Theology

Bible Book of the Month: Exodus

David W. Kerr

No doubt many persons today who have never read the book of Exodus are familiar with the contents of its earlier chapters. Cecil B. DeMille is responsible for acquainting the public with one of the most important phases of biblical history through his production The Ten Commandments. Exodus, as its name indicates, is the story of the “going out” of the people of Israel from Egypt. As such, it is a book of redemption telling how God redeemed the Israelites from bondage to be a people for his own possession.

Analysis of Exodus cannot be based upon the present chapter divisions. After a brief introduction in the first six verses, the book may be divided into seven main sections as follows:

1. The sufferings of Israel in Egypt, 1:7 to 7:7.

2. The ten plagues upon Egypt, 7:8 to 13:16.

3. Deliverance by the power of God, 13:17 to 18:27.

4. The covenant at Mount Sinai, 19:1 to 24:18.

5. Directions for the tabernacle, chaps. 25 to 31.

6. The broken covenant renewed, 32:1 to 35:3.

7. Erection and dedication of the tabernacle, 35:4 to 40:38.

Some Bible students like to find in each book of the Bible a “key” verse which supposedly expresses the theme of the book. One should not suppose that biblical writers presented their themes in single verses, leaving their readers to discover in each case what the verse might be. In the case of Exodus, however, there is a rather general survey of the content and meaning of the book in Ex. 19:4–6:

“Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

Critical Storm Center

Exodus has been a storm center of discussion among critics for various reasons. There is a very prominent element of the miraculous and of what might be called special providence. Obviously the writer regarded many of the events he recorded as being the result of supernatural causes rather than purely natural ones. There were happenings which were above and perhaps even contrary to what may be called the course of nature. A number of modern writings on the subject of biblical history attempt to explain such matters as the crossing of the Red Sea, the bringing of water from the rock, the manna, and even the burning bush in terms of natural phenomena. Unfortunately the result is often to explain them away. A recent example of this is found in the Rand McNally Bible Atlas, by Emil G. Kraeling, a volume which in many other respects is attractive and useful.

In three places in Exodus (cf. 17:14, 24:4, 34:27) Moses is said to have made written records. One of these was a record of a conflict with the Amalekites. The others were records of the laws of the divine covenant. This is the first mention in the Bible of the writing of any portion of the Bible itself. Older literary criticism went so far as to deny that any part of the Pentateuch could be Mosaic. Today the situation is different. Dr. Bernhard W. Anderson has stated that “on the basis of recent studies of the form and content of laws in the Pentateuch, we can affirm with a high degree of probability that the Jewish tradition which traces the law back to Moses has a solid basis in historical fact” (Understanding the Old Testament, 1957, p. 55). To the writer of this article it seems just as unreasonable to suppose that Moses confined his writing to the few fragments of law which some scholars are willing to assign to him as it is to suppose that the Pentateuch as we have it came entirely from him. It is also reasonable to assume that the intimate knowledge of Egyptian customs and conditions displayed in Genesis and Exodus came from one who was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.”

The attitude of literary criticism of Exodus has undergone another important change in the last two generations. Scholars who followed the leadership of Wellhausen maintained that the covenant between Israel and Jehovah (or Yahweh) originated only in the 7th century B. C. at the time of King Josiah. This view was upheld in this country as recently as 1941 and again in 1948 by Robt. Pfeiffer in his Introduction to the Old Testament. Archeological studies, however, have convinced others that the covenant relation marked the actual transition from tribalism to national consciousness under the leadership of Moses. The heart of the covenant, according to G. E. Mendenhall (Biblical Archeologist, vol. XVII, 2, May, 1954) was the Decalogue. It is gratifying that extra-Biblical evidence has been found to confirm the Biblical narrative.

Fruitful Preaching Source

Exodus has always been a fruitful source of preaching material. Several of the prophets draw upon the story of redemption to press home their own demands for reform and for a return to the covenant engagement. The Exodus provides a vital background for much of New Testament teaching. Augustine wrote one of the earlier Christian commentaries on the book. It would be difficult to count the books that have been written in various languages on the Ten Commandments alone, to say nothing of the many thousands of unpublished sermons which have been preached on them.

A noticeable feature of Exodus is its richness of revelation of the divine character. The purpose of God’s redeeming Israel is that they may know that he is Jehovah, the Lord. He is the God of the whole world, superior to the supposed gods of Egypt, who are discountenanced by the various plagues. God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises to the patriarchs and therefore, by implication, to all his covenants, is shown by his activity for his people. He is the God of justice, as indicated by his law. He is the God of compassion, the Father of all mercies, forgiving the iniquity of his penitent folk. He is the God who tabernacles with his people. The covenant name Jehovah (or Yahweh) is in itself a revelation. Whatever may be the theory of the scholar as to when this name first came into use, there is very general agreement that it is intended to convey to Israel a new understanding of their God. The student will find both the older and the more recent literature on this divine name a revealing study.

The Student’S Tools

For Exodus, as for Genesis, there are commentaries whose usefulness is retricted by their devotion to documentary hypotheses. Indeed, some of the most helpful literature is to be found not in commentaries but in other types of books. In the article on Genesis in Christianity Today (Mar. 4, 1957) several of these in the fields of archeology and Bible history were suggested. In the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia will be found discussions of some of the pertinent problems of the Exodus, such as the date and the numbers of the Israelites. Some of this material, however, is outdated by more recent findings in archeology. An older work which is enlightening in its content and devotional in style is Alfred Edersheim’s The Exodus and the Wanderings in the Wilderness.

Among the commentaries there will not be found as many separate works on Exodus as for some other Old Testament writings. Two of the older and more conservative works which commend themselves to the writer’s opinion are the work on Exodus in the Keil and Delitzsch series and that by F. C. Cook in The Speaker’s Bible Commentary. The outstanding modern work is, of course, the Interpreter’s Bible, in which the exegesis is done by J. C. Rylaarsdam and the exposition by J. E. Park. The work contains many conclusions with which the writer of this article cannot agree and it tends to fragmentize Exodus in what seems an unnecessary fashion. Nevertheless, there are many excellent insights into the meaning of the text and a wholesome recognition of the essential theological ideas which the reader should grasp.

For a good presentation of the various names of God found in the Old Testament, most of which are present in Exodus, the reader is advised to consult the recent volume by Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, and the pertinent sections of Geerhardus Vos’ Biblical Theology.

The tabernacle and its services are regarded by the New Testament as foreshadowing the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. This has given rise to the study of typology through most of the period of the Christian church. Vos’ work mentioned above avoids most of the unwholesome extremes to which some writers have gone. A much more extensive study of the symbolism of the tabernacle is that of Patrick Fairbairn in his Typology of the Scriptures.

Exodus stands in close relation to the rest of the Bible. It is the story of the fulfilment of covenant promises made in Genesis. It is the record of deliverance which is celebrated in the Psalms, the historical books and the prophets. The temples of Solomon, of Ezra and of Herod all took their general design from that of the tabernacle described in Exodus. When John states “the Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us,” he reflects the language of Exodus, where God dwelt in the midst of his people. The assertion of Paul, “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us,” takes its meaning from the Passover feast as described in Exodus 12. The apostle Peter in 1 Peter 2:9 uses the precise words of Exodus 19:6 to describe the Christian church as the Israel of God. A great deal of the Epistle to the Hebrews is taken up with showing that the “ordinances of divine service” and the “earthly sanctuary” of the Old Testament were intended to foreshadow the saving work of Jesus Christ. He who is well acquainted with the Book of Exodus will have a deeper insight into the grace of God which brings salvation.

DAVID W. KERR

Barabbas, Annas and Pilate

Christianity Today October 28, 1957

Christianity in the World Today

One of Latin America’s most beloved poets, Ruben Dario, finishes an ode to Christopher Columbus with this sideswipe at the dictatorships and violence which have all too often characterized the volcanic republics south of the Rio Grande:

While Christ walks the streets, feeble and frail,

Barabbas flaunts his slaves and chariots.

Christopher Columbus, unhappy admiral,

Pray to God for the land which you discovered!

Barabbas today has not only his slaves and his chariots, but his tanks and jet fighters as well. Carnage in Cienfuegos, assassination in Guatemala, kidnaping in Trujillo, bombs in Buenos Aires—these are the order of the day in lands where people still prefer Barabbas to Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself was once tempted to use the methods of Barabbas to establish his kingdom. He could have achieved sudden and universal popularity if he had chosen to espouse the political cause of rebellion against Rome. Satan said to him in the desert, “All this power will I give thee … if thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.”

But instead of violence, Jesus chose the path of humiliation, love and sacrifice. He refused to endorse the methods of political banditry.

Much of Latin America today is in the hands of Barabbas. Its dictatorships have ranged from the benevolence of Guatemala’s liberal Ubico to the conservative egotism of Colombia’s Rojas Pinilla; from the comic-opera grandiosity of Trujillo in the Dominican “republic” to the demagoguery of Peron in Argentina; from sugar-rich Batista in Cuba to oil-rich Perez Jimenez in Venezuela. All have had this in common—they have climbed to power over the dead bodies of their compatriots in revolutions of varying ferocity.

Possibly the most dangerous manifestation of Barabbas in Latin America is the existence of a strong and organized Communism in nearly all of the lands to the south of us. Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina—nowhere in Latin America can one escape contact with Red agents and Marxist doctrines. This is not surprising to those who are familiar with the dead authoritarianism of the official church and the economic feudalism still prevailing as an integral part of Latin America’s Spanish heritage.

Ex-president Galo Plaza of Ecuador, referring to this double legacy of religious authoritarianism and economic feudalism, recently stated that it is a short step from these factors to dictatorship. He could have added, “and to Communism,” for coincidentally present in Latin America are all the other factors which provide fertile soil for the Marxist agitators—a rising spirit of nationalism, a phenomenal industrial boom, the emergence of labor as a political factor, and a careful cultivation of Latin minds by social reformers of the left. Add to these ingredients the fact that Latin America has not found spiritual satisfaction in Roman Catholicism, and you have a perfect hothouse for communistic insemination.

Although Romanism opposes Communism with all its strength, it has at the same time created the very conditions upon which the Red cause thrives. By its accumulation of superstition and formalism in Latin America, as well as by its indifference to the economic and social welfare of the masses, the church of Rome has not only defaulted as a possible solution to the rule of Barabbas—it has cultivated the very factors which have opened the doors to communist activity.

For the moment, in one form or another, Barabbas is firmly entrenched.

At the other end of the political spectrum in Latin America can be discerned the shadowy, black-robed form of clericalism. This is Annas, the sinister, scheming religionist, whose interests are more political than spritual. Twice a high priest, and patriarch of a high priestly family, his were the money changers whose tables Jesus indignantly overturned. Fattened by a lucrative temple revenue, Annas is more interested in cultivating the favor of secular rulers than in ministering to the spiritual needs of a hungry people. Religion with him is a profitable career, not a faith. Cynically, he plays the game of power politics.

Nowhere in the world today has Annas had the opportunities afforded by long and uncontested tenure as in Latin America. Recognition of Roman Catholicism as the official religion, compulsory religious education in the schools, education in many instances controlled by the priests, concordats with Rome, government patronage of cathedrals, churches and mission territories—for the centuries that have passed since the conquistadores first brought the sword and the crucifix together to the Hispanic New World, Romanism has been the unchallenged (although, paradoxically, frequently neglected) religion of Latin America.

That this religion is superficial more often than not, cannot be denied. In many instances the Indian idol has become the Roman saint, and the crucifix has thinly disguised the indigenous paganism of the Aztecs and the Incas. Nor is the Romanism of European vintage much more profound. Possibly as low as 10 or 15 per cent of the Catholics in Latin America are truly practicing their religion. Theirs is a faith of outward convenience and of social propriety. It goes no deeper. I have been told of one country where the masses are said to be the briefest in the world—ordinarily one priest preaches the sermon while another says the mass in order to hurry things up for the parishioners!

Rome itself considers Latin America an unchurched mission field. Foreign priests are pouring in. The Spanish-speaking lands may be nominally Catholic, but the hold of Catholicism is tenuous. The hand of Annas is weakening, his grip failing. And as he sees his onetime power slip, he struggles frantically to maintain a degree of political, if not spiritual, control over the Latin American hemisphere. This explains the persecutions in Colombia—the ecclesiastical pressures in Mexico—the political maneuvers of Rome in so many of the republics. But, Annas is fighting a losing battle.

Still another important figure on the Latin American scene is that of Pilate, the cultured, worldly-wise, liberal-minded procurator who by his spinelessness sent Christ to the Cross. Pilate knew better, but he tried to pacify Annas and his crowd—he compromised his ideals on the altar of expediency. And in this he symbolized the political liberalism of Latin America.

Evangelical Christianity owes a large debt to the liberals of Latin America—the Masons and the free-thinkers, the men who stood up to the Jesuits a generation or two ago and by the sheer weight of their intellect and conviction turned the political charters of their lands into liberal channels. Latin American liberalism produced great leaders and great educators, and opened the doors to Protestant missions.

But in the last generation, political liberalism, lacking a spiritual core, has sold itself down the river. Being devoid of religious and ethical content, it has yielded to expediency. And the average Latin American liberal today is married in the church to a Catholic girl, has his children baptized in the church, educates them in church schools, and when the pressure is on he sells short his liberal ideals.

If Pilate at one time seemed to be the great white hope of Latin America, he is now simply the foolish little man who tried to wash his hands of responsibility.

Revolution, clericalism and liberalism. In none of these has Latin America found the solution to her moral, spiritual and political problems. Revolution breeds violence. Clericalism nurtures bigotry. Liberalism spawns indifference. Neither Barabbas, nor Annas, nor Pilate has provided what Latin America wants and needs.

But the three men have one thing in common—nothing much was heard from any of them after Good Friday. They are definitely pre-Resurrection figures in the Holy Week pageant of our Lord’s Passion. Up through Good Friday they each had their following. But on Easter mom they were eclipsed and condemned by the shining glory of the Risen Lord.

This Reformation Day of 1957 finds us in the Holy Week of Latin America. Barabbas, Annas and Pilate are struggling for the Hispanic soul, while off to one side, a crown of thorns on his brow, stands the Lord Christ, the Eternal Son of God. For the moment he is a minority. He stands in apparent defeat. But the day will come—very soon—when he shall break asunder the bonds of death.

Humanly speaking, it is unlikely that the Reformation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries will repeat itself in Europe. Catholic Italy is overshadowed by the Vatican. Catholic France is vitiated with the inroads of secularism. Elsewhere, Moscow is in control, but Latin America is different. In a climate of relative liberty, the Gospel of Christ has made tremendous advances. Already like the brightness which precedes the dawn, there are signs of an evangelical awakening.

If it please God, a glorious Resurrection Day is just ahead. For Latin America, Jesus Christ is the answer!

• This special interpretive article was written for CHRISTIANITY TODAY by W. Payton Roberts, staff correspondent. See also Dr. Taylor’s article in this issue.

People: Words And Events

Active Laymen—One of the largest laymen’s gatherings in recent history was held this month at Miami when the Presbyterian Men’s Conference drew almost 10,000. Among the speakers were Dr. Theodore F. Adams, President of the Baptist World Alliance, Dr. Billy Graham, Mr. Howard Butt, Jr., and the Rev. J. Marcellus Kik, Associate Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

New Library—Princeton Theological Seminary in October dedicated its new Robert E. Speer Memorial Library, built at a cost of $1,700,000 and with a capacity of 400,000 books. It is said to house the largest and finest collection of theological books in the western hemisphere.

Lutheran Hour’s 25th—Lutherans celebrated the beginning of the 25th year of broadcasting the “Lutheran Hour” at a rally in Milwaukee recently, attended by 7,000 persons. The Lutheran Hour, of which the Rev. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann of New York is the speaker, is now heard over more than 1,250 network and independent stations around the world, and in 53 languages.

Leaving Gotham—Dr. John S. Wimbish will leave the pastorate of Calvary Baptist Church in New York at the end of the year, after seven and a half years of service there. A native of Georgia, Dr. Wimbish will return to the Southland to resume pastoral duties and evangelism within the Southern Baptist denomination.

Editorial Task—Emile Gabel, former editor of La Croix, Catholic daily published in Paris, told 400 delegates from 30 countries at the fifth World Congress of the Catholic Press at Vienna that Catholic journalists must not leave their readers in “editorial isolation.… to think out, in a vacuum, problems connected with current events,” but that they should discuss anything that concerns truth and justice and thus help to create informed Christians. “The Catholic press must propagate the teaching of the Gospels,” he said, “but this must not be done abstractly.”

Mission Milestone—The 80th anniversary of the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago was celebrated recently. Known all over the world for its “Unshackled” radio program, the mission is a landmark in Chicago, and the second oldest city mission in America. It is currently engaged in an expansion program to cost $420,000.

Ethics in Public Office—A committee of 12, including 5 religious leaders, has been appointed by Governor Orville Freeman of Minnesota to study ethical and moral standards in state government. The governor said he would ask the committee—first of its kind in the country, according to one political scientist—to come up with recommendations to foster greater integrity in public office and better service to the people’s interests.

Publishing Progress—The nation’s largest denominational publisher, The Methodist Publishing House, founded in 1789, recently opened its new two-million-dollar headquarters building in Nashville. About 1,000 persons are employed in Methodist publishing activities in Nashville, and another 1,000 in the 14 branches of the organization.

Personality Stories—Two new books from the pen of George Burnham, News Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, are being released this month. Prison is My Parish, the story of Park Tucker, Atlanta Penitentiary chaplain, has been published by Revell, and Billy Graham and the New York Crusade, by Mr. Burnham and Lee Fisher, is scheduled for release October 30 from Zondervan.

Only a Nickel—According to the Southern Baptist Handbook, “Mr. Average American” spends only 5¢ a day for religious and welfare causes. In contrast to this nickel, each day he spends 9¢ for tobacco, 15¢ for alcoholic Beverages, 22¢ for recreation, 58¢ for transportation including foreign travel, 59¢ for taxes, $1.12 for food and $2.30 for other household expenses such as rent, clothing, savings, medical and miscellaneous expense.

Conferences Prepare Far East Pastors

TOKYO, JAPAN—It is now regarded as evident, among Christian leaders of both East and West, that Asia will never be reached for Christ unless native pastors in their own countries do the job of evangelizing.

The time of the white missionary as an important factor is rapidly drawing to a close. No matter how appealing the foreigner’s message may be, and no matter how attractive his personality, it is still something packaged in America. Asians are looking to Asians for leadership.

Fierce tides of nationalism are rising in all the nations of the Far East, coupled with superior initiative of Communism in exploiting situations. The day has passed when an American can command respect simply because he is an American, but hordes of tourists, workers, government officials and church leaders, failing to recognize this, have pushed the public relations barometer to the storm stage.

Fully aware of the approaching new day, based on many years of experience in the Orient, Dr. Bob Pierce and his World Vision organization have been holding pastors’ conferences for the last three years. The big aim is to arouse the evangelistic zeal of pastors in the various countries, in order to leave behind a commanding voice for Christianity when the welcome mat is pulled from beneath the white man.

Outstanding speakers from America have been greatly used of God in the conferences, but each year there has been increased use of “team” speakers from the Far East. And it seems that delegates sit a little straighter in their seats and listen with greater concentration when an Asian is speaking.

An example of this was seen at the conference in Japan, attended by 800 pastors ranging from liberals to fundamentalists. Bishop Enrique C. Sobrepena of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, who serves as chairman of the East Asia Christian Conference, went to the rostrum. He told the ministers the same things, in effect, that they had heard many times from Western speakers, but he was an Asian speaking to Asians. He hit hard, in uncompromising language, on the main points found in Luke 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”

“This can only be done through Christ,” Bishop Sobrepena said, “and he is calling upon us as ministers in the great task of individual and world redemption. Those of us who would participate must be willing to bear our portion of the Cross like the great men of old—the Apostle Paul, Livingston and Carey. Sacrificial service is needed.”

In commenting on the significance of the pastors’ conferences, the Bishop said, “I think they have tremendous value. I don’t know of another agency in the Far East that could bring all the different factions together for fellowship, inspiration and instruction.”

Nothing should be detracted, however, from contributions made to the conferences by Dr. Pierce and his three principal associates from the United States and India. Their talented efforts were blessed of God, but they share the feeling that such unusual opportunities may not always be present.

Evaluations by three members of the team traveling with Dr. Pierce are as follows:

Dr. Paul S. Rees, pastor of First Covenant Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota:

“A ministry to ministers has an importance that may be described as geometric, since the effect of it runs so far and so rapidly. There is the sheer impressiveness of the number of ministers and church leaders who have attended the meetings. Not less than 3,500 in the first five! For another thing, there is the breadth of compass by which the conferences have been marked. In most cases, the whole gamut of Protestantism has been represented.

“Impressive also is the fact that these have been Asian leaders with whom we have been associated. Can anyone think of an area on this planet more strategically and crucially important for the Christian Church? From Indonesia on the south to Japan on the north, we have seen the breath of God blowing upon souls of his servants. And this has been as true when we were at grips with such preacher’s ‘shop’ as ‘How to Prepare a Sermon,’ as it has when we were seeking to define for ourselves as ministers that distinctive doctrine of ‘Grace’ that makes the Christian message ‘Gospel.’ ”

Dr. Richard C. Halverson, associate director of International Christian Leadership:

“The most significant aspect of the pastors’ conferences was what I would call ‘true ecumenity.’ Together in Christion fellowship were representatives of many divergent groups from the extremely informal, non-liturgical to the extremely formal and liturgical. There was a striking demonstration of unity and love in Christ among the delegates. In several instances, pastors were reconciled to those they had previously opposed and there was public admission of the reconciliation of groups.”

The Rt. Reverend Dr. Alexander Mar Theophilus, Bishop of the Mar Thoma Church, India:

“As Christian workers continue their work in their separate churches and congregations, they are liable to feel lonely and weak. Sometimes they may feel as Elijah felt—‘I alone am left.’ But in these conferences they come together in deep Christian fellowship around the Word, and realize the unity given in Jesus Christ. The deepening of their dedication and strengthening by the Holy Spirit has made them serve their congretions more effectively and be better pastors of their flocks. The need for evangelism in Asian countries, to be carried on by the Church in Asia, has been presented with greater force. Along with evangelism, the need was seen for witnessing to the love of Christ in acts of love in ministering to the needy in society by sacrificial service, and by the prophetic ministry in calling the nations to the will of God.”

Dr. Pierce: “The conferences have exceeded my greatest dream. We have seen men come together under the blood of Christ who had never before enjoyed fellowship. And we have seen them return to their cities, villages and jungle outposts with a new zeal for winning the lost. Entire tribes in mountain areas are being won for Christ by men of God who substitute action for programs. They have a simple belief—that God is who he says he is and will do what he says he will do. For all that is being accomplished, we must give God the credit. He is doing an unusual thing in Asia.”

A capsule review of the conferences, with the largest remaining to be held in Korea, is as follows:

Bandung, Java—597 registered. This was the first conference sponsored by World Vision in Indonesia, and marked the first time that various Protestant segments united for a common goal. In a church that evolved from a European background, there was a graciousness and drawing together by such groups as the Sundanese Church of Western Java, Christian Missionary Alliance Balanese, Assemblies of God and Chinese groups. Stiffness was broken down as the men ate, worshiped and prayed together. Now that the ministers have come to know one another, they will be offered more in the way of practical helps if a conference is held next year.

Cebu, Philippines—625 registered, representing an estimated 15 denominations. Since this was the third year of conferences in the Philippines, the format changed from the purely inspirational to practical counseling in particular problems—stewardship, homiletics and social responsibilities. Some ministers from remote islands journeyed as much as seven days to the conference.

Baguio, Philippines—811 registered, representing 33 denominations. Dr. Pierce felt this was the greatest and most fruitful conference he had ever held. The ministry of the Holy Spirit resulted in Bible-centered unity and love. A number of the leading clergymen in the Philippines came forward at a service in humble rededication of their lives. Twenty-five observers were present from the liturgical Philippine Catholic Church.

Poli, Formosa—600 registered. The largest group, by far, came from the Presbyterian Church, greatly in the majority in Formosa. An estimated 250 mountain pastors, many from aboriginal tribes, who were not Christians 12 years ago, were present. They received a larger view of the total church than they had known in their mountain areas. In the 12 years, more than 400 churches have opened in the mountains of Formosa as people go from tribe to tribe talking about Jesus Christ.

• The above report of religious conditions and perspectives in the Far East was written by George Burnham, News Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, on tour with Dr. Bob Pierce and other American Christian leaders who have been conducting pastors’ conferences and evangelistic meetings in the Philippines, Formosa, Japan and Korea. After a brief vacation, Mr. Burnham will resume his duties on the news desk of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, with the November 25 issue. In the interim, the news department is being handled by Peter deVisser, Editorial Associate.

Baptist Jubilee Advance

A five-year program of evangelization, starting in 1959, is being planned by the major Baptist conventions of the United States and Canada, to climax in a Third Jubilee Celebration in 1964, commemorating the first national organization of Baptists in America, the General Missionary Convention, formed in Philadelphia in 1814. This cooperative effort, called the Baptist Jubilee Advance, is being sponsored by the American Baptist Convention, the Baptist Federation of Canada, the Baptist General Conference of America, the National Baptist Convention of America, the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., the North American Baptist General Conference, and the Southern Baptist Convention, with cooperation of the Baptist World Alliance. Baptists in 101 countries around the world will participate in the six-year celebration. A two-year program of preparation is now in progress.

Crusade Aftermath

The General Assembly of the Protestant Council of the City of New York has approved an expanded one-million-dollar program of evangelism, establishment of a Protestant chapel at New York’s International Airport, and has announced plans for a Crusade for Church Attendance the first three months of 1958. In addition, representatives of 31 denominations projected establishment of Protestant information centers in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Disciples Plan For Future; Change Name

(This special report was prepared forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Dr. James DeForest Murch, prominent author and editor, ordained minister of the Disciples of Christ and a member of the Convention’s restudy commission and a director of the Disciples Historical Society.)

Christian unity—the traditional concern of the Disciples of Christ—was at the forefront of the 1957 Convention of that communion in Cleveland, Ohio, October 11–16. The Convention moved toward merger with the United Church of Christ (Congregational and Evangelical and Reformed) consummated in the same Cleveland Public Auditorium last June. It further strengthened ties with the ecumenical effort of the National Council and World Council of Churches.

This does not mean, however, that the 2,000,000 Disciples of Christ listed in the Convention’s Year Book and reported in the religious statistics of the USA are moving this same direction. The International Convention is prone to think of itself as “the mainstream” of the religious movement begun by Barton W. Stone, Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott and Benjamin Franklin early in the nineteenth century, but it is in fact only one of three groups tracing spiritual ancestry to that source. The Church of Christ (opposed to the use of instrumental music in worship) now numbers better than 1,000,000. The so-called “independent churches,” strictly biblical and evangelical in faith, number over 1,000,000. This leaves the Convention proper with a constituency of less than 1,000,000. The 2,000,000 “right wing” of the movement has no relationship with the National Council or World Council of Churches and is completely opposed to any union with the United Church of Christ.

The International Convention, however, is an organization of tremendous influence, headed by men capable in ecclesiastical diplomacy though mostly liberal in theology. The ICDC includes in its organizational framework educational, missionary, benevolent and other agencies significant in American Protestantism. Many ecumenical leaders in the NCC and the WCC were at one time prominent in Disciple leadership and “earned their spurs” in the efficiently-operated machinery of the Convention or its agencies.

The Cleveland Convention gave much time to reports and future plans of these agencies. Its announced theme was “His Love—We Share,” dealing with the 1957–58 agency emphases upon missionary education and benevolence.

The United Christian Missionary Society, largest of the agencies, in a 17,000-word report told of the work of 254 missionaries and 2,093 national leaders in 11 mission fields. Its budget last year was around $5,000,000 and it is building a capital fund of $3,000,000.

Especially through the women’s work in local churches, the UCMS exerts great influence in minister placement and in interchurch and agency relationships. Because of this fact, and its “open membership” and ecumenical policies, it has long been the chief “bone of contention” alienating “independent churches” from International Convention support. These churches now have a missionary program of their own, giving $2,000,000 annually to support over 400 missionaries in over 20 foreign fields.

International Convention agencies which tend to unify the churches are the National Benevolent Association, The Pension Fund and the Board of Church Extension. NBA, supporting 10 homes for the aged and 7 homes for children, reported assets of some $10,000,000 with revenues for the year of $3,000,000. Pension Funds for ministers reported assets of $23,354,136. Church Extension board has, since its beginnings, loaned some $35,000,000 to assist churches in building projects. These boards are wisely administered without discrimination.

The Board of Higher Education serves 32 colleges, universities and seminaries (enrollment, 25,000 students), including such well-known institutions as Texas Christian, Drake, Butler, and Phillips University. In this area the constant battle between conversatives and liberals has given rise to more than 20 strictly evangelical Bible schools and colleges—institutions not recognized by the Board—but training more than half of the young men studying for the ministry among Christian churches.

The Disciples of Christ Historical Society, serving all wings of the movement, reported progress in the erection of its $1,000,000 Thomas W. Phillips Memorial library and museum in Nashville.

Fringe agencies, representing varied interests, held meetings at Cleveland. On the “right” the National Evangelistic Association, sounded a strong evangelical note. Dean E. G. Homrighausen of Princeton gave three challenging addresses. On the “left” the controversial Disciples Peace Fellowship and the Campbell Institute promoted extremely liberal social and theological views. While meeting the needs of minority groups, such gatherings had little effect on the Convention.

Resolutions processed by the Committee on Recommendations had to do with social concerns such as farm incomes, minimum wages, economic assistance programs, foreign trade, social welfare, United Nations, disarmament, immigration and refugees, race relations and capital punishment. Pronouncements followed the usual pattern set by the National Council, but all were prefaced by a modifying statement to the effect that “human pronouncements must not be confused with the will of God.” Resolutions on Christian unity committed the Convention to complete cooperation with the WCC and NCC in its ecumenical objectives and programs.

Most significant was the approval of a projected $25,000,000 fund for establishing 1,500 new churches in the next few years. Inter-agency rivalry over administration of this project is being ironed out, and “independents” and “schismatics” will be excluded.

There is a marked tendency toward centralization of authority in the Convention with potentially larger control over the agencies and the churches. At Cleveland the name of the Convention was changed from the International Convention of Disciples of Christ (Christian Churches) to the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). Most of the local congregations bear the name Christian Church, not Disciples of Christ, and the action will eliminate much confusion. While the move was said to have no significance as to ecclesiastical structure or function, nevertheless many advocates of strictly congregational polity see a shift from a Convention of individual Disciples with agency service features to an eventual delegate convention officially representative of the churches and with growing powers over churches and agencies.

Most of the 8,000 registrants at Cleveland will prefer to remember the great assembly by the “Ecumenical Communion Service” on the Lord’s Day. The Convention had invited all Protestants in Cleveland to join them in the observance of the Lord’s Supper. A throng variously estimated at 10,000 or 15,000 partook of the bread and the wine together. Four hundred deacons from Greater Cleveland Christian churches served the emblems of the Lord’s death and suffering in just eight minutes. It was an impressive and soul-lifting service.

Traditionally the mass Communion Service has been the high point of national gatherings of the Disciples for 100 years. As a people they have always maintained the Lord’s Supper as the center of their worship and observe it every Lord’s Day. Their open communion practice is based on the belief that the observance is an “ordinance of Christ” and is basically an experience of the individual Christian with his Lord.

The next Convention will be held in Saint Louis, Mo. Beginning in 1960 the gathering will be held biennially.

Dr. Granville T. Walker, minister of University Christian Church, Ft. Worth, Tex., was chosen president for 1958, succeeding Mr. John Rogers, a layman and outstanding business and civic leader of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dr. Gaines M. Cook continues as Executive Secretary of the Convention.

Worth Quoting

“There is … something we can learn from Billy Graham. It is the profound importance of good public relations, competent publicity and efficient organization in conducting a religious campaign.… Billy Graham’s crusade was magnificently organized.… Crude commercialism? I don’t think so. The Graham office has conducted the campaign in dignified fashion. No blatant sensationalism. Public relations firms are tempted to sell religion as you might sell soap or toothpaste, but the Graham crusade was conducted in good taste.… It has often been said that if Saint Paul were living today, he would be a journalist. I rather think he would be a modern evangelist whose religious crusades would dwarf those of Billy Graham. He would employ the best modern techniques of publicity and promotion: direct mail, TV spots, doorbell ringing, etc. ‘Every scribe instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a householder who brings forth from his stockroom things new and old’ (Matt. 13:52).”—The Rev. John B. Sheerin, C.S.P., editor of the Catholic World, in “What Can Be Learned From Billy Graham?”

Eutychus and His Kin: October 28, 1957

Robert Ingram

SAINTS AND SPOOKS

On the eve of All Saints’ Day

The spooks and goblins play

And witches stir their brew;

For the balanced Middle Ages,

Before paying saints their wages,

Gave the devil his due.

This equitable spirit

Saved the treasury of merit

(Which no goblin or fey spirit

Could properly inherit)

While assuring the ghosts of a chance

For a lark in the dark and a dance.

We’re well past Middle Age

But spooks are still the rage:

The kids are keen for Halloween

And now demand a Horrorland

(On Channel Z, color TV).

From these ghouls which unnerve us,

What saints will preserve us?

For saints today are quite passe,

We have only the stars made by movie czars.

We adore the gun-slingers

And the well-modeled singers,

But no star in Hollywood

Need be holy, pure, or good—

What all-star cluster

Could pass all saints’ muster?

While a world without saints savors horror for fun

A weird witches’ sabbath has fiercely begun

And horror in earnest closes its shroud

On the vacant heart of the man in the crowd.

Neither celibate monks nor the profligate stars

(Though the saints filled their cells as the drunks crowd the bars)

Could redeem or release from that spirit unclean,

The Power of darkness, the Prince Halloween.

Only the Lord of the age drawing near,

The Prince of Life, has broken the fear

Of death and the prison of sin,

Conquered the strong man and entered in.

“The Prince of Darkness grim,

We tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure,

For lo! his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.”

So sings the ransomed sinner

whose heart no longer faints

For all who wait Christ’s coming

are called to be His saints.

In hope they speak the gospel’s word:

All saints’ day is the day of the Lord!

EUTYCHUS

GOD AND THE SCHOOLS

It is encouraging to have you print pieces like “Fourth R in American Education” by Renwick Harper Martin (Sept. 2 issue). However, it seems to me Mr. Martin’s thesis falls apart when he accepts the fallacy that it is only sectarian religious education which is opposed by our laws and court decisions.

Are we Christians unable to recognize that in the eyes of Roman civil law any religion is sectarian? Christianity itself is sectarian for a statist, a Jew, a Unitarian, an agnostic, a Buddhist or a Moslem: yet these people are part of our American legal system. This is the very proposition upon which even the mention of God in state schools has been forbidden by some court decisions.

The Bible itself is sectarian, and, with all sympathies with the evangelical position, it must be recognized that the very introduction of the Bible into schools is a sectarian procedure. The decisive point of this issue is that at which we agree it is all right to be religious, but all wrong to profess a religion. How can one go to church without going to a church? And how can a church escape being, in a true sense, sectarian?

St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church

Bellaire, Texas

In his “Fourth R” Renwick Martin works a familiar theme which is quite popular these days—that of the “godless” public school. Such articles persist in the libel of the public schools which charges them with responsibility for the current crime wave and … juvenile delinquency. No proof is ever offered for this monstrous allegation.…

Mr. Martin bases his charge on the bland assumption that if there were more religious education in the schools these conditions would not exist.… We know that in all sectarian day schools religious indoctrination is carried on.… Yet we have no proof that products of these schools are any more crime proof or any less delinquent than products of the public schools.…

The whole problem of moral behavior is obviously more complex than Mr. Martin suspects.… The author urges the Bible as the key to his solution. This is good, but Mr. Martin should be told that the great majority of our courts have upheld the legality of Bible reading in the public schools. These courts have repeatedly held that the Bible is not a sectarian book (for example: Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, and many others). Thirteen states actually require Bible reading in the schools, and five others specifically permit the practice. The picture Mr. Martin gives of government ruthlessly eliminating religion from the schools is simply not factual.

Mr. Martin feels that his own brand of religious teaching which is “non-sectarian” would be unobjectionable if carried on in public schools. The trouble is that everyone else thinks his brand is “non-sectarian” and just what ought to be taught. It is my own opinion that the only kind of religion worth teaching is sectarian religion. Yet this is just the kind (Mr. Martin’s included) that cannot be taught in public schools. This is not just a matter of law—it is a matter of practicability.

This is not to say that schools should be “godless” or that religion cannot be dealt with in any classroom. We cannot ignore God just because the building we are in happens to be publicly owned. Nevertheless, we must face the fact that if we want to preserve our one school system serving all creeds and teaching mutual respect, we shall have to leave the job of sectarian indoctrination to the home and the church. After all, why not? What is wrong with the home and the church?

Protestants and Other Americans

United for Separation of Church

and State, Washington, D. C.

Which is better, to have the average public school teacher read, without comment, a few verses of Scripture every morning, or plan for religious education of pupils at least an hour a week under consecrated Christians? For me I would choose the latter.

In 1922 the Hennepin County (Minnesota) Sunday School Association [prompted] leaders in St. Paul and Minneapolis to secure legal advice and to prepare a bill providing for Weekday Religious Education on released time from public schools … not to exceed three hours a week. This bill went through both houses in the state legislature with little or no opposition. Schools were begun in both cities during 1923–24. The system has grown by leaps and bounds. Churches, parents and public schools cooperated nicely. It was not at all uncommon for 100% of a given grade to be enrolled. A fulltime supervisor was employed. Teachers were paid by the hour. Juvenile delinquency was greatly reduced.

In Pittsburgh Dr. Ben Graham, Superintendent of Schools asked the religious leaders to plan a program of weekday religious instruction for high school students. Fifteen districts were organized, giving each church a chance to be represented. It was agreed that classes would be held in nearby churches, on school time and that students would receive credits toward graduation. Thousands of students have been enrolled. A fulltime member of the county staff directs the work.

Eighteen years of my ministry were given to religious education in Minneapolis and Pittsburgh. Weekday religious instruction does make for honesty and a better way of life.

Manchester, N. H.

WARMTH OF FAITH

The book review by R. V. G. Tasker dealing with the work of Rudolf Bultmann (Sept. 2 issue) calls, it seems to me, for clarification. The reviewer cites Ulrich Simon: “Can any reader take Bultmann’s ‘Jesus’ really seriously without hearing, so to speak, the threatening Horst Wessel Lied in the background?” A connection is established between the apparently negative aspect of much of Bultmann’s work and the “political tensions in Germany in the prewar years.” The writer cited says he is not “charging Bultmann with such excesses,” i.e., the Nazi attacks on the Church, but his statement is so ambiguous that an uninformed reader might well conclude that Bultmann’s views were dictated by social pressures of the time. Quite apart from the fact that the Jesus was published in 1926, Bultmann’s view of the historical Jesus roots in the modern critical movement and in his own work in form criticism dating back to 1921. If Simon and Tasker mean on the other hand that they think of the Nazi outlook as caused by rather than the cause of critical scepticism, they should say so clearly. As it is, the statement hits below the belt. If I can say a word from personal acquaintance with the great scholar, I would testify to his rugged personal integrity and to the warmth of his Christian faith and preaching.

Harvard Divinity School

Cambridge, Mass.

DEWEY AND WORSHIP

The review of Dr. Manford Gutzke’s book, John Dewey’s Thought (Sept. 16 issue) did not, in my estimation, do full justice to this work as a contribution to the field of religious education. I hold Dr. Gutzke and his work in high esteem and have had occasion both to discuss this book with him and to read it. I feel that I can comment on his work as we have both written on the same subject, he from the standpoint of John Dewey, I from the standpoint of John Calvin.

Dr. Gutzke seeks to establish validity for Dewey’s thought in the area of religious education from a true, evangelical standpoint. It is his thesis that the “preferred behavior patterns” of Dewey may have successful religious application. He notes that the church tends to associate “attitudes” of worship (folded hands) with the experience of meeting God in worship and he concludes that Dewey’s thought may provide guidance in the matter of establishing the best possible procedures within the best possible environment for the business of “training a child in the way he should go,” according to a true Christian epistemology.

If there is a fault in Dr. Gutzke’s writing (other than its difficulty to read) it is the implication which one senses rather than meets headon, that practices and procedures may, in themselves, be means of grace, whereas “preferred behavior patterns” can never be more than auxiliary, as a context to the use of the primary means of grace which is the Word.

First Presbyterian Church

Alexandria, La.

EVANGELISM FOLLOW-UP

Now that the Billy Graham Crusade is over, the intensive effort of the churches … to welcome those who committed themselves to Christ begins.

It is providential that this period of conservation comes at the beginning of the active church year. The months from September to Christmas are strategic, and the period from Christmas to Easter full of the greatest promise. So wide has been the influence of the New York meetings that churches far beyond their environs have a wonderful opportunity to share in their after effects … this fall and winter season.…

Because a similar period meant so much to the church I served in Philadelphia during and following the great Billy Sunday campaign in that city in 1915, I venture to … record a few of our experiences.…

Mr. Sunday’s Tabernacle Meetings covered the three months leading directly up to Easter. But many weeks before, from the beginning of our fall season, we had been preparing for them. During the meetings we rebuilt our weekly program to coordinate with the program of the Tabernacle. Consequently the church was ready to continue the effort along lines suitable to the situation. For example, the Wednesday evening prayer meetings which had been going on for months continued, so that the people who had chosen ours as their home church might be personally brought into our fellowship and warmly welcomed in our homes. Similar arrangements were made to receive them into the church school classes and the organizations for men, women and young people. A special welcome was planned in the Sunday services, deliberately avoiding, however, anything that would separate them into a distinct group. They were, from the beginning of their church experience, absorbed into the on-going life of the church.

One of the most effective instruments for bringing the men together had been instituted before the Tabernacle meetings began. The men of the church had established a pleasant Sunday afternoon to run from four to five o’clock. Those who “hit the trail” during the meetings were brought in and introduced and welcomed, and given opportunity to tell … what their decision had meant to them. Perhaps nothing meant more to the new converts, as well as to the men of the church.… After the Tabernacle meetings were over this gathering was continued for months and offered all kinds of opportunities for mutual fellowship. Similar plans were provided for other groups.

Certain facts stand out as I recall this vital period of Bethany Temple:

First, we religiously followed up the persons (whose commitment cards we had received) who had named our church as their preference. And we followed them up at once, and continued to keep in touch with them until we reached them. Second, we gave them an invitation to become communicant members of the church as soon as they could attend the communicant classes through which all new members were instructed. Special classes were held for children. Third, we made some person or family responsible for introducing the new members to the older members in their own neighborhoods, and keeping in touch with them in a friendly yet unobtrusive fashion for a few months. Officers of the church were assigned especially to this task. Fourth, we had a group system in the church which brought the families together at stated times. The new members were quickly drawn into these friendly home groups and as soon as possible the meetings were held in their homes. Fifth, the officers of the church, church school and organizations all kept their eyes open for tasks to which these new members could be assigned and timed.

This program continued over the years with the result that within a few years the converts from the Billy Sunday meetings had been completely integrated into the life of the church.

Bethany Temple received the cards of 108 persons who “hit the sawdust trail,” not counting many of our own members who went forward to reconsecrate themselves to Christ. During the two years following the meetings we received into our membership, from the families of these 108, a total of 450 people including the trail-hitters themselves.

The question is being asked concerning the converts from the Billy Graham Crusade, “Will they continue?” The answer will depend partly on the persons themselves, but to a large extent on the way they are received and built into the churches they join. If the churches, inspired by their devotion to Christ and their dependence upon the Holy Spirit, will faithfully seek to build these folks into a living church, they will stand.

I remained long enough at Bethany Temple to see the church do this very thing. When I left, at least a third of the teachers and officers of the church school and a goodly proportion of the active workers in our organizations, and many of the officers of the church, had been drawn from the ranks of those that came to us directly or indirectly through the Billy Sunday meetings. I can say truthfully that no event in the 14 years of my ministry in Philadelphia had such a vitalizing influence on the church as a whole as the Billy Sunday meetings and their aftermath through the years.

I must add a postscript. Two years after the Billy Sunday campaign I happened to be in the study of another minister, of a church not unlike our own in personnel and neighborhood. As the minister and I chatted together he caught me looking around at his bookcases. Atop one was a bunch of cards which he thought had caught my eye. He said, “I see you are looking at these cards; do you know what they are?” I said I had no idea. “Well,” he said, “those are the cards I received from the Billy Sunday meetings.” “What did you do with them?” I asked. “Do?” he replied; “why nothing.” I said, “Do you mean to say that you never followed them up?” “Certainly not,” he answered. “Such cards mean nothing, we never received a member into our church from that much publicized campaign.”

My heart ached for that man, and it does now. Of all the lost opportunities that I can personally remember over a lifetime in the ministry, that is still to me the most tragic. If you are a minister and have been in any way moved by the Billy Graham meetings, do not fail yourself, your church, these new converts and your Redeeming Lord.

Asheville, N. C.

• Dr. Ferry, now retired, was for many years pastor of the Bethany Temple Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.—ED.

A YEAR’S READING

The only irritant and discordant note I have detected in your otherwise outstanding and commendable articles during a full year’s reading was sounded in your recent articles on RSV, which somehow did not satisfy, being negatively critical in part, and “damning with faint praise” in part. As a member of a conservative church-body’s committee, which for five or six years has critically studied the RSV, making careful comparisons with the original texts, I have come to George Eldon Ladd’s conclusions, viz. “Criticism, if any, must be directed to the revisers’ judgment, not to their theological presuppositions,” and “The charges have repeatedly been made that RSV reflects a liberal theological tendency and that the translators have misrepresented the original text in favor of lower theological positions. A critical study of RSV does not bear this out.” If the RSV is not perfect, it is, as Dr. Ladd declares at the close of his evaluation of the RSV NT (CT, July 8, p. 11), “the most useful translation we possess.” Then why, I wonder, has the good doctor “no zeal, in principle, to defend the RSV per se”? If the RSV is “the most useful translation we possess,” why not all help perfect it by sending valid criticisms with supporting evidence to the RSV Translators’ Committee for consideration, as my church through its committee plans to do? Valid criticisms and helpful suggestions are most welcome, I am sure. Unjustified criticism can only harm the critics and the good cause. I very much incline to agree with John M. Leggett Jr. (CT, August 19, p. 24).

St. Peter’s Lutheran Church

Shaker Heights, Ohio.

I am continually astonished at the success of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. You have done the impossible …

President

Belhaven College

Jackson, Miss.

This joins with many ministers, I believe, who have postponed too long writing you and commending you and yours for good editorship well done …

Calvary-Asbury (Meth.) Church

Sudlersville, Md.

“A Layman and His Faith” … attributes to Cardinal Newman the words of the Rev. Henry F. Lyte. It was Lyte, not Newman, who wrote those beautiful words of the hymn “Abide with Me.”

First Presbyterian Church

Dinuba, Calif.

I am a retired Methodist minister, having served for more than 40 years in the pastorate and the educational work of the Church. Since the first issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I have been an appreciative reader … Your issue of Sept. 16 is the best.… In this number are more articles of great value to the Church of today, than I have ever found before in a single issue of any periodical.

Custer, Okla.

I have just finished re-reading some of the early pre-subscription issues.… This second encounter convinced me that I have missed more solid reading than I can afford, so please find check inclosed.

Blairsville, Pa.

For rural pastors like me, it keeps us up-to-date on spiritual trends and news.… It is written in very plain language.…

United Baptist Church

Island Falls, Me.

Ideas

Protestant Purgatory

Inevitable logic compels those who deny the existence of an eternal hell to invent a temporary purgatory. The problem of unequal justice upon earth in relation to punishment and reward perplexes the mind that rejects the biblical revelation of the fashion of life to come. What must be done with those guilty of unrepented sin?

In a recent issue of a popular denominational magazine a writer asserted that we “have to rediscover the moral equivalent of hell.” His sense of justice recoiled at an equally cordial welcome in heaven for infamous men like Hitler and Stalin and saints like Paul and Augustine. In his own way, the above writer would solve the problem by proposing a consideration of “the redemptive and cleansing possibilities of hell.” The fires of this temporary hell are a “burning shame” and “searing regret,” a source of redemption, and, as such, a “Protestant” purgatory.

The horror of the Roman Catholic purgatory, however, should cause serious hesitancy in proposing as a moral equivalent of hell, the suggested temporary purgatory, for the satisfying of a sense of justice. Roman Catholics have been robbed of peace, consolation and hope, enjoyed by those who rest on the promises of Scripture. Roman Catholicism denies the infinitely meritorious sacrifice of Christ, and has insisted that the sinner make additional satisfaction for his sins. Only by enduring the painful, agonizing fires of purgatory can the half-pardoned sinner qualify himself for the favor of God. He must justify himself by fire, and to the torment which he endures is added the anguish of loved ones on earth who are driven to purchase candles and masses to buy his release. One shudders at the thought of what needless tortures the invention of a Protestant purgatory could bring.

Actually, limiting the torment of hell to soul and mental anguish does not lessen but rather increases suffering. Often the teaching of hell is rejected because the thought of literal fire is abhorrent. Yet, mental agony can cause more pain than a literal flame. The book of Proverbs states, “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?” Mental institutions are filled with broken spirits. A wounded conscience has caused more suicides than physical ills. Burning shame and searing regret intensify rather than soften the horror of purgatory.

The “Protestant” invention of a place to purge souls, of course, denies the necessity of the vicarious Atonement of Christ. If a “burning shame” and “searing regret” cleanse and prepare the soul for heaven, then the entrance of the Son of God into history was futile and vain. One may seriously question the wisdom and goodness of God in sending forth his Son to be born of a virgin and to die on Calvary’s Cross, if all that God needed to see in the soul of man was remorse and contrition. We must silence the prophetic voice of Isaiah who claimed that the Servant was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. We must hush John the Baptist’s declaration, “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” We must still the message of Peter that we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot.

Part of the attempt to abolish the biblical eternal hell comes from a desire to vindicate the love of God. The assertion has been made that if love is love and God is God, heaven can’t be heaven until hell is empty. God, according to this view, is made to be something of a Moloch who demands his creatures to pass through fires of purgatory before reaching the golden shore. But those who reduce the being of God to love and ignore his justice are still on the sharp horns of a dilemma even with the invention of a temporary purgatory. If God’s justice does not demand full satisfaction for sin, what particular attribute of his demands remorse and contrition, activated by purging fires?

Classical liberal theology stressed the subjective element of the Atonement; its sole aim was the moral transformation of the sinner. The sight of the Cross, it was asserted, fills the sinner with remorse for his sin, impels him to repent, and places him upon the path of righteousness. (The crucifixion led one sinner, Judas, to hang himself.) A classic example of the effect of remorse and contrition is portrayed in the life of Martin Luther. He describes his experience by saying that at times he suffered such violent and hellish tortures that had they lasted even ten minutes he would have perished and his limbs would have turned to ashes. He painfully realized that he was utterly incapable of proper repentance and that his penitence did not achieve righteousness. He saw nothing worthy of salvation in his agonizing remorse, and it was his subjective experience that finally drove him to accept the objective righteousness offered in the Gospel. Luther found his justification, then, not by the fires of contrition and repentance but by the faith in God’s Son.

That personal repentance does not satisfy either the individual soul nor the holiness and justice of God was recognized by the theologian, Dr. McLeod Campbell. He found the atoning fact in the Lord’s sympathetic repentance for man. Since man was incapable of an adequate repentance, Christ drank the cup of repentance for him. This idea finds no correspondence in Scripture and does not satisfy the justice of God nor the awakened conscience. Repentance, personal or vicarious, does not answer justice either in the court of men or of God. The wounded conscience cries out for punishment of its sin or an adequate Atonement. Were Christ’s sympathetic repentance sufficient, of course, there would be no need of the fire of purgatory to activate repentance on the part of the sinner.

The important question in this matter is whether purgatorial fires would really actuate godly sorrow. Penitence merely to avoid the consequence of sin would not be considered genuine sorrow. Dives (Luke 16:19–31) has been pointed out by some writers as an example of the redemptive quality of hell. In hell, they assert, he developed great concern for his five brothers and pleaded that Lazarus be sent to warn them about the place of torment. But in truth, this was not love; it was a hellish artifice, placing responsibility for his incarceration upon God with the deceptive implication that he had not been sufficiently warned. Abraham informed him that his brothers had already had sufficient revelation concerning the life to come from Moses and the prophets. But Dives revealed an intransigent impenitence when he argued, “Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.” Abraham’s reply to him was that if they refused God’s revelation given to them through Moses and the prophets, nothing would move them to repentance. The entire story of Dives demonstrates sharply the futility of expecting genuine repentance in hell.

The day may come when some theologian will speak of the redemptive quality and transforming power of death. However, the logic of the continuity of mind and character of life here with that which one experiences hereafter is still generally conceded. The unconverted, impenitent sinner enters the next life in his unregenerate state. What, then, in this newly invented purgatory would lead the sinner to godly repentance, if upon earth the goodness of God did not lead him to that act? (cf. Rom. 2:4). Would torment induce the sinner to contrition? Liberal theologians have spoken scornfully of repentance motivated by fear of hell, and surely godly sorrow implies more than a desire to escape retribution. But if “searing regret” and “burning shame” are to define genuine repentance, the question remains whether remorse and the works of remorse constitute redemption.

The word “redemption” is often used in a loose and popular manner to signify “deliverance” without any reference to price, or to specific means by which deliverance is accomplished. Suggestion has been made that redemption may be obtained merely by an act of repentance. The term is so well defined in Scripture that the wrong use is inexcusable. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon defines redemption as, “everywhere in N.T. metaph., viz., deliverance effected through the death of Christ from the retributive wrath of a holy God and the merited penalty of sin.” Webster’s New International Dictionary defines the word, “In Christianity, deliverance from the bondage and consequences of sin, especially as through the reconciliation (atonement) effected by Christ.”

Scriptures substantiate the above definitions by an overwhelming array of passages. “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” (Rom. 3:24–25); “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13); “In whom we have redemption through his blood.…” (Eph. 1:7); “Who gave himself a ransom for all.…” (1 Tim. 2:6); “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity.…” (Titus 2:14); (cf. also, Col. 1:14; Heb. 9:12; 1 Pet. 1:18–19; Rev. 5:9). And who would deny the import of Christ’s own statement, “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28)? The idea of deliverance through ransom may be repugnant to some liberal theologians, but it is the clear Scriptural definition of redemption.

Under the providence of God, Luther delivered the church from the dogma of justification by works and re-established the doctrine of Christ’s infinitely meritorious work on Calvary’s cross. He vanquished the argument for purgatory with all its attending evils by nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on that notable day, October 31, 1517. Now, 440 years later, children of the Reformation would establish a “Protestant” purgatory wherein redemption might again be wrought out through works of penitence! What can be the purpose, the value, in their refusing to proclaim the teachings of the Reformers, especially the truths that have come forth from the Word of God?

Christian Perspective In A Non-Christian World

There is an uncertainty in America today which is unusual. A people who have prided themselves on national progress and international prestige suddenly find themselves unsure in both categories. We have been known historically as a “Christian nation” endowed with unusual material and geographical advantages, but there now arises the grave question whether the very things of which we have boasted most might evaporate before our eyes.

In such a situation Christian perspective and conscience is desperately needed. To the Christian the clear question must be: What is right? Man has a primary responsibility to God and an equally inescapable duty to his fellow man. From the Christian perspective there can be no divorcing of the one from the other. The fact that the majority of individuals are devoid of Christian conscience makes the task of the Christian more difficult and also more imperative.

It can be safely said that most laws in America are compatible with the Christian concept; in fact, their basic philosophy stems from Judeo-Christian teachings. Our difficulty therefore is not in the laws of the land, but rather in how they are regarded on the one hand and how they are administered on the other. Right now a good deal is being said about the “law of the land” with reference to the race issue. But a host of other laws which also have bearing on citizens in their relationships to the government, and to each other, are accorded scant notice. The “fix” is a politically expedient way of evading laws, from the ticket for over-parking to a gross violation of tax laws. Racial discrimination is highlighted in Little Rock yet plagues every section of the country. A low view of the law, as such, seems ingrained in much of our citizenry.

To put it bluntly: our national life is at an alarmingly low spiritual and moral ebb. The very resurgence of an interest in religion seems to have stirred the forces of evil to even greater activity.

Now America finds herself out-distanced in a field of science where we thought we were well ahead. There is no use denying the fact that Russia’s successful launching of the first earth satellite was a major achievement and there is no denying the fact that it has served to lower American prestige around the world. Some captured German skill may have been used to make this artificial moon possible, but there the reasonable assumption remains that the satellite is largely the product of scientific developments we did not believe possible in Russia.

How should the Christian react to the present situation? From a personal standpoint he can say that he knows all things work together for good for all that belong to Christ, and hence these things cannot touch him. This is unquestionably the comfort and hope of the believer, so far as his personal problems are concerned. But, he also has a responsibility to others and this cannot be discharged by a detached approach.

In the international field the Christian has a responsibility which has not been discharged. As a Christian he should work for the evangelization of the world. As a citizen he should work for morality in our international relationships. The Christian can produce effective arguments to show that our recognition of Russia in 1931 was a grave mistake. Many who see no moral issue involved nevertheless can show that the advantages of such recognition accrued almost entirely to Russia and that she has increased in power, in territorial acquisition, and in international infiltration and intrigue ever since she received such recognition.

On the home front Christians have too often been savorless salt and hooded lamps. Conformity to worldly concepts and compromises with spiritual and moral issues has weakened the Christian testimony as effectively as did the compromise of Israel with the Canaanitish nations more than three thousand years ago.

For a generation there has been an increased emphasis on the influence of the Church as such. Both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant denominations, through their cooperative agencies, have laid increasing emphasis on legislation. In so doing have not Christians actually been led to shirk their responsibilities as citizens? There is reason to believe that the active voice of men who speak out as individuals on moral and spiritual issues and who exercise their influence through their vote actually contribute far more to good government and right living than those who lobby in the name of the Church. There is nothing wrong with a united voice for right, but there is something strangely compelling in the witness of Christian men who stand up and are counted as individuals expressing their plea for social righteousness.

The Christian perspective demands that we try to see things as God sees them and that, having sought the leading of the Holy Spirit, we exercise in every way possible our influence for that which is right. We have been shocked by blatant corruption in some labor unions. We stand appalled at the political power of unworthy characters. Our souls rise in righteous indignation and disgust when hate and prejudice erupt in violence against people because their skins are of a different color. All these evils stem from sin in the human heart. All of them demand the judgment of a righteous and holy God. But their cure is to be found in the redemption God has provided through his Son.

The key to our internal and international problems is to be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The custodian of that truth is the believing Church. The agents of the message are Christians. This is a time when we need to look up and receive, surrender from within and believe, and then to go out and live and act by and in the power of him who redeemed us and offers salvation to all who will believe.

Public Relations And Religious Revival

The link between public relations and religion is under scrutiny. In the aftermath of Billy Graham’s New York campaign, many newly “promotion-conscious” forces are asking: “What can we learn from Billy Graham?” Some religious leaders are answering: “We can learn the profound importance of good public relations.”

The Church has no better “publicity gimmick” than evidence to the world that Jesus Christ is still actively working in human lives. No high pressure salesmanship shaped by the spirit of the times, no slick programing of public relations, no tricks of the advertising trade, no experienced mass manipulation, no engineering of human decision, can turn the sinner from the evil of his way to the Living God. Regeneration involves a supernatural rebirth. “No man can call Christ Lord except by the Spirit of God.” No mechanics can dispense with the Holy Spirit. Many observers disregard this real secret of effective mass evangelism. Public relations produces spectators, not saints. It is one thing to lay fingertips on glory, another to lay hold of new life.

The real question is, what does promotion and publicity “pull a crowd” for? Some promotion may attract to church participation; other promotion may compete against it. Does religious promotion narrow the gulf between men and the Living God? Does it lead men to the message of Christ’s death for sinners? The religious surge may bear us toward the one true God but it may deluge us with false gods as well.

Fortunately, today’s sober spiritual concerns are gaining respect on the part of the press, radio and television. Here again science may fulfill its role as the handmaid of theology to the glory of God. The Graham campaign in New York shrewdly appropriated many positive values of scientific communicative techniques.

Yet we must bear in mind certain irreducible differences between mass advertising and mass evangelism. Mass advertising tends to generalize individuals; its pressures are for conformity. Mass evangelism, on the other hand, aims to refine and sharpen uniqueness in view of individual decision and destiny. Because spiritual commitment often requires action contrary to prevailing social pressures, it would be an untenable generalization to recommend the ideal 20th century evangelist to be a public relations tycoon. Rather, the message of the effective evangelist may recommend and call the public relations tycoon of our era to repentance.

Some editors still apparently assume that an agnostic makes the best religion editor, or at least that the religious cause is best served if a reporter is not a committed believer. If such editors were covering the story of apostolic Christianity, they would have preferred Gamaliel (“Keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this … undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them …” Acts 5:38), to Paul as an authoritative interpreter.

Measured in terms of modern promotional success stories, the New Testament evangelists and the apostles were perhaps far from ideal. But they told the truth at the cost of life itself; they spoke to man’s deepest needs in terms of the Christ.

A modern public relations staff would have advised Paul to “pull many of his punches,” but the apostle would have proved an exasperating client. He was more concerned with winning converts and serving Christ than with winning friends and influencing people. Whereas public relations aims to avoid all offense to customers it often exploits, the Gospel often is first a scandal to those it convicts and saves.

The Church must do more than appropriate the publicity opportunities of our age. By inspiring new forms and a loftier message, it must enable the very techniques and content of publicity to bring the avenues of promotion into the service of spiritual truth and righteousness. For too long secular promotion has borrowed great words and themes of Christianity to fill them with a secondary content that grieves spiritual sensitivities. Vocabulary of our religious heritage—Crucifixion, Atonement, Gethsemane, miracle, conversion, regeneration, etc.—has suffered from essentially secular trespassing. To restore to these terms their primary spiritual sense, and once again to sharpen man’s consciousness of God by them, is no easy task.

At the same time, the Church can learn much from the public relations world. This learning, however, comprises far more than the appropriation of valuable techniques and insights for mass communication. Public relations speaks simply and directly to the public; it aims for an immediate point-of-contact in the familiar vocabulary of the man in the street. Precisely this is how the Gospel of Jesus Christ first met the sinner. Jesus knew how to speak of water, bread and light as swift transitions to eternal spiritual concerns. The Gospel is superlative for its profundity in simplicity: it is good news, and that is what the modern man needs to hear. That “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,” is neither abstruse nor elusive in meaning. While so profound that all human philosophies are shallow alongside its depth of implication, the truth of the Gospel applied by the Holy Spirit is simple enough that it may gather the man in the street and his children into the fold of grace.

Theology

What Did Christ Do For Me?

L. Nelson Bell

I was walking down a hospital corridor by the stretcher of a man on whom I was to operate in a few minutes. Looking up into my face, he said: “Doctor, I was saved last night. My pastor came to see me and I accepted Christ.”

The anesthetist, head of the department, a man with little apparent concern for religion, overheard the remark. Following the operation, when all had left the doctors’ dressing room except this doctor, he asked: “Just what did that man mean when he said he was ‘saved’? How can Christ save anyone?”

Like so many of us laymen, he was confused by theological terms. Or perhaps he took Christianity as a matter of course without any idea as to its real meaning.

Knowing him well, I feared that he had been indifferent to Christ and his claims. He had an only son at the state university. I said: “I know your son is at the university and how keenly you are interested in him, his career and his welfare. Suppose that he got into serious trouble, and that on going down to see him you should find out that it was a situation where you could take responsibility for him and pay the full penalty yourself. How gladly you would do this for your boy! That, in one sense, is what Christ did for you, and for all the rest of us. Our lives are all messed up. We are guilty of multiplied sins against God, sins which demand judgment and punishment. But God has stepped in and intervened on our behalf in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. He accomplished something we could not do for ourselves. He took the responsibility of our sin and paid the price himself on the Cross.”

That which Christ effected for us on the Cross is spoken of as the Atonement. This particular word appears only once in the New Testament (Romans 5:11) but the implications of the Atonement are found throughout the Old and New Testaments and are at the very heart of the Gospel message.

How can the Atonement be explained in terms we laymen can understand? I recently examined two books on the subject. One is so exhaustive and so couched in theological terms that it was not easy to follow. The other did not explain the Atonement: it explained it away. This danger besets modern theology.

The Atonement (at-one-ment) is the means, the procedure, by which sinful man is reconciled to a holy God. There are those who deny that any reconciliation between God and man is necessary, and affirm that God is a loving Heavenly Father and that man is simply to turn to him and he will be received and forgiven. The difficulty with this argument is that the God of love is also the God of holiness, and sin and the unpardoned sinner cannot come into his holy presence. Furthermore, the justice of God demands that sin be punished. Even sinful humans recognize this necessity. Man recognizes the validity of punishment and vicarious substitution whereby one individual may suffer for or pay the penalty for another.

It seems logical to turn to the Scriptures to see what they teach. It is here that we find the historical record about Christ, who he is and what he did.

An honest reading of the Bible leads to the inescapable conclusion that Christ died for our sins. He, the eternal Son of God, came into this world, lived a sinless life and died on the Cross to take upon himself the guilt and penalty of all sinners who believe.

Speaking to his disciples, our Lord referred to an incident that occurred in the wilderness many centuries previously. A bronze serpent had been placed on a pole and stricken men were told to look towards that uplifted serpent as a token of their faith in the saving power of God. Jesus said: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:14, 15).

I know there are those who inveigh against the use of “proof texts,” but any layman—particularly one who is a lawyer and interested in and affected by the law—knows that precedents, decisions and judgments are constantly cited in court and are a part of a valid procedure. How much more have Christians the right to take the Bible and accept what it teaches by statements in multiplied places; these together constituting an overwhelming volume of evidence.

In 1 John 2:2 we read: “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Now “propitiation” is not a common word and we laymen may wonder what it means. According to Webster it signifies, “to appease, to render favorable, to conciliate, to atone, to effect reconciliation,” etc. The Prophet Isaiah, speaking to Israel, made a statement which is valid today: “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear” (Isa. 59:2). Those who argue against the need of reconciliation to God through Christ’s atoning work simply evade the awfulness of sin on the one hand and the holiness of God on the other.

Isaiah recognized man’s need when he wrote: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities … and with his stripes we are healed.”(53:5), while the Apostle Peter confirmed this in these words: “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Pet. 2:24). The same thought is expressed many times and in many ways in the Scriptures. Man can reject this concept but in doing so he is rejecting the work of Christ and the Word of God.

“Christ redeemed me” is a familiar phrase. Christ did just that for us, paying the price to buy sinners back to himself.

There are many “theories” of the Atonement. It is popular today to say that no one theory does full justice to this truth. There are many phases of the Atonement and this side of eternity man will never know the depth and height and breadth of the love of God which made our redemption possible and effective. But when we try, with the frailties and limitations of the human mind, to describe the greatest of all Christian doctrines let us be careful that we do not explain it away.

“Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures,” affirms the Apostle Paul. This has been the heart of the Christian message down through the ages and the efficacy of his death was confirmed by the fact of his resurrection.

Sinful man needs redemption. God knows that need and has made full provision to meet it. In Christ on the Cross the need and the sinfulness of man is forever met. Here we see the grace and mercy of God united with His holiness and justice in one supreme act of atoning love.

L. NELSON BELL

Cover Story

Eyes Front!

William M. Elliott, Jr.

“What is that to thee? follow thou me” (John 21:22).

A friend once asked Daniel Webster, “Mr. Webster, will you tell us the most important thought that ever occupied your mind?” The great statesman thought a moment, and then said, “The most important thought that ever occupied my mind was that of my individual responsibility to God.”

Now it was this truth—that a man has an individual responsibility to God entirely apart from his fellows—that Jesus was seeking to instill in Simon Peter’s mind that morning by the sea of Tiberias. After Jesus had served breakfast to the seven disciples there on the shore, he took Peter aside for a private conference. It was during this conversation that our Lord revealed to Peter that he would be called upon to suffer a martyr’s death, that he would die for the faith.

As the two men talked, John, “the beloved disciple,” came toward them. When Peter turned and saw his fellow disciple approaching, he said to Jesus: “Lord, and what shall this man do?” Then came the sharp rebuke which forms our text: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.” In other words, “Mind your own business, Peter. What is in store for John is no affair of yours. Only see to it that my plan for you is carried out. I’ll take care of John.” You see, the Master was rebuking Peter for turning his mind away from his own private duty to idle and fruitless speculation about the fate of a companion.

Needed Rebuke

The big fisherman needed this rebuke, and so do many of us. One of the most important lessons which you and I have to learn is to get our eyes off other people, and tend to our own knitting—doing and being what God meant for us to do and to be. Strong in all of us is the tendency to watch the other fellow, and to contrast our situation with his. It is a common temptation, and, from a psychological point of view, a destructive habit. So many things that plague men’s lives grow in this soil—envy, discontent, resentment, self-pity. The offices of physicians and psychiatrists are full of unhappy, restless individuals who are frustrated and inhibited in this very thing.

It is a great day in a person’s life when he makes up his mind to be himself—to do his own work, to fill his own special niche, and to follow God’s unique plan for him. Only thus can he experience fulfillment and peace of mind. Emerson once wrote: “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself, for better, for worse as his portion.”

God had a work for Peter to do, and a work for John, because each of these men was unique, and it was this uniqueness which made the cause succeed. Peter could serve God’s cause best by simply being Peter. He would have fizzled at John’s work, as John would have failed at his. God’s will or plan is never the same for any two of us. The Divine Architect never hands down two sets of blueprints exactly alike. His plan for your life is not his plan for mine, and his plan for my life is not his plan for yours. But both are essential.

To Each His Gift

I wonder if you have noticed how much St. Paul emphasizes this truth in his epistles. Writing to the Christians in Corinth he says: “Men have different gifts.… There are different ways of serving God.… God works through different men in different ways, but it is the same God who achieves his purposes through them all” (1 Corinthians 12:4–6, Phillips translation). And writing to the Ephesians Paul said, “His gifts unto men are varied. Some He made Special Messengers, some prophets, some preachers of the Gospel. His gifts were made that Christians might be properly equipped for their service, that the whole Body might be built up” (Ephesians 4:11, 12, Phillips).

In Martin Luther and Philip Melanchton we have the Peter and John of the sixteenth century. Luther knew that in some respects he was not as gifted as Melanchton, but he also had the wisdom to see that he could do a job for the kingdom which Melanchton, with all his gracious endowments, could never do. He said: “I was born to be a rough controversialist. I clear the ground, pull up weeds, fill up ditches, and smooth the roads. But to build, to plan, to sow, to water, to adorn the country, belongs by the grace of God to Melanchton.” It was a great day for the Protestant Reformation, and for the kingdom, when Martin Luther was willing to be Luther in all the glory and power of his individuality.

God knows what he is doing when he hands to each of us a particular set of abilities, and if we determine to be somebody else, or demand that somebody else be just like us, we are hindering Christ’s purpose, and retarding his work.

All have a share in the beauty,

All have a part in the plan;

What does it matter which duty

Falls to the lot of a man?

Inhibiting Growth

This habit of watching others inhibits our spiritual growth and makes us less effective in our service for Christ. We who work hard in the church see others who are not working hard, and it disconcerts us. They seem worldly, indifferent and free. They assume little or no responsibility for the Christian cause. And, as we watch them, we begin to feel a little sorry for ourselves. We think our lot is hard, and that we are bearing a disproportionate share of the burden. As a result of this comparison, we grow tired of responsibility, and want to “throw in the sponge.” Why should I, we ask, carry such heavy and demanding loads, while others go scot free?

It is a familiar but dangerous mood. We are so busy wanting others to follow Christ faithfully that we do not settle down to the business of following him ourselves. Some horses have to have blinds on their bridles to keep them from distraction. Maybe we Christians need some such device if we are to have a consistent and undisturbed loyalty to Christ.

Another way in which this habit of looking at others hinders our spiritual growth is that as we see their weaknesses and failures we become satisfied with our own religious progress and become complacent Pharisees. The poor achievements of others become our standard instead of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. But Christ is our example and our ideal, not some limping, indifferent church member!

No Valid Excuse

This is a wonderful text too, for those people who say that they will not join the church or profess the Christian faith because they see certain professing Christians whose lives are imperfect. They say that they do not follow Christ because someone who professes to be religious has let them down. He has given such a poor demonstration of Christianity that they have been forced to turn from it in disgust. That is a familiar complaint of the irreligious, but I believe that Jesus would say to all such people, “What is that to thee? follow thou me!”

Some people never tire of talking about hypocrites in the church. What a stale dodge it is! Wrote Dean Chas. R. Brown of Yale, “You speak of religion to some man, and all he can think to say is some silly quibble.… You mention the church, and his mind is off like a rat to drag out some moth-eaten story about an unworthy deacon. You wish to show him the well that is deep, and he merely jumps up and down in the puddle of his own conceit to splash you with mud. How pitiful it is” (Finding Ourselves, Harper, p. 83).

Let me say a word about the contention that there are hypocrites in the church. The people who attend church regularly and take an active part in its fellowship are not playing the hypocrite. They are not pretending anything. They are confessing something. They are confessing that they need what religion and the church have to offer. The Christian church is not a display room for model Christians. If you think that it is, then you have a wrong conception of the church. The church is a spiritual hospital for people who know that they are sick, and are without hope in this life and in the next without the grace and power of God. Some may join the church to impress others and to gain a reputation for piety, but this can be true of only a few. I do not stand in this pulpit because I think that I am better than someone else, and I do not stand here because I have “arrived” spiritually. I am here because I think that this is where God wants me to be, and because I have some good news about him. As Paul said to the Corinthians, “we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5).

This line about hypocrites in the church is a common one, and is an excuse very helpful to the devil. He capitalized on it, plays it for everything it is worth. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis makes quite a point of this. This book, you know, is a series of imaginary letters written by Screwtape, an elderly devil in hell, to his young nephew on earth whose name is Wormwood. Screwtape is coaching Wormwood on how to keep people out of heaven and get them into hell. In one of these letters the old devil is telling Wormwood that one of the best ways to get his man into hell is to encourage him to watch the people he meets in church. Here is what he says: “When he gets to his pew and looks around him he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbors. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces in the next pew.… Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anti-climax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman” (op. cit., pp. 16, 17).

We Must Answer

Shame upon us Christians that we do not more perfectly reflect Jesus Christ in our lives and conversation! May God in his mercy forgive us if we are ever the cause of another turning away from Christ and missing eternal life! But friend outside the church: this does not excuse you. What you say about certain church members may be true, but it will not weather the final judgment. When you come to stand before Christ he will not ask you how another believed or lived. There you must speak for yourself, and only for yourself. And this plea of yours about how others failed will be the lamest of all excuses.

Remember, God offers you his beauty and his glory, however much some of us may have missed it. As Leslie Weatherhead suggests, you don’t say, “Beethoven’s music is no good,” just because the girl next door murders his sonatas on the piano, do you? You don’t say, “I shall stop seeking health,” because you know a doctor who is sick, do you? Of course you don’t. Then why do you say, “I’m finished with Christianity because I know a preacher or a layman who is a humbug”? He may be, but why miss the salvation Christ offers—why lose the enrichment of personality and the inner peace and harmony which he offers—just because another has been such a poor example of what a Christian ought to be?

If some of us have missed what Christ came to give, why should you miss it? If you do not like some of the people in the church—if you are persuaded that we have tarnished the faith with unworthy lives, will you offer yourself for the Christian cause, and do the job right? If some of us have hurt the good name of Christianity, will you help to redeem it? If the church is not at all what you think it ought to be, will you come in and help to make it better?

“What is that to thee? follow thou me.”

Eyes front! Forward march!

William M. Elliott, Jr., is pastor of Highland Park Presbyterian Church and Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, South. He holds the A.B. degree from Park College, B.D. from Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, and Ph.D. from Edinburgh University. Davidson College has conferred the D.D., and Park College the L.H.D. Dr. Elliott is author of several books, among them For the Living of These Days and Lift High That Banner.

Chosen And Appointed Path

To know despair. To feel

The stark, blank hurt of her

Whose mother-love has spent

Itself upon a Judas.

To taste delight, as sire

Whose sun-kissed baby daughter

Laughs her infant ecstasy

Into his singing heart.

To have the joy of soul—

Clean maiden whose treasure springs

From bursting heart to golden song

Upon her wedding day.

To touch and clasp the pain

And burden of the bruised

And scattered multitudes

Who wander lost, and yearn.

To share the hope and fear

That stir and wrench and pull

Each human heart, and drive

From grasping earth to God.

“To laugh with them that laugh,

To weep with them that weep,”

To serve the Lord of Love

Among his hungry sheep.

JOE CARSON SMITH

Cover Story

Do We Want a Reformation?

Paul Woolley

Christians are constantly demanding a new Reformation of the Church. It would be surprising and pleasant if men of the stature of Luther and Calvin would suddenly appear, driving into our big American cities over the new turnpikes and turning the thoughts of the people to the commands of God. It is not, however, the idea of another Reformation that men need to have in mind. The first Reformation put the Bible into its proper place as the final authority for all Christians who are in the true lineage of Protestantism. Unless we are now willing to undo that work we do not need another Reformation.

God Irrelevant

God has become irrelevant to modern life. At least the majority of Americans think he has. That is the fact that the Church has to face and conquer. The conviction that God is irrelevant appeared in Western Europe as long ago as the twelfth century, but it was given tremendous impetus in the seventeenth century. Since the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species nearly one hundred years ago, the idea has conquered the Western world and is now the majority conviction. Science produces the marvels and the comforts of the current age and it does very well without God both here and in the Soviet Union.

There are still a few problems that do not yield immediately. One, for example, is juvenile delinquency; another is international and interracial hatred. A more serious one is the frenzy for comfort and amusement at the expense of serious accomplishment. David Riesman has pointed out how rapidly we are becoming an “other-directed” nation, a nation of people whose chief aim is to be like the crowd instead of being what each one knows he ought to be.

A basic reason for such herd behavior, clearly, is that most people do not know what they ought to be. That is where the Church has to find the way to come in. The Church has the job of showing the individual American either that science cannot get along without God or that man cannot get along with only science to provide for him.

The first job requires a discovery that the scientist will have to make for himself. It is only about a century ago that the majority of American scientists began to think they could get along without God. There are already signs that the attempt is not going to be permanently successful, but the revolution will not come overnight. Scientists of Christian conviction will ultimately have to furnish the answer by providing a science that is superior in its total conception to atheistic or agnostic science. One day it will be obvious that there are two basic varieties of science and that the former is superior to the latter.

The Church’S Job

In the meantime the second job—to show that man cannot get along with only science to provide for him—is facing the Church right now. How is it to be accomplished?

People have to come to know that they need something more than science before they will put any effort into getting it. The majority of Americans do not yet know that they need anything more. But people who have had some education are beginning to discover it. They are the ones who have been longest outside the Church. The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century had its most compelling effect upon the educated. For evidence, to save time, let us review only the American situation. The deism and skepticism of the eighteenth century made its greatest impact upon the people and the geographical regions with the most education. At about the time of the American Revolution the Christians in Harvard and Yale colleges could be counted on the fingers. Unitarianism began and had its greatest successes among the most highly educated. New England was its headquarters.

Mass Revivals

The mass revival movements of the nineteenth century, on the other hand, had their greatest influence among people of less education. The churches were most effective in that period among the same groups. These groups were kept, by and large, from mass skepticism for three generations longer.

Speaking in round terms, then, the highly educated section of the American population has had a century and a half of skepticism and uncertainty. It is the first to discover the results of such a diet. It is beginning to say that science is not enough.

The mass of the population, on the other hand, is reveling in the benefits of science. It has had less than a century of doubt and skepticism. Until recently it still retained ethical remnants from earlier ages of belief.

Is Science Enough?

There is now the beginning of a demand for a supplement to science. That is one of the factors which has started American church membership climbing within the past decade. That demand for a supplement to science is going to increase powerfully within the coming generation.

The all-important question is this: Is the Church going to provide an answer to this demand for something more than science? If it provides the answer, America may look forward to another period under God’s blessing. If the Church does not have the answer, America may expect the kind of decline which overtook the western Roman empire in the sixth and subsequent centuries.

People are showing the first signs of being ready to listen to the Church. Does the Church have something to say? Of course, it thinks that it does. But are people going to listen, or are they going to turn away in disgust?

A Look At History

History is of some use here. The times when the people listened to the Church most attentively have been two in number. The first was in the early Christian centuries when Christianity was first speaking in the world; the second was at the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Why did people listen at these times?

In the first instance, the answer is not hard to discover. At that time a great many people in the Roman Empire (and elsewhere) were actually looking for a way of salvation. The testimony to that effect is rather overwhelming. There was a widespread sense of guilt and of the need to get rid of guilt. There was a widespread consciousness that pagan ethical principles were not satisfactory. Something better was needed. Pride, hatred and selfishness were not being adequately checked by pagan ethics. To these demands Christianity provided an answer that worked, and people became Christians in great numbers.

The situation in the sixteenth century was more complicated. Economic and political changes were more complex and their effects less easy to assess. The same two factors appear, however, that had appeared earlier. Luther was tremendously oppressed by a sense of guilt. He found a remedy for it. The corruptions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in ordinary life were exposed by the great preachers, Geiler of Strasbourg and Savonarola of Florence. The low state of the papal curia was obvious to anyone acquainted with it. Its ethical standards were ineffective.

Luther and Calvin proclaimed a remedy for guilt and for ethical corruption, and they were heard. For a time they were heard by the majority in Western Europe.

In both of these periods, then, people listened eagerly, and great masses of them accepted what they heard.

The Reformation Message

What did they hear and what did they accept? In both the early Christian period and during the Reformation it was the same: that men are guilty before God, that a way of salvation from guilt has been provided by God, that that way of salvation has a powerful ethical content adequate for the sins of pride, hatred and selfishness.

Is that message sufficient to secure attention at the present moment? The author believes that the answer is no. In both of the earlier periods there was a widespread sense of guilt. The truths that changed the face of Europe in those periods were based upon the validity of that sense of guilt.

Today there is no widespread sense of guilt. It does not exist to any appreciable degree among the highly educated who know that science is not enough. It does not exist among those who are swelling the church membership rolls. Obviously, it does not exist powerfully elsewhere. How then is the Church to meet the problem of the present age?

Today’S Key

The Church must begin where the people are. The key is this: people know that love and beauty exist and are powerful and that science has no adequate explanation for the existence of these realities. Science does not explain their meaning or their value. If the Church will point out patiently and repeatedly that the only ultimate source of love and beauty is God, some will listen. They are genuinely interested.

The revival of family life, the rise in the birth rate, the interest in liturgical worship, in painting and architecture as seen in the popular magazines, are genuine, if diverse, indications of this interest. People want to know who God is and what he is like. As they are pointed to the Scriptures as the reliable source of information about him, they will find that here is the source of unending love, of superlative beauty. But they will also find that God is holy and God is righteous. Gradually they will discover that love and beauty cannot develop except under the favor of God, and that that favor requires holiness. Holiness is attainable only when sin is dealt with.

Thus the time will arrive again, if God continues his patience toward this age, when sin must be faced as it was in previous ages of crisis. The sense of guilt will return. The message of salvation from guilt will once more be overwhelmingly needed.

The evangelical Church of today is missing its optunity because it does not have an adequate sense of timing. It must, if it is to be heard, preach God as the source of love and beauty and, for the moment, emphasize that message. The whole system of truth must be available, of course, but the proportion, the timing, is vital. The people who have been longest away from the Church will be the first to return. The time to reach them has arrived.

Paul Woolley has been Chairman of the Department of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary since 1929. He holds the A.B. degree from Princeton University, and the Th.B. and Th.M. degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is Managing Editor of the Westminster Theological Journal.

Cover Story

The Fate of Protestants in Colombia

Clyde W. Taylor

Part I

[Part II will appear in the next issue]

The last few months have witnessed a rash of denials by the Roman Catholic press that Protestants have been persecuted in Colombia during the last eight years. Outstanding dignitaries of the American hierarchy have simultaneously made trips to Latin America, returning with the same story, regardless of whether they stayed in Bogota six short days or traveled around the country. These developments have not only confused many Catholics (who wonder about so much denial of something that “never happened”) but also arouse many questions in the minds of Protestants. Notable articles are now appearing (cf. Time, September 23, 1957, and Presbyterian Life, September 21, 1957) to interpret the situation.

Here in brief is what has happened. In May of this year the military forces of Colombia overthrew the military dictator Rojas Pinilla and drove him from the country. This action by the military junta had the approval of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, despite the fact that a few months prior Rojas Pinilla still had the complete backing of the hierarchy. As soon as this new military junta took control of Colombia, it initiated a more normal and constitutional state of affairs. Simultaneously, articles began to appear with greater frequency in the Roman Catholic press in America denying religious persecution in Colombia.

Roman Catholic View

The first widely publicized article was printed in View Magazine of the Capuchin Fathers in New York in June. This in turn was reprinted in the press throughout Latin America, in the English Catholic press, and in La Prensa (Spanish daily printed in New York), apparently as the hierarchy’s official denial of charges of Roman Catholic persecution of Colombian Protestants:

For the last ten years there have been published all over the world news of religious persecution in Colombia. The Protestants are always the presumed victims, and the Catholics are always the presumed persecutors.… The dynamo of this prolific anti-Catholic propaganda is the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia, known by the abbreviation CEDEC in Spanish, which comprises 17 of the 27 Protestant groups in Colombia and represents about 12,000 of the 27,000 Protestants that there are there. The Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans and Baptists have refused to join this so-called “Common Front” against Catholicism. The Baptists have stigmatized it as hypocritical and absolutely opposed to Protestant liberty.

In no case has the CEDEC demonstrated conclusively that the violence it said the Protestants have suffered was ever more than a local brawl between Evangelicals and Catholics, provoked by an offensive and at times violent proselytism. The demonstration that CEDEC would be unable to prove juridically its accusations is evident in the silence of the United Nations and in the indifference of our own Department of State.… Nevertheless, a sensationalist press will publish practically anything that can stir up agitation.

Analysis Of Charges

Let us look at some of these charges. The first charge is against the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia, which includes all but a few Protestant missionary agencies in Colombia. The Episcopalians in Colombia have no mission in the usual sense; they operate three or four chapels and practically all in attendance are foreigners. Lutherans and Baptists are not in CEDEC. But this refusal is due wholly to the fact that Baptists and Lutherans do not sign statements of faith, which membership in this organization requires. The Colombian Lutheran Mission states:

On several occasions we have availed ourselves of the services of the CEDEC legal office and have contributed regularly to the maintenance of the same in our common fight for religious freedom in Colombia.

As to the CEDEC news releases I am not aware that Lutherans in Colombia (or other informed persons treating impartially the facts of religious persecution in Colombia) have questioned the veracity and uprightness of the CEDEC News Service. I have seen no attempt to exaggerate. While it would be folly for anyone to claim infallibility in the accumulation and presentation of facts, it is my opinion that the CEDEC has on the whole succeeded in being consistently exact in reporting incidents of religious persecution in Colombia.

The article also says that Baptists have not only refused to join but they have stigmatized CEDEC. Officially Baptists have replied:

Baptists, though not actively participating in the CEDEC movement are in sympathy with its efforts to state clearly the Evangelical cause in Colombia.

Baptists do hereby reject the false charges as presented by the View magazine that “The Baptists have stigmatized it (CEDEC) as hypocritical and absolutely opposed to Protestant liberty.” Never has such a statement received our endorsement in Colombia, therefore, we must emphatically reject such a malicious attempt to misrepresent both Baptists and the CEDEC organization.

Colombian Baptists affirm that persecution of Evangelical groups under instigation of local Roman Catholic priests has for years caused much suffering and therefore we continue to register our protest against such persecution campaigns.

Of the 18 Protestant missionary societies of any importance in Colombia, 14 are members of CEDEC and three others cooperate. Of the 60,000 Protestants in Colombia, at least 90% are represented by CEDEC.

This View article then goes on to dismiss persecution as nothing but a local brawl between Evangelicals and Catholics. CEDEC has actually documented over 700 cases of violence where Protestants suffered. Our NAE Washington office also has complete reports on hundreds of these cases. It is true that these were all local affairs. There was no coordinated effort across Colombia in one day or one month to wipe out Protestants. But during this period 49 Protestant churches were totally or partially destroyed, 34 others confiscated (many of these are now serving as schools, offices of mayors, police and military barracks and have not been returned to Protestants). In an overwhelming number of cases mobs and attacks were either personally or indirectly led by local Roman Catholic priests.

What Is Persecution?

This brings us to ask, “What is persecution?” In the summer of 1956 while in Colombia, we were informed by Father Ospina of Javariana University, official mouthpiece of the hierarchy there, that persecution does not exist in Colombia—although he acknowledged religious violence, churches burned, people killed and that many had suffered. But, he said, “there can be no persecution unless the Church orders persecution.” Therefore, all that has gone on is not recognized as persecution. We prefer to use Webster’s definition that “to cause to suffer because of religious belief” is persecution. That’s exactly what has gone on in Colombia for nine years, with scores suffering death.

The article in View then asserts that CEDEC cannot prove these accusations in view of the silence of the United Nations. But this matter is not within the jurisdiction of the U.N. There would be no way to get these facts before the U.N. unless it were made a national matter and the delegates of the United States were to bring it up. View refers to the indifference of our own State Department. But the present Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, in a letter dated May 31, 1957 (at the very time the View article was printed), says:

As you know, we are extremely concerned with the problems confronting United States Protestants in Colombia, and we desire to do everything appropriate to find satisfactory solutions.

The State Department has in fact shown tremendous interest and has done everything within its purview to alleviate the religious problems and difficulties confronting Americans there. It has complete files, and knows that government personnel has also been involved. When the priest-led mob attacked the First Baptist Church in Bogota on December 22, 1951, the U. S. Ambassador, standing in the door of the church during the dedication service, was struck in the head with a piece of brick.

Memorandum To Senators

Before the recent change in Colombian government, the situation was so serious that the National Association of Evangelicals sent an individual memorandum in January, 1957, to members of the U. S. Senate. We received no contradiction of the facts in this document, and can guarantee their factuality:

On October 17, 1956, the Colombian Army entered south western Tolima to wipe out so-called guerrillas, (armed liberals, mostly all Catholics, many of whom have been marked for assassination). Reports indicate not one guerrilla was killed or captured, but several thousand Colombians, including the large Protestant congregation in Campo Hermoso, lost everything they owned and fled as refugees to the mountains. The army adopted the “scorched earth” policy, and ruined the homes and farms of these people.

On October 13, 1956 Luis Arce, lay preacher of Buenavista, Caldas was murdered while working on his farm by several “police” because he was an active evangelical leader. His brother and a hired man were also killed because they were sympathizers with the evangelical views.

On September 29, 1956 Sr. Ramon Garcia, elder of the Presbyterian Church in Coloradas, near Cartago, Valle, was assassinated on a mountain trail between Los Coloradas and Cartago. Another evangelical, Sr. Gutierrez, was returning from the funeral of Sr. Garcia when a group of fanatics attacked and severely wounded him. Some 25 families of the Presbyterian Church had to abandon their homes and flee the area for fear of further violence.

Two American missionaries, Miss Ida Danielson (a veteran missionary 82 years old) and Miss Dorothy Hagerman were arrested in Quinchia, Caldas, July 15, 1956 and were charged with having Communist literature in their possession. The literature had been carried into their home by the same police officers who made the arrest. After being held in house arrest for two days, their case was turned over to the Colombian Secret Intelligence Service in Manizales. The ladies were arraigned before the Military Penal Court and had to spend two nights in the police barracks. After several weeks of harassment they were finally cleared by the Colombian government through the (active) intervention of the U. S. Embassy.

On July 9, 1956 at 2 a.m. an effort was made to burn four American missionaries alive in La Cumbre, Valle. Arsonists fired their house with gasoline. Several witnesses in sworn testimony named Father Millan as the instigator who planned the attack and hired four men to do it, with police cooperation. Perhaps the most serious of all is that more than 40 Protestant churches were closed by the Colombian government during 1956. This does not include any of the 49 churches which have been destroyed since 1948. The Colombian government based its action on an agreement with the Vatican which was concluded in 1953 and which gave the Catholic Church exclusive religious and educational rights in approximately 3/5 of the country. This agreement has been given precedence over a long standing treaty between Colombia and the United States which has been in force since 1846, with regard to their citizens and their right to live, move and practice their religion anywhere in either country.

In a subsequent memorandum issued August 28, 1957 we added:

On April 3, 1957, armed men, apparently belonging to the army, violated the Presbyterian chapel in Galilea, Tolima Department. They broke open the doors to the chapel and adjoining manse and that night slept in the two buildings. On leaving the next day they destroyed furnishings of the chapel, including cups and plates for serving Holy Communion, chairs, pews and tables. They burned hymn books and Bibles and broke a hole in the roof of the manse. Damages are estimated at 500 pesos. In 1952, the congregation experienced violence as follows: A short distance from the chapel the aggressors met Sr. Jose Noel Luna, a Ruling Elder of the congregation. They questioned him about his religious faith, and when he affirmed that he was a Protestant they stabbed him in the chest and left him in the road. Sr. Luna was able to crawl to a nearby house, where he died that same day (May 29, 1952).

On March 2, 1957, Protestants of San Carlos (Cordoba Department) were assembled in a service of Divine Worship under the direction of Sr. Jose C. Ayala, when they were interrupted by a Roman Catholic priest. The priest entered the service while the Protestants were praying, and in a loud voice questioned their right to assemble. The priest withdrew and sent in a policeman who stopped the meeting and ordered Sr. Ayala to accompany him to the police station. There he was directed to stop conducting Protestant religious services and threatened with arrest if he should be apprehended again. Sr. Jose Ayala is licensed by the Presbyterian Church in Colombia to preach the Gospel.

Two United States citizens were arrested in Ayapel, Colombia on June 4, 1957, and were charged with “being found in Catholic mission territory without authorization from the local priest.” Dennis Crespo, a missionary of the Latin America Mission in Colombia, and Fred Roberts, of Westminster Films, Pasadena, California, were traveling through Ayapel in the interests of a documentary film on the work of the mission. They stopped for the night in the home of Florencia viuda de Acevedo, an evangelical, when they were surprised by the appearance of Father Juan Valentin Cidres. The priest was accompanied by two national policemen armed with rifles. Father Valentin ordered the men to leave all their baggage in the house and they were conducted at gun point through the streets to the police station in the town of Ayapel. Arriving at the jail, the priest ordered the police to lock up the prisoners overnight and to fine them each fifty pesos (about eight dollars). “Your very presence is a form of Protestant propaganda,” he told them.

Early in May, 1957, at Victoria, Caldas, Colombia, a governing elder of the congregation was administering the Lord’s supper when the priest entered, knocked the wine out of his hand and insulted the group. Then the authorities arrived to help the priest and took the evangelicals to a school, where they were locked up. When they were set free after sunset a mob of fanatics was waiting, armed with clubs. Although beaten and bruised, they all managed to escape. Later the mob caught the 24-year-old Belarmina Tabares Alvarez, and obeying the priest’s orders “not to leave one Protestant alive,” they murdered her. Her broken body was found later in the waters of the Tasajo River.

March 31, 1957, evangelicals at La Cumbre, Colombia held a memorial service for missionaries John and Mary Dyck. While the service was going on, the loudspeaker on the Catholic church was blaring forth insults against the Protestants, with special reference to the memorial service. It was discovered that it was Father Millan, the local priest, who was broadcasting the anti-Protestant propaganda. As a result of his activity a mob was formed and plans were being made for action against the Protestants. Violence was averted only because one of the leaders, the city manager, was killed in an automobile accident and the mob was hurriedly dispersed. (The Dycks, Mennonite missionaries at Istmina, Choco, for the past eight years lost their lives in an airplane crash March 9.)

On March 9, 1957, the Inspector of Police of Bocachica, Cartagena (Bolivar Department), Sr. Policarpo Berrio, sealed the door of the house used for Protestant religious services and announced that the parish priest, Father Jose Cristin (an Italian), had ordered all Protestant meetings prohibited. Father Cristin and the Inspector announced that this measure was taken because the children of the Protestant families were attending Sunday school where they were learning doctrines contrary to the Roman Catholic religion. Thus, declared the priest, the children were being taught to oppose the government of Colombia.

Clyde W. Taylor directs the Office of Public Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals and is the movement’s official spokesman to representatives of U. S. and foreign government in Washington, D. C. His office is best known for its worldwide crusade for religious freedom.

Legacy

Olympus fades, the Greeks and Romans

Are thundering no more.

Valkyries bring no heroes home

To grace Valhalla’s door.

Great Babylon, Tyre and Carthage

Lie in ancient dust

With many warriors and captains

Beneath earth’s aging crust.

The heart of man, the world’s warm altar,

Still glows and will arise

To worship God, Eternal Love,

In His own Paradise.

MARY LUCRETIA BARKER

Cover Story

Back to the Reformers

J. Theodore Mueller

“Back to Luther and Calvin!” Many readers will, no doubt, recall this striking slogan with which Karl Barth began his amazing career as a militant theologian about forty years ago. Though still greatly influenced by theological humanism, neo-Kantian negativism, Kierkegaardian existentialism, Ragazian religious socialism and other anti-biblical trends of his day; and though still under the spell of Ritschl and Schleiermacher, he judged it necessary to skip the whole century of bankrupt theology that lay behind him and return to the writings of Luther and Calvin to gain a firm footing for his dialectical methodology. With his strong Calvinist background and his assiduous study of Luther, he found that to recover a theology worth listening to he had to re-examine the fundamentals of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation and utilize basic religious premises which had largely been overlooked by later European theologians.

Today, when Barth has passed the age of seventy and has virtually flooded the religious book market with his pronunciamentos, we may well gauge the result of his new theological research. His type of theology, accepted in its major premises by Brunner, Thurneysen, Gogarten and many other followers, has been termed, quite expressively, “neo-orthodoxy.” But the new orthodoxy of the dialectical school is agreeable neither to liberals nor to conservatives. It is not new since it goes back to Kierkegaard, nor is it orthodox in the sense of the Protestant Reformation. For his theological insights and guidelines Barth went back neither to Luther nor to Calvin; and much less so did Brunner, whose theological orientation has been rather toward Anglo-Saxon liberalism.

The Failure Of Neo-Orthodoxy

That does not mean that Barth has not evinced some paramount religious emphases which wholesomely affected modern theological thought. He applied the dialectical method with great skill to demonstrate the “wholly-otherness,” or transcendence of God over against the humanists’ conceited and overbearing deification of reason. At the same time he proved finite man’s total helplessness in the realm of the spiritual. God is in heaven and man on earth. That means that God is so far removed from man as heaven is removed from earth. Therefore, even the greatest intellectual titans can never storm heaven and dethrone God despite all their frantic endeavors. On the contrary, sinful man must humbly and penitently put his trust in the sovereign God, though he cannot comprehend the transcendent Lord. He must have faith even if that faith means for him a jump into a vacuum. In that sense Barth, in his dialectical way, emphasized the reality and necessity of divine grace.

Basis Of Impact

In a world lost in theological nihilism and religious despair, these three basic truths readily received a hearing. There was something positive about them and what is more, there was something distinctively Calvinist in them. With the help of these three Genevan fundamentals Barth built up a religious system in which the dialectic method was decisive, but in which also theology became a religious philosophy. Its very method brought about the fall of neo-orthodoxy into heterodoxy. It turned Barthian theologizing back again into the old rationalizing liberal channels of which the world long before had become weary. It took from it its alleged newness and made it old in the sense that it was essentially only a repetition, though in another form, of what Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Hermann, together with many others, had said before Barth. So also it turned Barthianism away from the orthodoxy of the Reformation, for it deprived Christendom of its message of the sola scriptura and the sola gratia. That may appear as a very severe indictment of neo-orthodoxy, and such indeed it is; nevertheless, it is true. Neo-orthodoxy, in the final analysis, has neither a sure, divine foundation on which the Christian believer may rest his faith, nor has it the infallible Biblical redemptive message on which the distressed penitent soul may firmly fix its hope of a sure salvation. Neo-orthodoxy ultimately has words only—learned words, unintelligible words, confusing words—with no clear and unmistakable meaning for those desiring assurance of salvation. In that sense Barthianism is a bit of theological Barnum.

Neo-Orthodoxy Has No Sola Scriptura

What the Reformers of the sixteenth century so earnestly contended for against the hopeless confusion of Romanism, was a firm divine foundation on which the believer might rest his faith. This they found in the Bible and only in the Bible. They discarded the Apocrypha as human writings, though Luther was ready to grant them the dignity of listing them as profitable reading for mature believers, which of course they are only in part. Luther also accepted the ancient church distinction of biblical homologumena and antilegomena, i.e., books universally acknowledged as of apostolic origin and such whose apostolic authorship was contested.

But both Wittenberg and Geneva attested with one accord that the canonical books of the Old and the New Testament are the divinely inspired Word of God and as such the objective divine truth and the divine infallible source and norm of faith and life. In this positive confession they followed the witness of Christ, his apostles and the post-apostolic Christian Church till the induration of Romanism at the Council of Trent and, in the Protestant area, till the blight of crass rationalism. Romanism added the Apocrypha and tradition to the biblical canon, while crass rationalism totally denied the divine inspiration and authority of the Scriptures. Both dethroned the Bible as the only divine and infallible source and norm of faith and life.

It Is Written

At the time when Christ, our divine Lord, was about his prophetic ministry, the Old Testament canon was complete, and that biblical canon was precisely the Old Testament which orthodox Jews and Christians use today, consisting of the Law and the Prophets, or to use the term employed in the synagogue, the Torah, the Nebiim, and the Ketubim. It is significant that both Christ and his chief Jewish opponents, the Pharisees, accepted the Old Testament Scriptures as God’s Word and, therefore, as divinely authoritative. In that sense our Lord quoted Gen. 1:27; 2:24 when, in Matt. 19:3ff., he rebuked the Pharisees because of their marital infidelity. Nor did these learned scribes contest these passages; they rather admitted them as fully valid to serve as proof texts. Even Satan, when tempting Jesus, submitted to the authoritative value of the Old Testament Scriptures which our Saviour quoted against him (Matt. 4:1ff). Precisely so, St. Paul quoted the Old Testament Scriptures as, for example, in his letter to the Galatians, where he cited them against the Judaizers in this defense of the sola fide. Nor did the Judaizers contest his Old Testament Scripture proof. They too accepted the Old Testament Scriptures as God’s infallible Word.

In the New Testament St. Paul quotes his own apostolic writings as “the commandment of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:37). In Ephesians 2:20 he places the writings of the New Testament apostles of Christ on the same high authoritative level as those of the divinely inspired prophets of the Old Testament (2 Tim. 3:16), just as does St. Peter in 1 Pet. 1:10–12. Thus from the time of Christ and his apostles till the Romanist defection from Scripture and the rationalistic repudiation of Scripture, the Christian Church has always regarded the canonical books of the Old and the New Testament as the Word of God, and so as the divinely established source and norm of faith and life. Just so today thousands of Christian believers esteem the sacred Scriptures as God’s inspired Word and the objective divine truth upon which believers in Christ may safely rest their faith. To every Christian believer, for example, John 3:16 is the divinely inspired Word of God, not in the sense of Barthianism nor in that of Modernism, but in that of the Bible’s own teaching and testimony. And just that was the biblical viewpoint of the Protestant Reformation.

Where Neo-Orthodoxy Fails

It is claimed for Barthianism that it takes seriously what is meant by the “Word of God.” This statement of E. L. Allen in his brief overview of Barthian theology, A Guide to the Thought of Karl Barth (p. 10), has had the support also of conservative writers. According to Allen, Barth believes that “the Bible is the record of what God thinks about men, not of what men have thought about God” (ibid.). But he adds: “This return to Calvinism is not a return to Fundamentalism. The Word of God teaches us through the Bible, but is not bound thereto. God is free to speak as, when, and to whom he wills” (p. 13). “In the Bible we have the witness of the apostles of Jesus Christ and also, though in a somewhat different sense, that of the prophets: this is always a human witness and as such is never infallible, but is always conditioned by the circumstances of the time” (p. 14). Those who have read Barth’s voluminous works must admit that these statements correctly present Barth’s view of the Word of God. In fact, they are understatements rather than overstatements. Barth has repeatedly and emphatically favored the “murderous” method of the destructive higher critics. Let them tear the sacred Scriptures to pieces as much as they like, the Bible still remains the Word of God, not indeed in the objective sense of traditional Christian theology, but in the subjective sense of dialectical theology, namely inasmuch as God speaks to an individual through the fallible word of man, either in the Scriptures or outside them.

Denial Of Objective Truth

When we ask how the fallible testimony of man can serve the believer as the Word of God, Barth’s reply is: “Through the fallible witness of man God speaks personally to us and claims us for his service” (p. 14). In C. E. Luthardt’s Kompendium der Dogmatik, the reviser and editor of the 13th edition, Dr. Robert Jelke, puts Barth’s view of the Word of God thus: “God’s word is his address to man (Gottes Wort ist das Angesprochenwerden des Menschen durch Gott). Jelke adds to this: “Barth’s definition deals alone with the formal aspect of God’s Word and totally excludes its content” (p. 53). This means that the fallible witness of the biblical writers becomes the Word of God to a person only when through it God impresses upon an individual his own special Word. And since God’s existential address is not limited to the Bible, he may approach a person through any other agency which he wishes to make for him the medium of his revelation. Barth thus removes from the Christian believer the Bible as the only objective divine truth and the sure foundation of his faith. Ultimately Barth’s theological system leads to an insecure subjectivism and so finally to the denial of all objective divine truth. Neo-orthodoxy does not have the sola scriptura of the Protestant Reformation, in spite of whatever it may declare to the contrary.

The Cry For Religious Certainty

This, then, is the first point at which neo-orthodoxy fails our despairing modern world, which cries out for religious certainty and full assurance of salvation. The Reformers of the sixteenth century declared the Holy Scriptures to be the inspired Word of God and so the objective divine truth. Of this divine truth, they held, the believer is made sure personally through the witness of the Holy Spirit. It has been said that while Luther taught that the Holy Spirit witnesses through the divine Word, Calvin’s claim was that he witnesses in connection with the divine Word. Ultimately both ascribed the certainty of salvation through faith in Christ to the Holy Spirit, working by or with the divine Word. Both accepted St. Paul’s words as true: “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. 10:17). Both accepted as divinely true also Christ’s promise: “The Spirit … will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).

It is therefore at this point that all who desire to help our truth-seeking world find certainty of salvation must go back to the Reformation. Let them preach the Word of God, as Holy Scripture sets it forth objectively and infallibly in its full truth, the divine Law for the knowledge of sin and the Gospel for the forgiveness of sin. Then they will assure our perishing world of the divine truth that is revealed in Christ Jesus for the salvation of sinners, for then the Holy Spirit will guide them into all truth. The searching soul, hungry for the divine truth and the assurance of his salvation, does not care what Schleiermacher thinks, or what Ritschl thinks, or what Fosdick thinks, or what Barth and Brunner think; he wants a surer foundation on which to rest his faith than the religious philosophy of men. By the guidance of the Holy Spirit he rests his faith only on the glorious Gospel promises of God as they are clearly stated in the divine, infallible sacred Scriptures, which are the inspired Word of God. Cornelius Van Til, after all, was right when he judged neo-orthodoxy to be a new form of liberalism, and he was supported in this view by Charles Clayton Morrison, as we shall show later. The dialectical theology of Karl Barth overthrows the sola scriptura of the Reformation as surely as does Modernism.

Neo-Orthodoxy Has No Sola Gratia

This proposition may be contested still more than the one that neo-orthodoxy has no sola scriptura. Barth, as has been said emphatically, has gone far to restore the doctrine of divine grace promulgated by the Protestant Reformation. In a way Barthianism has restored divine grace, but in the same breath it has also overthrown it; for it is the very essence of dialectical theologizing to say yes and no at the same time. By the paradox of yes and no the dialectic method seeks to establish the truth. But in theology one cannot say yes and no at the same time. Abelard tried it, and failed, and so all have failed who walked in his footsteps. The fact that Barth is unable to teach the sola gratia of the Protestant Reformation is clear from the fact that he does not accept the New Testament teaching of the Christ of the Scriptures. It is true that at various times he has shifted his emphases and modified his earlier pronouncements, but essentially the Barth of today is still the Barth of the Roemerbrief, for the fundamentals of the dialectic method have remained the same.

Vague On Atonement

In his book, The Doctrine of the Word of God, Barth makes the statement, “Jesus Christ is also the Rabbi of Nazareth, historically, so difficult to get information about, and when it is got, one whose activity is so easily a little commonplace alongside more than one founder of a religion and even alongside many representatives of his own religion” (p. 188). That Christ of Barth is certainly not the Christ of the Holy Scriptures who declared himself to be one with the Father, and the divine Saviour who laid down his life as a ransom for many. Again, when Barth speaks of Christ’s Atonement, his views are so vague and difficult to understand that Dr. Carl F. H. Henry (in The Protestant Dilemma) is justified in stating that “neo-supernaturalistic thought on the Atonement is a difficult study” (p. 159). Barth, for example, writes: “With the doctrine of the atonement we come to the real center … of dogmatics and church proclamation.… The Word of God and therefore God’s Son Jesus Christ as the Word of atonement is the sovereignty of God asserting itself all the more emphatically and gloriously against the opposition of man” (Dogmatics as a Function of the Teaching Church. 2. The Dogmatic Method, p. 882). The reader asks himself: What does that mean? Does it mean what St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:18–21? If so, why does he not say it as clearly as St. Paul has said it?

Brunner Goes Farther

Brunner goes much farther in repudiating the Christian doctrine of Atonement when in The Mediator he writes: “The atonement is not history. The atonement, the expiation of human guilt, the covering of sin through his sacrifice, is not anything which can be conceived from the viewpoint of history. This event does not belong to the historical plane.… It would be absurd to say: in the year 30 the atonement of the world took place” (p. 504). The fact that Brunner totally rejects the Christian doctrine of Atonement in its biblical historical sense, is proved also by his rejection of Christ’s Resurrection as an event in history. He writes in The Mediator: “Whosoever asserts that the New Testament gives us a definite consistent account of the Resurrection is either ignorant or unconscientious” (p. 577). But Brunner, after all, is quite in accord with Barth on this point who writes in The Resurrection of the Dead: “This tomb may prove to be definitely closed or an empty tomb; it is really a matter of indifference. What avails the tomb, proved to be this or that, at Jerusalem in the year A. D. 30?” (p. 135).

But by denying Christ’s Atonement and Resurrection in the historical sense of Scripture and the Christian tradition, Barth and Brunner are unable to teach the sola gratia, i.e., the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Christ, in the sense of the Protestant Reformation. Without the actual, historical, atoning death of Christ and his triumphant Resurrection there is no divine grace for sinners and no assurance of their eternal salvation. To one who compares neo-orthodoxy and its unintelligible, contradictory pronouncements with the clear and simple Gospel message of Holy Scripture, it appears as a blasphemous mockery of the precious Gospel of Christ. (To such as look for a brief and simple, yet reliable guide to neo-orthodoxy we recommend Charles E. Tulga’s The Case Against Neo-Orthodoxy.)

Back To The Reformation

Karl Barth has not returned to the Reformation, but, using fundamentals stressed by the Reformers, has elaborated them into a new form of liberalism or rather into a new form of liberal religious philosophy. Charles Clayton Morrison stressed this fact years ago when he wrote in Christian Century: “To identify this new theological movement as a revival of the orthodoxy of the traditional creeds represents a failure to discern its most inward characteristics. It is true that neo-orthodoxy comes out at numerous points where orthodoxy came out, but it reaches its goal by routes with which the old orthodoxy was quite unfamiliar.… Virtually all the outstanding exponents of neo-orthodoxy came to their positions by way of liberalism. They were liberals before they were neo-orthodox” (June 7, 1950).

Neo-orthodoxy, with its inherent liberalism and its manifest departure from the Christian doctrine of Scripture and God’s grace in Christ Jesus, has no redeeming message for a world seeking assurance of salvation. But it does teach Christendom an important lesson. Modernism has no solution for the penitent person who cries out, “What must I do to be saved?” It has rejected both the divine Christ and his divine Gospel in toto. But neither can a halfway measure like neo-orthodoxy satisfy the pitiful cry of a sin-weary world, because what is halfway for Christ is not for him, but against him.

The One Solution

The only help for the world in its worst predicament lies in the preaching of Christ and him crucified and risen, a stumbling block to the Jew and stupidity to the Greek, but to all who believe, God’s power and God’s wisdom. Religious systems built up by men are bound to fail. But the Christ of Calvary and the open grave will never fail those who are weary and heavy-laden. That explains the continued existence of the believing “communion of saints.” That explains also the preaching of the pure saving Gospel of Christ by thousands of loyal followers of our Lord at all times. That explains lastly the many conversions and gains for church membership wherever the Gospel is preached today as St. Paul preached it and as our Lord himself preached it: the simple joyous message of man’s redemption and salvation by the atoning Christ, with all its stumbling blocks and absurdities for conceited human reason, but also with all its divine power to convince multitudes of truth-hungry and salvation-seeking souls that it is God’s wisdom. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35).

J. Theodore Mueller is a Lutheran scholar who served Concordia Seminary (Missouri Lutheran) for a generation as Professor of Systematic Theology and Exegesis. He began lectures at Concordia in 1920 and now, in his 72nd year, continues on modified service.

Cover Story

America’s Need: A New Protestant Awakening

By A Former Jesuit Trainee

The 440th anniversary of that memorable day when Martin Luther first posted his theses on the door of the church at Wittenberg and launched the Protestant Reformation is about to be observed.

For me the Reformation occurred not on October 31, 1517, but on a day in 1936 when I could no longer justify the discrepancy between Holy Scripture, the moral pronouncements of the Roman Catholic church itself, and Catholic dogma as it was being taught to me in a Jesuit seminary.

On the advice of a Father Superior who felt that I was not “physically and mentally strong enough” to become a priest, I was expelled from that seminary just a year before I was to have taken the final vows of ordination. Like many another student priest, I did not immediately break completely and become a Protestant. For nine years I found myself wandering in a nether world, coming to disbelieve more and more of the doctrines I had been taught from birth as a Catholic, but appalled by the thought that I should become a complete rebel and actually join a Protestant church. It was not until I was in the military service and met a wonderful Protestant chaplain that I finally made the decision that I ought to accept Christ and not merely compromise about him.

Personal Reformation

This Baptist chaplain counseled with me before my departure on a dangerous combat mission in Germany. He had no idea I was a former student priest. He knew only that I was deeply troubled. He was astonished when he learned that I had attended Catholic parochial schools, graduated from a Catholic college and studied three years in a Jesuit seminary. Then he told me how he himself had come to find Christ one day at a revival meeting when he, like I, had not been inside a church for several years and had lost all sense of contact with God. Under his inspiration I accepted the rite of baptism and for me, as it had been for Martin Luther, the break was at last complete.

For the last 12 years I have been active as a Protestant layman and have found that solace of spirit, that communion with Christ for which I yearned as a boy, for which I was prepared to dedicate my whole life as a priest, but which I could not find in the authoritarian dogmas of a creed which worships church more than Christ.

I look upon the Reformation today somewhat differently than those of my fellow Protestants who were born into the creed of Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley and other great Reformers. I have had to buy my freedom of conscience at a bitter price. I have come to my position as a Protestant by deep personal conviction.

Not A Matter Of Hate

While I deplore some of the materialistic, worldly influences within the Roman Catholic church, detest the cynicism and opportunism of many of the clerical politicians of the Vatican, I am not anti-Catholic. After all, there is much that is good in the Catholic church, many dedicated and selfless priests, brothers and nuns. There comes before my eyes the vision of my own saintly Irish grandmother saying the prayers of her Rosary and lighting a candle before the image of Mary at our parish church. I know that God has enfolded her into the eternal keeping of his love. I only hope that she can understand now why her favorite grandson could not become a priest as she fervently wished.

She and thousands of good Catholic worshipers like her are seeking God in the only way they have been taught and no church which has so many kindly, consecrated souls within it can be a totally bad institution. So I cannot hate the Catholic church, though I do criticize those who have led her into the path of pride, worldliness and a maze of Mariology that obscures the ethical and spiritual teachings of Jesus Christ.

From my vantage point as a Catholic who has become a Protestant, there are many misgivings which I have concerning the Protestant churches in America in relation to the Catholic church. I hope that I may speak candidly of some of them.

Protestants are the inheritors of a great tradition. I wonder if we realize how hard our Protestant forefathers had to fight for religious freedom, how bitterly they suffered in the Thirty Years War in Europe, and how hard they worked here in the frontier outposts of America, solely for the right to escape the dictates of Popes who said there was only one way to worship God. Today American Protestants take that inheritance of religious freedom for granted. Many of our Roman Catholic citizens take religious freedom for granted just as much, not realizing what clerical dictatorship really means.

Originally, America was a Protestant nation. Its Roman Catholic minority was very small. Today this is no longer true. In the last generation the number of Roman Catholics has doubled in the United States. Catholic church members now outnumber Protestant church members in 12 of our 48 states. They are a substantial and vocal minority in most of the rest. Since Archbishop Cicgonani came here as Papal Delegate in 1933, the number of Catholic dioceses and bishops has more than doubled and enrollment in Catholic schools tripled in the United States.

Roman Catholic leaders believe they have Protestantism on the run in America. They are confident as they read that 62 per cent of the children born in Connecticut last year were baptized Roman Catholics, that by sheer weight of outbreeding, as well as by more than 100,000 Protestant conversions each year (mostly in marriages), they will within another two generations (60 years) outnumber Protestants in all the populous industrial states, and in 200 years have a majority in every state.

Catholic Power Politics Explicit

Once Roman Catholics become a majority in an area, the church reaches out, as it always has, for control of the political state in order that the state’s power may be used to further the interest of the church. This has always been done and Catholics are taught as a matter of dogma that it is the duty of the State not to defend religious liberty, but to suppress it and support the church, for the church is a divinely ordained institution. This does not represent any secret conspiracy. It is plainly and explicitly taught in books of Catholic doctrine which are available to any Protestant to read.

We should not hate Catholics because they want to exterminate Protestantism by whatever means they can find to attain this objective, for they are taught that all Protestantism is a heresy, abominable in the sight of God, dividing Christ’s household. Catholics believe it will be for the spiritual welfare of Protestants themselves if they are led back to the chair of Peter, there to submit themselves to the Papal authority.

Protestants have to face the unpleasant fact that this is what the Roman Catholic church teaches concerning them. The Catholic clergy, whatever be their profession of tolerance and brotherhood, have as their one objective the ultimate conquest of Protestantism so that nowhere in America will there be a single Protestant church.

Protestant Apprehension

I think Protestants want to evade this unpleasant truth. I think, frankly, that they are afraid of the Roman Catholic church. They feel a chill run down their spines when they read the statistics of the growing Catholic population in the United States, frown when they see the tremendous expansion of Catholic schools (which now enroll one child out of every eight receiving education in America), and get a frustrated feeling when they see a neighbor boy signing a premarital agreement forever surrendering the religious freedom of his children in order to marry an attractive Catholic girl. But they are afraid to do anything about it.

Protestants can see what is happening as the emissaries of the Roman pontiff gradually eat into this bastion of religious freedom and convert it into a citadel of Catholic strength.

This is exactly what is happening on the 440th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. What are Protestants going to do about it? Protestants can’t look to the past in America for the answer. Too many of the actions that Protestants have taken in the past make them ashamed today. That is one reason they are so reluctant to do anything, afraid that they will slip back into evil ways that they would prefer to forget.

I know that Protestants would not want to return to the days when a shower of bricks greeted my Irish forebears as they held a St. Patrick’s Day parade on the streets of an American city. They don’t want to go back to the days only too recent when the Ku Klux Klan burned as many crosses on Catholic lawns as in Negro sections. I don’t remember with any relish the time when I applied for summer employment in a New Jersey resort town and was required to state my religion. When I wrote “Catholic” I saw the frown on the personnel manager’s face. That was a predominantly Methodist resort and Catholic boys weren’t welcome.

Can Protestants Meet The Challenge?

Can Protestants meet the Catholic challenge in America without resorting to imbecilic outbursts of violent personal prejudice that are self-defeating? I hope they can and I hope that Protestants can come to see both the need of combatting Roman Catholicism in our free America and the proper manner in which that contest for the minds and loyalty of Americans ought to be conducted.

One thing is clear to me. Protestants are sooner or later either going to have to stand up for their religious beliefs, or see themselves go down to defeat before the machinations and power of Rome. They are losing the fight for the minds and souls of America’s future generations today. Overconfident because they have long been a powerful majority, our Protestant churches seem to feel so secure that to carry the ideological battle to their adversary would be beneath them. They are smug and self-satisfied. The Roman Catholic church isn’t, and that is the difference in this contest at the present moment. That is why Catholicism is making such enormous gains in America.

Jesuit Strategy

The Roman Catholic church, whatever may be its other faults, is never lacking in shrewdness or in good strategists. If I may say so with a little “old school pride,” the Jesuits are the sharpest generals in this struggle for America’s future. The Jesuits have urged the Catholic church in America to label every criticism of the Roman Catholic church as “bigotry.” They pretend that anyone who would exhort Protestants to conduct a campaign to convert Catholics—as Catholics spend millions through the Knights of Columbus Bureau of Information to convert Protestants—is trying to start a religious war. And when their sensibilities are offended, knowing how much Protestants want peace and brotherhood, the Jesuits deliberately stir up bitter religious animosity so that Protestants will be frightened and lay off.

In this manner the Roman Catholic church uses the interfaith movement in the United States as a powerful defense for its own campaign against Protestantism. I have heard a prominent Jesuit scholar (Father Koerner of John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio) defend before a Catholic audience participation of the church in interfaith organizations on the ground that it pulls the teeth of Protestant opposition to Catholic doctrine, while Catholic laymen can be “steeled” against any subversion of their own beliefs by proper schooling in the “eternal truths” of their faith.

“Tolerance” And Timidity

It is a tragedy that Protestant leaders are permitting the Roman Catholic church to use “tolerance” as a sham with which to mask their own unremitting campaign of propaganda against Protestantism. Yet the Catholic church does use it so skilfully that any Protestant who criticizes the Catholic church seems to be doing something dirty. I make an appeal to my fellow Protestants on behalf of thousands of Americans who, like myself, were born and raised in the Roman Catholic church but who find its doctrines of Mariology and papal idolatry repugnant to the Scriptures, to common sense and to all concepts of democratic freedom. There are more such Catholic laymen—and even priests—than Protestants could have any means of suspecting. Why are they forsaken? Why is their very existence ignored? Why—except for Protestant timidity?

For nine years after I broke with Rome no Protestant church or minister made a move toward me. There was no agency working among ex-Catholics to give me answers for questions that perplexed me. I was simply an “unchurched” man. There are millions of nominal Catholics listed on the parish baptismal rolls today who haven’t been to Mass for years and who are willing to say openly that they do not believe the doctrines of their church, particularly her claim to be the sole repository of all truth. But they are ignored, even shunned, by Protestantism.

Freedom Demands Price

I remember how, after my voluntary baptism during the closing days of World War II, I asked the Army to recognize my new religious status by issuing me a new dogtag that said “Prot” instead of “Cath” to indicate which chaplain I wanted in case of disability or death. I had quite a battle to get it and during the course of it the Roman Catholic chaplain of our division came to me belligerently and asked who had been “tampering” with my faith! When he found out the Protestant chaplain had baptized me, there was an immediate vigorous complaint to headquarters and the Baptist chaplain was called on the carpet by his superior (also a Protestant) who explained that the military chaplaincy was not the place to engage in proselytizing! He seemed to regard it as an offense against religious tolerance and brotherhood for a Catholic to be converted to Protestantism. Yet Catholic chaplains were baptizing Protestant boys left and right, particularly on the eve of battle when the St. Christopher medals were so comforting.

Martin Luther was not afraid of Catholic power. He knew the wrath of Rome would descend upon his head when he posted his theses. You simply have to face that violent wrath if you are going to cross the Vatican’s path. I had to face it when I made my own stand, knowing it meant expulsion from seminary, an end to a cherished career, humiliation and disgrace at home. It has meant economic discrimination and personal abuse, ruptured family relationships that may never heal. I paid a terrible price for my freedom, years out of my life, and I’m still hounded and harassed by those who feel that I am a betrayer because I have left the church I once vowed to serve. I know other Catholics who have done the same, other students at my seminary, even a respected monsignor who ultimately had all he could take of Rome’s cynical power politics. They, too, have made the personal sacrifice for freedom.

Time For New Offensive

When Luther rang the tocsin bell, thousands of disillusioned Catholic believers of his day rallied to him. They came out of the church by the thousands—nuns, priests, monks, lay people. Early Protestantism didn’t hesitate to say exactly where, when, and how they thought the Pope had erred in interpreting the Bible. They did not hesitate to condemn the Vatican’s amoral politics, and its greed for gold. Thousands of Catholics listened and followed the Protestant Reformers. More thousands would have, had not the church used the power of the state to threaten with death all heretics within Italy, Spain and other areas. Only ruthless use of the sword saved Rome.

The Roman Catholic church in free America ought to be challenged by Protestants to defend her dogmas, particularly her bigoted assertion that she alone is the true church of Christ. The type of bigotry which is taught in Catholic parochial schools should be castigated as a positive subversion of America’s heritage of freedom—which it is.

If the Roman Catholic church were compelled to engage in debate in the free forum of ideas, if her communicants were regularly presented with the Protestant side of issues as well as the Catholic, she would soon be on the defensive.

The Catholic church can and is through its opposition to birth control outbreeding Protestants. It indoctrinates its young people so that if they marry Protestants the latter must sign away all rights to the children. It can thereby—and is—increasing its numbers. But it cannot indefinitely hold the minds of its adherents if they are given freedom of choice.

Make Reformation Real

Freedom of religion simply doesn’t exist for the average Roman Catholic in America today. If you think it does, you should see the pressure the church brings to bear upon any members who leave its fold or try to question its teachings. Every Catholic child, it is insisted, must be educated in a Catholic school. It is massive indoctrination, a process of education designed to make America in the future a Catholic country, utterly submissive and obedient to Rome. Yet Protestants are contributing more and more of their own tax dollars to the parochial schools!

The Protestant Reformation is more than an historical event. It has been in my own life, and in the lives of thousands of Catholics like me, a vivid and present event. We have broken away from the dictatorship of Rome and its false doctrines, its purchased Masses and ritual prayers, in this generation and in this country. Unless the Reformation confronts her with a continuous challenge, Rome will win the contest of the centuries. She has already succeeded in containing Protestantism and narrowing its influence. She has succeeded in pulling its teeth so that its challenging doctrines no longer reach the ears of her faithful adherents. Now she is beginning the slow, inexorable task of conquering it and forcing it into isolated pockets for ultimate destruction.

Rome would lose adherents by the millions in free America if she had to defend her dogmas. Thousands who will never know anything but a sterile service before a high altar in a mystical long-dead foreign tongue will never come to know Christ. They will only come to fear a church which damns them to thousands of years in an imaginary but vividly-described purgatory. Their souls may be lost to Christ entirely because they will drift away from that church, rejecting her ridiculous holy waters, indulgences, sacred wooden images, and other medieval superstitions. No other door is open to these Americans. No evangelist is calling them. No organization tries to help them. For lapsed Catholics, no challenging alternative to agnosticism is offered.

Results Would Benefit All

The Reformation must be born anew in America. Protestants—not throwing bricks or burning crosses—but nailing theses to church doors, are needed today to combat the spread of Catholic totalitarianism in free America. If the Catholic church faced such an intellectual challenge it would be good for her. She would learn to rely less on force and more on logic. And as events which followed the Reformation in Europe showed, under pressure she would reform herself. The Catholic church no longer burns Protestants at the stake as she once did; no longer openly sells indulgences for gold; no longer has a corrupt Borgia as sovereign Pope. She has made considerable progress and, if confronted with a serious challenge, would make more adjustments. Millions of Catholics who would remain loyal to their church as well as other millions of nominal Catholics who would leave it for a warmer, more vivid faith would benefit from a new Reformation in America.

Do Protestants dare to defend their faith and reassert its truths in the face of the certain fury of Rome? Only if they have the kind of courage and conviction to do so will they be worthy of their heritage. Only if they join the battle for America’s future being forced upon them by Rome will they preserve their heritage for their descendants.

The writer of this article is a former Roman Catholic Jesuit trainee. Christianity Today is assured of his identity, respects his plea for anonymity: “The power of the Catholic church to exact retribution upon its opponents is so great that I dare not sign my name to this article, for the employer for whom I work has Catholic customers and would be bound to feel the pressure of economic reprisal. If he were to stick by me, it would cost him thousands of dollars.”

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