Dung and Scum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Cover Story

Dare We Renew the Controversy?

Carl F. H. Henry

Part 3: The Contemporary Restoration

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

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

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

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

The Return To Doctrine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dramatic Change

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

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

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

Neo-Orthodoxy And The Bible

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christ And The Scriptures

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

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

Immanence And Transcendence

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

Divine-Human Encounter

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

Sign Of Weakness

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

Task Of Christian Philosophy

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

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

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

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

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

TO BE CONTINUED

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

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What Young People Need

Henry Rische

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

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

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

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

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

Adult Dereliction

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

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

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

Role Of Religion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Greater Lack

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

END

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

- More from Henry Rische

Cover Story

God in the Constitutional Convention

Delber H. Elliott

The sessions of the Constitutional Convention began May 25, and adjourned September 17, 1787, covering a period of one hundred and sixteen days. Fifty-five delegates were present at the opening of the Convention. The presiding officer was George Washington and the secretary was William Jackson. The impression that harmony prevailed is a figment of the imagination. Thirteen members left early, not to return—some because of conflicting opinions. Tempers at times flared hotly. At one stage the convention recessed to allow heated passions to cool. The final document was not adopted unanimously. Randolf, Mason and Gerry refused to sign.

The delegates to the Convention were not supermen. They came from the common walks of life. No more than twenty of the original fifty-five were credited with making any constructive contribution. If the working force could be reduced to any one man, that man would be James Madison, later called “The Father of the Constitution.”

A Disturbing Contrast

There were certain marked differences between the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. One of them was the place given to prayer. Prayer was prominent in the Continental Congress. Two chaplains were appointed to open the sessions each day with prayer. In the Constitutional Convention prayer was officially absent. When the going became hard, Benjamin Franklin presented his famed resolution asking that prayer for divine guidance be offered each morning. His supporting remarks are a classic in congressional literature. He said in part:

the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings that “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”

Many writers assume that prayers were offered and that all went well thereafter. The plain fact is that this was not so. Elliott’s Debates (Vol. 5, p. 255) and a footnote to Franklin’s speech tell us that prayers were not thought necessary and the motion was lost by adjournment.

A second contrast between these two historic assemblies concerns the recognition given to the Divine Being. The Continental Congress, in its official documents, mentioned “God,” “Almighty God,” “Governor of the Universe” and the “Omnipotent” One. If we go back to the early compacts, colonial charters, the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence, we find not only frequent mention of God but repeated reference to Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Ruler of nations.

But in its official proceedings the Constitutional Convention was noticeably silent on such acknowledgments of Deity. In the Constitution as finally adopted there is no reference to God, Christ or to the law of God.

The Finished Product

The excellencies of the American Constitution are many. The final product is a masterpiece of the English language. Its preamble is one of the world’s finest sentences. The threefold task of the Convention was well done; to establish a central form of government; to preserve the individual rights of the people; and to define the powers of the states and the nation in their relation to each other.

With all of its excellencies, however, the Constitution came short of perfection. This is understandable to the degree that trust was placed in the wisdom of men rather than in the guidance of God. The fact that the Constitution has been amended twenty-one times should bear this out.

Following the adoption of the Constitution there arose two widespread objections. The first was that it made no provision for a bill of rights. This defect was remedied by the passage of the first ten amendments.

The second objection was that there was no acknowledgment of a Supreme Being. This obvious defect has never been corrected. At least forty-two of the forty-eight states have made some reference to God in their constitutions but the Federal Constitution remains silent. It is encouraging that in 1908 “In God We Trust” was made mandatory on some of our coins. These words appear also on some of our postage stamps and have now become, by act of Congress, the official motto of the United States. Without serious opposition, the words “Under God” have been added to our salute to the flag. But these gestures are only side issues as long as no recognition is made in our fundamental law by which all other laws are judged.

The late Dr. Peter Marshall, while chaplain of the United States Senate, said: “It is strange and I believe tragic that the Constitution makes no reference to God.” A fascinating article appeared in the Congressional Record of Feb. 19, 1844, about the offering of a resolution by John Quincy Adams to amend the Constitution by a recognition of “the God of this nation”; “Submission to the Lord Jesus Christ, Prince of the kings of the Earth”; and “unreserved reception of His revealed will, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.” Space does not permit recording here his remarks supporting the resolution. The outcome was that his motion was laid on the table, though many voted in its favor.

On February 3, 1863, a three-day convention of Christian citizens met at Xenia, Ohio, for prayer and conference concerning the state of the nation. Eleven denominations were represented. The convention adopted a declaration which reads in part:

“We regard the neglect of God and His law, by omitting all acknowledgments of them in our Constitution, as the crowning sin of the nation, and slavery as one of its outgrowths. Therefore the most important step remains to amend the Constitution so as to acknowledge God and the authority of His law …” The sentiment thus expressed grew and became organized into the National Reform Association, which continues as a vigorous force, with the Christian Amendment as one of its projects. The Christian Statesman is its official organ.

A more recent organization, with a national field secretary and a central office located in Pittsburgh, is also pressing this issue. Its official organ is The Christian Patriot. The measure has been repeatedly introduced into Congress, including the present session, by various members of the House and Senate. The first section of this bill reads: “This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Savior and Ruler of Nations, through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God.” Section 2 safeguards against any union of church and state, and the third section is designed to protect the rights and consciences of those whose religious scruples may be affected.

No one would be so naive as to assume that the mere writing of a name into the Constitution would make the nation Christian. It is not just a pin on the lapel of Uncle Sam’s coat. An amendment to the Constitution requires for passage a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures. When such support as this is achieved, may we not safely conclude that Uncle Sam has become a Christian at heart?

Such recognition in our basic law would honor the God who gave our nation its being; bring our Constitution into harmony with the history and aims of the founding fathers; bring our government into line with the moral law of God; declare before the world that the United States is a Christian nation; give our ambassadors and statesmen a firm basis on which to rest their decisions; and silence the arguments of atheists and others that chaplains, Thanksgiving proclamations, inscriptions on our coins and reading of the Bible in our schools are unconstitutional.

Admittedly, the proponents of this constitutional correction are now in the minority. But it has been said of certain earnest dissenters, “They signed many minority reports which became majority actions.”

END

When CHRISTIANTY TODAY carried an article on “God and the Continental Congress” in its issue of Feb. 4 (Vol. I, No. 9), Dr. Delber H. Elliott, long interested in the Christian Amendment Movement, proposed this further article on “God and the Constitutional Convention.” A graduate of Geneva College and of Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, where he held the chair of Homiletics for seven years, he received the D.D. degree from Geneva in 1922, and has been a member of its Board of Trustees for 30 years.

- More from Delber H. Elliott

Cover Story

RSV Appraisal: New Testament

George Eldon Ladd

The Revised Standard Version has now been with us long enough so that most people, both laymen and scholars, have formed their basic judgment of the work. Therefore the purpose of the present brief article is not so much to shed new light upon a question already exhaustively studied as to attempt to clarify some basic issues by suggesting several principles fundamental to a philosophy of translation and by offering a brief evaluation of the RSV in the light of these principles.

The Need For A Clean Bible

First, the Bible must be a revealing book. In evangelical Christianity, the Bible plays an indispensable role, for it is the divinely appointed instrument to bring men into a knowledge of truth and an experience of God. Since the English Bible is above all else a book of the layman, it must be rendered in an up-to-date, completely intelligible idiom. This principle is reinforced by the historical fact, realized only in this century, that the Greek idiom of the New Testament is the koine, the vernacular, the living language of common people.

However, a paradoxical situation has prevailed in large areas of the English-speaking church. The King James, or Authorized, Version, which has been the Bible of the people, is written in an archaic Elizabethan idiom. Such verses as “we which are alive … shall not prevent them which are asleep” (1 Thess. 4:15), “take nothing for their journey … no scrip” (Mk. 6:8), “and from thence we fetched a compass” (Acts 28:13), “we do you to wit” (2 Cor. 8:1), “I would have you … simple concerning evil” (Rom. 16:19), “his wife also being privy to it” (Acts 5:2) demand explanation to be understood in the twentieth century.

Furthermore, the form of the Bible, as well as its language, should convey to the reader a maximum degree of meaning. Few modern books would sell if every third line or so were indented as is KJV. A literary form that indicates units of thought by the use of paragraphs, sets off quotations by quotation marks, arranges poetical materials in poetic form and uses a modern system of punctuation is mandatory.

Punctuation and paragraph indention indeed involve interpretation, and the decisions of any translator or translators can be challenged at many points because of the ambiguity of the data. For instance, it is debatable whether our Lord’s discourse in John 3 ends at verse 15 or at verse 21. Nor can it be decided with finality whether the last sentence of Revelation 19:10 was spoken by the angel or is an author’s comment.

We must conclude, however, that the RSV, as far as language and form are concerned, will introduce the reader to the truth of the Word far more effectively than either of the earlier versions.

Accuracy In Translation

A second quality necessary in a translation of the Bible is accuracy. The meaning of the original language must be carefully reproduced. We cannot emphasize too strongly that a literal translation, if by literal we mean a word-for-word equivalent, is impossible. Anyone who has had any experience with a foreign language knows that every language has its idiom, which is meaningless when rendered with wooden literalness. We cite only one illustration. Many a preacher has been unhappy with the English word “bowels” of KJV (see 2 Cor. 6:12, Phil. 2:1, etc.) to express affection or compassion. KJV really embodies a mistranslation, for the Greek word physiologically denotes the organs above, not below, the diaphragm. To render this word “literally” is literally nonsense in English. The Semites may speak of the liver as a center of grief (Lam. 2:11), and the Greeks of the higher organs as a center of deep feeling; English demands a different idiom.

This problem of idiom appears in such theologically significant passages as Hebrews 1:2 “God … hath … spoken unto us by his Son” (KJV). The divergent rendering, “God … has spoken to us by a Son” (RSV), should be understood against the background of syntax rather than that of theology. The Greek literally reads, “God … has spoken to us in Son,” having neither the possessive pronoun nor the article. The translator here must deal with the problem of reproducing the anarthrous use of the article for which there is no English equivalent. If RSV undertranslates it, KJV overtranslates the idiom. Strict literalness is impossible.

The translator therefore must interpret. He must know the meaning of the original and seek its equivalent value in a different language. He must be a scholar possessing first-rate historical and philological equipment. No amount of devotion or piety can be a substitute for knowledge and technical skill, for we are dealing with historical facts which sometimes become very complex. However, when the interpretative element has been recognized, we must insist that a translation ought to be as literal as possible.

To what extent has RSV attained accuracy of translation? Numerous renditions of the new version are more literal than KJV. Any one of these, by itself, is of little importance; but taken together, they reflect the effort of the translators to produce an accurate version. “When they wanted wine” (John 2:3) is corrected to “when the wine failed.” RSV rightly reads “for the sake of your tradition” at Matthew 15:3 rather than “by your tradition.” KJV renders a single word in two ways in Matthew 23:16 and 18: “he is a debtor,” “he is guilty,” while RSV consistently translates the same word in the same way, “he is bound by his oath.” RSV literally renders Luke 10:11 “know this” instead of the paraphrastic “be ye sure of this.” “The common people” in Mark 12:37 (KJV, ASV) injects an unnecessary element of interpretation for the Greek, “the great throng,” which is faithfully reproduced in the RSV.

Furthermore, we may cite almost innumerable passages where the new version has achieved a better translation because it is more meaningful and perspicuous. This is probably its most notable feature, for many passages will suddenly come to life to the ordinary reader which have lain unnoticed before. Other passages will be seen in an entirely new light. The rudimentary credal statement in 1 Corinthians 15:3 ff. is “of first importance” (RSV), not merely of chronological priority (“first of all” KJV). Romans 7:6 is not making a contrast, as KJV suggests, between a literal and a spiritual approach to the Scriptures, but between two dispensations, a fact which the RSV makes clear. The confusing expression of KJV in Galatians 2:20 that the believer is crucified and yet lives is corrected in RSV to “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live …” The almost meaningless wording of KJV of Colossians 2:23, “not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh” is clarified by the rendition, “they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh”; and a footnote indicates that the passage is subject to a variant translation.

Theological Accuracy

An important question for evangelicals is the theological accuracy of the RSV. The charges have repeatedly been made that RSV reflects a liberal theological tendency and that the translators have misrepresented the original text in favor of lower theological positions. A critical study of RSV does not bear this out. There are verses which at first sight may seem to involve theological presuppositions of a nonevangelical character; but a thorough study will reveal that in practically every case there are objective factors which enter into the language or context of the problem so that the evidence does not look in a single direction. That a theologically inferior rendition is not due necessarily to a liberal tendency of the translator is proved by the rather surprising “maiden” in Matthew 1:23 in the early edition [1937] of the Williams’ translation published by the Moody Press.

There are in fact many passages where RSV has a higher theology than KJV. RSV rendering “on a level place” instead of the KJV’s “in the plain” (Luke 6:17) helps to solve the problem of the apparent conflict between Matthew and Luke as to the scene of the Sermon on the Mount. In the important saying of Matthew 11:27, the new wording “chooses to reveal him” sets off to better advantage than KJV’s “will reveal him” the mediatorial, revelatory work of the Son. The sense of the miraculous in our Lord’s healing ministry is heightened by such a rendering as “instantly” (Matt. 15:28) instead of the more literal “from that very hour.” A new rendering of our Lord’s prayer, “glorify thou me in thy own presence” (John 17:5) affirms more definitely than KJV that Jesus is returning to the Father.

A very commendable feature of the RSV is the tendency to capitalize “spirit.” Many passages are thus attributed to the Holy Spirit which were not clearly designated in the earlier versions (see Matt. 22:43, Rom. 7:6, 2 Cor. 3:8, Rev. 4:2). The dissatisfaction created by the equivocal rendering of ASV in 2 Timothy 3:16 has been removed by a translation which closely resembles KJV and clearly affirms the inspiration of the Scriptures.

Other renditions are disappointing. RSV, in contrast to its predecessors, punctuates Romans 9:5 so as to apply the beatitude to God the Father rather than to Christ as God. The context hardly calls for the benediction that results in the RSV. At the same time, we must be hesitant of attributing this rendition to theological presuppositions, for it is a fact that while Paul assigns to Christ the prerogatives of deity, it is not his custom to attribute to him the word “God.” In our judgment, the old rendering is preferable, but it remains possible that RSV has it correctly translated.

Profound theological implications are involved in the decision of the revisers to render hilasterion by “expiation” rather than “propitiation” in Romans 3:25. This is not to attribute the decision merely to theological preference; only those who shared the immediate labors of the committee are in a position to know to what extent this may be true. We must, however, point out that in contemporary theological literature, the word “expiation” involves a far lower view of atonement than does “propitiation.” Indeed, our very concept of God is involved. Expiation looks manward and involves the blotting out of sins and the annulment of guilt. Propitiation looks Godward and includes more than expiation—the satisfaction of God’s holiness and of his wrath against sin.

Far more is involved, however, than an arbitrary and subjective decision between two views of the atonement. Extensive technical and philological study lies behind the translation of hilasterion, particularly in the researches of C. H. Dodd. The conclusions of technical scholarship are not answered by the charge of theological liberalism, but only by scholarly research of equal competence. This we now fortunately possess in the work of Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, [see the review by the writer in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Vol. I, No. 1, (Oct. 29, 1956), p. 37] who shows that “expiation” is less than the Scriptures teach and is therefore unsatisfactory.

Perhaps the most radical departure of the new version involving theological considerations is the abandonment of the archaic “thee” and “thou” in favor of the idiom of today. Many readers have felt that the Bible has become somehow less holy and distinctive because of this change. What they fail to realize is that “thee” and “thou” was the ordinary language of everyday life when KJV was made and not a distinctive religious idiom. The decision to employ the modern idiom, we are informed in the introductory brochure, was reached only after two years of debate and experiment when it was decided that the formal mode of address should be retained only when deity was being addressed.

Are we to conclude, then, that when our Lord is not addressed in this formal terminology, it is because the translators do not look upon him as divine? This conclusion does not follow. The question which must be decided in each instance is whether men were consciously addressing Jesus as deity. We must recognize in the complexity of the messianic self-disclosure that only after the resurrection and ascension did the disciples come to a full recognition of our Lord’s deity. To put into their mouths a uniform terminology which recognizes deity from the start is to ignore the historical facts of the self-revelation of Christ and the education of the disciples. With the basic principle decided upon by the revisers, we may agree; and we note that the deity of the promised Messiah is recognized in Matthew 22:44, Hebrews 1:5–13, 5:5, 6, 7:17, 21, and that of the exalted Christ in Revelation 5:9.

The effort of the translators to carry out this principle may be illustrated in Acts 9 where Saul, who was apparently as yet unsure of the identity of the heavenly being appearing to him, says, “Who are you, Lord?” (Acts 9:5), while Ananias, who was fully aware of the Lord’s identity, says, “thy saints at Jerusalem” (Acts 9:13). The handling of these two situations reflects a nicety of judgment. When this has been said, we must record dissatisfaction with the rendering of such high Christological passages at Matthew 16:16, John 6:69. Furthermore, in the light of Thomas’s confession in John 20:28, a higher form of address might be expected in John 21, although it is of course possible that only Thomas had as yet grasped the significance of his confession. However, criticism, if any, must be directed to the revisers’ judgment, not to their theological presuppositions.

Consistency In Translation

A third important principle is derived from the fact that the vast majority of people are shut up to an English version for their knowledge of the Word of God. Therefore, a good version must provide an adequate tool for serious Bible study, and must endeavor to achieve as large a measure as possible of consistency in rendering of both important and unimportant theological words. Literary excellence may demand variety; but serious study demands consistency and accuracy.

It is evident that the translators of the new version have aimed at such consistency, at least in the New Testament. The single Greek expression, aionios zoe, which occurs some forty-four times in the New Testament, is rendered in KJV by the two phrases, “eternal life” and “everlasting life,” at a ratio of two to one (cf. John 3:15, 16; Acts 13:46, 48; Rom. 6:22–23). The RSV is consistent in employing a single English phrase. A similar meaningless variation between “everlasting” and “eternal” is found in KJV for the adjective aionios. Does one word convey a qualitative significance and the other only a quantitative meaning? To ask the question is to answer it.

Another even more important illustration is to be found in the RSV’s happy rendition of the word aion which refers to the entire period of human history in contrast with “the age to come” when the fullness of God’s kingdom will be realized (see Mark 10:30, Matt. 13:39–43). The KJV obscures this basic biblical structure by the rendering “world.” This confuses the student of the English Bible, for there is another word for world, kosmos, which embodies a closely related concept but suggests a different emphasis. RSV in twenty places correctly translates aion by “age.” In two other places, a footnote indicates the Greek word (Luke 16:8, Rom. 12:2). In other passages, such as Matthew 13:22, Mark 4:19, 2 Corinthians 4:4, 1 Timothy 6:17, 2 Timothy 4:10 and Titus 2:12, RSV retains “world,” apparently because the translators concluded that such was the meaning in these passages. Undeniably, sometimes aion and kosmos appear to be quite interchangeable; but in our opinion, nothing is lost, and the Bible student would be assisted by the retention of “age.”

The Greek words, hades and gehenna, involve distinct concepts which are obscured by the indiscriminate rendering “hell” in KJV (except in 1 Cor. 15:55, where hades is rendered “grave”). RSV differentiates the terms by the use of “hades” and “hell” except in Matthew 16:18 where a footnote indicates the Greek word.

In its translation of diatheke, KJV alternates between “covenant” (20 times) and “testament” (13 times). The new version consistently translates the word “covenant” except in Hebrews 9:16 where the covenant in question is a will. Here a footnote indicates the Greek word.

Many students of the English Bible will miss the word “to impute” in Romans 4:6, 8, 11, 22–24. However, this probably reflects no theological tendency but merely another instance of consistency of rendering. The same Greek word is rendered in KJV “to count” in Romans 4:3, 5 and “to reckon” in Romans 4:4, 9, 10. Since the meaning “to reckon” is closest to the Greek word, RSV consistently renders it in all of these references. The same rendering should appear in 2 Corinthians 5:19, where the RSV has “to count.”

These few illustrations, which have been deliberately chosen more or less at random to give fair samplings, adequately illustrate the measure of consistency sought and attained by the new version. Some of the illustrations cited are important for doctrinal study while others bear little doctrinal significance. The latter are all the more important in serving to demonstrate that a real effort has been made to introduce a large measure of consistency in translation. This feature will be of immeasurable aid to the student who is limited to the English Bible. There is still room for improvement, and it is to be hoped that future editions of RSV will seek an even greater measure of uniformity wherever the context permits.

Preserving The Familiar

A fourth principle introduces an element that limits the application of those already set forth. The Bible belongs to the Church and has created a tradition in English literature and in Western civilization which cannot be ignored. The King James Version is an English classic of great beauty. Furthermore, it has been the Bible of the people, and our minds are stocked with its verses and phrases. Therefore, for the sake both of beauty and practical usage, a new translation should be conservative, retaining as much of the familiar idiom as possible. Never should changes be made for the sake of change. Accuracy and clarity are mandatory, but these principles must be combined with that of the conservation of the accepted standard. Our need is not for a new version but for an adequate revision of the old that will conserve its beauty but correct its defects.

Not infrequently the translators of RSV seem to have failed to recognize this principle. A few illustrations must suffice. The first verses of John 14 are deeply ingrained in the minds of multitudes of Christians, and something seems to have been sacrificed in the new rendering. We may admit that “mansions” needs a modern equivalent, and that there are textual grounds for the structure of the second verse even though the resultant translation creates the difficulty of supposing that Jesus had previously told the disciples that He was going to prepare a place for them. Nevertheless the changes from the indicative to the imperative, from “and if I go” to “and when I go,” from “receive you unto myself” to “take you to myself” are neither required by the text nor by the meaning of the passage. “If I give away all I have” (1 Cor. 13:3, RSV) is hardly an improvement over “though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor.” The change in the order of phrases in John 3:17 is quite uncalled for. “Satisfied” in the fourth Beatitude (Matt. 5:6, RSV) does not add enough to merit the change from “filled.” Illustrations could be added endlessly.

Furthermore, desire for modernity in language ought not to be carried to the point where fundamental theological terminology is sacrificed. The avoidance of such terms as “sanctification” in favor of “consecration,” [later editions of RSV have restored “sanctification” in some places] or “predestination” in favor of “destined” (Eph. 1:5, 12) renders a disservice to the Church. Christian people should become familiar with basic theological terminology by reading the Bible itself. Therefore, so far as possible, theological terms should be consistently rendered by equivalent theological terms in English. Here the RSV is defective.

RSV frequently makes interpretative changes in the traditional language where clarity demands no change. “Those who are entering” (Matt. 23:13) does not need the addition of the word “would.” It is quite unnecessary to change Matthew 24:48, “If that evil servant shall say in his heart” to “says to himself,” especially since this idiom is elsewhere preserved (Mark 2:6, Luke 2:19, 3:15, 5:22). John 3:12, “How shall ye believe,” does not need the alteration to “How can you believe.” The change in John 15:2 from “every branch in me” to “every branch of mine” is distinct loss. “In that day you will ask me nothing” (John 16:23) is quite as significant as “you will ask me no questions.” In 1 Corinthians 2:10, the literal “deep things of God” is superior to “the depths of God,” which suggests something in the being of God rather than the depths of God’s revealed truth.

These illustrations suffice to demonstrate that RSV has an unhappy tendency to seek novelty for its own sake. The work would have been far more useful had the translators endeavored to retain as much of the language of the familiar version as possible. Nevertheless, it is this writer’s judgment that while the New Testament of the RSV is liable to serious criticism, and has not yet provided us with a completely adequate version, it is the most useful translation we possess.

END

A Canadian by birth, George Eldon Ladd holds the Th.B. degree from Gordon College, B.D. from Gordon Divinity School, and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Since 1950 he has served on the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary. He is author of Crucial Questions About the Kingdom of God (1952) and The Blessed Hope (1956).

- More from George Eldon Ladd

Cover Story

RSV Appraisal: Old Testament

Oswald T. Allis

Months before its publication in 1952 the Revised Standard Version (RSV) was widely advertised as “the greatest Bible news in 341 years.” This decidedly ambitious claim has yet to find general acceptance. Whether the RSV will attain permanent and widespread success still remains to be seen. For good reasons many are not ready to accept it as the rightful heir of the historic Authorized Version of 1611 (AV). Although the RSV professes to be a revision of the AV, it is in reality a modern speech version.

Literary Style

The literary style of the AV has been frequently and even extravagantly praised. Men like Ruskin and William Lyon Phelps have commended it most highly. According to A. T. Robertson, the great charm and the chief merit of the AV lies in the fact that “it reproduces to a remarkable extent the spirit and language of the Bible.” That it contains expressions which are now obsolete or have changed their meaning as well as readings which are now regarded as incorrect or inferior is obvious. Many of these were removed in the American Revised Version of 1901 (ARV) and should be changed in the text or margin of copies of the AV which are published today. One of the rules adopted in 1870 to govern the revision which resulted in the ARV was “That in such necessary changes the style of the language employed in the existing version be closely followed.” This rule was not adopted for the RSV. But the hope is expressed in the Preface to the RSV that the translators have not taken undue advantage of their freedom from it.

Some changes are a matter of taste. For example, “to” instead of “unto,” “on” for “upon,” “you” for “ye” are purely a matter of English. But when the translators presume to decide just how frequently “and” may be used in a chapter or paragraph, the situation is quite different, and subjective considerations enter into the decision. The first “and” is omitted in verse 10 of Genesis 1 and retained in verse 8, where the construction is exactly the same. Its omission at Leviticus 1:1 and Numbers 1:1 destroys the connection between these books. The familiar phrase “and it came to pass” is omitted in Genesis 6:1 and frequently elsewhere. “Answered and said” is reduced to “answered” (Gen. 24:50). In Genesis 36:15–18 the word “duke” (RSV “chief”) occurs 18 times. RSV reduces it to 6 (cf. 1 Chron. 1:51–54). Such changes may make for easy reading, but they do not reproduce the biblical language and style accurately.

The Use Of “Thou”

The most important question under the head of biblical language is the use of “thou.” Both Hebrew and Greek distinguish between the singular (thou) and plural (you). The 1611 version carefully observed the distinction, not because it was Jacobean, but because it was biblical. The ARV retained it for the same reason. “Thou” is little less common in our vernacular today than it was fifty years ago. Yet probably all “modern speech” versions either eliminate the singular form entirely or compromise by using it only “in language addressed to God” or “in exalted poetic apostrophe.” This compromise in RSV encounters the most serious difficulties. In the New Testament it means that in every case where Jesus is addressed the decision must be made whether the speaker recognized his deity. Thus in Matthew 16:16, where Peter makes his great confession, RSV renders “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” That is, it declares that Peter addresses Jesus as a man, even when affirming him to be the Son of God.

In the Old Testament the same problem arises in connection with Messianic prophecy. The prophecy of Psalm 110:4 reads, “You are a priest for ever,” but it becomes in Hebrew 5:6 “Thou art a priest for ever,” which suggests that a prophecy which was not Messianic in the Old Testament becomes Messianic in the New Testament (NT). Or, if the principle of “exalted poetic apostrophe” is applied in the New Testament passage why not also in the Old Testament? We are told that the usage adopted in RSV followed “two years of debate and experiment.” The result is conclusive proof that such a compromise is both impracticable and dangerous. The only alternatives are either to follow the biblical usage or to eliminate the “thou” completely. We believe that the “thou” is too deeply embedded in the language of piety and religious devotion to be rudely displaced by the “you” of the modern colloquial. The fact that the diction of the AV differs from that of the daily newspaper is not necessarily a liability. Many regard it as a distinct asset. They enjoy the quaint and old-fashioned language of the Bible and want it changed as little as possible.

Paraphrase Not Translation

The aim of a translation is to render accurately the language of the text. A paraphrase may aim to give the meaning under a different form, but it tends to become an interpretation. “For he thought, ‘Why not, if there be peace and security in my days’ ” (2 Kings 20:19) is a loose paraphrase of “And he said, Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days.” Does “For he thought,” etc., mean that Isaiah is not telling us what Hezekiah said but simply reading his mind for our benefit? “But he said, ‘Oh, my Lord, send, I pray, some other person’ ” (Ex. 4:13) tells us what Moses clearly wanted to say, but not what he actually said, which was, “O, my Lord, send I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send.” It may help some readers to read “Moses’ feet” (Ex. 4:25), “Eli fell over backward” (1 Sam. 4:18), “took his stand by Amasa” (2 Sam. 20:11), “now Ahijah had clad himself” (1 Kings 11:29b)—passages where the simple pronoun of the text is somewhat ambiguous. All such explanations, if really needed, should be placed in the margin, not inserted in the text.

The AV and ARV use italics to indicate words which are inserted to clarify the meaning. RSV never uses italics. Yet it makes many interpretive additions. “After his mother’s death” (Gen. 24:67), “better than a thousand elsewhere” (Ps. 84:10), “seventy weeks of years” and “a most holy place” (Dan. 9:24), “three days’ journey in breadth” (Jonah 3:3). In these passages, “death,” “elsewhere,” “of years,” “place,” “in breadth” are all interpretive additions. But this is not indicated in any way.

Both the AV and the ARV recognized the value of the ancient versions, especially the Septuagint (LXX), for the Bible translator. But they recognized also that an important distinction is to be drawn between the divinely inspired original text and uninspired translations; and also that it is difficult to be sure of the text of these ancient versions. We are told in the Preface to the ARV: “The authorities referred to in the Old Testament are translations from the Hebrew; and though the date of these translations is more ancient than any extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, yet there is no means of verifying with certainty the text of these translations; and one can never get beyond plausible conjecture in attempting to correct the Hebrew text by means of them. It is one thing to admit that the Hebrew text is probably corrupt here and there; quite another, to be sure how to rectify it.” Consequently the ARV revisers reduced to a minimum the corrections favored by the versions; and their policy was to place those they adopted or favored in the margin, not in the text.

The attitude of the RSV to the use of the versions is radically different from that of the ARV. Not only has it corrected the Hebrew text some 600 times on the basis of one or more versions, but it puts these corrections in the text with a marginal note. This note varies considerably in form. “Assyria” (Amos 3:9) has margin “Gk.:Heb. Ashdod,” although the Targum, Syriac, and Vulgate support the Hebrew. “House of Israel” (Hos. 10:15) has margin “Gk.:Heb. O Bethel,” although the Hebrew makes good sense and is supported by Syriac and Vulgate (cf. Targum). “His neighbor’s flesh” (Isa. 9:20) has margin “Tg. Compare Gk.:Heb. the flesh of his arm,” although the St. Mark Scroll, Codex B of the Septuagint, Vulgate and Syriac support the Hebrew Massoretic text.

In a number of instances the margin contains the words, “Heb. lacks.” For example, “Jehoram his brother became king in his stead” (2 Kings 1:17) has margin: “Gk. Syr.: Heb. lacks his brother.” It is quite likely that the Greek translators, preparing a version for Greek-speaking Jews and proselytes, added the words “his brother” to make it clear just who this Jehoram was; and the Syriac probably followed the Greek. But the words “Heb. lacks” assume that the Greek is right and that the Hebrew text omits something which properly belongs there. Many examples of these alleged “lacks” of the Hebrew might be cited. Such readings as “Let us go out to the field” (Gen. 4:8), and “Why have you stolen my silver cup?” (Gen. 44:4 were undoubtedly known to the ARV revisers and probably also to those of 1611. But they ignored them. RSV places them in the text and states in the margin that the Hebrew “lacks” them.

How uncertain many of these changes are is illustrated by such a rendering as “swoon away” instead of “rejoice” (Jer. 51:39), which is adopted by RSV following Moffatt and the American Translation. If we take “exult” in the sense of “become hilarious,” the state which often precedes a drunken stupor, the Hebrew text makes perfectly good sense. It is quite probable that the Greek translators simply misunderstood the meaning. The RSV margin “Heb. rejoice” suggests that the Hebrew must be wrong. “And spreading itself like a green tree in its native soil” (Ps. 37:35 ARV) is literally “like a luxuriant native (tree).” RSV following the Greek changes it to “like a cedar of Lebanon” and adds a footnote, “Gk.:Heb. obscure,” which is a strange statement for Hebrew scholars to make.

Conjectural Readings

There are more than 300 readings in the text of RSV which are described in the margin as “cn,” which is explained in the Preface as standing for “correction.” But since these changes are without support in manuscripts or versions, they are really conjectures (properly abbreviated as “cj”) and should be described as such.

Psalm 2:11 f. is a “cn” which has been frequently cited. By omitting the words “with trembling” and rearranging the consonants of the words “and rejoice” and “son,” a rendering “kiss his feet” (so American Translation) is secured. Yet if it is admitted that the Aramaic form of the word “son” (bar) is used here instead of the Hebrew form (ben), the difficulty is entirely removed (in vs. 9 the word “break” is also an Aramaic loan word). By a similar juggling of letters a rendering “kiss the hero” has also been reached. One is quite as conjectural as the other. “Rebelled against the Most High at the Red Sea” (Ps. 106:7) instead of “provoked him at the Sea, even at the Red Sea,” is not justified by simply referring to Psalm 78:17,56. “Crown” (Ps. 89:19) instead of “help” involves consonantal change and is no improvement. “Nor upsurgings of the deep” (2 Sam. 1:21) is no improvement on “nor fields of offerings,” i.e., fertile fields where first fruits might be gathered. It involves changes in the consonants of both Hebrew words and gives the words a mythological meaning. Dr. Moffatt justified the many conjectural changes that he made in his version on the ground that the Hebrew text is “often desperately corrupt.” It is only on the basis of such an assumption that many or most of the “cns” adopted in RSV can be justified; and obviously every “cn” adopted serves to strengthen the claim that the Hebrew text is corrupt.

Changes Without Marginal Note

Changes without marginal note are of two kinds. The revisers state that where the readings they have adopted make no change in the Consonantal text but simply involve the vocalization and punctuation of the Massoretic text (MT), no marginal note is given. The Massoretic pronunciation represents a reading which is both ancient and important. To ignore it completely is arbitrary, to say the least; and it is confusing to the reader who does not have all the facts before him. In Isaiah 49:17, RSV follows the St. Mark Isaiah Scroll in reading “your builders” (BoNaYiK) instead of “thy sons (BaNaYiK). In such cases a marginal note such as “MT: sons” would certainly be in order. It would indicate both the change and also to this extent the reason for it. “For they have no pangs; their bodies are sound and sleek” (Ps. 73:4) does not change the consonants, but it involves cutting the word “death” in two (making “they” and “sound”). This is favored by many critics but finds no support in the versions.

Unfortunately there are, despite the claim of the Preface, a good many passages where changes involving the Consonantal Text are made without any marginal note. A glaring example of this is, “And Moses did as the Lord commanded him” (Lev. 16:34b). The only possible rendering of the Hebrew is “And he did as the Lord commanded Moses” (AV, ARV). Since the entire ritual of the Day of Atonement was to be performed by the high priest (Aaron is mentioned six times in the chapter), the statement as it stands in the AV is perfectly clear. “The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar” (Gen. 10:10), instead of “and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar” (AV) has no margin. The rendering “all of them” (for Calneh) does not require a change in the consonants. But it does involve the rejection of the “and” which precedes; and it is at least questionable whether such a phrase as “all of them” would be necessary or appropriate after the mention of only three cities. It is arbitrary, to say the least, to introduce this new rendering without even a marginal note, simply because discoveries in Ugaritic indicate that such a rendering is possible. “In the land of Amaw” (Num. 22:5) replaces “of the land of the children of his people.” “His people” (ammo) could be read as Amaw. But this ignores the “sons of” which precedes. The Greek supports the AV. Some 13 manuscripts, the Samaritan Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Vulgate favor a reading “Ammon.” “Let my right hand wither” (Ps. 137:5) instead of “forget her cunning,” “cannot abide” (Ps. 49:20) for “understandeth not,” “The Lord is the strength of his people” (Ps. 28:8) instead of “The Lord is their strength,” “a pleasant vineyard” (Isa. 27:2) instead of “a vineyard of red wine,” “Summon thy might, O God” (Ps. 68:28) instead of “Thy God hath commanded thy strength,” “praised” (Eccles. 8:10) instead of “forgotten”—all involve consonantal changes. Such unindicated changes are disconcerting, to say the least.

Poetical Arrangement

In the AV the printing of each verse as a unit makes it somewhat difficult for the reader to distinguish readily between prose and poetry. The ARV made this possible by arranging prose passages in paragraphs and poetry in verses. It treated Psalms, Proverbs, Canticles, and most of Job as poetry, also the clearly poetical passages in Exodus 15, Numbers 23–24, Deuteronomy 32–33. That there is a poetic quality in many of the utterances of the prophets has long been recognized. Rhythmic parallelism is quite marked in some of their discourses. But this does not warrant the treatment of them as poetry. The RSV has “metricized” the greater part of the prophetical books. The result has been that splendidly rhythmic prose has often been changed into very poor and lame poetry. The first chapter of Isaiah, often called “the great arraignment,” is broken up in RSV and printed as a kind of blank verse. An extreme example of this appears in Matthew 4:1–11. Jesus in answering the devil quoted three Old Testament passages, two from Deuteronomy, the other from the Psalms. The two from Deuteronomy are quoted from a simple prose narrative. Yet they are treated as poetry in Matthew.

Quotation marks are a feature of most, if not all “modern speech” versions. They may sometimes be helpful, but there are two dangers connected with their use. One is that they may be unduly interpretive. In Psalms 60, verses 6 to 8 are placed in quotes as the word of the Lord. Many commentators regard them as the word of the Psalmist. In Isaiah 2:3 the quotation ends with “paths” instead of including the rest of the verse. The other reason is that quotation marks are complicated and confusing. Deuteronomy 5:1 (“Hear O Israel”) to 26:19 is all placed in quotes. Every paragraph—there are more than 100 of them—begins with a quote (“). Hence the Ten Commandments are each introduced by two quotes (“ ‘) here, while in Exodus 20:2–17 they are introduced by one “quote” (“). Deuteronomy 5:28 begins with a quote (“). In includes a quotation (‘) which begins with the words “I have heard” and extends through verse 31; and this in turn includes a quotation (“) consisting of the words “Return to your tents” (vs. 30). Such a lavish use of quotation marks tends to pile up. Cf. Jeremiah 22:9 and 29:28, which end with three quotes (” ’ ”). It is to be noted also that the revisers have been quite inconsistent. Compare Jeremiah 13:12–14 with Ezekiel 35:1–9 in RSV.

An irritating feature of the RSV is its inconsistencies. Eitheir the Old Testament and the New Testament Committees did not consult one another sufficiently or they failed to reach an agreement on matters that concerned both testaments. Thus Isaiah 40:3 reads “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.”°’ This verse is quoted in all four Gospels, and in all four the words “in the wilderness” are connected with what precedes, not with what follows. The word “Gentiles” disappears from the Old Testament in RSV but appears nearly as frequently in the New Testament as in the AV. For the reader who has no way of checking them such inconsistencies are confusing. For those who have, they are irritating as indicative of carelessness and haste.

Minimizing Attitude

The most serious defect of the RSV is what may be called its minimizing attitude toward the supernatural. This appears with especial clearness in its treatment of Isaiah 7:14. That the word alma can be used and is used of a virgin (Gen. 24:43, cf. vs. 16), that the Septuagint rendered it by parthenos and that parthenos means virgin, that Matthew 1:23 used the word parthenos in quoting Isaiah’s prophecy, that the context in Matthew speaks of a virgin birth—these are facts which cannot be denied. Yet RSV renders the Isaiah passage by “young woman” (margin: “Or virgin”). This implies that Matthew read into the prophecy a meaning which was not originally there. It is of course possible, perhaps probable that alma was used at times in the broader sense of “a young woman (of marriageable age).” But to adopt such a rendering here shows a readiness to find a minimum of truth in a passage instead of a desire to claim the most its language will properly admit.

The words “and he shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne” (Zech. 6:13, AV) predict the coming of the Priest-King, who is to be like unto Melchizedek (Ps. 110:4). The RSV rendering “and shall sit and rule upon his throne. And there shall be a priest by his throne” introduces a sharp distinction between the king and the priest which is not justified by the Hebrew. “Your divine throne” (Ps. 45:6) substitutes a divine throne for a divine Messiah and conflicts with the rendering of Hebrews 1:8, “Thy throne, O God.” “Whose origin is from of old, from ancient days” (Mic. 5:2) tones down the “from everlasting” of the AV. The rendering of Daniel 9:25, “Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again”—in fact the whole treatment of vss. 24–27—agrees with the critical theory that the Book of Daniel is Maccabean.

The writer is not one of those who regard the Authorized Version as sacrosanct. It is not infallible and where it is wrong it should be corrected. But such a revision, if it is to be entitled to the name, should be completely in the spirit of that time-honored version. It should aim to conserve its style and diction and make as few changes in it as are consistent with the accuracy and lucidity of the translation. We believe it to be imperative that conservative scholars prepare a revision of the AV that will carefully conserve all that is best in it while seeking to eliminate its occasional obscurities and errors. The AV has been for centuries a great unifying factor in the life of English-speaking Protestantism. Long may it remain so!

END

For a quarter of a century Oswald T. Allis taught Old Testament and related subjects. From 1910 to 1929 he taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, first as instructor and then as assistant professor of Semitic Philology; and from 1929 to 1936 at Westminster Theological Seminary, first as Professor of Old Testament History and Exegesis, and then as Professor of Old Testament. He is author of seven books and a member of the Version Committee of the American Bible Society.

- More from Oswald T. Allis

Cover Story

Is America Losing Her Cultural Distinctives?

S. Richey Kamm

“American civilization has not merely changed its inspiration and its character but its epoch as well.” Thus Andre Siegfried, one of the leading French humanists, describes the cultural revolution in the United States. For him “the epoch of the pioneer has been replaced by the epoch of the machine” (Andre Siegfried, Nations Have Souls, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1952, pp. 170–171). Siegfried has emphasized the obvious. He has brought into focus the everywhere-apparent emphasis upon material values—the trend toward “bigness”—the decline of the significance of the individual.

The Vision Of Life

Latent in his analysis is the thought that culture is not made up alone of what we see. It may also be found in what we dream. Culture, in the sense of life’s habits—one’s way of doing things from day to day—may vary greatly from land to land, from community to community, and even from family to family. But the real question to be fathomed is this, What is the vision of life that a people carry about in their heads? Do they think of themselves as playing a part in a dramatic conflict with forces unseen, or are they cogs, bars, endless belts in an ordered mechanized existence?

The distinctiveness of American culture lies in its “myth”—its vision of life. This picture of life is highly dramatic. It conceives of man as an individual, discreet, intelligent, purposive, active. He is part of the society yet separate from it. He possesses capacities that are comparable to his fellows but always manifests a singular uniqueness in their demonstration. He is limited by his companions, yet is not bound by them. He is buffeted by circumstances yet never defeated. He is the servant of nature and likewise its master. He is a “free” man and not a slave. He knows life in the sense of destiny and purpose.

Such a vision of life is unique. The source of its singularity is to be found in its inspiration. This is hardly in the presence of “free land” in America nor in the abundance of the natural resources of the region to which men came. Neither was it imbibed from the changing climate of this north temperate region. Rather, it is to be discovered in the religious symbolisms of the men and women who laid the cultural foundations of American society.

Puritan Influence

The early vision of life in America was strongly influenced by the Puritan. His “cultural myth” was biblically inspired. Living in a day when church and state placed great emphasis upon the principle of order and unity, the Puritan protested against the cultural dominance of these external forms. He raised his voice against this tendency to uniformity in life and boldly asserted that man was no longer to be cast in the time-honored mold of his culture. Man was to be a “free” personality who would rise dominant over his culture. The basis for such a vision? It was to be found in the biblical view of God’s redemptive work for man, and in the realization of the individual reality of this experience by an act of individual faith. Alan Simpson’s recent study, Puritanism in Old and New England (University of Chicago Press, 1955), has again brought to light the importance of this vision in the life of early Puritanism. From it came the dynamic which drove men to oppose the church, the crown, and every semblance of regimentation until men were made free.

The real basis of the Puritan protest has great meaning for our present predicament. What the Puritan saw was this, that man tends to project the cultural form of the present into the future by codifying it as natural law and by employing the organized forces of society to sustain it. This made man the creature of his culture, rather than the creator. It further tended to divorce him from the real source of cultural inspiration, namely, God, and to deprive every cultural form of its real meaning and intent. In opposition to this tendency the Puritan asserted again and again that God, alone, was lord of the conscience. This meant that man must be free to follow the dictates of his own conscience in matters of law and government as well as in religious practices and in ethics. It gave man a basis upon which to assert the value of the individual over against the values of the group. It is the source of the spirit of individualism in American culture. As such, it is most important to consider in approaching the cultural transition of our times.

A People Of Lip Service

America’s cultural problem today is the problem of a people who give lip service to a set of cultural distinctives—forms of expression, standards of life, visions of reality—which are cut off from their real essence. The transition has been slow and gradual. The concept of liberty, once grounded in the belief that man must he free for the worship of God in every phase of life, is now confused with a man’s right to express himself or some vague assumption that the public welfare will be advanced by a scarcity of legal limitation. The concept of equality, which founds its inspiration in the biblical view of man’s creation by an eternal God and man’s universal state of sin or rebellion against God, is now confounded with weights and measures of economic privilege or physical capacity. The concept of private property which was conceived as a gift or trust from God and, hence, subject to limited political control, is now viewed either as the sole bulwark against arbitrary political power (that is, a very poor substitute for God), or it is viewed as a mere matter of social convenience. The institution of the family, which was once looked upon as of divine ordination and, therefore, not subject to man’s tinkering, is now often accepted as a product of an evolving set of social relationships. The state, once conceived as an instrument of God’s justice is now decried as the instrument of man’s inhumanity to man.

How may we retain our cultural distinctiveness? The answer lies in our readiness to abandon our prophets of monism and our willingness to return to a view of culture which accepts the various orders of inspiration—the spiritual, the intellectual, the material—and place them in their proper relationship to one another in the reinterpretation of American life.

The Loss Of Balance

Cultural history in America exhibits an alarming tendency to lose that sense of balance in orders of values that is so essential to a healthful cultural life. Beginning with a vital cultural vision gleaned from the Bible and interpreted in the forms of the evangelical Christian tradition it soon began to lose its distinctiveness. Seventeenth century Puritanism with its wholesome balance of supernaturalism, rationalism, and observationalism, sat down to converse with its snake in the garden and lost its freedom to an incipient intellectualism. Roger Williams detected the transition in Massachusetts Bay and was driven into exile for his protests. It all came about in a manner quite common to men who desire to preserve a revolution through the deification of new forms of expression. In its effort to preserve the vision of the individual God-man relationship through a personal experience of saving faith, Puritanism created its own “golden chain of being”—the concept of “covenant”—to connect the transcendent with the imminent and thus to give order to this new vision of life. The concept of “covenant” viewed all of life on this earth as related to God through the Living Word, Jesus Christ, and through the inspired word, the Scriptures. These somewhat mystical forms had to be translated into concepts intellectually prehensible. Then followed the “federal theology,” the elaborate explanation of the meaning of the “covenant” concept. It brought to American culture a vision of life which has never been transcended. In it the individual was most important. All institutions were divinely ordained, but man had a coordinate responsibility for their projection and maintenance. He was given a sense of responsibility and a vision of destiny that linked him with the Eternal. But tragedy became imminent when the son of the Puritan began to worship this theological formulation which often smacked more of Plato in its manner of expression than of its biblical typology. The idea of “covenant” which was basically an idea of personal relationship and order, was reduced to a principle of uniformity, a law. The result was manifest in the eighteenth century preaching of New England which emphasized the rationality rather than the personal aspect of God’s dealing with men. To put it theologically, the “covenant of grace,” whereby God extended salvation to his elect, was by-passed for the “covenant of works—the rational explanation of God’s dealings with men as part of the whole order of nature. Man thereby lost his identity as a person, he became known only as part of a rationally conceived order of life. Man was no longer dominant over culture but had surrendered his spiritual and intellectual powers to its control. With the passing of the “covenant of grace” there was little justification for change.

Shift Of Sovereigns

It was against this transition in American culture that Jonathan Edwards thundered in the middle of the eighteenth century. Edwards was concerned that America should assert the supremacy of the will as over against the domination of the intellect. He was determined that the sovereignty of God should be restored to American culture in opposition to both the intellectualist and the romanticists. In spite of his valiant efforts eighteenth century rationalism in the form of Deism wrought significant alterations in the American cultural myth. God, the Creator, still remained as the author of all order and truth. But the “golden chain of being,” the mediator between God and man, was no longer Christ and the Scriptures. It was Nature, conceived in the ordered vision of Newton’s Principia. The scientific experiments of Franklin and the writings of Jefferson and his friends tended to reinforce, yes, even to deify this concept. There had been brought back into American culture the principle of uniformity under the guise of science.

It was in the light of such a vision that Jefferson stated the basic principles of the American creed. These great ideas of equality, rights, and happiness were traced to “Nature’s God,” not the God of nature. In so grounding them Jefferson laid the basis for our cultural confusion. The modern conflict with atheistic materialism has demonstrated that there can be no “scientific” justification for such concepts. Man cannot look upon them as intellectual abstractions alone; they must be accepted as divine imperatives that are essentially spiritual in nature and can be understood only in the light of a Divine Creator who is also a Divine Redeemer. This is what Jefferson left out. Since then we have been trying to shore up the foundations of our cultural forms with new types of scientifically drawn intellectual abstractions only to discover that they are insufficient.

Distinctives In Peril

From the vantage point of the mid-twentieth century it is now possible to see quite clearly what happened to American culture in the nineteenth. Transcendentalism sought to perpetuate a basis of uniformity in the cultural myth that was not dependent upon human experience. God, in Emerson’s concept of the “Over Soul,” would transcend finiteness and thus give stability to culture. But there was something lacking, the sense of tragedy, the presence of sin. The vision became optimistically rigid. There was no deviation from the path of progress in the pattern of change. This vision served to strengthen the American vision of destiny and to awaken the social conscience to the enormities of human slavery. But the dynamic of action for the reform movement which followed sprang from the vision of God and man which burst upon the American scene in the Finney revivals.

Simultaneously, another movement sought to restore the concept of grace, of needed change, in the American cultural myth. Having rejected the vision of revelational grace which moved the Puritan Jonathan Edwards, and Charles G. Finney to clamor for reform, the new prophet sought inspiration from the scientific doctrines of change which were then emerging. The evolutionary view of life—dialectical, survivalistic, or emergent—became the inspiration for the American dream. God became imminent in the very motion of matter. In fact, there was no need for any transcendent God or any absolute; all that was necessary was the ability to determine the trend of the motion. This would provide the oracle for man’s action, the vision for his dream.

It is quite obvious that this tendency to monize our cultural inspiration does violence to the basic constructs of knowledge itself. Long ago the Greeks laid it down that all knowledge deals with origins (being), behavior (becoming), and ends (telesis). Our latest cultural inspiration has been drawn from behavior, alone. We have tried to explain both origins and ends in terms of behavior. We have lost the sense of balance and completeness which comes when one recognizes that both origins and ends are to be interpreted in terms of revelational truth. This places our absolutes where they belong—in God. It saves us from the error of confusing our ideas about God with absolutes, that is, it places rational truth in its proper place—namely, as one form of understanding. Likewise, it helps us to recognize that the knowledge derived from experience is meaningful only as it demonstrates in a non-deductive manner the realities of the absolute.

The American cultural myth is a rich one because of its basic inspiration derived from the person of God. It is sound when rational truth is brought into conformity with this “heavenly vision.” It is real when it permits man to experiment and to learn more of life through the realm of experience. This balance of the spiritual, the intellectual, the experiential, is the genius of American culture. When we lose this balance and endeavor to project either the principle of order, rationality, or the principle of change, experience, as the basis of our culture, we lose the proper foundation for any sound cultural system. We then become slaves either to the “god” of our intellectual abstractions, or of our observational generalizations. We can know freedom in our culture only as a free God is posited as its base. Without this assumption America will continue to lose her cultural distinctives.

END

We Quote:

DANIEL A. POLING

Editor of “Christian Herald”

Why do we support Billy Graham and the New York Crusade? Because he speaks always for Jesus Christ, because always his message is Christ-centered, because always he preaches Jesus Christ as man’s only sufficient Savior, because always he is a proved open channel for the Holy Spirit, because always he honors the Bible as the inspired word of God, and because under his leadership the churches of our Protestant faith are united in a Crusade unequaled in the history of this vast city.… The negative critics of the Billy Graham Crusade and of mass evangelism ask the question: Did Billy Graham change London and Glasgow?… The records indicate that large numbers of the converts do stand fast. But if the final test be thus raised, what about the entire history of Christianity since St. Peter preached at Pentecost?… What about John Wesley and Dwight L. Moody and all those other humble but inspired men who went before or who have come since? Is not Christianity itself and all that is worthy in the ecumenical movement of our time, the direct result of evangelism, mass evangelism included?

S. Richey Kamm is Chairman of the Division of History and Social Science at Wheaton College in Illinois. He holds the A.B. degree from Greenville College, A.M. from University of Michigan, and Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania, and in 1952 was awarded the LL.D. degree by Seattle Pacific College.

- More from S. Richey Kamm

Review of Current Religious Thought: June 24, 1957

G. C. Berkouwer

When we reflect on the reality and the significance of the Church in the New Testament and on the place of the Church in the midst of the world, we quite naturally come into contact with the question of the relation between the Church and authority. This will be immediately evident if we reflect on the age-old controversy between the Reformation and Rome. It stands to reason, however, that this controversy also plays a role, albeit somewhat differently, when we take note of other discussions about the Church of Jesus Christ.

When the Reformation began, the reformers were sure that they did not intend to place over against the authority in the Church a church without authority. This is what the Roman Catholics affirmed more than once; they asserted that the Reformation refused to acknowledge the authority in the Church. The reformers, however, were convinced that they wanted not the way of less authority, but specifically of more authority, of genuine authority, of an authority which was really the authority of Christ himself.

A church without authority is a pitiable thing, because in that case it is forgotten that the Church is not something of us (our church), but that the important thing in the world is the Church of Jesus Christ, which he governs by his Word and Spirit. For this reason the controversy with Rome is also of significance in any reflection on the body of Christ.

Even those who reject the Roman Catholic view of the Church are thereby not at the end of the road but at the beginning. This becomes fully clear in the New Testament, that the essence of the Church becomes visible only in subjection of the entire Church in all of its aspects to her only Lord.

This existence of the Church is by no means a matter of course, but a permanent calling to which the Church has to subject itself day by day. However important the activity of the Church in the world may be, this activity is legitimate only if, in faith and love and obedience, she remains subject to the authority of her Head, Jesus Christ, as the New Testament says.

The Church may never appeal to the fact of her existence in the world. When Calvin fought the battle of the Church he recognized the significance of the councils, but he also reminded us that Christ would be in our midst only if we are gathered in his name.

The Church may never regard it as a matter of course that she is a church; she must be constantly in subjection to the sacred norm which determines her being. There is no authority of the Church of such a kind that there is no higher appeal, and Calvin reminds us of the danger that the Church may forget her origin and norm. The apostle Paul also warns about this when he says that the Antichrist will set up his throne in the temple of God (2 Thess. 2:4).

The above is no haughty criticism of the Church and it is not the language of the individualist; it is rather a compassionate concern for the Church of Jesus Christ, that she may continue to understand that her only wealth and fullness is that she is the body of Christ, that she may bow her head in submission to her Lord.

The Belgic Confession speaks of this in Article XXIX, when it states that the true Church rejects all things which are contrary to the Word of God and that she regards Jesus Christ as her only Head.

This was not first of all criticism of others, of other churches, but a reminder of the Church’s own ecclesiastical life. In the relation between the churches of the New Testament there is no reason for pharisaism; it is rather that criticism, also of others, is possible and worth-while only if the Church (every church) has first of all applied to herself this sacred norm. Then, in the way of real submission, the Church will be a witness of Christ in the world. Then her own ecclesiastical life will serve as a constant reminder as to what the Church really is and ought to be.

And that is also the meaning of the responsibility of the Church in the world. It will be dark in the Church if she regards her life as an organization, which simply happens to exist and which has gained a place for herself in the world. And if the voice of the only Shepherd is no longer heard in the Church, how will the world understand this voice?

The New Testament contains many different names for the Church of Jesus Christ: the Temple of God, the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ. And many songs of praise are heard about the Church: “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17–19).

But this wealth and universality of the one Christian Church throughout the world (with all the saints) will become a reality and a witness in the world every day anew, only if the Church understands what her calling is and how she can fulfill that calling. And she will be able to fulfill this task only if she remembers from day to day the word of the apostle Paul, which, although not using the word church, embraces the essence and activity of the Church, when he writes: “casting down imaginations, and every high thing, that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

Here is the touchstone of the Church of all ages and under all circumstances. Here is also the answer to the question whether the Church will really be a blessing in the world, which needs most of all to hear the voice of the only Shepherd.

- More from G. C. Berkouwer

Books

Book Briefs: June 24, 1957

Supplement Volumes

Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge; an Extension of the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Editor-in-Chief, Lefferts A. Loetscher. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1955. 2 volumes. $15.00.

By adding these two volumes to the famous Schaff-Herzog, the publishers have performed a great service. A few years ago they reprinted the thirteen original volumes in an excellent format, with which the supplementary volumes are uniform. There is nothing in English to compare with this important encyclopedia. The price of the entire set of fifteen volumes is at present only $68.50.

It should he understood, however, that the two additional volumes do not stand alone. They are planned as a supplement. The original volumes, published in 1908–1912, have been reprinted unchanged; these two extra volumes seek to bring the original articles up to date by adding developments of the last forty years. In instances of new discoveries (Dead Sea Scrolls or Lachish Letters) the articles are fresh and complete in themselves. There are also other materials not touched upon in the earlier volumes. Nevertheless, perhaps half the articles give only partial information by way of additional details. We are told, for example, that such-and-such a scholar (who was treated more fully in the original work) died in 1918 and also published certain other books. The supplementary character of these articles needs to be emphasized, for there are instances where the reader will receive a misleading or even false impression if he turns only to the supplement without referring also to the original in volumes 1–13. An example is the article on the Westminster Assembly; if this alone were to be consulted by an inquirer he would be given no inkling that this Assembly had drawn up the notable Westminster Confession and Catechisms; he would gain the impression that it was an intolerant, abortive group which failed to accomplish much of importance. The article on Becket adds Roman Catholic sympathy; that on Charles I never mentions an armed Revolution; that on Henry VIII is gossipy and vague. To sum up this point; if only the two supplementary volumes are purchased the buyer should realize that at many places they do not profess to give a balanced account.

On the other hand, while the whole set should be obtained if possible, there is much to be said for the two extra volumes in themselves. There is a great body of strong, scholarly articles: Papyri, by Allen P. Wikgren; Archaeology, by W. F. Albright; Hittites, by H. G. Guterbock; Calvin, by John T. McNeill; Apostles’ Creed, by Robert M. Grant; Ras Shamra, by H. L. Ginsberg; Syriac Literature, by Arthur Voobus; Wyclif, by Matthew Spinka; and a vigorous and lucid advocacy of Crisis, the Theology of, by Paul L. Lehman. Perhaps the most honor among the contributors should go to Bruce M. Metzger. His articles are clear, informed, and of balanced judgment. As editor of the New Testament department he has supplied the most useful single group of articles in these volumes, such as: the 17-page Bible Versions; Bible Text (N.T.); Canon of Scripture (N.T.); N.T. Studies, Twentieth Century Trends in; and also Hymns in the Early Greek Church; Mystery Religions, and many more. Along with Dr. Metzger there is another scholar who has made an exceedingly valuable contribution, and that is Georges A. Barrois. He has written apparently at least 130 articles about Roman Catholicism, which come with authority from one who, now converted, was formerly a scholar and teacher in that communion. They are summed up in an article, Roman Catholic Church, but they cover separately such subjects as Assumption, Dogma of the; Concordats; Humani Generis (and other recent encyclicals); Implicit Faith; Marriage, Roman Catholic Laws on; Secrecy of the Confessional; Vows of Religion, and all manner of other Roman operations.

There are other excellent articles which may be evaluated in respect to the deficiencies and lack of balance in these two volumes. There is by no means general agreement as to Christian doctrine. The most widely different opinions are expressed. There is a striking contrast between the articles by Cornelius Van Til on Calvinism, Common Grace, and Covenant Theology, and the article God, by Holmes Rolston; the latter is not so much about the doctrine of God as about Barthian theology in general. One of the best features of these volumes is the article Liberalism, by Andrew K. Rule. It is an objective and devastating analysis. Liberalism in religion is shown to be the result of humanism, rationalism, naturalism and negative biblical criticism. And yet this very liberalism is exhibited in many other articles. Ovid R. Sellers says in the article Cultural and Social Conditions, Hebrew, that the Hebrews under Joshua brought “no art and no written literature” into Palestine. R. B. Y. Scott in his article on Daniel declares that the book comes “from the period of the Seleucids.” And Otto A. Piper says, in Myth in the N.T., that “the use of mythical terminology in the Bible is a necessary corollary of historical revelation. It does not detract from the truthfulness of its message.”

It may be asked, but what else should we expect in an encyclopedia which seeks to represent all views? It is true that contradictions must occur. But there is actually a failure to represent all views. This is most striking in the Old Testament articles. They exhibit an outspoken, almost uniform adherence to negative, naturalistic criticism. There is again and again at crucial points no reference to conservative scholars of the present day. It is only by the most diligent search that any reference may be found to such scholars. It is also remarkable that although Dr. Loetscher of Princeton is the editor-in-chief, there are no biographical notices of the Princeton authorities of the past generation, such as B. B. Warfield, Geerhardus Vos, C. W. Hodge, John D. Davis and Francis L. Patton or of the great Herman Bavinck whose Stone Lectures have recently been reprinted.

No doubt such inequalities are to be explained by the fact that independent departmental editors have had large powers in their choice of contributors. The New Testament department, under Dr. Metzger, is far more conservative than the Old Testament under Elmer E. Flack. The department of Systematic Theology, under Andrew K. Rule, contains a number of articles which can only be described as orthodox. Yet such is the multitude of opinions from dialectical theology and humanism and such is the frequency of mere expression of opinion rather than information, that these volumes must be characterized as very much a mixed bag.

There has been, apparently, a lack of overall policy and control, with consequent lack of proportion. There are numerous, lengthy articles about relatively obscure medieval mystics, while only short and inadequate articles appear on Aulen, Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, Niebuhr, Schweitzer and Tillich; and Kierkegaard receives no single article and no bibliography, although he is treated under such heads as Existentialism and Dialectical Theology. As for bibliographies, these supplementary volumes have failed to come up to the standard set by the earlier volumes. Dr. Metzger and certain others have been very full at this point but in many cases the bibliography is either lacking or exceedingly weak. There are articles on German cities, continuing the tradition of an originally German encyclopedia but none on American or British cities. In many instances there are biographical notices which give no indication whatsoever of the position, or viewpoint, of the person in question: this is true for Henry Sloane Coffin, C. S. Lewis, Clarence E. Macartney and Paul Tillich. To sum up again: there is a lack of relative proportion in these volumes. A comprehensive policy, clearly understood by all contributors, with constant exercise of editorial authority, is the only approach which can insure balance in an encyclopedic work.

ARTHUR W. KUSCHKE, JR.

Contemporary Liberalism

The Message of the Fourth Gospel, by Eric L. Titus. Abingdon Press, New York. $3.50.

This new commentary on the Gospel of John is a representative expression of contemporary liberalism written by the Professor of New Testament Literature at Southern California School of Theology in Los Angeles. The volume breathes the spirit of the new liberalism which tends to concern itself with biblical content. The Fourth Gospel is considered as an early second-century interpretation of Jesus, and it is assumed that the beloved disciple of the Fourth Gospel is not the Apostle John but one who is close to apostolic traditions. No supernatural inspiration was employed in the writing of the Fourth Gospel, according to the author, and at best it is historical fiction used as an interpretation of the life and ministry of Christ.

Key to the commentary are three chapters of introduction in which an elevenfold analysis of the literary techniques employed by John is presented. The commentary itself analyzes the gospel by sections, using these literary techniques. A serious attempt is made to determine the precise thought of the writer of the gospel in each section. It is assumed that the author of the gospel is “a popular religionist, not a philosopher” and that he is indebted principally to the synoptic gospels and the Pauline epistles for his sources of information.

Typical of the approach of this commentary is the suggestion that the story of the miracle of Cana in John 2 has its inspiration in the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 with the “good wine” of John 2:10 comparing with the “new wine” of Acts 2:13. A similar comparison is made between John 4 with its story of the Samaritan woman and the account of the gospel going to Samaria in Acts 8:5–25.

In illustrating John’s literary method, frequent reference is made to “literary opportunism,” “the use of individuals whose stupidity creates an opportunity for teaching,” “use of the dramatic technique,” and “use of words with double meaning.” For instance, “The Jews, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman and the disciples all fulfill” the role of “stupid” persons described as “one of the most frequently employed devices” (p. 35). The author of the Fourth Gospel is described as “a literary opportunist” (p. 97). The story of Lazarus in John 11 is the product of the “creative mind” of the author of the gospel who decides to carry the story of Lazarus and the rich man who is in hell (Luke 16) one step further and to have Lazarus actually rise from the dead. In like manner, the prayer of Christ in John 17 is interpreted as actually a sermon of the writer of the gospel cast in the form of a prayer by Christ. The commentator also holds that John 21 was not part of the original gospel and like the pericope adulterae (7:53–8:11) was a later addition.

Though well-written and representative of contemporary liberal interpretation, this commentary is far removed from the evangelical conservative position. Its value to conservatives will be to inform them on recent liberal interpretation of the Fourth Gospel.

JOHN F. WALVOORD

Conservative View

Inspiration and Canonicity of the Bible, An Historical and Exegetical Study, by R. Laird Harris. Zondervan, Grand Rapids. $4.50.

Harris’ study, First Prizewinner in Zondervan’s Third Christian Textbook Contest, has a general interest as a commendable presentation of the conservative view affirming the verbal inspiration of the Bible. As such, it is an important work, in that it not only gives an able discussion of inspiration but devotes the major share of attention to the too often neglected matter of canonicity. Harris gives anew the older, and at present neglected, view of the fluid nature of the threefold classification of the Old Testament, law, prophets and writings, pointing out that originally this “division was not so rigid as is usually supposed” (p. 142), and that a twofold division into law and prophets has ancient testimony in its favor. More than that, “the entire collection could be called the word of ‘the prophets.’ Also the entire work could be called ‘the law’ ” (p. 144). Recognition of this fact has, Harris points out, considerable significance in establishing the conservative view of such books as Daniel, inasmuch as the critical construction of the development of the canon assumes the threefold division and gives a late date for the canon of the writings (p. 140).

Important also is Harris’ study of the relation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, first, to the problem of the divisions of the Old Testament (p. 171 f.), and, second, to the problem of the inspiration and canonicity of the Old Testament (p. 145 f).

Harris’ book is thus in the line of Gaussen, Green and other defenders of the orthodox position and ably so. And this is precisely its weakness. While scholars may disagree with the details and points of Harris’ argument, in the main they will recognize the calibre and ability of the book. Its shortcoming is that it is written in terms of the approach of a previous era, an able approach, but one failing to take into account two recent basic challenges raised by adversaries to the doctrine of inspiration. One is the problem of authority, and the other is the charge of circular reasoning which are basically the same. Harris briefly mentions and denies, without answering, the charge of circular reasoning (p. 45 f.). He shows no awareness of the important work in this area by Cornelius Van Til, not only in his introduction to the recent reprint of Warfield’s Inspiration and Authority of the Bible but in many other works. All reasoning is circular reasoning, but reasoning from God to God-given and God-created data has the validity of conformity to the nature of things. The opponents of inspiration reason from autonomous man’s reasons, through brute factuality which has no meaning other than man’s interpretation, back again to man’s basic presupposition. In other words, all reasoning moves in terms of its basic presupposition, either God or autonomous man, interpreting all reality in terms of the presupposition. The only way to answer the charge of circular reasoning is to challenge the authority of man and to expose the barren circularity of all his reasoning and to point out that Christian thinking has a full circle of meaning in that God as the creator is also the only interpreter of reality.

Until this frontal attack on the critics’ charges is made, the conservatives will be talking to themselves.

R. J. RUSHDOONY

Reformed Worship

Presbyterian Liturgies; Historical Sketches, by Charles W. Baird, Baker, Grand Rapids. $3.00.

Many contemporary Reformed theologians and pastors have acknowledged that in matters of worship, our churches have been conspicuously weak. Although attempts have Seen made to improve this condition, ignorance of liturgical worship is still great. Some think that if the church furnishings are moved around, responses added or the service “dressed up” in general, then the liturgical revival will have matured. Others resist any change at all and point with pride to the central pulpit as the symbol of non-liturgical worship.

A hundred years ago the first important American Reformed liturgical scholar, Charles Baird, published his history of Reformed worship. The present edition is a reprint of this important work. Although much has been written upon the subject since the appearance of the first edition, I know of no better introduction to the study of Reformed liturgical worship in the English language than this valuable little work.

The thesis of the book is clearly defined by the author in his introduction, “To ascertain from the history and teachings of the Presbyterian Church, what may be considered the proper theories of its worship, and to compare that ideal with our prevailing practice.” His secondary aim is “to demonstrate, first, that the principles of Presbyterians in no wise conflicts with the discretionary use of written forms; and secondly, that the practice of Presbyterian churches abundantly warrants the adoption and the use of such forms.”

The construction and usage of the various forms of worship on the continent and in Great Britain are carefully traced. The book leaves no doubt that the Presbyterian and Reformed churches possess a rich and copious devotional heritage in the liturgical forms and prayers of the past. The neglect of this heritage has not only divided the church but has robbed it of its theological witness in the services of worship.

Although Calvin may be quoted as opposed to “external discipline and ceremonies,” he nevertheless gave much time and thought to the order of service in the Reformed churches. In this attempt he did not innovate. He formulated a liturgy, “selon les coutumes de l’Eglise ancienne,” that is, according to the practice of the church in the first centuries of our calendar.

This book, therefore, commends itself as worthy of careful study and prayerful attention. The formulation of the services of worship in the family of Reformed churches would become a sloppy business if reverent thought were not given to the worship of the past. The order of worship cannot begin in a vacuum; it always begins in the concrete situation of the contemporary church. This contemporary church, however, has a definite history. The church is one holy catholic church throughout all ages. Consequently the past cannot be ignored. If in this we fear the tyranny of tradition, let us not forget that the local churches and the universal church stand in a relationship to all the saints of every age. Permit me to put it in the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians, “… with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.”

When this book was first published, it was welcomed by none other than Charles Hodge as a work worthy of study and consideration. Although he was not converted to the advisability of introducing liturgical worship, he did commend many of Baird’s recommendations.

Certainly every minister in a Reformed or Presbyterian Church ought to be acquainted with this book.

JAMES C. EELMAN

Medical Opinion

Some Thoughts on Faith Healing. Edited by Vincent Edmunds, M.D., M.R.C.P. and C. Gordon Scorer, M.B.E., M.A., M.D., F.R.C.S. Tyndale Press, London. 2s. 6d.

In Christian circles today—and not only amongst Christians who would be termed ‘Evangelicals’—there would seem to be a growing conviction that the Church is slowly and painfully recovering the gift of healing which was one of the marks of the apostolic age. It is contended that this gift was lost through the gradual weakening of faith, hope and love, and that the Spirit of God is showing the church of the 20th century how to recapture the gift. Stress is laid upon salvation as “wholeness”, affecting spirit and mind and body. It is unhesitatingly affirmed that faith should “give us as clear a title to the healing of our bodies as to the salvation of our souls.”

The writers of this valuable booklet are medical men who present the findings of a study group, consisting of Christian doctors, who have made a careful, sympathetic investigation into the thesis thus advanced and the facts which are adduced to support it. Over and over again they make it clear that if they question the validity of the claims sometimes made for individual faith-healers, if they are cautious in accepting the evidence for certain miraculous cures, this must not be “taken to imply any lessened conviction on their part that God has in the past caused, and can at any time cause miracles to happen.” These men, therefore, are not sceptics but reverent believers in a God who “can and does intervene as and when He pleases”.

But an examination—necessarily brief but not therefore careless or cursory—of, first, the Scriptures commonly quoted in favour of spiritual healing as the normal method of God’s working and, second, the history of the Church in the first three centuries and, finally, the claims made in many quarters today, leads these writers to certain tentative conclusions, which are stated with the moderation one would expect from trained investigators.

These are, briefly, that God normally works by ‘natural’ means, that miracles recorded in the Scriptures “occurred mostly during the epochs when God was giving a new and special revelation of himself in word and deed,” that such healing powers as were possessed by the apostles and other Christians (e.g. at Corinth) were not intended to be permanent in the Church and that a passage such as James 5:14,15 which illustrates the “privilege and duty of believing prayer” for sick Christians but cannot be adduced as justification for “healing missions” to which non-Christians are invited. It is emphasized that cases of the “spontaneous regression” of organic diseases such as malignant cancer are not unknown.

We commend this booklet particularly to all those whose minds are disturbed by the confident but baseless assumption that sickness is never “in the will of God” for the Christian.

FRANK HOUGHTON

Perfectionist Activity

Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-19th Century America, by Timothy L. Smith. Abingdon Press, New York. $4.00.

This is an important work with major defects. Smith’s study, the major portions of which were the Brewer Prize Essay for 1955 for the American Society of Church History, attempts to show that the social gospel, the American doctrine of manifest destiny, feminism, Christian Socialism, abolitionism, church union, the emphasis on ethics over dogma and many other like movements had their origin in America from the Arminian and perfectionist revivalism of the mid-19th century. Smith gives emphasis to the urban leadership in revivalism and in this makes an important contribution to the subject. Revival was not essentially a frontier manifestation but urban in its leadership and having roots in the highest places in church life and educational and theological tradition. Moreover, he traces ably the extensive Unitarian support of revivalism, with major opposition coming from the Old School Calvinists. One of the most interesting and most important sections deals with the problem of slavery, wherein he traces the similarity of the church’s position, under the impact of revivalism, to Lincoln’s views (p. 201). The church’s seeming vacillation has often been caricatured, but Smith points out that for Christians the problem was not easily simplified. They could condemn slavery but still feel an obligation to love Christian slaveholders (p. 215). They could not readily decide between slavery and union; they felt a compulsion to oppose slavery and yet manifest a redeeming bond of peace, without sacrificing in their love of union the moral issues involved. Thus, like Lincoln, they were ready to condemn slavery and fight to preserve unity. Smith has made a major contribution in his discerning analysis of this dilemma.

Smith’s great weakness, however, is that he writes, not as an historian but as a professional genealogist, not to trace the history of the perfectionist revivalism in all its ramifications but only to give the pleasing lines of the family tree. Thus Smith disposes of the ungodly seed and the black sheep and assumes that perfectionist revivalism had only good seed. Source books and studies which point to the contrary are dismissed as bigoted or unrewarding. We are, for example, constantly warned against heeding or reading Old School Presbyterians and other Calvinists. He briefly recognizes in his preface (p. 7), that perfectionist revivalism, instead of being followed by the marriage supper, led to what Parrington has called the Great Barbecue, with good churchmen leading the vicious exploitation of a continent, but he says no more of this aspect. The sexual communism born of the same perfectionist revivalism is again overlooked in this genealogy. No note is made of the fact that perfectionist revivalism, denying the reality of sin in the redeemed, obliterated the old forms and restraints, as well as laws, and tried to re-order society in terms of perfection, i.e., sexual communism, socialism, equality of sexes, church union, etc. Moreover, in actual practice it often led to neglect of present realities, such as sin in their lives, they being now perfect, and sin in the elect United States. This blindness with regard to reality is seen in Finney’s Albany practice of pairing men and women for prayer, supposedly conducive to higher spirituality and certainly to enthusiasm.

Nowhere does Smith deal with the theological issues involved, i.e., a confusion of justification and sanctification, so that perfectionist activity became, in Blaikie’s words, a means “where men keep themselves in a justified state, and consequently justify themselves.” Blaikie’s Philosophy of Sectarianism (1854) Smith regards as “residual bigotry” and mocks him for belonging to a small church (p. 43), but Blaikie aptly criticized perfectionism for claiming to be for church union while creating further divisions, as witness the Campbellite history, and for placing minor “peculiarities as at par with the word of God.”

Smith’s study is further marred by blind prejudice against Calvinism. He is gentle and understanding of pro-slavery arguments and compromises in perfectionist and revival circles and harsh with Old School Presbyterians, impugning their motives. Old School Calvinists did not think a-millennially; they “spawned” their “variant of the beliefs which Miller’s demise had discredited” (p. 236), bad motives and associations being implied here. Their arguments are “fabrications” (p. 202), although at times “even the most orthodox of Old School men did not escape the tide of human sympathy” (p. 174); these men are “reactionary” (p. 166), and “dour” Warfield’s definitive study of Perfectionism is dismissed summarily (p. 238). He speaks of something being “as dry as Jonathan Edwards’ bones and just as sterile of saving compassion” (p. 92), revealing both bigotry himself as well as an ignorance of Edwards. He cites Toplady’s “Rock of Ages” (p. 113) as epitomizing the holiness movement, apparently unaware of Toplady’s militant Calvinism and hostility to perfectionism. He notes in passing the pragmatic and hedonistic element in perfectionism (p. 93) but says no more of it. He rejoices in the Unitarian role in perfectionist revival without seeing its essentially humanistic concern in perfectionism. He expects us to rejoice in this birth of the social gospel from the holiness movement, to accept the identification of the Kingdom of God with America and the fulfilled social gospel as a great result. It is not surprising that modernists today are so respectful of the perfectionist revivalism of the mid-19th century. But evangelical Christianity cannot hope for a true revival today unless it assesses the full nature of the movement Smith so uncritically portrays and frees itself from these sins.

R. J. RUSHDOONY

Far East News: June 24, 1957

Merger In India

Plans for the merger of Anglican and Protestant Churches in Northern India and Pakistan now provide for separate United Churches in the two countries rather than one for both of them.

The bodies contemplating union are the United Church of Northern India, the Church of India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon (Anglican); the Methodist Church in Southern Asia, the British and Australian Methodist Missionary Societies, the Baptist Church in Northern India, the Church of the Brethren and the Disciples of Christ. Discussions are expected to continue until 1960 and the two United Churches may be inaugurated in 1961.

Campaign In Japan

Dr. E. Stanley Jones, 73-year-old American missionary and evangelist, recently completed a vigorous three-month campaign in Japan.

He addressed public meetings in 27 cities and conducted six ashrams (retreats). The meetings were attended by more than 23,000 persons. More than 10,000 signed decision cards.

Dr. Jones stressed a three-point program at the ashrams: (1) that a definite time be set aside for Bible reading and prayer every morning: (2) that prayer cells of from three to 12 persons, led by laymen, be organized in every community, and (3) that visitation evangelism be revitalized.

He left Japan for more work in India.

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The Return To Doctrine

Dramatic Change

Neo-Orthodoxy And The Bible

Christ And The Scriptures

Immanence And Transcendence

Divine-Human Encounter

Sign Of Weakness

Task Of Christian Philosophy

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Adult Dereliction

Role Of Religion

A Greater Lack

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A Disturbing Contrast

The Finished Product

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The Need For A Clean Bible

Accuracy In Translation

Theological Accuracy

Consistency In Translation

Preserving The Familiar

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Literary Style

The Use Of “Thou”

Paraphrase Not Translation

Conjectural Readings

Changes Without Marginal Note

Poetical Arrangement

Minimizing Attitude

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The Vision Of Life

Puritan Influence

A People Of Lip Service

The Loss Of Balance

Shift Of Sovereigns

Distinctives In Peril

We Quote:

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Supplement Volumes

Contemporary Liberalism

Conservative View

Reformed Worship

Medical Opinion

Perfectionist Activity

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Merger In India

Campaign In Japan

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