symptoms prior to death. Not knowing that he was a scholar, nor that he spoke Latin, the one said to the other: “Fiat experimentum in corpore vili” (“Let the experiment be tried on this vile body”). “Vilem animan appellas,” came a voice from the bed, “pro qua Christus non dedignatus est mori?” (“Dost thou call that soul vile for which Christ was content to die?”) (T. R. Glover, Jesus in the Experience of Man, New York, 1921, p. 222). The rebuke was timely and it was just.

The question is: what is our attitude to those we dislike, or with whom we disagree? Do we say, with a contemptuous lift of the head, a sneer of the lips, “dung and scum”; or, do we say, in the immortal words of John Bradford, when he saw criminals being led to execution: “There, but for the grace of God, go I” (D. N. B., in loc.)?

It is easy to admire those richly endowed with natural gifts; it is not so easy to like, let alone to love, the physically handicapped, the socially maladjusted, the mentally retarded. The Christian, at any rate, is bound to see the life of man in the light of God, and to say, with the Apostle Paul, “the love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Cor. 5:14). He dare not say, “dung and scum”; he must say, “a brother for whose sake Christ died” (1 Cor. 8:11).

A realization of man’s true nature and high destiny will save us from cynicism, and nerve us for service.

Cover Story

Dare We Renew the Controversy?

Carl F. H. Henry

Part 3: The Contemporary Restoration

Fundamentalism, despite its problems of temperament, is a theology reflective of biblical supernaturalism in the conflict against the unbelief of modernism. Therefore we particularly need to understand fundamentalism in its theological formulations. In so doing, we may clarify our personal responsibility, to divorce biblical supernaturalism from its stigma of temperament, and to know it for what it reflects in truth: the unchanging realities of special divine revelation.

Most recent literature dismisses fundamentalism in terms of temperament and ignorance. Little significance is given to the movement as biblical supernaturalism in continuing conflict with theological unbelief. A few exceptions sensed that the role of Christian doctrine was the basic issue at stake, and seem almost monumental on this account. Theodore G. Soares, for example, in Three Typical Beliefs (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1937), states the issue unabashed: “Fundamentalism is as old as the Reformation, though the name is of recent origin. The differences that have separated the Protestant sects have been peripheral; the great doctrines of the orthodoxy have been central, held by all. About half a century ago the inroads of liberalism caused the conservative elements in all the denominations to draw together.… Asserting that there could be no compromise on the unchanging fundamentals of the Christian faith, they adopted as a rallying cry the name of ‘fundamentalist.’ They claimed that they were reaffirming the faith as Luther held it, and Calvin, and Knox … and Wesley, and the great missionaries and evangelists, and most of the theologians until very recent times. And in that claim they were undoubtedly correct. The great Protestant creeds enunciated the doctrines which are now called ‘fundamentalist’ ” (pp. 37 f.).

It is hardly accurate, therefore, to depict the modernist fundamentalist controversy as rising from an attempt to freeze church doctrine “in terms which the fundamentalists chose” (Fosdick, The Living of These Years, p. 157).

This fact of doctrinal soundness in the struggle with modernism compelled men who were not fundamentalist in temperament or in affiliation to defend the movement, and to associate themselves with its championing of biblical defenses. For over against modernism’s abandonment of the miracles of Christmas and Good Friday and Easter, and of a sacred view of history and of the Bible, fundamentalism stood firmly on the side of scriptural theology and the historic Christian faith.

The Return To Doctrine

One of the remarkable turns in the theology of the recent past is that theologians who once shared the liberal viewpoint, now confess that this perspective was forged from a standpoint of secular unbelief.

Today’s increasing stress on doctrines essential to biblical Christianity coincides in many respects with the doctrinal emphases of the fundamentalist controversy. No fact of recent Protestant theology is more conspicuous than its emphasis that apart from the clear recognition of the supernaturalness, nay the deity, of Christ, only the shadows of Christianity remain.

Since 1927 Barth has championed the virgin birth of Jesus against almost a century of speculative doubt and denial by the liberal tradition, and likewise against such contemporaries as Brunner within his own neo-orthodox tradition. Barth’s comments on Brunner’s position on the virgin birth are even somewhat reminiscent of the older criticisms directed by fundamentalists against modernist denials of a generation ago: “Brunner’s denial of the Virgin birth is a bad business.… It throws an ambiguous light over the whole of his Christology.” Indeed, he echoes sympathetically the complaint of Berdyaev: “When I reached the passage in which Brunner confesses that he does not believe in Jesus Christ’s birth of the Virgin, or at least confronts it with indifference … it seemed to me as though everything had now been cancelled, as though everything else was now pointless” (The Doctrine of the Word of God, Vol. I, Part 2, p. 184).

Barth even writes: “It is no accident that … the Virgin birth is paralleled by … the miracle of the empty tomb. These two miracles belong together.… The Virgin birth at the opening and the empty tomb at the close of Jesus’ life bear witness that this life is a fact marked off from the rest of human life” (p. 182).

While Barth assuredly does not affirm all that an evangelical doctrine of atonement requires, he does speak of the sinless Christ who suffers in our stead (p. 152), bearing the wrath of God which must fall on sinful man (p. 157). Barth writes that God “takes upon Himself the sin and guilt and death of man, that laden with it all He stands surety for man” (p. 378). He writes of “the humanity of Jesus Christ … characterized by the bearing of our sins” and “abandoned to punishment, suffering and death” (p. 428). Barth acknowledges that “with the doctrine of the atonement, we come to the real centre … of dogmatics and Church proclamation” (p. 882).

The doctrine of Christ’s second coming likewise belongs to essential Christianity. In his earlier writings Barth’s eschatological teaching was leavened by an excessive contrast of historical time and eschatological time. This contrast has been modified somewhat, if not yet satisfactorily, by way of reaction to Bultmann’s consignment of the Christological events to myth and symbol. Barth now stresses that the Church exists on earth in the interval between the ascension and the second coming (pp. 692 f.).

Even with respect to Scripture as the norm of Christian doctrine, Barth has given us many statements which, as far as they go, have an evangelical ring. The Church, he tells us, is created and maintained by the Word of God, and is governed by that Word: “by the Word of God in the form of the testimony to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ set down in Scripture. To say that Jesus Christ rules the Church is to say that Holy Scripture rules the Church” (p. 693). Barth not only asserts the priority of the Scriptures over sources of divine knowledge affected by the Fall, but he says bluntly that “if the Church dared simply to abandon the sign of the Bible dominating its worship and instruction, it would be the end of Protestantism” (p. 460). Indeed, he even acknowledges that “the right doctrine of Holy Scripture” “must always be sought and found in exegesis and therefor in Holy Scripture itself” (p. 462).

Dramatic Change

The dramatic element in this theological reversal is simply this: in the first third of our century theological initiative lay with those who labeled the defenders of of these doctrines as obscurantists; today, in contrast, the prominent theological thrust defines the discard and neglect of these doctrines as violence to Christianity. A basic fundamentalist thesis has been vindicated: the intrinsic genius of Christianity demands proclamation of doctrines that fundamentalism upheld in the controversy with liberalism.

It would be overstatement to imply that in the recovery of these doctrinal emphases Barth and the neo-orthodox theologians return in all essentials to an historic evangelical exposition. That is not the case.

Perhaps G. C. Berkouwer has given the most constructive critical evangelical appraisal of Barthian theology in The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (1956). Without in the least depreciating Barth’s refutation of the older modernism, Berkouwer addresses most pertinent questions to Barth’s “theology of the Word of God,” lest we uncritically assume that the Barthian plea for a Christological-Christocentric theology presents a thoroughly evangelical and biblical exposition of revealed sovereign divine grace in Christ. Philosophical categories in the Barthian exposition of creation, election, reconciliation and eschatology leave Berkouwer quite convinced that the triumphant grace motif in this neo-orthodox form compromises biblical theology and blunts the purity of the Gospel.

Neo-Orthodoxy And The Bible

Important motivational differences distinguish the neo-orthodox from the fundamentalist interest in doctrine. Neo-orthodoxy has no intention of reinstating a fixed and final theology. Indeed, it refuses even to concede that biblical theology is revealed. Doctrines, even prophetic and apostolic doctrines, are treated as devout theological reflection, not as revealed theology.

Beneath this halting return to the Bible lurks a dialectical prejudice that imparts an anti-intellectual turn to the neo-orthodox view of divine self-disclosure and hence to its definitions of revelation and inspiration. God’s revealing activity is sketched in terms of personal encounter beyond the grasp of human concepts, therefore sealing off any divine transmission of truths and words. Nowhere is the Barth-Brunner theology more disappointing than in thus exalting Schleiermacher’s objectionable definition of revelation. Indubitably neo-orthodoxy has supplemented and modified Schleiermacher’s view in numerous details. Its essential point, however, is retained, that God discloses no truths or doctrines involving himself and his purposes. Nowhere does neo-orthodoxy’s loud claim to honor the witness of Scripture fall upon stonier ground than its attempt to justify this anti-intellectual prejudice against the Bible. The evangelical exposition of inspiration has been nearer the heartbeat of the Bible when, in debating the relative merits and defects of the dictation, verbal, and concept theories, it at least held the line against anti-intellectual speculations about divine revelation and inspiration.

Contrary to conservative reliance on an authoritative Bible, the neo-orthodox doctrinal interest retains the liberal methodology. Barth still maintains the requirement, already stated in his early writings, that the Bible as such be distinguished from divine revelation (p. 463). Deference to biblical criticism compromises the religious finality of Scripture in the historic evangelical sense. To more than one interpreter Barthian dogmatics seems indeed marked for frustration in endeavoring to preserve the Bible as the witness of revelation, while at the same time restricting it as a witness to revelation. For this controlling postulate cannot survive the test of Scripture’s implications and assertions about itself. Here evangelical theology, insisting that the Divine Logos and Speech is addressed in human conceptions and words—how else could it be revelation?—is assuredly on the side of the biblical witness.

Barth indeed speaks of the “inspiringness” of the Bible, of its character as a frame wherein one is confronted by the encountering Christ. He fails, however, to acknowledge that inspiration or “inspiredness” which the New Testament ascribes to Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16), and on which evangelical theology therefore insists. The many passages in which the Old Testament prophets claim to convey the very words of God gain from Brunner the grudging admission of “a low order of revelation.” Yet nowhere does he reconcile this concession to verbal revelation with his basic theory of revelation as uncommunicable in concepts and words.

Barth, to be sure, tells us in a refreshing passage that “the biblical texts must be investigated for their own sake to the extent that the revelation which they attest does not stand or occur, and is not to be sought, behind or above them but in them.… If it is asked whether Christianity is really a book-religion, the answer is that strangely enough Christianity has always been and only been a living religion when it was not ashamed to be actually and seriously a book-religion” (pp. 494 ff.). Often his writings disclose a concern for textual and exegetical considerations that renegade liberalism had snubbed, and that even yet is lacking in some neo-orthodox theologians. Yet when Barth erpounds what Scripture teaches about its own inspiration, he reflects the prejudices of the dialectical theology. The dialectical evasion of the rational and verbal coherence of the Bible circumvents a doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture that corresponds to the witness of Scripture itself.

Barth wrongly invokes the witness of the Spirit to offset the need for stabilizing the words of Scripture as the Word of God. Nowhere does Barth really prove his case that the traditional view interposes the Bible as a “paper Pope” between Christ and the Church. Actually the modernist compromise of the authority of the Bible enabled critics to usurp the Lordship of Christ in the theological realm.

Christ And The Scriptures

There is a further consequence of deserting the high view of inspiration. Scripture itself loses the right to delineate the essential elements of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Although neo-orthodoxy calls for a revival of biblical theology, its formulation of Christian doctrine stresses whatever allegedly agrees with the revelation of the person of Christ. And evangelical theology must show enthusiasm for the Christocentric phrasing of revealed theology. But in neo-orthodoxy this principle operates critically and selectively in evaluating the data of Scripture. Scripture thereby no longer serves to refract what coheres with Christ’s person. Consequently, subjective factors constantly threaten the construction of Christian doctrine. This is seen in Brunner’s indifference to the doctrine of the virgin birth, despite Barth’s assertion that “the narratives of the Virgin birth were admitted to share in the gospel witness because of a certain inward, essential rightness and importance in their connection with the person of Jesus Christ” (p. 176). It is seen also in Brunner’s indifference to the empty tomb in relation to faith in Christ’s resurrection, whereas Barth notes that “its most illuminating moment” according to Mark’s Gospel “consists in the inconceivable fact of an empty sepulchre” (p. 114 f.), and that this outward sign guards against reducing resurrection from an event to a speculative idea (p. 179).

Barth’s speculative premises about divine self-revelation not only shape his departure from the historic view of Scripture, but determine also his general attenuation of evangelical doctrines, including his bias against the exposition of propitiation in the doctrine of atonement. Whenever convenient, neo-orthodoxy does not hesitate to shift its appeal from the nature of Christ to the witness of Scripture. But because the evangelical principle of the organic unity of the Bible is compromised, the dialectical approach accomplishes only a limited return to biblical theology and provides only a relative opposition to liberal theology. A crucial illustration is the hesitancy of dialectical theologians to maintain the full identity of Jesus of Nazareth with the Christ; the historical Jesus is for them a witness to the Christ. Here the detachment of the Christological from the scriptural principle actually threatens the central faith of the New Testament, namely, that Jesus of Nazareth is the zenith of divine self-revelation.

Immanence And Transcendence

Nonetheless, the new theology properly rejects the liberal doctrine of extreme immanence, to which the central Christian concepts had been conformed or had been deleted. The neo-orthodox statement of divine transcendence, however, appears reactionary. Whereas this new formulation of transcendence readmits some traditional and biblical fundamentals (e.g., the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection), it excludes others (e.g., propitiatory atonement) through its stress on God in his self-revelation as being always “subject, never object.” An exaggerated doctrine of divine transcendence is as harmful to the fortunes of biblical theology as an excessive doctrine of divine immanence. Twentieth-century theology incorporates this vulnerable approach to Scripture with speculative preconceptions of either divine transcendence or immanence. By imposing this procedure on biblical data, some elements of scriptural theology are accepted, others rejected. Actually, the limits of transcendence and immanence are fixed by all, not merely by some, Bible events and doctrines. It is this totality which guards against speculative distortions. Genuinely biblical theology views the divinely inspired Scriptures as the font from which, and from which alone, a trustworthy and adequate statement can be derived of those important and essential elements whose inward connection with the person of Christ must be maintained. Only the preservation of the total scriptural revelation justifies a theology’s claim to be biblical.

Divine-Human Encounter

Neo-orthodox theology has enlivened present theological discussion with a new, and rather wholesome, sensitivity to divine confrontation. The Christianity of the twentieth century had quite obscured the God who continually encounters and confronts man. Modernism had exchanged the divine initiative in special revelation for the human quest for God. Fundamentalism had stressed Christian experience in terms of doctrinal assent and outward social restraints, appended of course to an initial experience of rebirth whose vitality was to be renewed in periodic crises of spiritual surrender. Ritualistic churches dulled the edge of divine-human encounter through their recital of good news in a form which often struck modern men as monotonous and impotent. Twentieth-century man was face to face with death at every moment; if Christianity was to retain its relevance for him, it must somehow preserve him each moment face to face with life, with the ultimate, with God. The contemporary approximation of the New Testament emphasis on spiritual immediacy as preserved by the religion of the Mediator is therefore a gain. We who minister to this tensed generation dare not neglect the continual unveiling of God in Christ encountering every lost soul in creation, preservation, conscience, judgment, and the call to repentance and faith. Nor dare we neglect the sway of the confronting Christ over our own souls, framed by creation and refashioned by redemption primarily for a life of personal fellowship in his service. The disregard of this dimension of Christianity has doubtless done more to provoke the rise of modern religious cults than any other factor.

Sign Of Weakness

At the same time, the incessant neo-orthodox laboring of the theme of confrontation and encounter betrays a weakness. This neo-orthodox travail follows from the failure to adequately correlate the dynamics of present Christian experience with New Testament revelation. The fundamentalist confidence in a specially inspired communication of the knowledge of God and his purposes is sound. Scripture is not reducible to exalted religious insight; it is a literature of theological conviction uniquely shaped within an orbit of special divine revelation and inspiration. Nay, it is more; it is the normative and authoritative statement by which Christian faith and doctrine must be tested.

Task Of Christian Philosophy

A fresh exploration of the interrelations of revelation and reason (in view of man’s possession of the image of God created and sullied, and renewed in redemption) is one of the present imperatives. The historic Augustinian-Calvinistic conception of the relation of revelation and reason holds magnificent relevance for a generation reaching for a transcendent God, while yet concerned for the rational integration of all life’s experiences. Modernism’s surrender to the secularization of science, of education, and of cultural pursuits generally resulted directly from separating these spheres from the claims of revelation.

The way theology defines the relation of revelation and reason will color its comprehension of Christianity and culture, Christianity and science, Christianity and philosophy, no less than the exposition of Christian doctrine and apologetics. If divine revelation stands in essential contrast to human reason, or if it impinges only dialectically upon the human mind, so that divine revelation cannot be grasped in concepts and words, then a Christian philosophy is a vain hope. It is part of the glory of evangelical theology that it rises above the modern contrast between God-truth and world-truth which divides human reason and precludes the intellectual integration of experience.

The recovery of interest in special divine revelation is one of the gracious providences of our century. It comes significantly at a time when the world must contend with the tactical initiatives of Communism and of irreligion. Protestant modernism deflected Western Christianity’s theological interest from biblical revelation to natural theology.

This retrograde idealistic philosophy only briefly resisted a further decline to humanism. Evangelicals once reveled in the divine oracles; the modernists now asked whether God exists. Modernism’s surrender of biblical revelation finally enmeshed American Christianity in the loss of the self-revealed God; in the noncommunist world, as well as the communist, naturalism surged to ascendancy. Now that special revelation is Once again recognized as integral to Hebrew-Christian redemptive religion, it becomes a duty of evangelical theology to conserve this gain, and to shield it from speculative misunderstanding.

The message of divine creation and redemption comprehends both the individual life in its private growth and the redeemed man in all his social and cultural life. The awareness of biblical revelation as relevant to the whole of life grants contemporary civilization the living prospect of a rationally satisfying explanation of human aspirations and problems.

TO BE CONTINUED

This is the third of four abridgments of lectures on “Evangelical Responsibility in Contemporary Theology” delivered by Editor Carl F. H. Henry during the centennial observance of the Christian Reformed Church in America. The series will be concluded in the next issue.

Cover Story

What Young People Need

Henry Rische

The label delinquent implies a lack of something—a “falling short.” In the instance of a taxpayer it is money. What is it in the case of a juvenile?

It isn’t money. True, “the love of money is the root of all evil,” and the lack of it figures in many outbreaks of juvenile delinquency. In the case histories of delinquents, however, one also finds young people from well-to-do families. Indeed, some of the worst offenders have parents who pamper them with extravagant allowances.

Nor is it lack of home comforts. That a slum environment fosters behavior problems is a social welfare axiom. However, blighted neighborhoods have no monopoly on delinquency. In some suburban communities of high real estate values and well-kept homes authorities have more problems with refractory young people than in run-down tenement areas, as theater managers and highway patrols will testify.

It isn’t lack of physical strength. The popular notion that the delinquent is a weakling, an “underprivileged runt,” is not borne out by statistics, according to a survey of “bad boys” and “good boys” by Dr. Sheldon Glueck, Harvard criminologist. On the whole, the bad boy is likely to be physically stronger than the good boy.

It isn’t low mentality. A certain lack of intelligence obviously lies behind all criminal conduct. The frequency of delinquency, however, is not determined by a high or a low IQ. In fact, the delinquent characteristically boasts of “being smart.”

Adult Dereliction

Delinquent, teen-ager, rebel—the words have been used so freely that they have become class labels. The cases and the causes have been pinpointed with clinical exhaustiveness. They present a disturbing and complex picture in which many fingers have a hand. With the delinquency of minors go the four D’s of adult contribution: Dereliction of duty, Divorce, Drunkenness, and Debauchery.

The remedies resorted to are largely restrictive and penal measures, dictated by the immediate emergency. Long-range prevention is recognized as more effective, but it takes so long and for present purposes it’s too late. Besides there’s some uncertainty whether to start with the young chick or the mother hen. Which comes first?

And yet, while the police increase their vigilance, judges stiffen their fines, principals tighten their rules, and parents question their miscreant children, the conviction persists that something more than halters and gendarmes and regimented pastime is needed to keep young people from straying.

Role Of Religion

The search for the answer to this need exposes a remarkable obduracy in human reasoning. In all the volumes of scientific books and the stacks of candid magazine explorations in juvenile delinquency, there is little reference to the possible importance of religion as the answer to the problem of youthful delinquency. As an example of this footnote status of religion in the study of the youth problem we have the thick, fine-print report of the congressional investigation of juvenile delinquency, which covered the nation but in 250 pages contains only two slight references to religion. One is a suggestion that the church provide more recreation for young people; the other is a negative note bearing out the statistic that for every dollar given for the work of the church ten dollars are spent on crime.

This faint regard for religion as a factor in social welfare does not necessarily imply spiritual disrespect. What it does seem to indicate is that “the notion is still very prevalent that religion is a beautiful lyrical element which hallows our Sundays and haunts our memories but does not come to life and effectuality in our everyday problems” (“American Youth in Trouble”).

“A resultful contemplation of juvenile delinquency is hard to come by without the consideration of religion as of major importance. For what is lacking in the delinquent? Not always mental competence, not always knowledge of right and wrong, not always spending money, not always opportunity for a good time, not always all the comforts of home. There are young people who have all this and yet delinquent. What is lacking?”

An old book, which from time to time reveals itself as a word of authority and an up-to-date manual on human nature, makes this statement corroborated by history: “The thoughts and imaginations of a man’s heart are evil from his youth.”

The Word of God is a pioneer in character analysis when it observes: “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts.” Its case histories are so pertinent that a Los Angeles prosecutor in a trial of youthful rebels cited Scripture to describe the modern delinquents: “Lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection … incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.”

It echoes the question of every thinking youth and all those concerned with the welfare of young people: “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?”

The answer is: “By taking heed thereto according to thy Word.” This Book of Books provides youth with the stability of character to withstand the enticements of evil men who say, “Come with us,” who walk in darkness and “whose ways are crooked.” It instills in youth the discretion to resist the call of the strange woman, “Come let us take our fill of love,” whose end is “bitter wormwood” and whose house is “the way to hell.”

A Greater Lack

When a California youth authority, Jim Rayburn, was asked for the underlying reasons for juvenile delinquency, he pointed to neglect in training of children and laxness in discipline at home and in school as two major factors. But beyond it all he saw a greater lack. “The basic cause of the whole situation,” Rayburn said, “is that our young people have no knowledge of God.”

That, says this attorney at law, is the main reason for delinquency, which, in his opinion, is a serious situation, an enduring trend with prospects of getting worse, unless “something very drastic” is done about it. That something, which Rayburn considers the one answer to the problem, is this: “The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only solution.”

The inculcation of general moral precepts is not enough. Young people must have the empowering motivation of faith in and dedication to the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

The wayward one in Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology found that the revulsion rising in his heart against the wiles of a black-eyed coquette was prompted by the thought of a woman of good influence, the remembrance of Emily Sparks, “in the days when she taught him in Spoon River.” And what was this teacher’s main message: “Do you remember the letter I wrote you of the beautiful love of Christ?”

Dr. Walter A. Maier, one of America’s great voices of the air, had this to say in a message on the American home: “I submit this as a very definite principle, that the first and foremost requirement in the attainment of home happiness is the sincere conviction, firmly accepted by every member of the household, that Jesus Christ is their personal Savior.

“Why is it that our nation is being inundated by a flood of juvenile crime? Why is it that there is such a rude disregard of the requirements of purity and chastity in American social circles?”

“Is all this not finally to be traced to the ugly fact that many homes, calloused and stolidly indifferent because of cold commercialism and endless pleasure seeking have found no room for the old fireplace motto, God Bless Our Home, and have crowded out the truth, Christ is the Head of This House?”

What youth needs is the spirit-guided conscience to say, “How can I do this great evil and sin against God?” and the Christian conviction to follow the principle, “Keep thyself pure.”

END

Henry Rische was for 17 years a West Coast pastor in the Lutheran church (Concordia Synod), and is presently editor of the family magazine This Day. He is a former staff correspondent for the Sacramento Bee, and is author of the book American Youth in Trouble.

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