Theology

The Warping of American Conscience

Paul Harvey

In my multi-engine airplane there are two of everything. Two engines require much duplication of controls and gauges, but why two compasses? It’s because you’ll catch one of them lying to you sometimes. Because of other attractions and distractions, a generally dependable magnetic compass will sometimes look you squarely in the eye and lie about which way is north. When that happens—when your compass gets out of kilter—you have to ground your airplane, reswing the compass, readjust it, until it tells the truth again.

A man’s conscience is subject to similar deflection, Or a nation’s conscience. And as surely as a bad compass, pointing the wrong way, can lead you into trouble, so can a cockeyed conscience.

Beside your bed is an alarm clock. A dependable, trusted instrument capable of awakening you at six o’clock in the morning—unless you forget to wind it. There is another way you can cancel out its effectiveness—ignore it. If morning after morning you are awakened by the alarm but refuse to heed it, eventually it will cease to alert you. It may not even awaken you. Ignore it long enough and you’ll cease to hear it. In this case the clock is still there and still accurate and still ringing, but you don’t let it bother you anymore.

A man can deafen himself to his conscience the same way. A nation can do the same.

The Meter Is Bent

I find the struggle with my own compass, my own alarm clock, my own conscience, is a constant one.

Man comes into the world equipped with a brain and a conscience. Each must be educated to work properly or it is unreliable.

Manhattan’s mad bomber seemed such a delightful fellow. He liked flowers, had a cheerful disposition, made a pleasing appearance. But somewhere back there the built-in gauge that tells a man the difference between right and wrong got damaged. The needle was bent.

Suddenly what was morally wrong seemed morally right and he went around planting time-bombs in public places. He still had a conscience, but it wasn’t working right. So society disposes of Mr. George Metesky with one uncomplimentary adjective and locks him and his unreliable conscience in a place of confinement.

Yet the needle in the conscience meter is bent, if to a lesser degree, in most of us. We have gradually “adjusted our consciences” to where we are now against burlesque shows in a downtown theater. We say they are “wrong.” Yet we, through TV, feel no conscience anymore as we invite a burlesque show into the family parlor.

Or we say it is all right for the dancing girls to wiggle in all manner of suggestive undulation, but all wrong when a guitar-playing boy does the same thing.

See how unreliable your conscience can be? I am not being smug about this. I could not evaluate it so thoroughly if I did not understand it so personally. I know how a conscience meter can get out of repair.

From The Mount

And each man must regulate, adjust, oil, maintain and service his own conscience to keep it properly in tune with the laws Moses brought down from the mountain.

In national and international affairs, our sometimes contradictory policies result from a “bent needle.” A “compass” that is trying to tell us that north is two different places, and it’s not really.

The Apostle Paul once wrote a letter to the Romans telling them how man was supposed to follow God; not try to make God over into his own image. Yet this is the tendency. And so, “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”

A man can’t make his own rules as he goes along, for then he goes in circles. We cannot make our own morals. We will either return to the Sermon on the Mount or we will destroy ourselves.

The Republic which was born in Philadelphia will have to be born again. If the Republic is to live, it must be fit to live.

This earthly while is a testing time, determining which of us deserves to populate some more perfect place. Americans have been especially favored. But there is another way to say that: We are being singularly tested. More than most, our seven per cent of the earth’s people have been abundantly endowed with the material blessings which invite sloth. Americans, then, must preserve, protect and defend this garden spot or surely they will have failed to measure up to any higher responsibility.

General Charles Lindbergh said, “We have measured success by our products rather than by ourselves. A medium which over-emphasizes short term survival detracts from the humanism essential to long term survival. We must remember that it was not the outer grandeur of the Roman’s but the inner simplicity of the Christians that lived on through the ages.”

Can the decline of American morality be reversed? Can our warped conscience be set straight?

God would have spared Sodom if he could have found ten righteous men. That was all he asked. Ten good men and he’d have spared the city.

Badness, resulting from an unreliable conscience, from misdirected emotions, wrote every black headline in today’s paper. Every one. On the other hand, properly ordered emotions are the basis for love, friendship, kindness, mercy.

We have been figuring religion is just for small children and old ladies. One hundred and three million churchgoers are more than ever before. Half again what attendance was ten years ago. Church attendance has increased far faster than our population has increased.

Yet, at the same time, prison rolls have climbed at the fastest rate in history. How come? How come some ninety-four million get a Sunday morning shower bath and yet so many don’t come clean?

The Republic, born in Philadelphia, can be born again … only … one man at a time!

Richard Lloyd Jones said: “We must begin again.” And the hour is late. So many stand to lose so much.

Jesus said: “Ye must be born again,” and the time is short.

Sigmund Romberg, for the lyric score of New Moon wrote, “Give me ten men, stout-hearted men, who will fight for the right they adore. Give me ten men, stout-hearted men, and I’ll soon give you ten thousand more.”

That’s the way it works. Ten men raise their voices and Jericho falls. Ten righteous men and Sodom and Gormorrah may be spared.

Ten … to inspire ten thousand to lead us … back to the Genesis of American Liberty … back to a reliance on “Divine Providence” and “Sacred Honor.”

We must return to the God of our fathers, for it is to him that we owe all blessings of the past and hope for the future. Then the law of the Lord will again be the respected law of this land. Then we’ll be worth saving.

After World War II, in which he served as Director of News and Information for the Office of War Information in Michigan and Indiana, Paul Harvey’s rise to radio fame was meteoric. He is heard over the ABC network Monday through Friday at 12 noon, CST.

Theology

Assets or Liabilities?

L. Nelson Bell

Assets Or Liabilities?

The average Christian is a layman (and I use the term to include all church members other than the clergy). The ratio to the clergy is approximately 300 to 1, and while it is the latter which are usually quoted in the papers and who unquestionably exercise the greatest influence in ecclesiastical circles, so far as the world is concerned the Church is what the average Christian is.

We laymen therefore carry tremendous responsibility, for in the world at large the influence of the Church depends on the influence of its average member. It is the ordinary Christian who runs the home, does the shopping, teaches school, operates the businesses of our country and engages in the professions.

As one layman, writing to other laymen, let us consider just what Christ expects of us as his representatives. It is a sobering thought that people outside the Church judge Christ and Christianity, not by the Bible, not by church pronouncements, not even by the occasional fragmentary reports of sermons they may read in the paper. Rather, if they form any opinion at all, it usually is from the sudden impact or day-by-day influence of some man or woman who demonstrates in the contacts of daily living that there is a different quality of life and attitude in those in whom Christ is Lord and Saviour.

While the Apostle Paul affirms that it has pleased God to save men through the “foolishness of preaching,” he tells the same Corinthian Christians that they are letters written in the heart, letters which are known and read of all men.

Our Lord admonished his disciples to let their light shine before men for the express purpose of glorifying Him, and this admonition holds good today to all who bear the name Christian.

One of the difficulties in the Church today is the ever-recurring attempt to make non-Christians act like Christians. Because of this we have many people wearing the uniform and repeating a set of Christian shibboleths when they actually belong to the camp of the enemy and speak a different language.

I believe that if the average minister were asked what he feels is more important, more church members or more Christians who live as Christians, he would unquestionably say the latter. This is therefore written to that great company of believers, men and women who believe in Christ as the Son of God, trust in him for salvation and who honestly want him to be the Lord of life.

Just what is expected of us? How should we live? How can we do the things that our Lord expects of us?

A Christian is a redeemed person, one who has been transformed by the saving power and grace of Jesus Christ. He is living in the world but maintains citizenship in heaven. The very fact of this new citizenship entails on its holder a grave responsibility here and now, for the Christian should be the best citizen of the country in which he lives.

Christians are as salt in the society of which they are a part and as such should exhibit the properties of salt, among which are preservation and savor or sweetness. The social order outwardly may have a semblance of order and stability through the exercise of law and force, but true stability comes from the character of those who make up that order. Christian character is the salt which produces those qualities of society that preserve it and make it worth preserving. This “salt” may find its expression in what is spoken of as Christian influence, or it may assume the role of direct action.

Not only must a Christian be salt but he is also light, not a light of human origin or attainment but the reflected light of the living Christ who should shine in and from our lives. Without light man cannot live. By the presence of light man can orient himself and see the way in which he should walk. Light reveals grime and dirt, it cleanses and purifies, and it brings joy and hope to those who have been in darkness. Little wonder that our Lord told his disciples that one of their functions was that of light in the world.

A Christian is also a witness. Christianity has been spread by those who have heard and accepted the good news and then passed it on to others. We would not be Christians today but for the fact that some before us were faithful as witnesses. When our Lord went back to heaven he did not leave a great organization, nor did he ordain that the Church should exercise political or other worldly methods. Rather he left a set of historical facts and a divine revelation of their significance and committed these to a small group of men who, under the inspiration of and by the power of the Holy Spirit, went about telling others what had happened and why.

Today we Christians have the same task. It is our duty to tell other people about Christ, who he is and what he did, and it is also our duty to share in helping others tell about him. Missions both here and abroad would be an impossible task but for men and women who pay the bills while others go out to tell the story.

Christians are also followers. One of the weaknesses of some has been an intellectual acceptance of Christ as Saviour and an accompanying delight in promised happiness in heaven, without an accompanying realization that Christ must be made the Lord of our daily lives. This means following him, and the course may not be always pleasant, nor the immediate objective something attractive.

Being a follower of Christ is a matter of reflecting his glory, and we show this only as his presence shines from within our lives. This involves surrender to him, whereby the Holy Spirit takes possession and we become the channels through which he would reach men.

The outstanding characteristic of one who would live as a Christian is summed up in one word—love. We are not speaking of a pallid negativism which interprets Christ in terms of taboos, nor are we speaking of a “satanic sweetness” which may be a mask for a perverted and self-centered egotism. The love which should characterize the Christian is described in detail in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. Later in this same book Paul enjoins that everything we do shall be based on and proceed from love. This is a quality of character no man has from within himself, but rather a fruit of the indwelling Holy Spirit. It is a quality by which our lives commend the Gospel we profess and which must be received and cultivated.

If Christians are to so live in the world there is an inescapable source of strength which must be tapped daily. The daily study of the Bible is as essential to spiritual life as food is to the body. Prayer, a talking with and listening to God, is as necessary for the Christian as breathing is to human existence. Witnessing and living for Christ are as important for believers as is exercise for bodily strength. Make full use of them and we become the salt and light the world desperately needs.

L. NELSON BELL

Ideas

Will the “Y” Recover Its Gospel?

The Editors

As the YMCA moves into its second century, friends of this originally remarkable movement are hopeful that it will re-examine its mission and message for the safeguarding of a high and historic calling. They have been fearful over the past generation that the Young Men’s Christian Association has deleted from its program Christianity as a Gospel of salvation for lost sinners; and that in place of genuine spirituality, it has developed interests apart from, and even competitive to, the purpose for which it began.

It was in 1844, in the heart of London’s mercantile district, that twelve men, leaders from the Anglican Church’s evangelical wing, and from the Wesleyan and other free churches, launched the Y into operation. It was a time of social unrest. The evangelical conscience was now aggressively directed toward prison reform, education, temperance, decency in literature and art, and other vexing social problems. Yet, underlying all the energy put forward had been the presupposition of a personal faith in the redeeming work of Christ and an enthusiasm for soul-winning. John Wesley had emphasized his belief that “The gospel of Christ knows no religion but social, no holiness but social holiness”; yet he had also left no doubt in mind that he was “saving sinning men, with no aim to transform them into crusaders against social sin.” It was the evangelical forces to which England came to owe its greatest debt in the struggle for social justice; the social vision remained the by-product of a desire to fulfill the objective of the Great Commission—personal soul-winning and evangelism.

Nine of the twelve founders of the mid-nineteenth century London Association had been members of free churches, the remainder being from the Church of England. Their object was to improve “the spiritual condition of young men employed in the drapery and other trades, by the introduction of religious services among them.” It was a common fact then that many of London’s retail clerks had become degraded and dissolute. And for its first year of activity, the London Association sponsored prayer meetings, Bible study, soul-winning, and weekly offerings for foreign missions. Yet Dr. L. L. Doggett, in A History of the Y.M.C.A., credits the London Association as having been “one of the chief factors in shortening the hours of labor for commercial young men.” Incited by spiritual vision, the YMCA became a promoter of social welfare through the spread of Christianity.

A chain of Associations, devoted to the Gospel of Christ, soon spread across the United States. The first was established in Boston in 1851. Montreal had formed the first YMCA in North America two months earlier. Its founders were Protestants, mostly of fervent evangelical conviction, and the associations developed into centers of Christian activity. “In those days,” said the late “Ma” Sunday, widow of Evangelist Billy Sunday, “the Y was known for its Bible more than for billiards.”

Galen M. Fisher, for many years executive of the Institute of Social and Religious Research and author of Public Affairs and the Y.M.C.A. 1844–1944, claims that “during the first fifty years of the history of the Young Men’s Christian Association, there was virtually no attention paid to what is properly called public affairs. During the second fifty years there developed, albeit slowly and unevenly, a determination by progressive leaders to arouse and equip Association members to participate in solving some of the great public questions of the day” (p. 183). He observes that the second century discloses the “growingly rooted conviction held by both lay and secretarial leaders that public affairs must be a central concern of the Associations” (p. 185).

The observation would appear cryptic. Fisher is unwittingly stating the cold fact that as an evangelical agency, the YMCA has in recent generations displaced its Christian evangel by the secular and merely social.

Fortunately, some Y Associations have still preserved their spiritual heritage and at the present time carry on supplementary programs of recreation, education and social effort in the interests of vigorous Christian witness. Perhaps the best example of this is the Association at Kannapolis, North Carolina, the largest in America, with 12,000 members. This is an exceptional example, however. In many places the spiritual tenor is at a very low ebb, and in others virtually non-existent. Some Associations have gone so far as to distort their original theological emphasis. For instance, the Cal-Tech branch of the Pasadena YMCA has for years been drifting in Unitarianism. Other Associations have become rallying places for “religious brotherhood” efforts, bringing together Protestant, Catholic and Jewish interests in such a way as to deprive Protestantism of its former missionary vitality.

The issue, of course, is not whether the YMCA ought to bristle with social concern. Rather, the problem to be faced is the manner in which that concern is to be defined and carried out. Many Association leaders today declare that faith in God and his Kingdom is the foundation of their confidence, and that business, labor, politics, race relations and international affairs can be dominated by the Spirit of Christ. But they are still suffering from the liberal Protestant illusion that the Kingdom of God can be introduced by the social melioration of unregenerate humanity. Y leaders have frequently protested against “the excessive individualism of the Protestant tradition.” This complaint has arisen, not simply from tendency of private religion to overlook the obstacles that unjust social institutions place in the path of consistent Christian living, but also out of a misplaced confidence that social evils can be conquered apart from supernatural individual regeneration. Proponents of the “social gospel,” even speakers applying evolutionary theories to moral and spiritual realities, have been featured in the past on the Y platforms. Moreover, some speakers have accorded Christian sanction to forms of Marxism which, they imply, would be acceptable if “filtered through the minds of men steeped in democratic optimism and Christian idealism.”

This anemic, if not unchristian, drift of Y interests, running alongside its program of recreational and public activities for “Christian citizenship,” represents the situation today in many of America’s most influential Associations. What it indicates is that the liberal social gospel movement still widely dominates the YMCA public affairs program.

This development has not been due to a neglect of social issues by evangelicals in the Associations. The entire Y movement had been born out of a social concern. The great evangelist Dwight L. Moody had, in days when social concern was rooted in the Gospel of Christ, raised large sums of money in his campaigns for new Association buildings. Before the turn of the century, however, lectures and panels sponsored by some of these Associations were already reflecting a shift toward independent consideration of social problems. After the turn of the century, attention focused more and more upon social ideals as divine imperatives, and local Associations were called upon to educate their memberships in terms of these objectives. In 1919 the International Convention adopted a set of “Social Ideals” which called for “subordination of … the profit motive to the … cooperative spirit,” “social planning and control of the credit and monetary systems and the economic processes for the common good,” “a wider and fairer distribution of wealth,” and other semi-socialist objectives. It is not to be denied, however, that many of the social correctives which the Associations supported pointed to definite, even urgent, areas of need. Some of its formative leaders in past decades have been of socialistic temper, however. Others have represented “world church” ecumenical attitudes and even tend to speak of the Y as a form of ecclesia.

The vast membership of the Y today represents a strategic global constituency. Centennial statistics show that the YMCA now has more than 2,000,000 world members, over 8,500 Associations, with some 6,000 secretaries. The United States alone has 1,800 Associations and 3,700 secretaries, which account for three-fourths of the world membership.

It may appear ironic to say that the Young Men’s Christian Association today stands as a vast mission field with infinite, significant Christian potential. Its concern for human welfare has given it a unique role to play in American communities. And as it moves into the second century of its life, many of its supporters hope that it will reflect upon its Christian heritage and effectively find its social interests to the Gospel of personal redemption.

At the 1955 Centennial Conference in Paris, Alfred Hirs of Zurich, who has demonstrated a wide evangelical witness on the International Committee, reminded the opening session of a consecration which young delegates had made one hundred years previous: “Each one carried away in his heart a new vision of the Master’s cause, a stronger determination to serve the Lord more faithfully; each one left Paris with the conviction that the All Powerful would stretch out his hand upon this new undertaking.”

At that Paris conference on August 22, 1855, delegates from Europe and America laid the evangelical basis for the future admission of all new Associations: “The Young Men’s Christian Associations seek to unite those young men who, regarding Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour according to the Holy Scriptures, desire to be his disciples in their faith and in their life, and to associate their efforts for the extension of his Kingdom among men.”

This was the beginning of the YMCA venture, worthy indeed of survival for Christian service.

Once A Bible Land, Syria Can Trigger War

It is sometimes difficult to interpret God’s mysterious hand in history, and even more difficult for us to understand the relation of immediate events to his ultimate plan. At the same time we should always confess that the sovereign God watches over men and nations and that all are subject to his judgment.

One of the most startling events in the history of the Christian Church took place outside the walls of Damascus. The Apostle Paul went out from that experience with a divine commission which made him a mighty power down to the present day.

This same Damascus is now one of the danger centers of the world. At the helm of the government of Syria are men who, wittingly or unwittingly, can trigger what could become World War III.

The disciples were first called Christians in Syrian Antioch. From that church there went out missionaries who, in their generation, turned the world upside down.

Strange that during these recent weeks this same city and area should now be occupied by Egyptian soldiers, as a gesture of defiance to the West and as a token of the would-be solidarity of the Arab world.

Paul’s missionary journeys were largely in the area now covered by Turkey. The witness of those early churches has largely disappeared. The cities in which were located the seven churches mentioned in the Revelation no longer have such churches; the total Protestant population of all of Turkey today is probably less than 150.

But today we find Turkey and Israel the dominant military powers in the Middle East. Both are able and willing to impose their own will on all of that area. Only America and Russia restrain these nations or make them hesitate to take action.

What is the significance of all of these events? None of us can say. But of this we can be sure: the God of history is overruling in the affairs of men and nations and his own holy will shall certainly prevail. One of the dramatic turns of history is that the Bible lands of antiquity so much dominate the headlines of the world. But the God of Bible history holds the destinies of nations in his hands.

In the face of the kaleidoscopic changes in the world situation, the modern man is holding his breath, not only at scientific developments which stagger the imagination but also because men themselves seem unable to exercise moral control over the forces they have now generated.

Precisely at this point the Christian and the Church has comfort and hope to offer. We know the Christ of history and the Christ of Calvary and they are the same. We also know that the future is in his hand. As he yearned over Jerusalem in the days of his flesh, so he yearns for the sinning world of our generation and offers peace and redemption to those who hear his call.

The Church is the repository of this glorious Gospel. God forbid that we should neglect it for another.

Eutychus and His Kin: November 11, 1957

Daniel L. Eckert

SERMON SATELLITE

From Deepwell Heights to Cloverleaf Vista the pulpits of this part of Exurbia have all viewed sputnik on the horizon. Comments on the world’s little red fellow traveler range from the political to the allegorical. The rector of All Souls’ was in splendid form, relating sputnik to Atoms for Peace, the prophets, the geophysical year, Zionism, and integration. It made you shiver just to hear him launch the word spooot-neek. The visiting speaker at the Village Gospel Tabernacle favored the pronunciation sputnick, and discussed the prophetic implications of the red moon.

Old Dr. Van Dyke, the emeritus pastor at Second Church, preached for Dr. Jones who was down with the flu. Surprisingly, he mentioned sputnik, too. He always chooses a text, and was preaching on the Tower of Babel passage in Genesis 11. (He insisted that it was not just a tower but a city.) It was a moving sermon. He pictured the race for the conquest of space as manifesting man’s pride and pretension. The motive that thrust sputnik soaring into orbit is the same that built the tower: “Let us make us a name …” As the patriarchal preacher described God’s sovereignty over human rebellion, he seemed to be looking down at our globe from a perspective more remote than a satellite could achieve. He was speaking as from eternity, proclaiming the Word of God.

Most memorable was his contrast between the pride of Babel and the worship of the chosen seed (Genesis 4:26): making a name for ourselves, or calling on the name of the Lord.

It was a little surprising that Dr. Van Dyke began with the sputnik. His conclusion was not novel, however. His sermon ended at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, as all his sermons have done for half a century.

EUTYCHUS

WORDS OF GOD AND MEN

It seems to me that the objective authority must ever be the self-revealing Spirit of God dealing with the individual soul. A good illustration … is a note in Bruce Metzger’s article on the Apocrypha, where he says, “John Bunyan … received help … from the text … he could not at first locate.… When at length he found it in the Apocrypha (Ecclus. 2:10), he was honest enough to confess that ‘though it was not in those Texts that we call Holy and Canonical, yet for as much as this sentence was the sum and substance … of the Promises, it was my duty to take the comfort of it; and I bless God for that word, for it was of God to me.” … My experience is that Bunyan’s principle is the principle which is followed by all Christians.…

Danville, Ill.

Publication of the Bible with the Apocrypha … can result too much in the average Bible reader’s mistaking the apocryphal writings from the written Word of God, and to distraction from the sacred text.… I take serious issue, in kindness, with Dr. Metzger’s use of Bunyan’s experience of relief from despondency through the use of the Apocrypha. It seems to me that Dr. Metzger is unintentionally being irreverent of the potentialities of the Holy Scriptures when he suggests that Bunyan might never have overcome his spiritual despondency if he had not been familiar with the Apocrypha. Certainly, Holy Writ itself … contains promises of an efficient enough nature to have relieved Bunyan.…

Pine St. Baptist Church

Scranton, Pa.

MISSIONARY PRIORITY

… Dr. Smith (“Christianity and the Pagan World,” Sept. 16 issue) mentions the motto which has virtually become synonymous with his name.… “Why should anyone hear the Gospel twice before everyone has heard it once?” Now this motto is very effective in creating missionary interest, and no doubt … is asked out of genuine Christian concern.… Nevertheless I submit that this motto is a purely human invention … blatantly contrary to the Holy Scriptures. There is no support … either in precept or by example. Indeed … Paul could wish himself anathema, if possible, for the salvation of his kinsmen.… This, however, does not justify Dr. Smith’s motto.… On his first Journey Paul visited the Asia Minor cities twice.… Shall we accuse Paul of not having a proper missionary spirit? Not only so, but Paul also visited these cities on his second journey and also on the third. Furthermore, Paul did not cover as much ground as possible, but rather spent considerable time in several places.… My purpose … is not to minimize Dr. Smith’s worthy emphasis on mission work, but rather to defend the Word of God which Dr. Smith himself loves.…

Ashland, Ohio

JUDGMENT AND REWARD

You may go jump in the lake anytime, as far as I’m concerned.

Toronto, Ontario

The very title CHRISTIANITY TODAY indicates that you believe real Christianity is changing.… Evangelist ED NELSON Aurora, Colo.

The thing that impresses me most about your journal is that it is criticized both by liberals and fundamentalists. Any magazine able to boast of such an accomplishment must stand in a fairly sound position. I personally disagree with a good percentage of what I read there; but occasionally I find an article which is reward enough for the wading.…

Christian Church

Alamosa, Colo.

I especially like the scholarly presentations relating Biblical Christianity to our cultural and everyday life.…

Wheaton, Ill.

Please be congratulated for CHRISTIANITY TODAY; what it does for Christian apologetics and dialectic is sorely needed for evangelical missionary intelligence.…

London, Eng.

Your magazine is top-notch, thoroughly sound, theologically incisive, intellectually respectable and vital.…

Third Presbyterian Church

North Tonawanda, N. Y.

I’m only a housewife, but your magazine gives me much joy … as I read the sound, scriptural articles.…

Asheville, N. C.

I would judge … that it is not designed as a popular magazine, but rather for those of a specifically theological type of mind. For such I believe you are rendering splendid service.…

United Church

Cottage City, N. Y.

I’m a retired minister, but am not retired from good literature. So I’m enclosing a check.…

Mocksville, N. C.

I enjoy CHRISTIANITY TODAY and commend you for fulfilling an important need in the Christian publications field.

Salem, Ore.

Secretary of State

I don’t know of another publication doing the same job, a job that needs to be done.…

Athis-Mons, Seine-et-Oise, France

“JINE ‘EM!”

In the June 24th issue I read with interest the reported accounts of both the Southern and American Baptist Convention sessions. Without any malice or ill-will, permit me to make public a comment which I believe the article will justify. It is difficult for some of us American Baptists—even those from the South such as I—to accept and reconcile the statement quoted from Southern Baptist president, C. C. Warren’s opening address that, “it is not the policy of Southern Baptists to go as invaders anywhere.” But as a matter of fact, they do—anywhere! Members of other denominations of my acquaintance have also voiced concern not because of fear or jealousy or competition but on the basis of Christian ethics and mutual respect.… If present trends persist, the only hope of the Baptists of the North is to give the victory to the South they lost almost 100 years ago and “jine ’em!”

Gilbert Memorial First Baptist Church

Mount Clemens, Michigan

GOD AND SEGREGATION

Race Relations is by no means the most important problem agitating Christian consciousness today. The real problem is the inability of scholars to accept God’s universal morality and a frightening ability to project with scintillating astuteness their own rationalizations. It is the chronic failure to acquaint revelation with fact. I want to point out several half truths employed by Dr. Ellis (“Segregation and the Kingdom of God,” March 18 issue) so common in the type of presentation made in his article. As I do so I want to stress that writers in religious journals should be aware that nonbelievers read their articles as well as believers. I am sure that the non-believer is strengthened in his non-belief by this featherlike thinking.…

The basic assumption of Dr. Ellis is that the white man in the North and South has been, is, will be, and ought to be the dispenser of morality and freedom. Thus when he (the white man) speaks from European culture or southern tradition all other men “ought” to condescend. With this anthropomorphic morality Dr. Ellis calls Paul, Barnabas and Jesus together for a Divine premise to his “ought”. Dr. Ellis’s procedure is not intellectually honest. He poses the weakest argument of the integrationists and addresses it to the strongest argument of the segregationists. He says for instance, “Only a naive appraisal can reduce the problem of race to one of skin color.” He does this, implying unfairly, that the integrationists base their entire defense upon this immature judgment. He then suggests the privilege of the white South’s “right” to preserve its European and racial and cultural heritage. Not a word is mentioned of the right of the Negro. It is assumed that the desires of the white man are axiomatically right and that the desires of the Negro are prohibitive. It must be pointed out that while Dr. Ellis employs the word “right” for the white South he should really use “desire” of the white South as I have indicated the desire of the Negro. Desires of various groups may clash, but Divine rights of one group can never clash with the Divine rights of another. A more accurate statement could have been made by Dr. Ellis had he said that the white South holds it to be a right to preserve their advantage rather than their heritage! The modern world holds little brief for heritage or tradition—production is the theme everywhere except in race relations.

In discussing the rights of the South Dr. Ellis says that the most important point is that the people who must live in the situation are convinced for reasons sufficient to them that integration will be detrimental to society. Dr. Ellis should have said that the white people are convinced that integration is an evil. There is a veneration here of a closed mind—“sufficient to them.” How dangerous it is when justice is based on reason sufficient to a few interested in preserving their own culture at any price! The man who robs a store may do so for reasons sufficient to him. Does this make it right? How unfair it is to the millions of personalities which are innocently tom by the penalty of segregation. Of course, Dr. Ellis, this is a problem greater than “skin color.” This has a tremendous effect on the souls of young children who are forced by law and custom to think less of themselves than they ought to think in the North and South.

Dr. Ellis said segregation should be a fence, not a wall. On my father’s farm there were chicken wire fences with many openings. The chickens were kept in place just as if it had been a wall. The assumption behind much of this thinking is that Negroes have nothing to contribute. Furthermore, the openings to which Dr. Ellis alludes are generally one way streets or safety devices whereby the builder of the fence can keep a watchful eye on those whom he wishes to keep out. There is, as Dr. Ellis well knows as a Virginian, freedom of a white man to visit a Negro church at his discretion. But a Negro visit to a white church must be prearranged. This is not New Testament ethics, sir.

Race relations is good according to Dr. Ellis in six suburban type communities which were built with a segregated approach. Here is real subterfuge. First it is projected that the Negro contractor is right because he apparently agrees with Dr. Ellis. This in the South is called a “smart Negro.” Actually it should be clear to Dr. Ellis that race relations in such a community are not good—they are nil.

All Christian integrationists are not headed for a socialistic state. This perhaps is the greatest half-truth employed by Dr. Ellis, and borders on being malicious. For that matter all integrationists are not Christians, nor are they wrong because of that. Dr. Ellis falls prey to that which he accuses the integrationists. He becomes emotional and calls all integrationists socialists and anarchists. He omits Paul’s great contributions and his ethical demands of Christian love. Rather he puts forth Paul’s weakness and short-sightedness as biblical evidence in support of a social philosophy of separate but equal facility. Shall we take Paul at his worse or at his best? Paul and Barnabas had vital differences, but their human traits must not be the basis of our social or racial philosophy or for the premise for moral law. If Dr. Ellis would escape from the ivory towers he would find that our churches would be quite silent if the ladies did not speak. Certainly the mores of the Pauline Community cannot be used as a basis for social philosophy today.

Finally I want to say that the substitution of legislation for natural law in Western civilization, and especially in America, is working a havoc with our moral system. Originally the role of the civil law was conceived as one to interpret the will of God in the affairs of men. This was a high noble concept. The judge, the advocate and the priest were true apostles. They were “sent forth” to proclaim and elucidate the will of God. Today right and wrong are legislated. If I hate a man’s color I simply develop a plurality in the legislature against him. Therefore, I legally justify my hateful actions against him. Thus, we have witnessed on the American scene the rise of a devastating relativism in moral conduct. With this relativism nothing is clear and precise. We have become ambiguous and indefinite. Look for instance at the range of words used in this short article by Dr. Ellis … “socialism, communism, world government, integration, forced integration, modus vivendi, unity in diversity and ecclesiastical integration.” What a wide range of indefinite words, and how increased the area of ambiguity when we add to these terms their emotional connotations. Certainly if we are to clarify and put at ease the Christian conscience on the matter of race we shall have to accept the unequivocable cosmic morality of one God. His truths must not be deflected by the limited ability of men to love their brother.

Trinity Methodist Church, Bronx, N. Y.

DEED AND INTENT

The statement … of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Sept. 16 issue) was that the ‘president of a Christian college forbade students on his campus to pray publicly for success of the meetings.’ As a matter of fact, neither the founder or the president forbade the students to have a public prayer meeting for the success of the Billy Graham campaign. Had such a request been made, we would have forbidden it because we do not believe in mocking God, and to pray for God to bless that which in His Word He positively forbids is to mock God.

President

Bob Jones University

Greenville, S.C.

• CHRISTIANITY TODAY regrets that it confused intention with deed. The report was based upon a letter in which Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., chairman of the Board of Trustees of Bob Jones University, stated: “If any group of Bob Jones students wanted to have a prayer meeting to ask God to bless the evangelistic movement which Billy Graham is heading up in New York, we would not permit it. If we did permit it, it would be a repudiation of the purpose for which Bob Jones University was founded.”—ED.

Theology

Bible Text of the Month: 1 Corinthians 5:19

Augustine

To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Behold our Mediator! Not God without humanity, nor man without divinity; but intermediate between mere Deity and mere humanity, he is a human divinity, and a divine humanity.

As the salt-waters of the sea, when they are strained through the earth, they are sweet in the rivers; so the waters of majesty and justice in God, though terrible, yet being strained and derived through Christ, they are sweet and delightful.

To wit—This verse is designed further to state the nature of the plan of reconciliation, and of the message with which they were intrusted. It contains an abstract, or an epitome of the whole plan; and is one of those emphatic passages in which Paul compresses into a single sentence the substance of the whole plan of redemption.

Reconciliation

By reconciliation is meant the whole work of redemption. It is called reconciliation as it respects us as enemies, salvation as it respects us in a state of damnation, propitiation as we are guilty, redemption as captives, and bound over to punishment. Reconciliation, justification, and adoption differ thus: in reconciliation, God is considered as the supreme Lord and the injured party, and man is considered as an enemy that hath wronged him; in justification, God is considered as a judge, and man as guilty; in adoption, God is considered as a father, and man is an alien. Reconciliation makes us friends, justification makes us righteous, adoption makes us heirs.

STEPHEN CHARNOCK

That salvation implies the removal of man’s moral enmity to God is frankly admitted: but this is not inconsistent with firmly maintaining that it also necessarily supposes and requires the removal of God’s legal enmity to man. The party offended must be reconciled as well as the offender, before any real or permanent friendship can be effected. The reconciliation or atonement spoken of, is said to be effected by the death of Christ, whereas the removal of the enmity of man’s heart is more properly the work of the Holy Spirit. It is also represented as something synonymous with the non-imputation of trespasses, which itself is decisive of the sense in which it is to be understood.

WILLIAM SYMINGTON

Particularly, to Him belongs the praise of devising the stupendous plan of redemption, by which he reconciles to himself the rebellious children of men. In a way honorable to his holiness, justice, and truth, he removes the enmity of their mind; he subdues their rebellious will; he sheds abroad his love in their heart; he restores them to his favor and friendship; he renews them after his own image, and blesses them with all heavenly and spiritual blessings. This reconciliation is effected, not on the ground of their repentance; not by works of righteousness which they have done; not by the arbitrary exercise of mercy, but through the mediation of his own dear Son, who, by his obedience and death, has satisfied divine justice; magnifies and honored the law, and made a full atonement for sin.

WILLIAM LOTHIAN

To reconcile unto himself, does not mean to convert, or to render friendly to himself. This is plain first, because this reconciliation is said to be effected by the death of Christ as a sacrifice; and secondly, because what follows is not a proof of God’s converting the world, but it is a proof of his being propitious. The proof that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ (i.e., in his death) is that he does not impute to men their trespasses, and that he has established the ministry of reconciliation. The forgiveness of sin and the institution of the ministry are clear evidence that God is propitious.

CHARLES HODGE

In verse 18, it is said, God “hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” This does not mean that God changed our heart, and made us love him, and appointed the Apostle to announce that fact. It can only mean that through Christ, through what he did and suffered for us, peace is restored between God and man, who is able and willing to be gracious. This is the gospel which Paul was commissioned to announce, namely, as follows in the next verse, God is bringing about peace; he was in Christ effecting this peace, and now is ready to forgive sin, i.e., not to impute unto men their trespasses; and therefore the apostle urges his readers to embrace this offer of mercy, to be reconciled unto God; i.e., to accept his overture of reconciliation. For it has a sure foundation. It rests on the substitution and vicarious death of Christ. He was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. It is impossible, therefore, that the reconciliation of which the apostles speak as effected by the cross or death of Christ, should, in its primary and main aspect, be a subjective change in us from enmity to the love of God.

CHARLES HODGE

Reconciling—The greatest controversy lies in this word, whether by it be meant God’s reconciliation to us, or our laying down our enmity against God. Socinus and his followers say God was not angry with man, he was reconciled before, but that this place is meant of affection towards God, because it is said we are reconciled to God, and not God to us.… By reconciliation of us to God in this place cannot be meant our conversion, or any act of ours. Because the reconciliation here spoken of was the matter of the apostles’ sermons, and the great argument they used to convert the world to God. If, then, that sense were true, it would be an impertinent argument, unworthy of those that Christ called out to be the first messengers and heralds of this redemption. The sense of their discourse would run thus: God hath already converted you, therefore be converted to him; as it is nonsense to exhort a man to do that very act which he hath already done. Also, this reconciliation doth formally consist in the non-imputation of sin to men. Now this is God’s act, not the creatures.

STEPHEN CHARNOCK

Fruit Of Reconciliation

The effect of God’s being reconciled, or his reconciling the world to himself, is in these words, “not imputing to them their trespasses.” God doth so reconcile us to himself by Christ as not to impute our trespasses to us; that is, not dealing with us according as justice required for our sins, upon the account of Christ’s work, remitting the penalty due to them, laying away his anger, and receiving us to favor. This is the immediate fruit of the reconciliation spoken of, if not the reconciliation itself.

JOHN OWEN

Sin at the same time creates enmity in the human heart toward God, an enmity removed also by faith in the great propitiation. Thus the cross is the symbol of peace. He who died on it possessed God’s nature, the offended party, and man’s nature, the offending party; and thus being qualified to mediate between them, his blood was poured out as a peace-offering. The law is satisfied, and guilty sinners are freed from the curse: an amnest is proclaimed; God reconciles the world unto himself, and justified man has peace with God.

JOHN EADIE

The evidence that the death of Christ has been accepted as an expiation for sin, of infinite value and efficiency, is the fact that God hath commissioned his ministers to announce to all men that God is reconciled and ready to forgive, so that whosoever will may turn unto him and live.

CHARLES HODGE

“Special Testimony” Girl Gives Doll to Queen

George Burnham

Christianity in the World Today

The Filipino pastors, many of whom had suffered great persecution at the hands of the Japanese during World War II, had a common bond with the big American who was singing to them.

He also had known sorrow.

Fague Springmann, who has sung for the last three Presidents of the United States, had taken a brief vacation from his position as professor of music at the University of Maryland to appear in a series of pastors’ conferences sponsored by World Vision, Inc.

Before singing, Fague told the listeners about Pamela, his seven-year-old daughter.

When Pamela was two weeks old, the doctors said she had a rare blood disease and could not live. She is alive, after 170 blood transfusions, each of which required from 10 to 12 hours to administer.

After each transfusion, Pamela’s temperature goes as high as 104 and she has to be packed in large amounts of ice.

It may be that she will have to take such transfusions as long as she lives, but Pamela grins through the suffering and touches the hearts of healthy people. For the last two years she has been the beautiful little girl smiling at you from the Red Cross posters.

From the time she has been big enough to talk, she has knelt by the bed with her mother and father to say her prayers.

Once, at a Red Cross rally, one of the minor speakers told a joke that was a little off-shade. Because of the occasion, it left a bad taste with many in the audience. The speaker was followed by Pamela. She said:

“First, I want to thank Jesus for giving me life, and second, I want to thank the Red Cross for giving me blood.”

That was all, but it was enough. The people cheered within their souls.

At another rally, Pamela was asked by a thoughtless reporter why she hadn’t been healed by all the blood transfusions. She replied, sweetly, “You see, if I didn’t have leukemia, I’d be the same as any other little girl. Now I have a special testimony for Jesus.”

Fague was attempting to explain some of the mysteries of the Bible to Pamela one night and, like many fathers, wasn’t doing too well. Then Pamela, in her own direct way, explained in one sentence what others have used up books trying to say:

“Are you trying to say, Daddy, that what people need is a Jesus transfusion?”

—GEORGE BURNHAM

Objectives Met

Billy Graham was limping badly and had to drag his best foot forward when he left New York Oct. 29 after the biggest spiritual battle of his ministry, but objectives of the Crusade had been met head-on and conquered, under God.

As he boarded the train, he may have gained small consolation in recalling that the limp was caused by an unimpressed ram that butted him off a North Carolina mountaintop and not by the expected pride, indifference and sophistication of America’s largest city.

During a testimonial dinner the night before, more than 800 guests, including top church and industrial leaders of the United States, told the evangelist how much they appreciated what had been accomplished.

The Rev. Phillips P. Elliott, speaking as president for the 1,700 churches of the Protestant Council of the City of New York, said objectives had been met far beyond expectations. He added:

“Those objectives were to win men to Christ, to make our city God-conscious, to strengthen the churches, to make New York City conscious of moral, spiritual and social responsibilities.”

The 16-week Crusade at Madison Square Garden, combined with outdoor rallies, attracted a total attendance of 2,149,700, with 66,577 decisions for Christ.

During the final week, 1,000 churches participated in a visitation campaign, with 6,000 members going out two-by-two to visit their neighbors. Dr. Jesse M. Bader, chairman of the visitation evangelism committee of the Protestant Council, said the teams made 24,000 calls on unchurched persons and reported more than 6,000 decisions for Christ. The concluding rally on October 27 at the Polo Grounds was attended by 40,000 on a bitterly cold afternoon, and 1,295 decisions were made.

In speaking about the results at the testimonial dinner, Dr. Graham said:

“I want to begin and end by giving God the glory. This was his doing. I believe God did these things because a number of spiritual laws were obeyed.

“The first law obeyed was the tremendous amount of prayer centered on New York. Prayer was organized in 109 countries.

“The second law obeyed was unity among churches of many different backgrounds. There has seldom been such unity for anything in the history of New York.

“Another was the authoritative preaching of his Word. When I quoted from the Word of God, it was like a rapier. I could feel the power. When I resorted to my own logic, I could feel the power leave.

“The fourth law obeyed was that there was dependence on the Spirit of God to do what it was impossible for man to do.”

In the wake of the Crusade, the Protestant Council announced an expanded program of evangelism calling for a budget of nearly $1,000,000. The General Assembly, in addition, approved the establishment of a Protestant Chapel at New York’s International Airport, costing $250,000.

The Council has signed a lease to take over the Graham Crusade offices, 165 West 46th St., for its evangelism head-quarters.

The Rev. Dan M. Potter, executive director of the Council, said plans call for a stepped-up integrated youth program.

Also visualized, he said, was the continuance of the noon radio program and the telecast entitled “Impact.” A crusade for church attendance will be conducted throughout the metropolitan area during January, February and March.

Dr. Graham enthusiastically endorsed the program with this comment:

“We think nothing of spending $1,000,000 for one fighter plane that will be obsolete in three years. How can we do less for God?”

Killed In Africa

Dr. Sidney Robert Correll, medical missionary from Dayton, O., suffered fatal burns from a gasoline explosion in French West Africa on Oct. 15.

He attended the University of Dayton, Harvard, Wheaton College and Boston University Medical School.

People: Words And Events

Auca Lances—A partially destroyed house, with Auca lances crossed in the doorways, greeted Plymouth Brethren missionary Wilford Tidmarsh when he returned recently to the advance station he was opening down the Arajuno River inside Auca territory. Tidmarsh had started to build a house and clear a landing strip when he suffered an accident which necessitated his absence for two weeks. Conjecture centered on whether this was a kindly warning from “George,” the Auca contacted by the five missionary martyrs, or a threat from the more bloodthirsty members of his tribe.

Sign of Times—New suburban communities place the construction of supermarkets and taverns before churches, according to the Rev. Theodore Conklin of Syracuse, associate secretary of the New York State Council of Churches. Years ago, he said, churches in new communities often were built before the homes of parishioners.

Point of Law—Miami Circuit Judge John J. Niblack ruled that reading the Bible, requiring your spouse to wear skirts instead of blue jeans and insistence on church attendance does not constitute grounds for divorce. The judge said William Connelly, 25, was well within his rights on all three points” and denied Mrs. Martha Connelly, 19, her petition for divorce.

$30 Clergy Diploma—A housewife revealed in Los Angeles how she obtained, for $30.20, a church charter and certificate which permitted her to perform baptisms, marriages and burials as an ordained minister. Mrs. Juanita Purviance, 30, said she received the documents exactly a week after requesting them from the Universal Church of the Master, with headquarters at Oakland. Her testimony launched hearings by a State Assembly subcommittee into California diploma mills.

Christmas Barrage—The most intensive barrage of liquor advertising and propaganda in the history of Christmas is now hitting the American public. Trade journals will be filled with plans for an unprecedented campaign on the $350,000,000-plus holiday liqour market. A major clue to the advertising attack lies in business magazine reports that Christmas liquor sales have been tapering off. When the publication Advertising Requirements listed the Christmas gifts “most appreciated” by businessmen, liquor wasn’t even mentioned.

Alert Lutherans—That the United Lutheran Church has the largest membership among Lutheran bodies in the U. S., was quickly pointed out by readers (Oct. 14 issue). Its baptized members numbered 2,335, 352 in 1956, according to National Lutheran Council statistics, while the Missouri Synod was second, with a baptized membership of 2,152,412.

Seoul Campaign—Despite unseasonably cold weather and a drenching downpour of rain, 31,800 persons attended the final meeting of the (Oct. 4–20) Seoul Crusade of Dr. Bob Pierce, World Vision President. Total attendance was 296,045, with 5,657 decisions for Christ.

More Than Clubs—Congregational brotherhoods should be more than supper clubs, says Dr. Franklin Clark Fry of New York, president of the United Lutheran Church in America. He asserted, “Wide awake brotherhoods will find many types of service that they can do better than anybody else.… Fellowship is fine, but it is not enough.”

Divorced Persons—A minority group of Anglican clergymen in Birmingham diocese protested against a recent statement by Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, that Church of England law still forbids the remarriage of divorced persons while the former partner is still living. The protest followed a letter by Canon Bryan Green, Anglican evangelist, who said the Primate’s statement “seems to be nearer the idea of an infallible corporate spiritual authority within the Church of England, on the lines of papal infallibility, than to Anglican practice and discipline since the Reformation.”

Power Of Prayer

The following excerpt is from a recent letter written by Mrs. J. Edwin Orr from South Africa to Mrs. Billy Graham in Montreat, N. C.:

“When Edwin was campaigning in a very remote part of New South Wales, more than 500 miles from Sydney, a Christian man approached him and inquired about the Hollywood Christian Group.

“He said he’d been looking at an Australian picture magazine more than four years ago, and his eye was attracted by a photo of an attractive girl with the caption, ‘The Prettiest Girl in England.’ Having had nothing to do with the movies, he was not impressed, but a strange conviction from the Spirit burdened him to pray for her conversion. He personally felt it was a waste of time, nevertheless, he kept on praying for the girl. In 1954, the burden lifted, as if the Lord said, ‘You do not need to carry this burden any longer.’ He had no idea whether the girl had died or was truly converted, for he had never heard of a movie star being converted.

“But he remembered her name—Joan Winmill—and when Edwin checked dates with him, he found that the burden had lifted during the (Billy Graham) Harringay Campaign (in London), when you were actually dealing with Joan! The man’s name is Ellwood Fischer, and he is a great man of prayer. Naturally, he was greatly encouraged to learn that many of the conversions in Hollywood were genuine and Joan Winmill’s also.

“Knowing that you must be in touch with Joan, I thought you might wish to tell her how a stranger in far-off Australia prayed so long for her conversion.”

Staggering Study

Nationwide estimates on the number of fatal highway accidents in the United States involving drinking need to be revised upward to nearly 50 per cent of the total annual motor death toll, according to William N. Plymat, speaking at the Loma Linda Institute of Scientific Studies for the Prevention of Alcoholism.

Plymat, an insurance executive, told the Institute that at least 15,000 lives could be saved annually if all accidents involving alcohol could be eliminated. He based his estimate on recent traffic and laboratory tests, and said that even small amounts of alcohol frequently destroy inhibitions of drivers to restrain themselves from misconduct while behind the wheel.

Bible For Cadets

A total of 503 cadets at the U. S. Military Academy, West Point, were presented Bibles recently in a ceremony sponsored by the American Tract Society of New York City.

Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, president of the society, in delivering the sermon, said:

“The Bible is about history and morality, about human nature and sin. It tells not only about the past but also the future, about heaven and hell. It is about God and his greatness and righteousness, his justice and his love, and what he requires of us men. But, when we come to the more particular question, what is the Bible about, there is just one chief answer. It is this: Above everything else, the Bible is all about Jesus Christ. In the deepest and most living way, its purpose is to tell us about him who is ‘the wav, the truth and the life.’ ”

‘Peacemongering’

Queen Elizabeth II and President Eisenhower were in the congregation at Washington’s National Presbyterian Church when Dr. Edward L. R. Elson said “careless and irresponsible talk about peace” is “worse than warmongering.”

The pastor added:

“To talk about peace unrelated to moral principles is as dangerous for world order as saber-rattling and scowls at international borders.

“Jesus did not say, ‘Blessed are the peace-wishers.’ He did not say, ‘Blessed are the pacifists.’ He was quite emphatic. He said, ‘Blessed are those who make peace.’ ”

Others in the congregation included Prince Philip, Mrs. Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Secretary of the Army Wilbur Brucker and Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield.

Benefits Hit

An advisory opinion issued by the Social Security Administration in Washington, D. C., threatens to restrict the benefits of retired ministers and missionaries who are provided homes by the churches and denominations they served.

The agency held that if the rental value of a parsonage is designated as income for social security purposes in computing base earnings for benefits it also must be counted towards the maximum of $1,200 a year that a retired recipient of benefits is permitted to earn while receiving such benefits.

Charles Smith, associate director of the Washington office of the National Council of Churches, said “the new social security ruling disrupts many of the retirement plans worked out by the Protestant denominations.”

He pointed out that nearly all denominations make provision for their retired missionaries and many churches provide for their retired ministers to continue occupying a parsonage.

“As a result, the amount of cash income they can have and stay within social security limitations is not more than $300 a year in most instances,” he said.

Africa

Moslem Prime Minister

A fitful drizzle could not dampen the spirits of thousands of Nigerians who crowded the roads to get a look at their new Prime Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and his newly-formed cabinet. For Nigeria, this was the last big step to independence, which is set for April 2nd, 1960. It opened a new era in the country’s government and is hoped to be the strong unifying force to pull the vastly tribalistic communities into one.

Balewa, who made his first trip to Mecca two months before, has always been the hero of the vast Nigerian North, often labeled the “Golden Voice of the North” because of his pleasing voice and excellent command of English. He once made the prophecy that the North would continue its march to the sea if the South felt it could go on for national independence alone.

In his opening speech to the House of Representatives he constantly stressed the need of unity—“On no account should we allow the selfish ambitions of individuals to jeopardize the peace of the 33 million law abiding people of Nigeria.”

Although a staunch Moslem by faith, the Prime Minister made a point of expressing his gratitude to what Christian missions have done for Nigeria.

“I would particularly like to refer to the Christian missionaries of all denominations who have done so much to encourage the development of the country,” he said. “They have the distinction of being the first in the field in spreading Western education and providing our peoples with modern medical facilities. We greatly admire their efforts and we shall continue to be grateful to them for all that they are doing.”

At the same time, the Prime Minister made it emphatic that “the future of this vast country of Nigeria must depend in the main on the efforts of ourselves to help ourselves.”

What a Moslem’s power will mean to Christian missions cannot as yet be told. But there is indication enough that the new Prime Minister, even though a Moslem, is dedicated most of all to strengthening the unity of the country in an effort to present it as eligible for independence from British rule. And for the present at least, the Prime Minister, in order to accomplish such a task, is doing all he can to bring economic, political, and religious groups into peaceful and harmonious coexistence.

J. L. J.

Going Again

The Nile Mission Press, founded more than 50 years ago in Cairo, Egypt as a center for the printing and distribution of Christian literature in the Arabic language for all of the Middle East, has resumed operations under a new set-up in Beirut, Lebanon. A program of publication work is being organized under direction of D. T. L. Howell there, in cooperation with a committee in England and America.

Nile Mission Press, whose work was interrupted last year at the time of the Suez crisis, was founded in 1905 by Samuel M. Zwemer and others, and throughout its long history has carried on a far reaching literature ministry in all of the Near and Middle East. At one time its catalog carried more than 800 titles of books available in Arabic. Renewal of the work in Beirut is being expedited by the formation of a committee of national Christians and with the cooperation of missions in the area. An office has been set up and the first list of new titles approved for printing and distribution, with George Jamil, a Lebanese, to assist Mr. Howell.

Far East

My Only Regret …

Portrait of a pastor, whose ministry changed from frustration to fruitfulness:

The little Korean, sitting alongside me on the one-hour flight from Seoul to Taegu, was in his 60’s. His face was lined from evident years of a hard life, but a deep calm seemed to radiate from him.

Traveling with the old gentleman was his son, a young man who smiled easily. They were the Rev. Yong S. Rhee, president of the Taegu School for the Blind and Deaf, and Kisu Rhee, his special assistant.

“My father has been the biggest inspiration in my life,” remarked Kisu. I thought of how refreshing this simple statement sounded, compared to the “old man” references heard so often among American teen-ages.

As we rode and talked, there developed the remarkable story of a man who can well be an inspiration to everyone.

The story really began, as is so often the case, with the sacrificial life of a mother who dedicated her son to God after she became a Christian and had her sight restored following seven years of blindness. In order to pay for her son’s education, she walked hundreds of miles year after year, peddling goods throughout North and South Kyongsang. Less than five feet tall and not very strong, she was continually racked by physical suffering as she struggled up mountain trails and crossed fields with her merchandise. But her strength was renewed daily, as she looked at the Cross and remembered the suffering of Jesus.

While at school, the son worked hard and served God devoutly. He showed such progress that he was invited to lead a church service in Taegu. At night he found time to practice his oratory in the market place.

“I was painfully conscious, however,” he said, “that my faith was not genuine, but only disguised.”

He related the troubles which began in 1919, the year of a major upheaval against Japanese imperialism. For his rebellious shouting, he spent one year in jail at Seoul. After release he refused to quit making speeches and spent three more years in jail at Taegu. A jailor’s cruel blow resulted in partial deafness.

“While suffering under this imprisonment,” he testified, “I realized more clearly my mother’s intention that I should be a pastor. I resolved to be a good one. After prison, I left for Japan to study at Kobe Seminary.

“After graduation, I still did not have a true belief in the grace of God. While desperately seeking this belief, I offered my life in the service of lepers. Two years after I joined the leprosarium, however, I resolved that I would quit my ministry unless God bestowed his grace upon me. The decision didn’t come easily. I tortured myself in prayer for several weeks but nothing happened until Christmas eve. During the 3 a.m. service, I asked, ‘Lord Jesus, have you ever seen such a sinner as I? Has there ever been such a wicked pastor? You love these lepers most of all human beings, erected this leprosarium and sent me to love them for you, but I did not love them. I am not a benefactor, but one benefitted.’

“While praying, my eyes overflowed with hot tears. Four hundred patients also shed tears of repentance. The whirlwind of grace sent by God never ceased to blow until the service had lasted five hours.

“After this, I could serve the patients with true love. I served them sincerely for 10 years under the protection and grace of God.”

Rhee, after this service, accepted pastorates in Korea, Manchuria and Japan.

With the liberation in 1945, he came home to Taegu. The leper-relief position was no longer open, but God had another big work for the faithful pastor. Park Yon Saeng, a blind man, impressed him with the importance of education for blind and deaf children. The school was opened on faith in 1947.

Money was hard to come by. To help support his young charges, he took over the job as labor section chief at Taegu jail and devoted the rest of his time to the school. The arrangement wasn’t satisfactory, in view of the great need among thousands, so he quit the jail job after seven months.

Monetary aid picked up slowly. Offerings on Christmas, 1949, from blind men and women across the United States, were sent to the school through Miss Helen Keller. The mayor of Taegu, Han Po Yong, provided desperately needed land.

The work was progressing wonderfully in 1950—when war again came to Korea. By August 30, the enemy was 120 kilometers northeast of Taegu. Refugees below Seoul were streaming southward.

In an attempt to rescue relatives at Songjiu, Rhee crossed the Naktong River on the same day that UN forces pulled back across the river. Shells began to fall all around. He hid in the mountains, among rocks and behind hedges until the day he was captured, Sept. 17—on charges of being a jail chaplain.

He arrived at a compound for prisoners just as those who had been murdered were being taken away. As his time for execution approached, an unusual order for reconsideration came through. But on Sept. 24 he was again sentenced to death.

“I was not troubled by the fear of death,” he said, “but by the fact that I had not been a better pastor and had not rendered more worthy service to the lepers and school for the blond.”

When given a chance to say his last words, he told the Communists why he had become a pastor and ended the little speech with these words: “I fear nothing, since I shall be in the Kingdom of Heaven after my death. My only misgiving is who will be my successor in the education of the blind and deaf.”

God intervened again, as a Communist official was touched by the words. “Set this old man free,” he ordered.

Returning to Taegu, Rhee found over 1,200 lepers and children praying for his safety!

More than 250 blind and deaf children are now taught how to live at the school, with World Vision, Inc., of Los Angeles, paying for the support of 185. World Vision, under President Bob Pierce, has made other valuable contributions to bolster support from Korean groups.

I walked through the corridors and watched the children at their studies. A blind boy smiled at something he was reading with his fingers. A deaf boy, who had never heard sound, struggled with the words, “How do you do … welcome.” Hundreds of hours of patient love and coaching had gone into the effort. Kim Jae Yul, a 14-year-old boy, was with a group of other children. He was blind and part of his right arm was gone as the result of a stray explosive picked up after the fighting, but he smiled as he sang a song, “I Need Thee Every Hour.”

Looking on proudly was the Rev. Yong S. Rhee, spared by God for a great work. He had been as blind in the beginning of his ministry as the children he was helping, but God had opened his eyes with bitter tears on Christmas morning in a leper colony.

—GEORGE BURNHAM

Korean Moderator

The Rev. Chen Pil Sun, pastor of Seoul’s Yong Dong Presbyterian Church, was elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Korea at its 42nd General Assembly in Pusan.

The new moderator, a former secretary of the National Christian Council in Korea, won fame for his dramatic escape from Seoul’s notorious West Gate Prison in 1950 when he was being held for execution after capture by the communists. All his fellow prisoners were killed. Koreans call him “the man who jumped from his coffin.”

A highlight of the assembly was the welcome given to the Rev. Pang Chi Il, last Presbyterian missionary to be released by the Chinese communists. Mr. Pang is a second-generation China missionary, the son of one of Korea’s pioneers to Shantung province. He had been in China without furlough since 1937 and had been held with his family for eight years by the communists.

Continuing its insistence on high standards for the ministry, the assembly’s committee on examinations passed only 60 out of 130 candidates applying for admission to the Presbyterian ministry.

—S. H. M.

South America

Overflow Crowds

Dr. Oswald J. Smith, pastor of The Peoples Church, Toronto, has completed evangelistic campaigns at Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Overflow crowds were reported in each city, with a total of 1,579 registered decisions for Christ.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is a subscriber to Religious News Service, Evangelical Press Service and Washington Report.

Books

Book Briefs: November 11, 1957

Do-It-Yourself Religion

Stay Alive All Your Life, by Norman Vincent Peale, Prentice-Hall. $3.95.

The writings of Dr. Peale are easily criticized, but the importance of his work cannot be underrated. As pastor, he has attempted to deal specifically and remedially with the problems of his people. By the use of psychiatrists as a part of the church counseling program, he has emphasized the relation of mental and emotional health to spiritual health, and by his stress on such a healing as revivifying ministry, he has brought back into focus the fact that salvation includes the redeeming and enjoying of our lives here and now. All this constitutes a program of major importance and one deserving of study and commendation. Unfortunately, Peak’s thinking does not live up to the promises implicit in his program.

First of all, any emphasis on biblical faith is utterly lacking. Peak’s God is the God of all religions, and all men have “the instinct of God and immortality” (p. 300). God is never presented as Judge, nor even as Saviour. In the process of attaining help, God is essentially passive and is appropriated by men. Jesus Christ is quoted by Peak, though not so often as his many great friends, but there is no expressed regard for his Person and his atoning work. Man works, not God, nor Christ.

Testimonials abound in the book, but they are not to Jesus but to Peak and his friends of “inner power.” What we have here is not religion, nor is it even moralism. Peak does not deal with problems of good and evil, but only of “right and wrong” (p. 144f); moral categories are replaced by neutral ones, correct and incorrect. The “supreme personal test at all times” is not, Am I a saved man, or even, Am I a good man, but rather, “ ‘Am I a right person?’ If you are ‘right’ things tend to go right” (p. 156). Peak defines religion thus: “Religion is a scientific methodology for thinking your way through problems” (p. 147). There is here neither religion nor moralism, but only self-help.

It is significant that only twice does Peak deal with guilt feelings (not sin or guilt in itself or as related to God), and on the first instance he urges its suppression. “Allow no sense of guilt to take the luster off your spirit. It’s the greatest of all causes of ennui”; rather, enthusiasm, “meaning ‘God within,’ ” is to be cultivated (p. 43). In the second instance he merely observes “the close relationship of guilt to tension” and finds it strange that the personality retains indiscretions like “pockets of spiritual poison” (p. 165f). He has no answer to this other than to have affirmative thoughts relieve your tensions. Peak speaks much of faith, but it is not faith in God, but “faith in faith,” which means in your capacities (pp. 1, 12, 22, 263, etc.).

Second, any real relationship to medical and psychiatric knowledge is lacking. There is a seeming reliance on psychosomatics, but actually Peak reverses the opinions of such theory. Instead of leaning on psychosomatic medicine, he favors the reverse, i.e., the body’s determination of the mind. By physical exercises and enacted routines, the mind is given spiritual power. Peak is thus closer to Yoga and Hinduism than to anything in Scripture or in psychosomatics. To develop “dynamic life … put animation in your daily work” (p. 110). To be vital, act vital. To be happy, practice joy (p. 172, 221f, etc.). Significant is his extended citation of “the practical program for maintaining continuous energy” of the late Lawrence Townsend, which meant nude sunbathing, the “emptying” of the mind of all “thought poisons” (we should “flush negatives” away, p. 33), plus the following affirmation, spoken aloud, standing tall:

I breathe in pure, beautiful, positive thoughts of God and Jesus Christ, which entirely fill my conscious and superconscious mind, to the total elimination of all hatred and malice, which, with God’s help, I dismiss completely from my conscious, unconscious, and superconscious mind.

This gave Townsend “conquest of the aging process, and … demonstrated conclusively the validity of his method” (p. 132 ff).

It would be easy to go on and cite ridiculous instances of Peak’s thinking (e.g., the possibility of the power of positive thinking in fishing, p. 16), but it is hardly necessary. This is neither religion, moralism, medicine, or anything more than self-help baptized with a sprinkling of devout-plus-medical phrases. For those who believe in self-help, this is the answer. For those who believe in the God of Scripture, the reality and validity of good and evil, and the grace of God unto salvation, there is nothing here but the frenzy of guilty life and the misery of creeping death.

R. J. RUSHDOONY

Significant Collection

Selected Letters of John Wesley, by Frederick C. Gill (editor). Philosophical, New York, 1956. $4.75.

John Wesley has left to the Christian world a collection of letters significant not only in their quantity, but in the range of subjects with which they dealt. Some 2,670 of them have been collected, written over a period of seventy years, and addressed to every type of person living in the England of his day and to some in the New World. It is in these letters that he often expressed himself more truly than in the more precise discourses which he left in writing.

This collection of 275 letters has been made to offer to the busy reader something of a cross-section of this correspondence, and particularly, to exhibit the wide range of Wesley’s interests. The most that can be given in a review is an indication of the major subjects with which the letters published deal. First of all, they sketch for us the life of a disciplined man, selfless in his labors for his Societies. He appears before us as tireless in his travels, intensive within his extensive labors, for he pursued his calling by house to house visitation and by constant personal interviews.

His correspondence with kings and prime ministers grew out, not of a desire to curry favor, but to maintain the cause of his Societies, particularly against the charge of disloyalty. The people called Methodists were at the same time a joy and a surprise to him. As he writes (p. 105), “… the more I attend the service of the Church in other places, the more I am convinced of the unspeakable advantage which the people called Methodists enjoy … The church where they assemble is not gay or splendid … but plain as well as clean. The persons who assemble there are … a people most of whom do, and the rest earnestly seek to, worship God in spirit and in truth.”

Wesley’s letters reveal foibles, very human foibles; he can be sentimental, or he can be withering; at times he seemed to be whimsical. The letters dealing with the question of his marriage are selected with a view to giving an over-all picture of this event in his career. The reader will admire a great deal in the side of Wesley’s character which this correspondence reveals. The range of his other interests amazes us; he had a very practical interest in diet, in electricity, in psychology and in the use of herbs for their curative properties. He kept a hand upon movements of thought no less than upon trends in the religious practices of his time. Best of all, he was a man of tremendous force and unquestioned dedication.

This volume can be recommended for its balanced insight into the life and work of this cosmopolitan figure. The Editor is correct in his statement at the end of the Preface: “His letters still live, and are characteristic of the man, showing unsuspected angles of his mind, reflecting vividly the life and spirit of the age, and revealing the birth and growth of a nationwide revival …” Here is a collection of the most significant of them.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Sunday School Methods

Informal Talks on Sunday School Teaching, by Ray Rozell, Grand Rapids International Publications, distributed by Kregel’s, Grand Rapids. 160 pp., $2.00.

Do you consider yourself a capable Sunday School teacher—one who possesses knowledge concerning the technique of teaching? Read this book and you will find how much can still be learned.

Here is a book that is true to its title. It presents a wealth of plain and intensely practical hints on teaching. The meaning of teaching and the importance of knowing the pupil’s needs and the teacher’s aims, the know-how of the pupil learning process and the methods to be followed—all this and more is systematically discussed. The treatment given these matters by the pedagogically astute author is as interesting as it is extensive.

The author rightly states that it is essential that the teacher be motivated by a Christian philosophy of life. But it is at this point that we find it difficult to follow the author. His philosophy—like too much present-day Sunday School material—is off-center. Instead of being God-centered or Christ-centered, it is pupil-centered. The whole teaching program is directed to supplying pupil needs. Even the Bible is said to be a “tool” to this end. Says the author, “It is the pupil that we are teaching and not the Bible.… In all of our lesson planning and presentation we must keep the pupil at the center” (p. 33). To make the pupil central in our teaching is to teach the pupil that he is the center. To make one who is an image of God central is an affront to him of whom he is an image.

To be sure, we must analyze the needs of our pupils and seek to supply them. We also agree that teaching should be impelled by a specific aim. But just what is this need and aim? Is it the need and aim envisioned by the mother of James and John who requested Jesus that her boys might be leaders in his kingdom and share his glory? The teacher who is so minded should be told in the words of Jesus, “You know not what you ask.” To share Christ’s glory is to drink Christ’s cup of death on the cross. Not the promotion of the individual, but the daily crucifixion of this individual with Christ, is the basic need of our pupils and the fundamental aim of Christian teaching. The “I” as a center must be crucified that the resurrected Christ may be central in their lives (Gal. 2:20).

MARK FAKKEMA

Valuable Tool

The Church in Soviet Russia, by Matthew Spinka. The Oxford University Press, New York, 1956. $3.25

A problem in the world church today is that of the church in Eastern Europe. A scholar who has made a careful study of this problem is Matthew Spinka of the Hartford Theological Seminary. His thesis in the volume before us is that the Soviet state, in the early years of the Bolshevik revolution wholly antipathetic towards the church in Russia, now utilizes the church as a valuable tool for its own purposes and policies (p. 94 et al.).

A disastrous event hardly equalled in “the whole course of church history” was the resolution of the Karlovtsi conference in November, 1921, in which a large number of Russian emigre ecclesiastical leaders called upon God to overthrow the Bolsheviks and to restore the House of Romanov to the throne (p. 24ff). The revolutionary Communist leaders, remembering the earlier slavish subservience of the church to the Tsar, interpreted the resolution as further proof of reactionary church political policies and the church itself between the anvil and the hammer. In his struggle for church autonomy Tikhon, who was the first leader of the post-revolutionary church (1917–25) and became patriarch, at first fought the regime. Within a year, however, he saw that that policy could only end in defeat so he altered it to secure for his church autonomy within the state. Tikhon became convinced, especially during his imprisonment (1922) that non-interference in politics was the policy necessary for the church’s survival. The reward for this change was that the state gave him the legal right to administer the church.

Tikhon’s successor, Sergei, sought increasing state recognition and in 1927 signed a pact with the state which made the church subservient to it. The year previous 117 bishops were exiled and the whereabouts of 40 others was unknown. “By this systematic weeding out of the best elements of the Russian episcopate the GPU in the end succeeded in purging the church of all who posessed moral courage to oppose the policies of the state” (64). Sergei himself spent three and one-half months in prison that year during which he decided to sign the historic document, the most notable incident of his eighteen-year tenure of office. The “Declaration” stated that the Soviet government was guiltless of any wrongdoing in its relations to the church and placed the blame instead on church leaders themselves. Therafter patriarch Sergei cooperated increasingly with the government even declaring that “in the Soviet Union no religious persecution has ever existed, nor does it now exist”; that “churches are closed not by governmental order but because of the will of the inhabitants, and in many cases even the decision of the faithful”; that “the reports concerning cruelties of the agents of the Soviet government in relation to certain priests absolutely do not correspond to reality and are lies”; that “priests themselves are guilty of not making use of the freedom of preaching granted them”; and that “the church itself does not desire to open theological training institutes” (p. 78f).).

Sergei’s subordination to the state won for the church certain privileges. In 1937 the Soviet government for the first time since the revolution included in its census a statement concerning religious affiliation and revealed that 57% of the adult population was related to the church and that those persons declared themselves to be believers (p. 80). Other considerations were given the church. The shift in Soviet policy is shown by the author to have been greatly accelerated when Nazi Germany broke its pact with Russia in June 1941 and invaded the country. “The (Soviet) regime was now faced not only with a powerful foreign invaded, but also with the possibility of revolt at home” (82). To the surprise of many, including the regime, the church remained steadfastly loyal and Sergei used everything at his command to serve the “holy” Soviet cause, his “sycophantic glorifications of the ‘great, God-given leader of the Russian people’—Stalin—(being) notorious. The church thus ceased to be a Church, and became an adjunct of the state. This is the tragedy of the Russian Church and its leadership” (p. 863. Spinka believes that the present state of the church in Russia is, in “many particulars, worse than ever before.”

The present Patriarch, Alexei, continues Sergei’s policy of unconditional service to the state. His first official act was a letter to Stalin, dated May 19, 1944, in which he pledged unswerving loyalty to the “God-appointed leader.”

Second to Alexei in the Russian Church is Metropolitan Nikolai who has striven to outdo his superior in singing the praises of the Soviet communist regime. Professor Spinka avers that his eulogy of Stalin on the 26th anniversary of the October Revolution has been “rarely exceeded by the most notorious communist sycophants.” “Our church members,” it says, “along with the entire population, discern in our Leader the greatest man that has ever been born in our country. For he unites in his person all the characteristics mentioned above in connection with our Russian ancient heroes and the great military leaders of the past” (p. 110). One wonders whether de-Stalinization has meant anything to Alexei and Nikolai, the present leaders of the Russian church. (cf. Matt. 15:14)

The author’s thesis includes the proposition that the Soviet government encourages intercourse between Russian Church heads and those of “satellite” countries as a means of extending and strengthening Soviet influence over those countries (last chapter). Alexei’s ambition of becoming head of all Orthodox people coincides with the political aims of the Soviet government and “Church and state can work hand in glove to gain these objectives” (p. 121).

The report of the delegation of the National Council of Churches which visited the Soviet Union last March is in no way contradictory to the positions elaborated by Dr. Spinka but rather agrees therewith (Christian Century, vol. 73, p. 428; cf. an interpretation, p. 480). One wonders then what prompted The Chicago Daily Tribune to editorialize that the leader of that delegation “came back talking nonsense about the position of the churches in Russia” (Dec. 1, 1956), or if the writer had read that leader’s report (summary in Presbyterian Life, April 28, 1956).

Spinka’s claim that the Soviets use the church to Soviet advantage is true not only of Orthodoxy. One needs only to read the monthly reports published by the Foreign and Information Department of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Czechoslovakia, or the tightly-controlled Hungarian Church Press, to observe the same there.

In closing I wish to mention another essay of Prof. Spinka, Church In Communist Society: A Study in J. L. Hromadka’s Theological Politics (Hartford Seminary Foundation Bulletin, 1954), the reading, and re-reading, of which has been to this person, a former student of Dr. Hromadka, a painful, but necessary, experience.

M. EUGENE OSTERHAVEN

Church And State

The Christian and the State, by H. M. Carson, Tyndale, London, Is, 6d.

This 48-page pamphlet is published in a series entitled “Foundations of Faith,” planned to cover a wide range of subjects, and particularly to answer questions which may arise in the minds of intelligent Christians “who have reached the final stage of their school course or have recently begun studying at a university.”

The subject of the Christian’s relationship to the state is one which is increasingly important when the state is accepting larger responsibilities for the welfare of its citizens and expecting in return a fuller recognition of its position. Mr. Carson obviously regards Scripture as the final court of appeal, and in that court he ably enforces the duty of prayer for the state, and of obedience to it, limited only where the state’s demands are in clear conflict with conscience.

He is on more debatable ground when he maintains that Christian participation in politics is not ruled out by Scripture and discusses particularly the Christian’s use of the vote in elections. He has no hesitation in accepting capital punishment as a right which, however sparingly it may be used, is included in Paul’s reference to rulers “bearing the sword.” But he states the arguments for and against Christian participation in war without declaring definitely for one view or the other.

The final chapter, “Lessons from History,” ends with a serious warning against the danger of the church becoming “a subsidiary department of the state” in lands where totalitarian government prevails. The booklet should go far towards clarifying the thinking of young Christians who are asking, or ought to be asking, “What does the Bible teach about the relations of the individual Christian, and the church as a whole, to the state?”

FRANK HOUGHTON

Review of Current Religious Thought: November 11, 1957

John H. Gerstner

What of preaching in current thought and practice? What is the general character of twentieth-century preaching, judging from present-day pulpit men and literature?

Perhaps we can get an historic perspective by glancing at Harry Emerson Fosdick, who is regarded by many as the greatest preacher of our time, and Jonathan Edwards, who is regarded by virtually all as the greatest preacher of the eighteenth century (at least in America).

Though always a candid opponent of historic, creedal Christianity, which he usually dubbed “Fundamentalism,” Dr. Fosdick receives high praise from Dr. Ganse Little (The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, February 1957). “We must hasten to add,” he remarks, “as Dr. Fosdick does himself, that here is a man literally ‘saved by grace’ for a ministry of unsurpassed helpfulness to men in every walk of life for well on towards fifty years.” Dr. Fosdick believes in “grace” in essentially the same way Pelagius believed in “grace”—and as Augustine proved that Pelagius’ “grace” was not the Bible’s grace, so Machen proved the same of Dr. Fosdick’s “grace.”

With respect to Dr. Fosdick’s “unsurpassed helpfulness,” a remark is in order. It probably would be generally granted that Dr. Fosdick was the most influential American preacher of the first half of the century (at least on ministers and the intelligentsia). Whether he was the most useful would depend, as he would gladly admit, on the soundness of his message. If it was the truth of God, as he no doubt believes and Dr. Little with him, then it would follow that his usefulness was probably unsurpassed among preachers. If his gospel was “another gospel,” as many believe, then the effect of his life requires drastic re-evaluation. This is all obvious and no one would admit it sooner, we suppose, than Dr. Fosdick. Dr. Little, though giving a positively delightful review of the autobiography (The Living of These Days) does not wrestle with this problem, apparently because he believes it self-evident that Fosdick’s message is basically true and wholesomely liberating.

Of especial interest to us is the turning point in Fosdick’s life. One of the early and pivotal events was his repudiation of the preaching of the coming wrath of God (hell). Such preaching turned him from “orthodoxy” permanently and accounts for his lifelong crusade against “Fundamentalism.”

Now the turning point in the career of Edwards was precisely the opposite. He had sore problems, as a young theological student at Yale, about divine sovereignty and particularly its exercise in the damnation of some men. However, from feeling this was a “monstrous” doctrine he was inwardly persuaded of the “sweetness” of divine sovereignty and yielded himself absolutely and unquestionably to it. It became the dominant note in his preaching that God “was sovereign in the matter of salvation” and the sermon which he regarded as most fruitful in conversions is entitled “The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners.” Edwards preached much more than this theme and other than this theme, but he did preach this theme.

And certainly this is a striking contrast, that the most eminent preacher of 1750 stressed the absolute sovereignty of God, even in salvation and damnation, while the most eminent preacher of 1950 found himself in lifelong rebellion against such sovereignty.

What is true of these two champions of the pulpit is an epitome of others, and the cue to twentieth-century preaching in general. It reveals itself in the very way in which most sermons begin. Never did Edwards, or virtually any Puritan, begin with other than the Word of God and its close exposition. Present-day homilies, by contrast, seldom begin with serious exposition unless the text is narrative in character and affords opportunity to tell an interesting and unfamiliar Bible story. Early Puritans used illustrations sparingly even when they, like the parables of Christ, were basically analogous to the revealed truth. In most sermons we now read or hear, the text illustrates the illustration rather than vice versa. The homiletical tail is wagging the homiletical dog, and most of the time the tail itself is only pinned on. But the illustrations—independently considered—are usually very good. As far as the biblical content of modern sermons is concerned, there is simply no comparison with Puritan preaching. One learned something about the Word of God then, while now he usually comes out of church better informed about Saroyan, Ibsen, Freud or Eisenhower. We are having a preaching of the word indeed—but it is the word of man.

The eighteenth-century pulpit was quite down-to-earth and practical, but preaching was always related to eternity—sub specie aeternitatis. This century seldom rises above an obsession or probes any deeper than a frustration. Here is the flyleaf of a current book on preaching: “Emphasizing that good preaching is doctrinal preaching applied to life, this book will assist pastors of all denominations to prepare sermons that will minister to the anxiety, insecurity, loneliness and frustration that beset our times.” Preachers seem to dabble more in amateur psychology than exegesis; they would be embarrassed by a person under conviction of sin, would talk a man out of feelings of guilt, and if confronted by someone fleeing from the wrath of God would be sure he was a paranoic.

It is no wonder that a layman has the courage to write: “What’s the Matter with Protestant Preaching?” (Church Management, September 1957.) This would take as much audacity, we should think, as it would take for us to write “How plumbers may improve their skill.” Men recognize that education, medicine, bricklaying and the like are the work of those specially trained in such subjects. But any one who hears sermons seems qualified to issue canons to direct the preacher who has usually had four years of general and three years of special training in this divine business. We are concerned to note that such supposed lay competence is a symptom of the breakdown of the awareness of the high calling of the ministry on the part of those to whom they minister. It hardly needs saying that this breakdown on the part of the laity is at least in part occasioned by the ministry’s own loss of a sense of specian vocation.

If preachers insist on competing with psychiatrists as counselors, with physicians as healers, with politicians as statesmen and with philosophers as speculators, then these specialists have every right to tell them how to preach. If a minister’s message is not based on “Thus saith the Lord,” then as a sermon it is good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of the specialists in the department with which it deals.

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.”

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.

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