Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: January 21, 1957

John H. Gerstner

We shall comment on Roman Catholic matters currently discussed in Roman periodicals.

The Jesuit weekly, America (Dec. 22, 1956), reports with satisfaction that California is the 48th state to permit tax exemption for private schools. The magazine rejoices in this triumph for religion in general. The concluding words are: “The will of the people, confirmed by the courts, now prevails. A dubious legal quibble has been destroyed—and with it, is to be hoped, the spectre of an injustice in education alien to every Christian nation.”

This is a characteristic attitude of the Roman church in this country. Every act that tends to favor her and other religious groups’ interests she approves as triumphs for religion in general. This gives the impression that Rome is concerned with liberty and benefits for all religious groups. But in Barcelona we visited with an evangelical minister. A little second-story room was all he was allowed to use for a church. Even then he had no sign to indicate the nature of the building. This was against the law in officially Roman Catholic Spain. This evangelical pastor was not supposed to speak to Roman Catholics about his religion. And he had much more time to do so because Franco’s Roman Catholic state closed all non-Roman schools. So it goes in Peru and other Roman nations.

The Roman Catholic refutes the charge of inconsistency, thus: We claim religious liberty for ourselves on your principles and deny them to you on our principles. But why does Rome not say this openly and plainly? Why is this information hidden in textbooks for scholars only? And why, in 99 cases out of 100, is the opposing idea implied, as in the article above cited?

How the Roman scholar looks on Protestantism is revealed in the current Ecclesiastical Review. “An English theologian recently visiting America asked to speak to an expert on Protestant theologies at a Catholic seminary. He was promptly informed that no such expert existed precisely because Protestantism is not theological. If the Englishman had put the question differently by asking for the expert on Protestantism, he would probably have been introduced to the professor of Church History. Protestantism is too often treated in our seminaries as a sixteenth-century phenomenon which has somehow perpetuated itself for the past 400 years.” The article develops the idea that Protestantism is theologically amorphous varying with the denomination and the century. “Which Protestantism?” is the question.

There is undeniable truth in this pet Roman polemic. Variations in Protestantism are many and confusing, we must penitently acknowledge. But, Roman Catholics almost never mention relevant further considerations. Vast variations exist also within the unity of Rome, and a core of unity exists within the diversities of Protestantism. One variation within Romanism was alluded to in the preceding paragraph. The Roman Catholic teaching concerning religious liberty varies between the U.S. and Spain, for example. It has broken out at times in controversy between American ecclesiastics and Cardinal Segura. In the practical realm one Romanist promotes bingo and another attacks it. In the theological arena opposition is most apparent. Almost every variety of doctrinal opinion in the denominations of Protestantism is found in the orders of the Roman church.

Rome does not deny these things, but rather points out that, despite them, all her different schools acknowledge the authority of the pope. But Protestants may reply: We all recognize the authority of Christ and the Bible. The Roman Catholic counters: Yes, but you have different opinions about Christ and the Bible. We can then observe: Your theologians differ in the definition of an ex cathedra statement. It would be good if both sides would let this point rest about here: the Roman Catholic, admittedly, has more external, visible, constrained and conspicious unity; the Protestant has more internal, invisible, unconstrained and inconspicuous unity.

The Marian Year is now past, but deification of the Virgin continues apace (Ecclesiastical Review, Nov., 1956). In a remote way, Mary became our Co-redemptrix already in the Incarnation, for Christ took on himself a human body with all its sufferings in order to redeem us and atone for our sins. Mary agreed wholeheartedly to be mother of just such a suffering Redeemer, hence already in the Incarnation Mary cooperated in our redemption. At the cross the Saviour consummated his work of redemption amid great sufferings. He gave himself up entirely as our Sacrifice to the Father. But Mary is there too: ‘with her suffering and dying Son, Mary endured suffering and almost death. She gave up her mother’s right over her Son to procure the salvation of mankind; and to appease the divine justice, she, as much as she could, immolated her Son so that one can truly affirm that together with Christ she has redeemed the human race.’ (Benedict XV). Hence not only remotely in the Incarnation, but also proximately and immediately in the very act of the Redeemer on Golgotha, Mary is our Co-redemptrix. Not that the price paid by Christ was not sufficient. It was all-sufficient. But God willed to accept Mary’s offering as part of the price, even though that of the Son was all-sufficient.”

The entire article is in the same vein. But we confine ourselves to but one other phase of mariolatry—Mary’s Queen-ship. The present Pope Pius XII had said in 1946: “Jesus, the Son of God, reflects in His heavenly mother the glory, the majesty, and the dominion of His Kingship, for, having been associated to the King of Martyrs in the ineffable work of human redemption as mother and Co-operatrix, she remains forever associated to Him, within an almost unlimited power, in the distribution of grace which flows from the Redeemer. Jesus is King throughout all eternity by nature and by right of conquest; Mary, through Him, with and subordinate to Him, is Queen of grace, by divine relationship, by right of conquest, and by singular election. And her kingdom is as vast as that of her Son and God, since nothing is excluded from her dominion.” “Mary is also Queen by conquest, for she cooperated with the Saviour in redeeming us from Satan.…”

Since the statements are made, criticism is necessary. If Mary is thought of as Co-redemptrix, this implies her divinity. Redemption is, as the Roman Catholic church teaches, a work of infinite grace: an infinite sacrifice to an infinite God to remove an infinite guilt. If Mary could cooperate in that—if she could be a co-effector of an eternal and infinite redemption—she must need be infinite and eternal. The Roman church is nothing if not logical—so it should not take long for her to say this in so many words, rather than leaving the inferences to Protestant polemicists.

Books

Book Briefs: January 21, 1957

Indispensable Tool

The Westminster Atlas to the Bible (Revised Edition) by George E. Wright and Floyd V. Wilson. The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1956. $7.50.

To say that the present atlas is an indispensable tool for every serious Bible student is to say the obvious. This revised work is a delight. As to format, printing, illustrations and maps it is a masterpiece. It contains sixteen more pages than the first edition (1945) and discusses the latest discoveries in Palestine, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. The remarks on the excavations at Megiddo (p. 113) are a model of compact archaeological reporting. One can spend much profitable time in examining the well chosen illustrations, and will learn a good deal about the Holy Land from such examination. The picture of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (p. 104), which in the original edition had been reversed, is now printed correctly. All in all, the book is a pleasure to behold.

We cannot but commend the authors for the manner in which they have written the material which accompanies the maps and illustrations. An introductory essay by William F. Albright provides an excellent introduction to the study of the ancient Near East. This is followed by a chronological table or outline of ancient history which will well serve the purposes of ready reference. There is an excellent restraint, also, in the discussion of some of the problems connected with the relationship of archaeology and the Bible. The patriarchal period is dated as c.2000–1700 B.C. No attempt is made to force a late date upon the patriarchal age, and this, we believe, is wise.

To be regretted is the fact that the authors are willing to embrace a “critical” view of the Holy Scriptures. Their sympathies lie with the modern school of biblical studies rather than with the historic Christian position which regards the Bible as infallible Scripture. For example, on page 26 we are told, “—we lack precise knowledge of the nature of Abraham’s religion,—”. Genesis one to eleven is said to contain “Hebrew traditions about the Creation and the Flood” (p. 25). The Christian position is that these are not merely Hebrew traditions but the revelation of God about the origin of all things. There is much mention of the ministry of Jesus, but one looks in vain for a clear-cut statement as to who this Jesus is. Nor does it help to be told of Paul that on the way to Damascus “—he had the vision of the living Christ which transformed his life and affected the course of history” (p. 95). The phrase “living Christ” is vague and shadowy. The Christ Whom Paul saw on the Damascus road was One who had been crucified and by a mighty miracle had risen from the dead. He was the risen Christ.

For the most part, however, the “critical” viewpoint of the authors is excluded from the discussion, and for this we are truly grateful. The value of the book is thereby tremendously enhanced, and so, can be used with great profit. The scholarship which has gone into the book’s preparation is truly admirable and we congratulate the authors upon their production.

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Exegesis And Homiletics

The First Epistle of John, by Robert S. Candlish, Zondervan, Grand Rapids. $5.95.

Like a trip to the mountains that border the sea!

Candlish was a leader among “the Wee Frees.” For many years he preached in Scotland’s most influential church and was Principal of New College, Edinburgh. In this book he combined careful exegesis and true homiletics to produce forty-six messages of insight and inspiration. He died in 1873, but in this reprint his preaching lives on.

The Doctor did not pause for thorough investigation of the background of First John, but he occasionally makes clear the references to the incipient Gnosticism which John contacted (e.g., pp. 198, 528). The analysis is of the text. The Epistle is “the divine fellowship of light, righteousness, and love, overcoming the world and its prince” (p. 436). There are four parts: in 1:5–2:28 God is light; in 2:29–4:6 God is righteousness; in 4:7–5:3 God is love; and then there is conflict with the world, 5:2–21. Our author overrides human chapter divisions for new truth (e.g., 350) which is often strikingly stated. For example, the child of God is born of the Spirit as Jesus was:

You who believe are born of God as he is. I speak of his human birth; in which you, in your new birth, are partakers with him; the same Spirit of God being the agent in both, and originating in both the same new life. His birth was humiliation to him, though it was of God: your new birth is exaltation to you, because it is of God. His being born of God by the Spirit made him partaker of your human nature;—your being born again of God by the Spirit makes you partakers of his “divine nature” (p. 220).

Criticism? There is perhaps too much subjectivism, as in dealing with what John says about anti-Christs (p. 355). He seems to teach an impeccability realized on earth from a passage like “whosoever is born of God cannot sin” (3:9 A.V.), without sufficient attention to the continuous action of the Greek infinitive, which makes John really say, “he cannot go on sinning, he cannot make sin a habit of his life” (Cp. however, p. 352).

May I suggest, first, that laymen buy this book for their pastors; second, that pastors take a course in First John, under Candlish, by reading this large type for fifteen minutes a day for 46 consecutive days. It will deepen spirituality and quicken love for Christ and men.

W. GORDON BROWN

Ecumenicity

The Church for the New Age—A Dissertation on Church Unity, by Christopher Glover. Exposition Press, N. Y., 1956.

This is an extraordinary book. Every Protestant ought to read it. It sets forth opinions which, if believed by the Anglican Church generally, are eye-openers in the area of Ecumenicity. And if what the author claims is true, it is indeed essential for every Protestant to be aware of the claims and to understand and appreciate them.

Bishop Walter Carey of the Anglican Church wrote the foreword. He stated that the author’s “thesis and analysis is (sic) uncontrovertible.” What then is the viewpoint which is uncontrovertible?

Mr. Glover claims that the Church (the holy catholic church) is marked off by four characteristics. It is divine in origin, visible in character, organic in structure and priestly in function. There are only three communions (possibly a fourth) which are true and valid parts of this holy catholic church by these standards. One is the Roman branch of the holy catholic church, a second is the Greek Orthodox branch of the holy catholic church and the other is the Anglican branch of the holy catholic church.

Only through the aforementioned branches of the church is it possible to be assured of salvation. God has worked through other so-called churches and has allowed people to be saved, but their salvation is “uncertain” and they can have no certainty or assurance save through the branches of the holy catholic church. All Protestant churches, including Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed, Congregational, Baptist, etc. are not true churches. Their ministries are not valid and their sacramental systems are built on error and not on truth.

Biblically, God intended that there should be one visible organically united church. This is the plan and will of God. Division is sin and while the division of the three branches of the only true church is sinful, the schism of Protestantism is more sinful. There is little present hope for reunion of the three dissenting branches of the true church—Roman, Greek, and Anglican. Error exists in the Roman and Greek forms and these two branches are temporarily confirmed in their obstinacy. The Anglican Church alone possesses all the truth and alone is the branch of the true church which is true to the demands of the biblically true church.

There can never be a reunion of the churches as this relates to Protestantism because Protestant churches are not really churches. They must submit to the basic claims of the Anglican church and come penitently to its fold and recognize its basic or essential claims. Protestantism’s ministry can become a valid ministry when it has been validated by the laying on of the Anglican hands and its people assured of salvation through Anglicanism’s sacramental system.

If the author of this book is right, Protestantism has been wrong for more than four hundred years. Its views on the church, ministry, and sacraments have been wrong too. With incredible aplomb this writer takes himself and his church so seriously that he becomes as dogmatic as any Roman pope. Most ecumenical enthusiasts will be far less enthusiastic once they read through this volume. If a Fundamentalist wrote a book the way this book is written he would be pilloried and termed as an obscurantist. At times this reviewer asked himself the question, “Is the author really serious?” Well, he certainly is serious, and his conclusions are well and good for those who wish to accept them. But for me and my house (my father having come up through the Anglican tradition) there are dissenting voices both from the conclusions and the evidences used to support them.

—HAROLD LINDSELL

Cancer Anonymous

Determined to Live, by Brian Hession, Peter Davies. 15s.

No one can read this book without being moved with admiration for the courage of its author. A clergyman of the Church of England who has for many years been deeply impressed with the value of visual aids in the presentation of the Gospel, Brian Hession was in Hollywood in 1954 acting as “spiritual technical adviser to a company making a religious film,” when he consulted a doctor and was informed that he had only three or four days to live. The diagnosis was—inoperable cancer in an advanced stage. As they faced this stunning blow in the presence of God, Mr. Hession and his wife became convinced that they must find a surgeon who would consent to take the risk of operating. They found their man in Dr. John Howard Payne of Pasadena, California. The finest human skill, the best possible nursing and all expenses paid by generous friends are not uncommonly found in the United States. In the Hessions’ case these were combined with a strong faith in God and a determination not only to survive, God willing, but to prove that it is possible after a colostomy to live an active life to the glory of God. As the story shows, Brian Hession is still alive and engaged in worthwhile work after more than two years. It is his great desire not only to continue in the production of religious films, but to sell to the world the idea of Cancer Anonymous (on the analogy of Alcoholics Anonymous). The greatest need, he feels, is to stimulate faith and hope amongst cancer patients who are too ready to accept a fatal diagnosis as certain. The plain fact is that there are far more cures in the early stages of the disease than most of us imagine, and Brian Hession is alive to show that even in an advanced stage, recovery is not impossible.

This is not a treatise on faith healing, for under God it was the surgeon’s skill which brought about the miracle. But miracle is not an inapt word, for thousands were praying, and it was surely God who blessed the means used and inspired His servant to remain alive, for the sake of his wife and children and his work, when the medical verdict left no loophole for recovery.

Cancer Anonymous is surely a project which ought to command universal sympathy and widespread support. If the main subject of the book were a plea for the production of religious films, your reviewer would feel obliged to enter one or two strong caveats, particularly concerning the propriety of any actor impersonating our blessed Lord. Nor must affectionate admiration for the author be misconstrued as an endorsement of some decidedly loose phraseology from a biblical and theological standpoint.

FRANK HOUGHTON

Too Brief

A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, edited by Eugene R. Fair-weather. Westminster, Philadelphia, 1956. $5.00

This book is volume 10 in The Library of Christian Classics. Other volumes are: 1. Early Christian Fathers; 4. Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa; 15. Luther: Lectures on Romans; 24. English Reformers.

The present volume covers Anselm to Ockham. Aquinas is naturally given a separate volume, but the verb covers is still too inclusive. The material on Anselm is perhaps sufficient, but this can hardly be said of Abelard, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus and Ockham. Duns, for example, is allowed nine pages of fairly important material, and Ockham is give six pages of fairly unimportant material.

The editor’s Introductions to the several sections are well written and reflect great learning; but they are so general and summary that I fear a scholar would find them too brief and a general reader too unintelligible.

GORDON H. CLARK

Missionary Literatur

Jungle Doctor Hunts Big Game, by Paul White. Paternoster Press. 4s.6d.

Here we have the fourteenth volume the now famous Jungle Doctor series, but lest there should be any misgiving, prospective readers may be assured that there is absolutely no sign of any diminution in Dr. White’s unrivalled powers as a narrator of his missionary experiences and adventures in Central Tanganyika. From beginning to end the book is completely absorbing, and in places most moving. Like its predecessors, its pages effectively and unselfconsciously display the Gospel as the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, and as missionary literature, entirely suitable for both young and old and challenging to both young and old and challenging to both believer and unbeliever, we know of nothing better. The book is attractively illustrated by Graham Wade.

PHILIP E. HUGHES

Biography

The Protestant Bishop, by Edward Carpenter. Longmans. 35s.

This is the biography of a Bishop of London who, though little known, exercised a powerful influence upon the destinies of the English Church and people. Henry Compton came of a noble family which had rendered great service to the Royalist cause. Henry Compton exiled himself to the continent during the commonwealth and only returned to England with the restorction of the monarchy.

His early promotion is sensational by our standards and stemmed, no doubt, from his noble birth, but was later justified by his outstanding ability. He was ordained deacon and priest in 1666; three years later he became a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. Within a month he proceeded to the degrees of B.D. and D.D. In 1674 he was made Bishop of Oxford and a year later, of London.

Compton was a man of very simple faith. His biographer says, “he may perhaps be numbered among the twice born.” He scorned the proud conceit of those who exalted their own intellect above spiritual understanding. “We are absolutely dependent,” he writes, “upon the righteousness of Christ for our justification: and for getting out of our state of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

He was devoted to the monarchy because he was even more passionately devoted to the English way of life, and he believed each to be dependent upon the other. But he was a typical Englishman in his rooted antipathy to the Church of Rome which he considered to be alien to the freedom-loving Englishman, the inevitable cause of despotism and tyranny and the source of unscriptural doctrine and worship. Thus his career as a Bishop was dominated by a determination to keep England Protestant, and this determination ultimately overrode even his loyalty to his sovereign. It was impossible to avoid a clash between Bishop and King. Whatever religious sympathies Charles had were with Rome, and his successor, James, was a Roman Catholic determined to force his religion upon the Country. Compton drafted a loyal address on behalf of the clergy in which he assured the King that “our religion established by law is dearer to us than our lives.” Compton was soon suspended from office but he did not cease to use his influence to oppose the policy of the King. The danger to Parliamentary Government from the King’s arbitrary conduct and the threat to the Church from his Roman Catholic influence, drove Compton to be one of the signatories to the invitation to William of Orange to come to England. Canon Carpenter’s book has much that is relevant to our contemporary situation. Compton taught his clergy by an ingenious system of conferences the dangers of Roman Catholicism and the errors of that church, and he saw that this teaching was passed on to the people. Such teaching would be most valuble in this age of what Bishop Hensley Henson called “comfortable anarchy.”

When the bloodless revolution was achieved many of Compton’s Episcopal friends deserted him and the Archbishop shut himself up at Lambeth and took no part in the Coronation. (Incidentally it was left to Compton to draft a Coronation service which is substantially what we use today and it was his genius which introduced the presentation of the Bible to the sovereign). Episcopal leadership is frequently timid and hesitating in matters of deep theological moment but in things of social or political sentimentality they are bravely, but not always wisely, vocal.

Compton’s boldness and faithfulness was not rewarded by William or Anne, both of whom passed him over when the Archbishopric was vacant. This soured him so that in his later years he encouraged “just those elements in the nation which would have bypassed the Act of Succession in the interests of the Pretender.” It is refreshing to read of an ecclesiastic in high office so fearless and forthright in his determination to preserve the church and nation from spiritual tyranny, but it is rather saddening to discover that human nature in every age bears some of the less attractive characteristics.

Parts II and III of this book tell the story of Compton’s work as a Diocesan Bishop and his responsibility as such for chaplains in “the Plantations of America.” His wide sympathies included the French Refugees and the Greek Orthodox Community in London. It is interesting to note that his conditions for approving of a Greek Orthodox Church in London were that there should be no pictures or ikons, they must repudiate the doctrine of transubstantiation, and there must be no prayers to the Saints.

T. G. MOHAN

Cultic Dictatorship

Thirty Years A Watch Tower Slave—The Confessions of a Converted Jehovah’s Witness, by W. J. Schnell. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, $2.95.

This volume was writen by a man who was entangled in the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses for three decades. He writes his personal life testimony of his relationship to this movement. The story is in the form of an expose of the cult and its machinations.

Briefly the author contends that the cult is dangerous, having its origins in the personalities of Charles Taze Russell and Judge Rutherford. Both of these men, he claims, were deceivers who deliberately and for evil gain created this cult and its crude theology. Based upon distortions and falsehoods the cult moved forward in a totalitarian framework in which innocent men and women were led astray. The victims lost their freedom, their right to think and their souls too in the maze of this deception. Once under the iron rule and reign of the cultic dictatorship the victims were used to promote the sale of literature and to fill the coffers of the cult with the financial gains.

When an individual tried to free himself from the meshes of the dictatorship he would be persecuted and hounded in a fearful fashion. Mr. Schnell himself experienced the tortures perpetrated on those who would be free—not in the sense of physical imprisonment but from the pressures used by the organization to keep the victims in line.

One cannot doubt the genuineness of the author’s insights nor the obvious lessons which should be learned from his experiences. At the same time one cannot but be amazed at the organizational zeal of the movement and its remarkable success in winning converts. Quite obviously the cult is not even sub-Christian—just anti-Christian and thoroughly dangerous.

The volume lacks some of the artistic graces of good writing, but it has the touch of the sincere about it.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Far East News: January 21, 1957

Campaign In Manila

An evangelistic campaign, described as Manila’s first major Crusade for Christ, is now under way, with Dr. Robert Pierce delivering the messages in an open-air auditorium seating 5,000.

Never before have churches in the city united for a campaign to continue for three consecutive weeks (January 13-February 3). The National Evangelistic Strategy Committee is sponsoring the crusade, with 75 churches giving support to the effort.

(This is a large majority of Protestant churches in the predominantly Roman Catholic city. In December, the Philippines were officially consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the Eucharistic Congress.)

Dr. Pierce, president of World Vision, Inc., with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, is well known throughout the Far East, where his organization supports many Christian projects.

Meetings are held in the auditorium of the famous Sunken Gardens, opposite city hall in downtown Manila. The platform, with its 60-foot tower and cross, seats a 600-voice choir. Heading the sponsoring committee are Chairman Jose A. Yap and Ellsworth Culver, coordinator.

Prayer support is being given by many churches in the provincial areas.

Chaplain Honored

The Republic of Korea Award of Military Merit has been given to an American Protestant chaplain for his work in organizing a Christian chaplaincy to aid men of the Korean Air Force.

Air Force Chaplain (Captain) Robert M. Moore (Presbyterian, U. S. A.), of Jersey City, N. J., received the award from Major General Chang Duk Chang, vice chief of staff of the Korean Air Force. It was bestowed in a ceremony at Bergstrom Air Force Base, Texas, where Chaplain Moore is now serving.

Different Message

Former Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who as a pilot in the Japanese Navy led the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, is on a tour of the United States as a Christian missionary.

Fuchida was converted after the war through the efforts of an American missionary Timothy Pietsch, and later joined the Sky Pilots of America, a group which aims at interesting boys in Christian work through their love of airplanes and trains young men to become flying missionaries.

He is chief of the Sky Pilots in Japan and has launched an evangelistic campaign among his fellow countrymen.

Before the Pearl Harbor attack, Fuchida trained 360 special pilots for a month and a half. During the attack, he said years later, he was filled with a love of his country and hatred of Americans, but added, “there was no real joy in my heart.”

At Midway, he was in sick bay aboard an aircraft carrier when it was bombed by United States forces. Both his legs were broken. Later, he was sent to build an airfield in Iwo Jima.

In August, 1945, Fuchida was to take part in a suicide mission against Guam, but the war ended before it could take place. He was tried as a war criminal and acquitted.

Stemming The Flood

“When Viet Nam joined the ranks of Communist-divided countries, Christian people the world around said, ‘My, isn’t that too bad.’ … Why shouldn’t it have been so? Millions of Americans, and others, had done nothing to stop it … hadn’t even said a prayer.

“In nearby Cambodia, I found only one missionary printer and one antiquated press … only one! He had succeeded in rolling off material which was piled from the floor to the ceiling of his tiny back-alley shop in Phnom Penh. In an adjoining room, a native Cambodian boy, a spastic child, was trying to fold and assemble that material by hand. That Christian printer had been praying and hoping for over a quarter of a century for reinforcements that hadn’t come.

“Is it not inconceivable that in these days of technological know-how, achievement and advance, that we should expect one man and one spastic boy to stem the Red flood in such a strategic country all by themselves?”—From address at “Men’s Council on World Objectives,” Spokane, by Clay Cooper, president of Vision, Inc.

Strong Bid For Aid

When Roman Catholic authorities in New Zealand made a strong bid to obtain state aid for their expanding network of church schools, the government set up a special commission to hear evidence.

The Commission heard reports from all quarters and finally reported it had no recommendation to make. A Roman Catholic member of Parliament moved that the matter be referred back to the Commission for further investigation, but the motion died for want of a second.

Roman Catholics comprise about 16 per cent of the population of New Zealand. Anglicans total 37 per cent and Presbyterians 25 per cent. Both have a number of church schools and other educational institutions.

Under the existing plan, time is allowed up to a half-hour a week for religious instruction in state schools.

Government Ally

A leading Australian Methodist clergyman has charged that the Christian Church in Communist China is now “so fully a party to the plans and politics of the government that it is actually an ally of that government.”

“It is playing its role,” declared Dr. Malcolm Mackay, minister of the Scottish church in Sydney, “in subverting men and women from the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Its prophetic function is ended and Jesus Christ is not its King.”

He called for an end to contacts between Western churchmen and the State-subordinated churches of either Communist China or Russia, branding such contacts as “sentimental nonsense.”

He added:

“It is time we put an end to this blind and wilful folly which has made deep inroads into our churches and to have an end to this sentimental nonsense which sees all the right with the other side and all the wrong on our side. That is not Christian charity. That is high treason in an ideological war.”

Deaths

*Richard Johnson, American Methodist missionary of Owatonna, Minnesota, drowned when he was caught in a strong current while swimming at Kuala Trengganu in Malaya.

*George T. Stephens, 72, Canadian-born evangelist associated with both Billy Sunday and Billy Graham.

*Dr. Clarence E. Krumbholz, 69, executive secretary of National Lutheran Council’s Division of Welfare for 15 years.

*Bishop Alexander Caillot, 95, of Grenoble, France, said to be oldest Roman Catholic bishop in world.

CHRISTIANITY TODAYis a subscriber to Religious News Service, Evangelical Press Service and Washington Religious Report Newsletter.

Russia News: January 21, 1957

‘Rise In Vain’

Metropolitan Anastasi, head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, has told the people of the Soviet Union in a radio message that the communists “rise in vain against Christ and his immortal gospel.”

The Gospel, he said, has “edified and consoled” countless millions through the centuries, while Communism “has brought with it nothing but bitter disappointment.

“Communism has not eliminated poverty and suffering from the earth, and it has not given people the blessings it has promised. Instead of bread, it gives them a stone. Instead of freedom, it gives them agonizing slavery and impoverishment.”

All free peoples, the Metropolitan said in the message broadcast by Radio Liberation, “recoil from Communism.”

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia comprises those who refused to accept the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate after the Russian Revolution.

‘Emptiness Of Heart’

The broadcasting of Christian teachings and principles to the Russian people is the free world’s greatest opportunity of smashing the Iron Curtain.

This is the opinion of the Rev. Paul E. Freed of Greensboro, North Carolina. Back from a six-week visit to European countries, including Russia, he said there is “a great emptiness of heart” among young Russians “which I am convinced can be filled by true Christianity.

“The young people of Russia have had atheism pounded into them since childhood, but I don’t believe that deep down within themselves they can deny the existence of God.”

Mr. Freed is president of International Evangelism, an independent missionary group which since 1954 has operated the “Voice of Tangier,” an international radio station in North Africa. The short-wave station currently broadcasts seven hours a day in 23 languages. It uses five sets of beamed antennas, one of which is directed to Russia.

Africa News: January 21, 1957

Nitro In Nigeria

The State and the Roman Catholic Church in Eastern Nigeria are locked in controversy over the government’s free universal education plan, designed to take effect this year.

Basis of the disagreement is the government’s decision that all schools receiving government subsidy must conform to government standards. The Roman Catholics, who claim over 50 per cent of the Christians among the region’s 7,000,000 population, assert that parents have the right to decide the nature of their children’s education. Also, they have expressed fear of mishandling of funds in a region which has had frequent investigations of corruption.

In answer to the Roman Catholic charge of a “godless State monopoly of education,” Prime Minister Azikiwe said, “the government of the Eastern Region is irrevocably committed to the principle of religious freedom.”

Protestants have quietly accepted the plan, feeling that they will benefit from it. Under the new arrangements, financial problems will be solved and missions, responsible for 95 per cent of education in the country, will have the right to give religious instruction in classrooms. Mission officials have the opportunity of being nominated as managers of schools and can influence policy by becoming members of local councils.

Roman Catholics, on the other hand, see the plan as a threat to their bid for control of education in the region.

The Prime Minister has pointed out that “the government will not prevent any person or voluntary agency from establishing a private school which shall charge fees, provided that such schools need not claim to be eligible to receive grants-in-aid as a right.”

—W.A.F.

Exodus From Egypt

Familiar faces are being missed in Egypt today as a result of the recent government action against British and French nationals.

In addition to virtually the entire business, professional and consular communities, three distinct groups of British people have been ordered out of the country. These include one missionary organization almost in its entirety, the total force of educationalists and all the Anglican clergy.

The missionary organization was the Egypt General Mission, a group of women and laymen, including nurses and doctors, from Britain and Australia. Members of the organization came under a dark cloud last spring on government charges of teaching Christianity to Muslim children. The Mission’s two schools were closed and taken over by the government.

After the recent outbreak of hostilities, the Mission Hospital in Shebin al Qanater, in the Delta, was expropriated and the staff sent to the Mission headquarters in Zeitun, a suburb of Cairo, where all were kept under house arrest and given orders to leave the country within seven days. With the bank account under sequestration, members had no way in which to pay for plane tickets. Appeals for the release of funds fell on deaf ears. Finally, tickets were bought by non-British friends. Observers predict the organization will never be permitted to return to Egypt.

In mid-December, only one clergyman from the United Kingdom remained—the Rev. Roy Stewart, for the past five years pastor of the St. Andrews Church of Scotland, Cairo. Of Mr. Stewart’s congregation, two remained, one a retired Scottish businessman and member of the Kirk Session, and the other the wife of an American University professor.

Europe News: January 21, 1957

Drastic Measures

Soviet Zone leaders of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKID) are resorting to drastic measures—including a cut in ministers’ salaries—to thwart efforts of the communist regime to paralyze the Church’s work by undermining its financial resources.

Some churches already have ordered a 10 per cent reduction in the salaries of both pastors and church workers. They have levied special contributions, and in addition, have taken disciplinary measures against members who balk at paying their church “taxes.” Such persons will temporarily forfeit their right to such services as baptisms, marriages and funerals.

In a recent sermon, Bishop Otto Dibelius of Berlin, chairman of the EKID Council, appealed to the East German members to respond to the financial plight of their churches in “a true spirit of Christian sacrifice.”

Communist measures to disable the Church financially have become increasingly stringent over the past two years and are generally regarded as attempts to minimize the Church’s influence as an anti-communist force.

The measures include reductions in State subsidies, sharp reduction in street and house-to-house collections.

Control In Hungary

Hungary’s State Office for Church Affairs has been abolished as part of a governmental reorganization program undertaken by the communist regime of Premier Janos Kadar.

The office’s “sphere of influence” has been assumed by the Ministry of Public Information.

What effect this action will have on the churches of Hungary was not immediately apparent.

The Budapest Radio claimed that the move “virtually ends State control of the churches.”

“The churches,” it said, “can fulfill their tasks freely. The State authority will no longer interfere with the churches’ work.”

The Office for Church Affairs was set up in May, 1951, as a separate department for religious matters. Late last November, after Soviet forces had crushed the insurrection, the office issued a statement saying that “the revolutionary worker-peasant government stands for the free practice of religion as laid down in the constitution of the Hungarian People’s Republic … It wishes in the future to resolve questions arising between the State and the Church through negotiations and agreements.”

Abolition of the Church Affairs Office came after Hungarian church groups had acted in the wake of the uprising to throw off the shackles imposed on religious life and institutions by the communist regime and to oust collaborationists appointed to church offices.

Janos Horvath, a communist, had been director of the Church Affairs Office. During the short-lived revolt, the Office apparently ceased functioning and telephone calls there remained unanswered.

General Harrison Answers Graham Critics

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

(The following excerpts are taken from a letter written to a well-known Christian leader in America by Lieutenant General W. K. Harrison, Commander in Chief, Canal Zone, U. S. Army, and contributing editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.The letter pertains to the controversy over “modernist” ministerial cooperation in the coming New York City campaign of Dr. Billy Graham—ED.)

The questions you raise are important and should be carefully and prayerfully considered.

The first question is, does Billy Graham consistently preach the Gospel?… I have heard Mr. Graham speak and have read some of his writings and not once have I heard him depart from the Gospel. By the word “Gospel” I mean essentially the good news that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He arose from the dead according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3). He preaches this truth, with its attendant truths, in a positive and sincere manner.…

The basic position in your letter, as I understand it, is that it is a disobedience of God’s commands for Bible-believing, born-again men to associate themselves with modernist churches and church organizations in supporting the dinner of September 17th given in honor of Billy Graham. You cite 2 Cor. 6:14; Ephesians 5:11; 2 Thess. 3:6. Since the purpose of this dinner, sponsored largely by modernists, was to gain support for the coming evangelistic campaign (in New York City) by Dr. Graham in 1957, it seems fair, also, to assume that you object to association with them in that campaign.

I examined the matter on the premises you stated in your letter; that is, that the major group supporting the dinner and the campaign is the modernist Protestant Council of the City of New York.… These men … have preached the social gospel, which is the only gospel they can preach until God speaks to their hearts. They would see some of the fruits of true Christianity, without the living tree itself. Now, after years of Christ rejection and of social gospel, they see failure. They are frustrated. Their religion is losing its adherents. Now they do the only thing really left to them. They turn to the kind of revival ministry that Dr. Graham has, and Moody, and others before him. True, they are not seeking salvation of the soul; they are seeking better morality and environment, better Christianity, but they are seeking them in the only place that they can see hope, in the Christian Gospel. And behind them, unseen behind the big names and ecclesiastical titles, are hundreds of thousands of little people who “don’t know their right hand from their left.” To me, it is a demonstration of God’s infinite love and grace that these unsaved blind leaders of the blind are, in their blindness, turning to the only truth which can lead them and their followers to salvation. In a way, it reminds me of Paul’s vision of the man of Macedonia, who beckoned to Paul to come over and help them. Do you not see the similarity?…

If these modernist groups invite Mr. Graham to preach the Gospel to them and offer to support it with money, effort and prayer, should he refuse? God’s command is to preach the Gospel to every creature. Would you accept an invitation to speak in a modernist church, in a synagogue, in a Roman Catholic church? I would, because I think that every ambassador of Christ would welcome the opportunity to tell the lost of the good news. It seems to me that rather than reject the Macedonian call we should praise God for it.

Now, if it is right for Mr. Graham, or you, or me, or Paul, to accept an invitation by unbelievers to speak the Gospel to them and their flocks, is it right for other real Christians to refuse to associate themselves with this ministry of the Gospel?… The crux of the matter is, what is to be preached and expounded? And that, we know, is the true Gospel of Christ.

In considering the verses which you cite in your letter, I noted first 2 Thess. 3:6 (Now we command you brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of its). It seems to me quite clear that this verse, taken in its context, verses 6 to 15, refers to persons who are disorderly in their conduct, not working, but busybodies. Yet, even so, these are to be treated not as enemies but as brothers (verse 15). It is a matter of discipline in conduct among believers.

The next verse is Ephesians 5:11, which says, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” In considering this verse I have examined six translations and three commentaries. The context in which this verse occurs is a condemnation of and warning against fornication, all uncleanness, covetousness (which is idolatry), filthiness, foolish talking and jesting. Those are all sinful and immoral acts … I must say that I see no resemblance between the unfruitful works of darkness mentioned in the context and the present action of the New York modernists in seeking and supporting a true gospel ministry in that city, unless we must take the position that their action is a work of darkness simply and only because they do it. This alternative leads to the following discussion of the third verse you cite, 2 Cor. 6:14.

This verse states, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” I think that this verse is really the one which is relevant to the question … It seems to me that where born-again Bible scholars differ as to the exact meaning and application of this passage, the least they can do is to treat one another in love, remembering that only God is infallible …

In trying to discover from the Bible the application of this verse to myself, I reached the conclusion, first, that it does not mean total separation from unbelievers. This seems clear from John 17:15, 1 Cor. 5:10 and 1 Cor. 10:27. Christ maintained contacts with people generally; many of whom were undoubtedly unbelievers (John 2 is an example). The most obvious example is the fact that during His earthly ministry He included Judas Iscariot with the other Disciples. We are also told to love and do good to our enemies, both of which involve contacts and action. Similarly, we are to remain in the human calling wherein we were called into God’s kingdom and service (1 Cor. 7:17–24). This inevitably involves some form of yoke or association with unbelievers and it is so indicated (Romans 12:1–7). Therefore, the separation commanded in 2 Cor. 6:14–17 is less than total and must have a special character.

It seems to me that the governing word is “unequally” and that its meaning must be understood in the light of righteousness, light, Christ, belief, the temple of God on the one hand as against unrighteousness, darkness, Belial, unbelief, idols, respectively on the other hand, as indicated in verses 14–17. We are to be separate, not necessarily by segregation, but by not touching that which is unclean (verse 17). Admittedly, this separation may, and often does, require segregation in some matters, but not inevitably in others. That is, if we are yoked or associated with unbelievers in objectives, purposes, methods or actions which are contrary to God’s will, commands or character, in other words, which are sinful, the yoke is unequal and must be avoided.

The question next arises as to how we are to determine those objectives which are to be so avoided. In many cases this is no problem because the Bible clearly states them. In others where there is no clear biblical command we are to be guided by the principles of love …

On the basis of the preceding thoughts we can consider the application of 2 Cor. 6:14 to the recent Billy Graham dinner in New York and the revival campaign which it supported.

I doubt if any unbeliever would argue that the objective or purpose is sinful, since the preaching of the Gospel of Christ is commanded by the Bible. The desire of and consequent invitation by the Protestant modernists to receive Mr. Graham’s ministry is certainly to be desired in the interest of saving men’s souls … The use of unbelievers’ money to pay the necessary expenses of the meetings which they themselves seek seems logical and legitimate to me. That modernists may be on the committee or sit on the platform are not in themselves evil, as I see it. I believe any real believer would welcome an invitation to preach the true Gospel to the pastor and unsaved people in a modernist church. Why should he withhold the Gospel which Christ commanded His disciples to preach? Yet, if one accepts such an invitation, he does so from the pastor of the church, and that pastor will sit on the platform and probably take part in the service.

There is in this no recognition of any yoke or Christian fellowship.… Now, I see little difference other than in magnitude between the preaching of the Gospel in a single modernist church and in New York by Billy Graham.

… I think we must all recognize that God has saved many, many persons and multitudes have received the true witness through the ministry of Mr. Graham.… I simply cannot see how such a movement and salvation could be of Satan, which it must be if it is not of God.

If it is of God, then are we, who have been saved through the ministry of the same Gospel, to refuse to cooperate? Are we to hinder or to help? And I ask myself, what kind of Christian testimony is it when we stand before the world in opposition to the preaching of the Gospel to unsaved people who ask for that preaching …?

It may be true that Mr. Graham in his public ministry does not try to put converts into, or keep them out of, certain churches, leaving the decision to the individual. I agree with him that the Sovereign God is able to keep His own and to finish that which He has begun. Who knows that converts who go to a modernist church may not be God’s witnesses in that church until such time as they leave it or are expelled?

Personally, I do not feel that I am in a position to judge others in this respect, although my personal inclination is to worship in the churches which are faithful to the truth as it is given in the Bible. I think the great objective is to try to lead people to salvation, in full confidence that God Himself is the one who saves them, keeps them saved and guides them through life in accord with His plans for them (Eph. 2:10).

I personally hope that all true believers in New York and elsewhere will support the Graham campaign there.…

Worth Quoting

“A man cannot be right with God in his heart until he is right with God in his pocketbook.”—Howard Butt, Texas supermarket executive and lay evangelist.

“A sober teenager with a craving for speed is much better than a drunken adult with liquor banging away at his senses.”—Dr. Robert A. Cook, president of Youth for Christ International.

China Visits Hit

A move by the National Council of Churches of Christ to send a delegation of churchmen to Communist China has been strongly denounced by the National Association of Evangelicals in a letter to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Clyde W. Taylor, Secretary of Public Affairs for NAE, in a letter dated January 8, urged the State Department to “hold its present policy of invalidating all American passports for travel to Communist China.”

He stated:

“If any American Churchmen should be allowed by the communists to visit the mainland of China, it would be only because the communist regime feels that it is in their interest to allow such a visit. It is reasonable to assume that such churchmen would not be allowed to interview those Chinese Christians who have refused to surrender their faith and as a result are in concentration camps, many of them in Manchuria. Nor is it likely that they would be allowed any extensive contact with the leadership of the noncollaborating evangelical segment of the Chinese Christian Church.

“Thus it is quite possible that such a visit would be a serious detriment in several respects. It would be a source of great discouragement to the leadership of the vital evangelical segment of the Chinese Church. It would undoubtedly produce a very unrealistic picture of the situation of the Church in China. It is certainly impossible to get a true picture in a few days of the pressures and persecutions which have spread over several years. This is especially true in light of the fact that the evangelical church in Communist China has grown in spite of persecution. It undoubtedly would be used as a means to bring further pressures on the U. S. Department of State toward the recognition of Communist China. Finally, and this is most important, such a visit would imply U. S. approval of the collaborationist tactics of the leaders of the ‘government-approved’ church in China.”

Worship In Washington

Before the opening of the 85th Congress, President Eisenhower, leaders in various branches of government, including cabinet members and congressmen, gathered for a reverent and impressive communion service in historic National Presbyterian Church.

Participation from the upper echelons of political leadership was the largest since the annual service was inaugurated on the day Congress convened in 1948.

Above such dramatic asides as participation by dignitaries of both party affiliations was the spectacle of national leaders humbling themselves, from the President down, in corporate intercession in the house of God before assuming new duties in the White House and houses of Congress. The annual service, possible under the Presbyterian doctrine of the catholic church, probably could not now be discontinued, because many officeholders who value its spiritual significance would doubtless insist on its repetition.

President Eisenhower sat in his customary pew, and was served the communion elements by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Dulles was one of 30 Presbyterian elders serving the elements during the 43-minute gathering.

Because of unfamiliarity with the service among new members of Congress, briefings were held in the church auditorium a half hour early. Those serving included Secretary of the Army Wilber M. Brucker, Paul W. McCracken of the Council of Economic Advisers, Assistant Attorney General Perry W. Morton, five elders in the Senate (Martin, Pa.; Dirksen, Ill.; Ervin, N. C.; Stennis, Miss.; Scott, N. C.) and five elders from the House (Beamer, Ind.; Pillion, N. Y.; Simpson, Pa.; Fountain, N. C.; Laird, Mich.).

President Eisenhower came with his assistant, Sherman Adams, and Press Secretary James C. Hagerty. (Former President Truman, also without the first lady, usually attended with a considerable group of aides.)

The house of God is the one assembly where the arrival of the President goes unmentioned, and the people remain seated as he joins the worshippers. At the close of the service, they remain in their pews until the President is escorted from the church by the host minister.

Leaders in the service, no less than participants in the pews, contributed their share of interest. Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, the President’s pastor and contributing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, offered the prayer for divine guidance and blessing upon all in authority. The Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., David W. Profitt, who was elected to that post over Dr. Elson in a “layman’s year,” acted as chief elder. The customary exhortation or invitation before the serving of the elements was omitted. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, president of the National Council of Churches, presided.

The service is sponsored each year by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., in cooperation with the N. C. C. and Washington Federation of Churches. As a symbol of merger negotiations now in progress, Dr. Robert W. Gibson, Moderator of the United Presbyterian Church, was among those officiating. In recent years, before the Presbyterian Church, U. S. (Southern), rejected a merger proposal, its Moderator, likewise, was asked to officiate at the Lord’s table.

—C.F.H.H.

Digest …

► Dr. Duke K. McCall, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, named chairman of Accrediting Commission of American Association of Theological Schools.… Brig. Gen. Lester Maitland, first man to fly non-stop from U. S. to Hawaii, ordained deacon in Protestant Episcopal Church, Iron River, Michigan.

► Chicago management consultant firm—Booz, Allen and Hamilton—hired to study ways of improving effectiveness of Southern Baptist Convention agencies.… Annual budgets of 155 churches between Windsor and Ottawa, Canada, boosted from $1,000,000 to $2,500,000 in biggest Protestant stewardship campaign ever undertaken in the country.

► Dr. Carrol A. Wise, professor of pastoral psychology and counseling, Garret Biblical Institute, Evanston, Ill., elected president of board of governors of Council for Clinical Training, Inc., with 42 accredited training centers.

► C. E. Bryant, public relations director of Baylor University, named director of publications of Baptist World Alliance.… University of Chicago Press announces publication date of January 26 for first English translation of Walter Bauer’s Worterbuch, formerly available only in German to Greek New Testament students.

► Each family belonging to Hillcrest Methodist, Bloomington, Minn., receives key to front door of church.

Aroused Broadcasters

Unusual interest is being shown in the 14th annual convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, Inc., scheduled for the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D. C., January 30–31.

In what promises to be the largest and most representative gathering in the history of the NRB, there will be two main concerns:

*A new strategy for the preservation of the right to purchase radio-television time for the broadcasting of the Gospel.

*Development of more effective religious broadcasting techniques.

Special interest in the convention resulted from the official pronouncement of the Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches against the purchase of radio and television time for the broadcasting of religion. (The National Council apparently wants to control the allocation of broadcast and film time.)

Members of the NRB, affected by the active implementation of this policy, broadcast on 80 per cent of the nation’s radio and television stations. It is estimated that their annual budgets are in excess of $10,000,000, most of which is spent for broadcasting time.

Representatives of the religious broadcasting field who will address the convention are Dr. Eugene R. Bertermann, executive director of The Lutheran Hour; Dr. Theodore H. Epp, head of The Back to the Bible Hour; Dr. Peter Eldersveld, The Back to God Hour of the Christian Reformed Church; Dr. Clarence W. Jones, president of the World Radio Missionary Fellowship and director of Station HCJB, “Voice of the Andes.”

Faith On Campus

The 2,360 delegates to the Southern Baptist Student World Missions Congress in Nashville, Tennessee, signed commitment cards pledging themselves to relate their faith “integrally” to campus life.

An estimated 200 of the delegates also pledged themselves to full-time service as missionaries or in other Christian vocations. They responded to a call given by Dr. Baker J. Cauthen, executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention’s foreign mission board.

Dr. Cauthen said he believed a chain reaction would develop when the delegates returned to their campuses, with “many other recruits” coming from the influence of the Congress.

Exclusive Right

The U. S. State Department has announced that the Republic of Colombia is reconsidering an order banning a substantial area of the country to Protestant missionaries.

“Since 1951,” the Department said, “there have been numerous incidents of violence against American Protestant missionaries and the destruction of American mission property.”

Under terms of a so-called Mission Agreement signed by the government of Colombia on January 29, 1953, the Roman Catholic Church was given the exclusive right to proselytize and carry on religious and educational work in “a considerably expanded area, believed now to constitute between two-thirds and three-fourths of the national territory.”

A number of Protestant missions were closed as a result of the order.

The Department added:

“The Colombian government has given considerable study to the problem, and has indicated that it hopes it will be possible to re-open the closed churches in the near future.”

Major Advance

Speakers at the eighth annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Philadelphia described the Dead Sea Scrolls as “a major advance in biblical scholarship.”

Dr. R. Laird Harris of Covenant Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, said the scrolls have given “new importance and value” to the Septuagint, or first Greek translation of the Old Testament.

Dr. Ned B. Stonehouse, dean of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, was elected president of the society. He succeeds Dr. Roger B. Nicole of Gorden Divinity School, Boston, who presented a paper on “Opportunities and Perils of Evangelical Scholarship.”

Treasures On Earth

Clergymen will have to lay a little more money aside in 1957 to pay their self-employment tax under social security coverage.

The rate is going up from 3 to 33/8 per cent this year, with the tax assessed against the first $4,200 of a clergyman’s income. This raises the maximum payment from $126 to $141.75.

Since the tax is due in a lump sum, many clergymen follow the plan of laying aside a specific amount each month. The payment must be made at the time personal income tax returns for the year are filed. These are due on April 15 of the year following the end of the calendar year. The higher tax, therefore, will not be paid until April 15, 1958.

In return for the increased tax, clergymen who become completely disabled because of accident or illness may retire on full social security payment at any time after the age of 50 and wives will be eligible for benefits at age 62 instead of 65.

Theology

Bible Text of the Month: Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and

Between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head,

And thou shalt bruise his heel (Genesis 3:15).

This text embraces and comprehends within itself everything noble and glorious that is to be found anywhere in the Scriptures.—LUTHER.

The obverse side of the sentence upon the serpent is a curse upon him; the reverse a promise for mankind. Before the penal sentence upon man is pronounced, the mercy of God fashions the curse upon the tempter into hope for the tempted.—F. DELITZSCH.

The first promise was revealed, proposed and given, as containing and expressing the only means of delivery from that apostasy from God, with all the effects of it, under which our first parents and all their posterity were cast by sin. The destruction of Satan and his work in his introduction of the state of sin, by a Savior and Deliverer, was prepared and provided for in it. This is the very foundation of the faith of the church; and if it be denied, nothing of the economy or dispensation of God towards it from the beginning can be understood.—JOHN OWEN.

Implanted Enmity

The statement emphasizes that it is God who will not suffer this enmity to die down: “I will put.” God wants man to continue in undying opposition to this evil one and He rouses the enmity Himself.—H. C. LEUPOLD.

In the place of the false, ungodly and man-destroying peace between the serpent and the woman, must there come in, between them, a good and salutary enmity, established by God.—J. P. LANGE.

The work of regeneration is included in the first promise. We cannot have an enmity to that which is the same with our nature, without a change of disposition. That foolish appetite, affected sensuality, indulgence to the flesh, the cause of our first friendship with Satan, must be changed into divine desires, affection to heavenly things, a mortification of the flesh, before a man can part with this friendship.—STEPHEN CHARNOCK.

Had not the devil spite and enmity enough against men, without God’s putting enmity between them? Yes, enough and enough again; but man had not enmity enough against the devil. He had been too much friends with him, in hearkening to him, obeying him, complying with him to the violating of God’s command, and the undoing of all mankind; and should he still continue in that compliance with him, there were no hope of recovery, no way but eternal ruin. Therefore, it was a most comfortable and happy passage, when God himself takes on him to dissolve this society, and to set hem at odds,—that the seed of the woman should set the devil at defiance, be an enemy to him, and fight against him,—and, at last, through God’s strength and good assistance, tread him under foot.—JOHN LIGHTFOOT.

Wicked Versus The Righteous

“Thy seed”—There must be meant the children of the evil one who are of their father the devil and will do the lusts of their father (John 8:44). If “seed” must refer to a whole class and so is used in the collective sense in the one half of the statement, then “seed” in the second half or parallel member of the statement must be used collectively for the descendants or posterity of woman. To take the word “seed of the woman” at this point at once in the sense of an individual and so as a definite and exclusive reference to Christ the Savior is wrong and grammatically impossible.—H. C. LEUPOLD.

There are four things here intimated, each of which is worthy of notice. (1) The ruin of Satan’s cause, was to be accomplished by one in human nature. (2) It was to be accomplished by the seed of the woman. Satan had made use of her to accomplish his purposes, and God would defeat his schemes through the same medium. (3) The victory should be obtained, not only by the Messiah himself, but by all his adherents. (4) Though it should be a long war, and the cause of the serpent would often be successful, yet in the end it should be utterly ruined. The head is the seat of life, which the heel is not.—ANDREW FULLER.

The enmity is spiritual, but the warfare often times is outward. The first manifestation of this enmity was in blood. Cain slew Abel. Why? Because he was of the evil one. And so it hath been carried on by blood from that day to this.—JOHN OWEN.

Against the natural serpent the conflict may be carried on by the whole human race, by all who are born of woman, but not against Satan. As he is a foe who can only be met with spiritual weapons, none can encounter him successfully but such as possess and make use of spiritual arms. Hence the idea of the seed is modified by the nature of the foe.—C. F. KEIL.

Bruising Of Head And Heel

If we had a lively feeling of the serpent’s poison, we could not but rejoice in our Captain, who hath bruised his head.—JOHN TRAPP.

In the protracted struggle with Satan thou mayest receive many a wound.… Still be thou in Christ; abiding in Him as the Seed of the woman and thy Savior; and thou shalt have confidence and good hope through grace. Satan may wound thee, but only in thy heel. His own head is bruised; and he has no power over thee, no power to keep thee under condemnation, no power to keep thee under bondage, no power to prevail against thee, either as the accuser or as the oppressor.—R. S. CANDLISH.

By head, we are to understand the whole power, subtilty and destroying nature of the devil; for as in the head of the serpent lieth his power, subtilty and poisonous nature; so in sin, death, hell and the wisdom of the flesh, lieth the very strength of the devil himself. Take away sin, then, and death is not hurtful.… Wherefore, the seed, Jesus Christ, in his braising the head of the serpent, must take away sin, abolish death and conquer the power of the grave.—JOHN BUNYON.

This promise was the great charter of our redemption, and the foundation of the faith of Adam’s posterity for several ages. It was indeed spoken to the serpent, but for the sake of man; a threatening to the tempter, and a promise to the tempted, and an argument of terror to the first, and support to the latter. Christ is here proposed for men’s comfort under the notion of a conqueror, but yet under the notion of a sufferer; his passion in his heel was to precede his breaking his enemies’ head; so his sufferings are first to be eyed by faith before his victory.—STEPHEN CHARNOCK.

Application

We perceive, that the person, sufferings, glory and triumphs of the Redeemer; the character, tribulations and felicity of the redeemed; the temporary success and final ruin of all enemies of Christ and his people; and indeed almost the whole history of the church, and of the world, through time and to eternity, are compendiously delineated in this singular verse; which stands, and will stand to the end of time, an internal demonstration that the Scripture was given by inspiration from God.—THOMAS SCOTT.

This victory also is set out in the New Testament in such expressions and phrases as evidently doth allude to this very promise in Genesis, as the accomplishment of it. Romans 16:20, “And God shall tread down Satan under your feet shortly.” It is God indeed treads him down, and yet it is their feet he is trodden under. Yea and Christ himself is pleased to give forth to his apostles, and us in them, our part and share in this victory over Satan, under the same expressions and allusion to this promise, as then bequeathed to us together with himself, Luke 10:19, when speaking of their subduing Satan, verse 17, and by their ministry throwing him down as lightning, verse 18, he utters it in these words, verse 19, “Behold I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and all the power of the enemy.”—THOMAS GOODWIN.

Christ is the leader of the seed of the woman, the captain and head of it in this great conflict; and Satan, as he was the head of the apostasy from God, continues the head of his seed, the generation of vipers, to try out the contest with Christ unto the end. The victory shall always be to the seed of the woman.—JOHN OWEN.

The protevangel contains the germ of all later Messianic prophecies; therefore is it so universal, so comprehensive, so dark, and yet so striking and distinct in its fundamental features. As the ground outline of the future of salvation, it denotes: 1. The religious ethical strife between good and evil in the world, and the sensible presentation of this strife through natural contrasts—the serpent, the woman. 2. The concrete form of this strife and its gradual genealogical unfoldings: the seed of the serpent, the seed of the evil one, and the children of evil; the seed of the good and the children of salvation. 3. The decision to be expected: the wounding of the woman’s seed in the heel, that is, in his human capability of suffering, and its connection with the earth, the treading down or the destruction, not of the serpent’s seed merely, but of the serpent himself, and that too in his head, the very centre of his life. The whole is, therefore, the prediction of an universal conflict for salvation, with the prospect of victory. From this basis the promise proceeds in ever-narrowing circles, until it passes over from the general seed of the woman to the ideal seed and from that again draws out in ever-widening circles, together with the self-unfolding promise of the kingdom of God.—J. P. LANGE.

Theology

Thoughts on Artificial Insemination

G. Aiken Taylor

Artificial insemination (the procedure whereby a donor renders a woman pregnant through the medium of a physician’s instruments and office) today is no longer an academic question. No accurate records are available, but the guarded testimony of physicians and parents indicates that in the United States alone thousands of “test-tube” babies are born every year. And the number is increasing as additional couples hurdle the barrier of the husband’s reproductive impotency with the impersonal cooperation of an unseen and unknown third party to the marriage. Not long ago a national magazine carried an article defending the practice, written by a woman who was then awaiting her third such pregnancy.

Recent Debate Inconclusive

The practice, of course, involves fundamental moral and spiritual considerations. These, in the light of growing acceptance, may not be ignored or taken for granted. And, as a matter of fact, the moral implications of artificial insemination have already received wide attention in both the ecclesiastical and medical press, but thus far without generally conclusive results.

It is possible to state the fundamental moral question very simply: Does the method used sanction the conception of a child by a man who is not the husband of the mother? Or, in other words, is it possible that circumstances may occur when it is morally and spiritually excusable for a woman to have a child by a third party to her marriage?

Arguments Pro And Con

Doctors and sociologists in increasing numbers say yes. They point to the impersonal nature of the arrangement; to the natural hunger of married couples for children; to the frustrations that inevitably attend a childless marriage; and to the absence of physical or emotional entanglements between husband and wife which this antiseptic arrangement presumably provides. They often speak of this act as a simple medical procedure which, to all practical purposes, now allows the husband himself to become a father—although the semen is not actually his.

But the fact remains that the woman who submits herself to artificial insemination has a child by a man who is not her husband. The donor, not the husband, is the true father of the child that is subsequently born. The productive union between this father and this mother is not that of husband and wife. It may properly be asked, therefore, if the infant is not, logically and literally, born out of wedlock?

On the other hand, supporters of artificial insemination point out that the procedure can hardly be called natural intercourse. And without the physical sensations associated with sex, can this be adultery?

Some Related Questions

But such attempts to justify the practice on account of the procedure employed raise other questions: If the method used to accomplish this conception and pregnancy is without moral stigma, then why wouldn’t it be morally right for any woman to have children this way, even unmarried ones? Why a husband at all? Most women crave the joys of motherhood, spinsters as well as matrons; and millions are denied those joys because they never marry. If it is morally defensible to have children via the test-tube and without benefit of clergy, then why not any woman who desires children, whether single or married? As a matter of fact, Dr. Joseph Fletcher, in his book, Morals and Medicine (p. 103) reports that Dr. Frances Seymour, medical director of Eugene Alleviation of Sterility, Inc., in England, frankly confesses to the frequent impregnation of single girls. Dr. Fletcher declares (p. 132) that whatever you may say of this, you certainly cannot accuse the girls of adultery. Maybe not (depending on your definition of adultery), but neither can you say that their children are born in wedlock.

It seems that the case for artificial insemination rests heavily on the fact that a husband is standing by. Apparently (unless you believe that single girls may also have children this way, in which case the fundamental question becomes an altogether different one) he is something of a moral “catalyst” which sanctions the arrangement. If the woman has a legitimate (and willing) husband, she may proceed in this roundabout fashion to become impregnated by another man. Thus the whole question boils down to the impersonal nature of the arrangement and depends, for its moral validity, upon the fact that the true father unites with the mother, but without bodily contact. Otherwise, of course, the act would clearly be adultery.

But we are not discussing adultery, and the fact or the absence of bodily contact in artificial insemination is beside the point. The question, “Whose child is this?” does not necessarily follow upon every instance of adultery, nor does a woman of many loves commit adultery only with the father of her illegitimate child. Of course, moral looseness has usually been charged against those who had children out of wedlock, because prior to the practice of artificial insemination there was simply no other possible conclusion. But now, the question of paternity must be considered apart from that of sexual morality. And there seems to be no reason to declare that, because science has come up with a new wrinkle, a woman may now bear a child by just whomsoever she pleases. Or as often and by as many different men as she pleases. The question of personality and of fundamental personal identity is at stake. We cannot morally agree that it makes no difference whose child this is.

Additional Difficulties Cited

Other bothersome questions, however, occur: if the husband is not the true father, should he be considered a step-father? Or would god-father be better? Perhaps his is the spirit of the compassionate suitor who marries the ravished maid in order to give her child a name? Most bothersome of all: if artificial insemination is morally defensible in order to meet the problem of the husband’s impotency, then why not to avoid the transmission of undesirable inheritable characteristics—or for a host of lesser reasons?

Then there is the time factor. If it is the married estate which legitimatizes test-tube conceptions, the whole plan will depend upon whether the marriage lasts until after the child is born. Should the husband be removed from the picture unexpectedly, the wife might revert to the legal status of an unmarried girl insofar as her child is concerned!

Inherently A Marital Breach

Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was the first on record to practice the principle of artificial insemination, if not the method, when she gave her handmaid, Hagar, to her husband in order to redeem her own infertility by proxy, as it were. However, neither the Scriptures nor subsequent history have tended to justify a continuation of the practice. Any marriage which does not bring happiness or fulfillment tends to disappointment and sometimes to bitterness, of course. But not yet is the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness permissible beyond prescribed moral bounds. Both the Roman and the Anglican communions have come out strongly against artificial insemination as intrinsically a breach of marriage. The rest of us can do no less, in this instance, than to follow their view.

G. Aiken Taylor, minister of First Presbyterian Church of Alexandria, La., holds the Ph.D. degree from Duke University, and is author of A Sober Faith and St. Luke’s Life of Jesus. A Calvin scholar, his doctoral thesis centered on the Reformer’s view of Christian Education.

Ideas

Conversations With Chinese Christians

Conversations With Chinese Christians

The tragic gulf between the nations of the world in this generation of grief must not be allowed to threaten the unity of the body of Christ. Russians, Chinese, Yugoslavians, Hungarians, Indians, Japanese, Britons and Americans alike belong to that body, equal in dignity and privilege, if they have been regenerated by the Spirit of God. There is neither East nor West in the body of which Christ is the head, but one faith, one Lord, one baptism.

One can sympathize, therefore, with the repeatedly expressed hope for renewed contact between believers in Russia and China and believers in the Free World. Almost six years have passed since American missionaries and Chinese believers have had free conversations. The break in relationships came not without some measure of ecclesiastical animosity; in fact, Chinese member churches requested in 1951 that the World Council cease all correspondence. Of the 4200 Protestant foreign missionaries in China in 1948, not more than ten remained in 1955, some of these reportedly in prison. Of the 6475 Catholic missionaries in 1949, less than 84 remained; 20 of the remaining missionary priests were allegedly imprisoned.

The suffering and sorrow of Christians behind the Iron Curtain are part of the burden that more fortunate Christians may help them bear. If direct help is excluded, at least they can pray and understand. Lack of information about the persecuted church in China has curtailed intercessory interest among world Christians.

Whether this communion of saints is best achieved by exchange groups of ecumenically-minded churchmen making tourist stops in the churches of the Soviet Union and Red China is another matter.

We may waive for the moment the marginal question of whether a contingent of ecumenical clergymen, traveling under State Department auspices, adequately reflects the outlook and temper of American Christianity. Even more important is the question: Is it judicious for American churchmen to go abroad and confer recognition and dignity upon foreign churchmen standing in cordial relations with a regime that has martyred and imprisoned hosts of believers?

Leading churchmen have been agitating for the State Department to permit a delegation to visit Communist China, with the ultimate objective of an exchange visit by Chinese churchmen to the U.S.A. Dr. John A. Mackay, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, has called bluntly for revision of state policy, virtually impugning the present restrictions as anti-Christian: “Christian churchmen simply cannot regard as ultimate and permanently authoritative any governmental edict that would force them to accept a situation which violates their Christian conscience and the eternal imperative of Christian love.” These are strong words, a stinging indictment of American foreign policy from church sources. One wonders whether such words have been uttered in China by the churchmen Dr. Mackay proposes to visit?

When evangelicals think of fellow-believers in Communist China, their hearts go out first to those who suffer for their witness to Jesus Christ as the crucified and risen Lord. The 3000 evangelicals reportedly languishing in concentration camps and prisons would welcome a resumption of contact with believers outside Red China and would ably interpret to them the innate spiritual antagonism between Communism and Christianity.

The relationship of these persecuted believers to the churches and churchmen tolerated by the Red regime in China is quite ambiguous. We are not suggesting that the government-approved church hegemony includes no men of sincere Christian faith and experience struggling in their own way to save the churches in China from extinction, and seeking a more favorable state policy. Nor do we contend that no evangelical workers have joined the pro-Communist church leadership. But nonetheless the evangelical spirit in China has gone to prison and martyrdom, whereas the liberal spirit is the moving force in the pro-Communist ecclesiastical thrust. A sketch of the fortunes of Christianity in China indicates that, although ecumenical leaders convey the notion that there is one Protestant church in China (“the Church on the Mainland”), multitudes of evangelical believers opposed to Communist restriction and control of spiritual activities and now unorganized if not underground are outside the “official church.”

The fundamentalist-modernist struggle in China was confined mainly to the big cities, as a contest waged between leaders of church life. Influential for the modernist cause were liberal books published by the Association Press, including works by T. C. Chao, former dean of Yenching University School of Religion, later elected a president of the World Council of Churches at the Amsterdam Assembly.

When the government-approved Three Self-Reform Church Movement was formed in 1951, inclusivist church leaders emphasized unity on the basis of anti-imperialism, and identified the modernist-fundamentalist debate as a minor disagreement within a major unity. Theological differences were said to add abundance and richness to the unity, rather than to hinder it. The Nanking United Theological Seminary featured “courses in the area of theology and Bible … divided into two sections according to the modernist and fundamentalist point of view.” H. H. Tsui, more than 15 years general secretary of the organically united Church of Christ in China, and who disowns belief in the doctrines of the incarnation, virgin birth, resurrection, trinity, last judgment and second coming of Christ, pursues this course in a recent article titled “We Must Strengthen and Expand Our Unity.” Y. T. Wu, chairman of the Three Self-Reform Church Patriotic Committee, in Darkness and Light, writes: “During the past thirty years my thinking has experienced two great changes. The first was when I accepted Christianity; from religious doubt I moved to religious faith. The second change was when I accepted the anti-religious principles of social science and combined materialism and religious faith in one philosophy.”

Communism had its inception in China just a generation ago, in July, 1921, in an army cell in Canton. Within six years it gained power enough to challenge the government and to threaten all religious faiths. In 1927, shrines, temples and churches were destroyed in central China. Christian missionaries headed homeward by hundreds; missions effort slowed almost to a stall. The Communist withdrew to the mountain areas of China only to recruit and train for a better opportunity, presented by the end of the Sino-Japanese War. Having won the long struggle with the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai Shek, the Communists in October, 1949, set up “The People’s Republic of China.” The Communist cause was unwittingly promoted by a surprising number of Americans; journalists, State Department representatives and some missionaries. Some of the latter, having discarded biblical supernaturalism, tended to view Communism as a form of Christian social and economic reform which the masses needed. Communism was welcomed as an acceptable exposition of Christian social ethics; not even the notion that it is “a Christian heresy” survived. Chinese Christian youth became easy victims, including those in many mission-sponsored colleges.

The Communists appeared in the new role of protectors of all religion; The Common Programme, Article V, guaranteed “freedom of religious faiths.” Five Protestant leaders were invited to help participate in the writing of the new constitution and set up the government. In 1951 one of them became chairman of the Communist-approved church reorganization that claimed to represent 40 per cent of China’s million Protestants. Under government auspices 158 Protestant leaders met to form the united church movement. Church workers and members were urged to adopt the Communist practice of “self-criticism” by searching out and publicizing faults of churches and Christians, a technique which led to the imprisonment of many evangelical leaders. During 1951 alone, at least 228 accusation meetings were held in 133 cities, aimed at Christian workers opposing Communism. Christian conferences in Peking in 1951 and 1954 were largely oriented to the government’s political program. The Christian mission was represented by such slogans as “Loyalty to Country and Church” and “Service to the People.” Government hostility was directed against Protestant efforts that refused cooperation to this state-approved effort. The majority of evangelicals were reluctant to join up. Evangelical Foreign Missions Association points out that there were only spotty defections of a small minority, including a few leaders; the vast majority resisted pressures to join the Communist-approved church agency. Many of their churches have since been occupied or closed by the government. All are pressured to display the picture of President Mao Tse Tung and the Five Star Flag. Leaders have been falsely accused, tortured and imprisoned with the aim of forced confessions. Only in the larger cities are some congregations allowed to carry on, because attempts to dissolve some churches have yielded several congregations in their place. In the case of “unreformed churches,” however, heavy land taxes are imposed, and if not promptly paid, a fine of one-half per cent per day is added. The result of Communist policy is to make evangelical Christianity secret and silent.

The Three Self-Reform (self-government, self-support, self-propagation) Church Patriotic Committee, the Communist government-approved agency representing Protestant church bodies, has virtually replaced the National Christian Council. A bridge between church and government, it attempts officially to direct Christian activity in Red China, exerting pressure on all church groups to affiliate, sponsoring study groups and patriotic campaigns in which Christians must take part, and publicizes accusations and charges against “reactionary elements.”

In 1954 a sixteen-day Conference of the Christian Church was convened, July 22-August 6, in East Peking, with 232 delegates from 62 denominations and organizations attending. Leaders lamented the fact that of the million Protestants it had been hoped to force into the government-sponsored movement, only 414,389 had signed the new church manifesto. This was tacit to an admission that the Three Self-Reform Church group had been unable to enlist the majority of Protestants in China, and represented only a minority. The manifesto pledged support to the construction of a socialist society, to the right of freedom of religion used “in the interests of the People” and to the promotion of patriotism in the churches. Wu Yao Tsung, president of the movement, a member also of the standing committee of the government’s Political Consultative Conference, has taken the line that missionaries of the past extended imperialistic aggression through their preaching of the Gospel. His hostility is clear: “We know that … American mission boards are … studying the reasons for their failure in China, in order to work out a new policy for using the Chinese churches.…” Mr. Wu told the National Conference in 1954: “Regardless of who the person may be, he cannot use freedom of religion as a pretext to engage in activities contrary to the Constitution.”

The reports about Christianity in China issuing from the state-approved church follow an interesting pattern. At the expense of the Peking government, in 1953 nine Swedish citizens led by Bishop Theodor Arvidson, and in 1954 twelve Norwegians with the Rev. Ragnar Forbech, visited Red China and gave approving reports. In May, 1954, 21 leaders of the Three Self-Reformed Church (now using the more appealing title of The Protestant Christain Reform Movement) denied reports of the death sentence and execution of 29 pastors (including Pastor Wang Ming Tao) the previous month by the Chinese People’s Government. They issued a joint statement: “Not a single pastor has been sentenced to death since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. On the contrary, the churches in China are enjoying full freedom of religion.” In January, 1955, Dag Hammarskjold, with the Rev. Gustav Nystrom of Stockholm as interpeter, returned from Peking with appreciation both of the organized church in China and of Premier Chou En-lai. In the interim the American agitation for deputations of churchmen to visit “the Church of the Mainland” has continued to mount.

If the State Department is inclined to lift its present ban on visas to Red China (enforced presumably because the U.S.A. cannot guarantee protection and security to its citizens in that land), some pointed questions must be raised about the renewal of Christian relations. If a Christian delegation goes to Red China, ought not its objective to be those who suffer for their faith and who by virtue of that fact can best interpret to us the clash between government and church? Reports persist that 3000 evangelicals languish in the concentration camps of Red China; dare we learn the truth about them? Is the full picture of the fortunes of Christianity likely to be obtained from those who for one reason or another have escaped the cruelties and hostilities of the Peiping regime and are associated with an agency whose present freedoms derive from a cooperative effort approved as an instrument of government doctrine and policy? This question is of utmost importance.

By the same token, if in the future we are to have a return visit from China, ought it not to be made by Christian leaders who have been imprisoned and who are ready now to assure us either that the Red rulers have had a change of heart, or at least a change of strategy, or that their confinement grew out of just misunderstandings? Might not such a delegation appropriately include Pastor Wang Ming-tao, arrested in Peking the night of August 8, 1955, after 30 years of preaching and writing? Pastor Wang’s story is set forth in the Occasional Bulletin of the Missionary Research Library (Vol. VII, No. 3). The son of Chinese Christians, a college man who grappled long with a call to Christian service, his theological perspectives fell to him from evangelical European missionaries, Pentecostalists among them. He worked independently of foreign denominations and church groups, although in close cooperation with indigenous Christian efforts. During the Sino-Japanese war, before the Communist era, he refused to join the North China Church Union sponsored by Japanese militarists. After the Communist victory, he refused cooperation with the Communist-favored “progressive leadership” in the Chinese church. When the “Three Self-Reform Church Patriotic Committee” brought pressure on him, he openly defied it. Pastor Wang was known throughout China through his writings, and his popularity made him a symbol of evangelical fortunes. Wang’s independency made it hard to tag him as “an agent of imperialism”; for a season government and church leaders even pointed to him as an example of religious freedom under Red rule. But in 1954 and 1955, “progressive” church leaders joined actively in a campaign of public vilification against him. Christians were forced to call him friend or foe. Wang refused to unite with the Church Reform Committee on biblical grounds and for the sake of faith. His opponents labeled him a counter-revolutionary. For his refusal to cooperate with the political front he was sentenced to fifteen years; his wife and son, for the present, are being permitted to carry on his church work. It would be well to let him speak his heart to the American believers. Similar observations are in order with regard to an American delegation. Nothing impressive is involved in a visit by distinguished ecumenical leaders. Those who bear in their bodies the marks of activity and initiative do not always bear the marks of persecution for Christ’s sake. Would not an American delegation to China more aptly be comprised of veterans of American missionary labors in China, men and women who faced the totalitarian tyrant in their own person and who preferred prison to an acceptance of the encroachments of the state against religious freedom and the Great Commission? Would not Dr. Levi Lovegren, released by Communists after years in prison, be qualified? There are Roman Catholic missionaries from America who also have suffered abroad and for that reason qualify. Bishop Donaghy, after release from his long imprisonment in Wuchow, South China, told the press in Hong Kong that Chou En-lai’s claim of religious freedom in China is utterly false. If American missionaries released from prison are lacking in number, why not consider Dr. Walter H. Judd, the distinguished congressman from Minnesota, himself a veteran of missionary service in China in the Protestant liberal tradition, yet a churchman who does not dismiss Communism as merely “a Christian heresy”?

Apart from such safeguards the proposal for conversations with Chinese Christians is of doubtful value, and may easily deteriorate into a monologue by Communist collaborationists.

END

Ministering Between The Living And The Dead

A patient, suffering from an acute massive hemorrhage, was recently rushed to a hospital. The surgeon had been notified of the emergency and the operating room was ready, the patient being transferred directly from the ambulance to the operating table.

Life was almost gone; the face with pallid greenish tinge spoke of death. There was no pulse, but the heart was still beating. The source of the hemorrhage was quickly located and the necessary steps were immediately taken to control it. A large amount of blood and plasma was needed and these were administered immediately. A few hours later the surgeon could talk with the patient so recently but one step from eternity.

The whole procedure in this case was one of the utmost speed designed to save life, using those things known to be needed and effective to that end.

Science has made possible the equipment and the means necessary for many emergencies which may confront the human body, but, the emergency of the soul must be met by the One alone who came into this world for that purpose.

In a prayer, a successful pastor asked the Lord to never let him forget that as a minister of the Gospel he stood between the living and the dead.

Here we find God’s highest calling: not to relieve a malady which may recur, not to heal a body which must eventually die but to stand as a witness of the living Christ to those who are spiritually dead.

It is a strange commentary on human nature that we will applaud the efforts of a physician or surgeon who acts with speed to avert tragic consequences from accident or disease, but at the same time will often criticize the minister for being “sentimental” or “emotional” if he pleads with the spiritually dead to turn from their sins to the Saviour.

Is this not one of the reasons why the faithful preaching of the Gospel can never be popular with the world. Men do not like to be told that they are sinners. They do not want to hear that they are dead. They resent being told that they are lost. But, that is a part of preaching and a very necessary part.

Some years ago a man was preaching to a large audience in India. He mentioned the weight of sin. A young man arose and asked, “How much does sin weigh? A pound? A ton?” The reply of the speaker came right to the point. “Does a dead man feel a weight when you place it on his body? Just so, a man who is spiritually dead does not feel the weight of sin. But, when God’s Spirit stirs in his heart he becomes conscious of his sin and of his need for one to save him from that sin and its consequences.”

Yes, the minister does stand between the living and the dead. May he never forget it and may his parishioners always uphold his hands in prayer as he preaches and as he daily faces the emergencies of lost souls.

Without the power of God no dead soul can come to life. Only by a miracle of grace can the blind see and the deaf hear. Preaching the Gospel and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit are the two requirements for raising the dead.

END

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