INCOGNITO CHORALES

One of my kin has furnished me with a page from the student newspaper of a metropolitan seminary featuring the words for a new hymn by an anonymous author. The writer, having learned of the success of Arius in popularizing his heresy in song, feels that his seminary should not lose this wide open opportunity to spread its theology.

Old Tune, New Sentiment

His contribution to a great new movement is set to the tune of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and begins:

“What a myth we have in Jesus

O how meaningful to me,

Existentially confronted

In artistic liturgy.

Though in life we often languish

Mid its ambiguity,

Jesus points to the solution,

Transcending all symbolically.”

This may have to be taken with a grain of salt, but it suggests what some of these newer movements in theology could do for (or to) the grand old hymns.

Rosy-Tinted Lyrics

Something of the kind has been tried in the past; you may remember the rosy-tinted lyrics:

“Just as I am, young, strong and free,

To be the best that I can be

For truth, and righteousness and Thee …”

This was substituted as a reversed version of the original:

“Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;

Sight, riches, healing of the mind,

Yea, all I need in Thee I find.…

Existential Replacements

Since this substitution was not very successful, perhaps my kin can provide more existential replacements. Contributors may become charter subscribers to my monthly choir collection, Incognito Chorales. You may have a paradoxology in mind, or perhaps you can add to such new numbers as:

“A critic snips the sacred page …”

“Angels, from the realms of story …”

“My hope is built on less and less.…”

Psychotherapeutic psalmody is also desired; e.g., “Relax, my soul, calm every nerve.” Address all entries to:

EUTYCHUS

ADVENTIST AVALANCHE

My confidence in your integrity has been justified. While I might have added a bit more context to a quotation or two and, while I obviously arrive at different conclusions than Mr. Lindsell (Mar. 31, Apr. 14 issues), I must say that he states the case with integrity and fairness.

Alaska Mission of SDA

Ketchikan, Alaska

I found Mr. Lindsell’s article … deeply stimulating and indicative of considerable personal research. I congratulate a man who will investigate for himself before making an evaluation.

Marinette, Wis.

Lindsell … rediscovered the great bond that marks us all as brethren—our failings.

SDA Church

Mountain Home, Ark.

How does he classify the churches who actively support religious legislation in the form of Sunday laws? Where does grace end and legalism begin for those who teach the sufficiency of Christ’s death for man’s salvation, but who also seek to legislate that same man (as well as unbelievers) into a religious observance of a day under the threat of civil penalties?

Central Union Conference

Lincoln, Neb.

• A number of letters have made this point. If Sunday laws do represent legalism, it is here found in a far less crucial area than when ensconced in the doctrines of salvation.—ED.

Our good friend … would have us believe that because a man is saved by grace he can go on breaking the law … I take my stand with John Wesley, Martin Luther, John Knox, and D. L. Moody who make clear … that the law of God written on two tables of stone will stand through … eternity.

Lethbridge, Alta.

To the rich young ruler Christ said, “… If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” And it is unfortunate for Brother Lindsell and his fellow antinomians that this statement relating commandment-keeping to entering into eternal life, cannot be credited to Ellen G. White.

Reseda, Calif.

We … keep all ten of God’s commandments (only by power of Christ) … We disagree … that a person can be saved, sanctified, backslidden, satisfied, and yet saved.

SDA Church

Bellingham, Wash.

Could it possibly be that to qualify as an evangelical one must have a conscience that will permit him to knowingly disobey one of God’s Ten Commandments?… We cannot be saved by merely keeping the commandments but we can be lost by breaking them.

San Jose, Calif.

I strenuously protest … “A man may be a genuine believer who believes in soul sleep …” How can one, who disbelieves what the master said to the dying thief.

Christian & Missionary Alliance Church Altoona, Pa.

I cannot teach my children, for whom I am responsible to God, that they are at liberty to set aside or try and change any or all or one of God’s commandments …

Glendale, Calif.

The SDA position on the Sabbath observance is utterly hopeless … However, SDA can still build around the person of Christ and by junking its errors find a place with other Christian communities.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal

Port Angeles, Wash.

Is [the] child of God expected to obey God while growing up? And if so, is this not in some measure salvation by works?

Mr. Lindsell objects to the teaching of SDAs that disobedience to the command to “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” might bar one from entrance into the kingdom of God. Should this be thought strange when … Paul … says that adultery, idolatry, hatred, murder, drunkenness … will keep one out of the kingdom of God?

SDA Church

Vincennes, Ind.

What I want to know is: the seventh from what? Has anyone gone back to the year one and traced all the weeks down to present date, to be sure that we have the right days? If we part and go around the world in opposite directions—when we meet again one has gained a day and one lost a day; which day should be kept? When the day comes that we are known and do know, I will not be surprised to learn that I have been keeping, perhaps, Wednesday and the seventh-day people Tuesday.

Newfield, N. J.

Mr. Lindsell makes quite a to-do over the Sabbath question but that is nothing more than a smoke-screen for the real issue of the Calvinistic doctrine, “once saved always saved.”

St. Simons Island, Ga.

This statement … I cannot accept: “One acid test marks off Reformation theology from both sacramental theology and all other viewpoints. This has to do with soteriology.…” Reformation theology is sacramental theology as far as Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are concerned.

Peace Lutheran Church

Seattle, Wash.

We do believe in annihilation of the wicked (Mal. 4). We do believe that eternal torment is more in keeping with the character of Satan than of our merciful heavenly Father.

Williamstown, Vt.

I am an Adventist minister … I fail to see how one can read very much on any of these doctrines and not be convinced by the great amount of biblical evidence available to the earnest seeker.

Dinuba, Calif.

SDAs … just 2000 years behind the times.

Gordonville, Pa.

Dr. Lindsell … declares, “I know of no SDA literature that hints that Mrs. White was ever wrong.” Allow me to refer Dr. Lindsell to the words of Mrs. White, “I had taken a wrong position,” cited by Arthur G. Daniells, President of the SDA denomination from 1901 to 1922, in The Abiding Gift of Prophecy, p. 327.

Emmanuel Missionary College

Berrien Springs, Mich.

• It is notable that the only charge of ‘wrongness’ adduced is one by Mrs. White herself. It would be of interest to know if this exhausts the list.—ED.

If God has spoken before—in Testament times—and he chooses to speak again in modern times, is it not possible that the authority of his latter communication is just as valid as the previous?… If Mrs. White … is in harmony with scriptural teaching, as SDAs believe she is, in dealing with vital scriptural doctrine, perhaps one had better be careful in denying a voice of authority in those areas in which she speaks which are not brought forward from definite scriptural statements …

The Sabbath … is a question as to the authority of Jehovah God versus Satan.

Howard University

Washington, D. C.

I have not been able to find that any appeal has been made to her [Mrs. White] writings in SDA doctrinal books to support the views now held by us.

Loma Linda, Calif.

If to be evangelical one must believe that the gifts of the Spirit, one of which is prophecy by divine revelation, are not to be manifest, heeded or accepted, then SDAs cannot be evangelical and still have any reason for being SDAs.

Everett, Wash.

Why are the SDAs the only Sabbath-keeping group singled out and called “legalist”? You will find the answer to the question in Rev. 12:17 [And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed …].

Arlington, Calif.

Significant is it to say that … Lindsell’s article falls into two parts: a) Part II. SDA and the keeping of the commandments (i.e. “The Sabbath Test”). b) Part I. “Role of Ellen G. White” (i.e. the prophetic gift).

Did not Christ foretell, “war with the remnant (church) … which, a) keep the commandments of God, and b) have the testimony of Jesus Christ” Rev. 12:17. (The “testimony of Jesus” is “the Spirit of Prophecy” [Rev. 19:10] or the prophetic gift.) Certainly, “We have a more sure word of prophecy, etc.” (2 Pet. 1:19) in the fulfillment of these articles denouncing SDAs as “not evangelical.”

Press and Public Relations Bureau

Nottingham, England

I believe he honestly tries to evaluate it as an unbiased observer … I charge … Lindsell of deliberate misrepresentation.

Norfolk District of SDA

Norfolk, Neb.

Lindsell finds fault with … Nichol for defending Mrs. White … And if he had not defended her … would not … Lindsell have said that since the accusations against her had not been answered, … they were therefore true? There would appear to be no way of satisfying such a prejudiced mind.

Hawaiian Mission of SDA

Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

The article … was about as bold a display of antinomianism as I have ever seen.

White Plains, N. Y.

I do not hold … SDAs are … consistent or they would practice circumcision.

Pataskala, O.

Is he trying to hoodwink the ignorant and unthinking?

Lincoln, Neb.

Actually, the SDA authors he quotes couldn’t have done a better job in preaching the truths of SDA than Mr. Lindsell. As a SDA I wish to say, “Thank you, Mr. Lindsell. Please keep it up. Maybe the denomination will take you on as a full-time worker.”

Sikeston, Mo.

… Unscholarly contribution … Marietta, Ga.

I feel this is a very well-written and conclusive article on this prominent subject. I wish that it could be put into an attractive tract form to be used with SDAs and to inform Christians.

Glen, N. H.

I came across a very interesting … and fair analysis of SDA. The title … is “The Bible and SDA.” Under this heading the following … are considered: the cleansing of the sanctuary, observance of the Jewish Sabbath, eschatological errors, the inspiration of Mrs. Ellen G. White, salvation through the devil, and deceptive propaganda. This booklet can be obtained from the Faith, Prayer and Tract League, 1016 11th, NW, Grand Rapids, Mich.

Bluffton Christian Reformed Church

Muskegon, Mich.

COOPERATIVE EVANGELISM

Some months ago Christianity published an article in opposition to “separation.” Now it publishes another that avoids meeting the criticism that was made of the first one. In defense of having unbelievers sponsor evangelistic endeavors, Mr. Ferm (Apr. 14 issue) quotes Finney as saying, “My duty is to belong to the church, even if the devil should belong to it.” Does this mean that it would be a sin to leave a church if the devil controls it? At any rate, Mr. Ferm’s argument, during the course of which he asserts, “If it is compromise, then Finney compromised,” requires for its validity the unexpressed premise that Finney could not have compromised. Personally I do not hold such an exalted opinion of Finney. Nor do I think that Jesus’ preaching in the temple is comparable with being sponsored by unbelievers. Jesus did not have the sponsorship of the Pharisees.

The writer also appeals to Wesley, and rebukes some misinformed person who cited Wesley as a separationist. But now may we ask, is Mr. Ferm a member of the Anglican or Episcopal church? If separation is a sin, then all the Methodists are great sinners, and should return to their parent body. And all the rest of us, with them, should return to the Roman Catholic church. It is instructive to see that articles against separation, that is, against the purity of the Church, are ordinarily quiet as to the Protestant Reformation. Their arguments proceed on the tacit assumption that there are no apostate churches from which obedience to God requires separation. But such synagogues of Satan do indeed exist.

Indianapolis, Ind.

The article … is but further evidence of the bankruptcy of thought and unbiblical approach used by those enamored of the current ecumenical evangelism, in a futitle effort to vindicate it. To toss casually and indifferently aside “the few proof texts, such as 2 Cor. 6:14” advanced against the ecumenical program, and the substitution of example on the part of past evangelists, indicates the truthfulness of the fundamentalist charge that such programs are of men and not of God, since God makes known his will only through his Word. The “proof-texts” are not few …, but even if they were but few would still be proof-texts.

First Baptist Church

Johnson City, N. Y.

While it is not always wise to be continuously making war with apostates, it is deadly ever to make peace with them … The chasm between redemptive Christianity and non-redemptive religion … is not bridgeable.

New York City

Much on historical precedent; almost nothing for a scriptural basis. Thus, an extremely lopsided article.

Oldham Baptist Church

Oldham, S. Dak.

ON LOGICAL POSITIVISM

The March 17 issue carried a “Review of Current Thought” by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes of London which was a strange mixture of Scripture paraphrase, dogmatic arrogance, book reviews and confused thinking about contemporary British philosophy.…

From this article one would receive the impression that logical positivism was the current trend of philosophy in Britain and that Language, Truth and Logic by A. J. Ayer was its Bible. This is certainly a gross error. Mr. Hughes in the first paragraph identifies “contemporary linguistic philosophy” with logical positivism. This is a mistake all too common today.…

The book review of E. L. Mascall’s Words and Images is very interesting and rewarding reading … Mr. Hughes has rightly pointed out the Achilles heel of the book from the perspective of an evangelical Christian apologetic. However, I want to defend Dr. Mascall for not appealing to the doctrine of creation: he is not writing theology. Dr. Mascall feels that philosophical questions deserve philosophic answers. On the other hand, if Mr. Hughes had wished to criticize the book he should have concentrated on philosophic issues, for instance, the several Thomist assumptions in the book.…

Mr. Hughes … asserts that logical positivism would have to sacrifice logic to the verification principle. As a matter of history this did not happen; as a matter of logic it was not at all necessary.…

I won’t say much about the arrogant and dogmatic condemnations of the logical positivists.… Philosophic doctrines are not sinful; they are wrong. Mr. Hughes may be quite correct in his analysis of man as sinner. My only contention is that honest philosophic questions and arguments deserve honest sympathy and honest answers. Since it seems that Mr. Hughes cannot refute the positivists, he has used ad hominem arguments.…

Indiana University

Bloomington, Ind.

It is good of Mr. Perkins to take notice of my brief Review of Current Religious Thought; but how he managed to receive the impression from what I wrote that logical positivism is “the current trend of philosophy in Britain” and Professor Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic “its Bible” is a mystery that I have not succeeded in solving. Such a view would indeed be, as Mr. Perkins affirms, “a gross error.” The error, however, resides in his impression rather than in my article, for I neither wrote nor implied any such thing. Mr. Perkins also completely fails to meet my point about the incompatibility of the concept of logic with the verification principle of the logical positivists. As for Dr. Mascall’s Thomistic predilections, I am of course well aware of these, but lack of space precluded an examination of this aspect of his thought.

To suggest, as Mr. Perkins does, that Mascall eschews theology in his book shows the former’s reading of the book to be suspect, for Dr. Mascall does no such thing; nor is it correct to state that he makes no appeal to the doctrine of creation—on the contrary, he speaks of “that unique but universal characteristic of finite beings which manifests their dependence upon the creative activity of a transcendent cause, the God of Christian theology.” My complaint was that Dr. Mascall has failed to indicate in a consistent manner the crucial relevance of this doctrine in any debate on epistemology from the Christian side. I believe that Mr. Perkins is fundamentally wrong in supposing that “philosophical questions deserve philosophical answers,” when the person giving the answers is a Christian. Can he really believe that the fact of man’s creaturehood and fallenness has no bearing on philosophy and must be dismissed as irrelevant theology? In making a distinction between what is sinful and what is wrong I presume Mr. Perkins will be prepared to grant that wrongness is not unconnected with the root of sinfulness. I am consoled that he should have found my review of Dr. Mascall’s book “very interesting and rewarding reading,” for that means the major portion of my article. London

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled (Matthew 5:6).

The end which all healthy religious striving proposes to itself, is to attain this righteousness in fellowship with God; and it can be perfectly realized only when the will is entirely united with God. This condition of perfect oneness of will with God is essential to full self-contentment, that is, blessedness. Therefore, when this righteousness is attained, then, and not till then, will perfect blessedness enter.

Because man had perfect righteousness before the fall, he enjoyed perfect blessedness. If you and I shall, by divine grace, attain to blessedness hereafter, it will be because God has restored us to righteousness. As it was in the first paradise, so must it be in the second—righteousness is essential to the blessedness of man. We cannot be truly happy and live in sin. Holiness is the natural element of blessedness; and it can no more live out of that element than a fish could live in the fire. The happiness of man must come through his righteousness: his being right with God, with man, with himself—indeed, his being right all round.

Spiritual Appetites

Hunger and thirst are appetites that return frequently, and call for fresh satisfactions; so these holy desires rest not in anything attained, but are carried out toward renewed pardons, and daily fresh supplies of grace. The quickened soul calls for constant meals of righteousness, grace to do the work of every day in its day, as duly as the living body calls for food.

MATTHEW HENRY

Hunger and thirst are the strongest of all our bodily appetites. In like manner this hunger in the soul, this thirst after the image of God, is the strongest of all our spiritual appetites, when it is once awakened in the heart: yea, it swallows up all the rest in that one great desire, to be renewed after the likeness of him that created us. From the time we begin to hunger and thirst, those appetites do not cease, but are more and more craving, till we either eat and drink, or die.

JOHN WESLEY

Where the healthful appetite after righteousness is defectively developed in Christian life through undue brooding over faults or nursing of despondent grief, there Christianity grows pale-complexioned, sickly, and womanish. There needs the irrepressible hunger to be and to do what is right, in order that a man may be maintained in the activities of spiritual manhood; and this desire, when inspired with promises of success and ardent through high enthusiasm, grows into a holy ambition, a noble and eager daring, covetous of the best gifts.… It is true that there is still pain in such hunger and thirst of the soul. Man never attains his moral ideal. Dissatisfaction with himself is, in fact, the root of spiritual desire; and here, as in all desire unaccomplished, there must be pain.

J. OSWALD DYKES

Many there be who are most anxious to please God and make conscience of all known sins, yet find in themselves so much darkness of mind, activity of rebellious corruption, forwardness in their affections, perverseness in their wills, yea, a constant proneness to all manner of sins; and, on the contrary, they can perceive so little of the fruits of sanctification, so little evidence of spiritual life, so few signs of divine grace at work within, that they often seriously doubt if they have received any grace at all. This is a fearfully heavy burden, and greatly casts down the soul. But here is divine consolation. Christ pronounces “blessed” not those who are full of righteousness, but those who hunger and thirst after it. Those who mourn over their depravity, who grieve over the plague of their hearts, who yearn for conformity to Christ—using the means constantly—are accepted of God in Christ.

A. W. PINK

Righteousness

By “righteousness” is meant piety towards God, vital religion, godliness. By a starving man nothing is accounted of any value, in comparison with that which will satisfy the cravings of hunger. How rich then and precious the promise to such, as are hungering and thirsting after righteousness that their spiritual wants shall be supplied and that they shall be filled with that for which they are so earnestly longing.

JOHN J. OWEN

The metaphorical meaning of the verbs is that of longing desires. The righteousness is the establishment of which was the aim of Christ’s work, and the condition of participation in the Messiah’s kingdom. They will obtain righteousness in full measure, namely, in being declared righteous (Rom. 5:19; Gal. 5:5), at the judgment of the Messiah (Matt. 25:34) and then live in perfect righteousness, so that God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).

H. A. W. MEYER

Gift Of God

No willing and running, no laboring chase after it in our own strength and in our own way, attains unto righteousness: ours is to desire it; it is for God to give it.

RUDOLF STIER

There is a negative kind of holiness, which is neither pleasing to God nor profitable to man: it consists merely in an abstinence from open sin, and a discharge of external duties. But real holiness pervades the whole man: it comprehends the whole circle of divine graces: it reaches to the thoughts and desires of the heart; and assimilates us to God in all his communicable perfections. Now this is that which the true Christian shall be filled: in all his dispositions towards God and man, he shall be changed: he shall not only be delivered from all that would injure his character among men, but shall be “transformed into the very image of his God in righteousness and true holiness.”

CHARLES SIMEON

He that gave the thirst likewise provides the water, and the one exactly meets the other. It is not the will of our heavenly Father that any longing in our hearts, prompted by himself, and therefore sincerely seeking him, shall perish unsatisfied. A satisfying righteousness therefore must be provided for the people of God. And it must be provided outside of us. To eat means to be nourished from without. Since the sinner is devoid of all righteousness, it is self-evident, that the source of his supply must be sought beyond the confines of his own evil and empty nature. For it to be otherwise would mean that hunger could be stilled with hunger. Our Lord’s meaning obviously is that the coming order of things, the new kingdom of God, brings with itself, chief of all blessings, a perfect righteousness, as truly and absolutely the gift of God to man as is the Kingdom.

GEERHARDUS VOS

He hath also promised to fill the hungry with good things, to rain down righteousness on the dry and parched ground, to fulfil the desires of them that fear him. So that it is but our asking and his giving; our opening the mouth and he will fill it; our hungering and his feeding; our thirsting and his watering; our open hand and his open heart.

JOHN TRAPP

It is not unusual for a sensitive Christian student to be deeply troubled upon first exposure to psychological studies in religion. Religious experience is made to appear as either the result of some inward combination of feelings, urges and tensions, or as the product of social conditioning. Case histories and tables of statistics seem to support the contention that religious experience is merely another human experience upon which no claims can be made for the realities discussed.

Whether it be a study of adolescent crises and conversion, of fear and religious commitment, or of mania and religious delusion, the question must be asked: Can psychology determine truth in religious experience? Or the question may be put more simply: Can a psychologist completely explain religious experience as some sort of natural product of the human being, or is there something about religious experience which necessarily escapes the psychologist?

The Christian view to this matter is that although we learn much from studies of the psychology of religion, true religious experience cannot be explained as a completely human affair.

The Problem Of Truth

The first reason for our position is this: psychology cannot settle the problem of truth.

A psychologist proposes to make assertions which he deems as true, or at least provisionally true. But the procedure of determining the truth of a statement is not psychological but philosophical. The psychologist intends to make assertions which may be classed as knowledge-statements. But the criteria for discriminating knowledge-statements from false statements is again philosophical and not psychological.

Therefore, any and all psychologists have to presume a theory of truth and knowledge. Some do this critically and philosophically, as Clark Hull; others naively imitate theories of truth and knowledge familiar to them through their teachers or textbooks.

Furthermore, the psychologist likes to think he is a scientist and employs the scientific method. But there are many debatable assertions in the scientific method, and many assumptions, none of which are capable of psychological verification. Perhaps a simple illustration can clear up this point. A psychologist may explain how a child learns that two and two are four, and he may discover a more efficient method of teaching this to him. But what psychological experiment could ever prove that two and two make four? Such proof is the province of mathematical logic.

Beyond Clinical Scope

Therefore, truth-claims made in the field of religious experience and realities claimed as existing therein cannot be settled by psychology alone. A psychologist may indicate that a certain religious person is psychotic, and we would be quick to discount such a person’s religious experience (although it is well to consider Kierkegaard’s warning that in a world of fallen men a truly religious person must of necessity be abnormal). James and Starbuck, Leuba and Freud, Johnson and Jung may teach us much about the reasons for unusual religious behaviour; clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and industrial counselors may parade before us the distressing alliance of certain mental disorders and religious experiences or adolescent psychology and conversions; but this in no way settles the truth-claims of religion.

Psychology cannot settle the problem of truth and knowledge; that is the province of philosophy.

Inadequate Explanation

Further, an act of God on the soul will have a psychological result on the believer, but a study of this result cannot completely explain the experience.

It is the constant assertion of Scripture that when God acts on the soul, the soul has a concrete religious experience. The soul may praise God, sing to God, worship God, consecrate itself to God, repent before God or even, Jonah-like, flee from God. In any God-created religious experience, there will be changes in the believer’s moral and spiritual life. These reactions of the soul can be “public property” in a sense, either through observation or by confession of the believer. And as such, they may become matters of psychological study.

The religious person may be studied physiologically, psychologically and sociologically. Such a study may in some instances create valid suspicion over the integrity of his religious experience (e.g., in cases where a person who claims divine healing has his old ailment return in force). But if someone’s experience is the result of the action of the Holy Spirit, then a physiological-psychological-sociological study cannot give us all the facts. For the most important fact of all, the Holy Spirit himself, is not within grasp of the psychologist. The issue still remains, an act of God cannot be settled on psychological grounds. As Bavinck has correctly said, “History and psychology can only exhibit religious phenomena. They cannot evaluate them” (The Doctrine of God, p. 76, italics his).

Not Subject To Test

Again, no psychological tests can be made of religious truth. Scripture informs us that it is sin to tempt God. A controlled experiment to test spiritual truth is tempting God. As a Christian psychologist has well said, a psychiatric hospital could not be divided into two parts, half the patients being prayed for and the other half receiving mental treatment, and the authorities expecting at the end of their “experiment” to discover a correlation, or lack of it, between prayer results and mental healing. That would be tempting God. Neither could one twin be baptized and the other not for the purpose of serving as a “control group.”

The possibility of experimentation with spiritual truth is out of the question. “In no laboratory can we reproduce the situation in which a man is experiencing the impact of the Holy Spirit,” writes J. G. McKenzie. “We cannot stage either the conviction of sin or the forgiveness of sin” (Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Evangelicalism, p. 44).

Spiritual Order Unique

The spiritual order does not operate like the material order. A lack of proper evidence can doom a material hypothesis, but in the spiritual order apparent inactivity of God (as in the case of Habakkuk), or suffering (Job), or severe testing (Abraham), or even death itself (Jesus Christ) does not count against spiritual truth. God’s actions in developing a man’s spiritual character are often beyond our understanding.

One of the old chestnuts from logic books is the story of a hen. For one thousand days the farmer fed this hen faithfully. According to the law of uniformity, the chicken assumed the hypothesis that it would be fed thus another thousand days. But on day number 1001, the chicken’s head was lopped off. The chicken had confused the material order with the personal order, and in its confusion lost its head!

Enthusiastic Christians who would seek confirmation of Christianity out of the latest works on mental health ought to be restrained. Many eminent figures of the Bible were what they were because they were not conformed to patterns of mental hygiene! We must restrain the psychologist who would sin in tempting God through experimentation on spiritual truth.

The Limits Of Psychology

The actions of God on the human soul are through the Holy Spirit, and are therefore mysterious.

Our Lord taught Nicodemus (John 3) that the actions of the Holy Spirit were mysterious and real. The Spirit produces a real work in regeneration. As we know the wind blows, we know that the Spirit works. Just as the motions of the wind are invisible at night (for Nicodemus came by night), so the motions of the Holy Spirit are real though mysterious.

It is this mysteriousness that sets limits to the psychology of religion. A psychologist may study a man’s conversion, but not his regeneration; he may study the human spirit, but not the divine Spirit. To get all the data about one’s spiritual experiences, an investigator must include the actions of the Holy Spirit which is precisely what he cannot do.

God-Centered Approach

Finally, the biblical approach to religious experience is God-centered.

According to Scripture, true religious experience is the result of Holy Spirit action on the human soul. And the emphasis falls more on God who creates the experience than on man who has it. There are touching and moving spiritual experiences reflected in the Psalms, but even so the eye of the Psalmist is fixed intently upon God. The important matter in Scripture is not that man experiences, but that God acts. The critical question, then, is that of the reality of God, and not the peculiarity of experience.

Thus the emphasis in Scripture is upon the Spirit who creates experience. David’s great cry, “take not thy Holy Spirit from me” (Ps. 51:11) has nothing to do with our modern debates on the admissibility of salvation, but has everything to do with the Holy Spirit as creator of genuine spiritual experiences.

Two Healthy Emphases

A healthy theology will assert two things in regard to psychology:

First, that all efforts of psychologists to explain away religious experience must be resisted. Christianity is grounded in the self-revelation of God given to man, and does not hang on the slender thread of religious experience. Psychologists of religion, therefore, deal with secondary and tertiary matters, never directly with the divine Spirit.

Second, that anything which attempts to ground the Christian faith solely in religious experience, or any movement within Christendom which exalts personal religious experience over against the God who creates true spiritual experiences must be resisted.

How much ado is there in Scripture over this or that man’s conversion? Very little, with the exception of Paul’s conversion of which some was made, due to the peculiarly theological cruciality of its nature. But the New Testament gives little regard to the conversion experience of this famous or that notorious character because, from the perspective of biblical faith, the real wonder is that God comes to us, and through Jesus Christ creates a living fellowship in our hearts. And as this is true, it is just as much miracle in the heart of a child as in the heart of a murderer; it is just as much miracle in the heart of a common daily laborer as it is in the heart of some world-renowned personality.

A theology that knows its Scripture never overemphasizes psychological experience at the expense of the miracle-action of God. Rather, it is careful to rest its apologetic not in the flux and flow of religious experience, but in the self-revelation of the eternal God.

Currently on leave as Professor of Religion in Baylor University Graduate School, Bernard Ramm is in Basel studying European theological trends. He is author of several books, among them The Christian View of Science and Scripture.

Holy Scripture teaches definitely that as God is the Creator of all men, so also is he their final Judge who will reveal his omnipotent power and his saving grace especially on the last day in the presence of those who love him and those who do not.

The difficulty of the Bible student is not to find adequate Scripture proof for this doctrine, but to select from the many passages of Holy Writ witnessing to the final judgment, those which present the biblical teaching in its widest scope. Such a clear, full, and most convincing passage we have in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, where he writes: “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest thou up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.… In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel” (Rom. 2:5, 16).

Here, as in many other places in Scripture, the final judgment is ascribed to God who executes it by Jesus Christ, his divine Son. This agrees with the words of our Lord: “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22). Similarly the apostle declared at Athens on the Areopagus: “He [God] hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained” (Acts 17:31). The Redeemer of mankind will be also the final Judge of man. Indeed, the apostle predicates the final judgment directly of Christ when he writes: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10). The fact that the Father will judge the world by Jesus Christ mightily proves the deity of our divine Saviour, who is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit (John 10:30).

As Scripture in all its doctrines reveals to us only so much as is necessary for our salvation and never attempts to satisfy carnal man’s vain curiosity by presenting needless details, so also it does in teaching the final judgment. It offers the sweetest comfort to all believers and the most earnest warnings to all who reject Christ, but it always confines itself to what man must know to obtain everlasting life. Nor can human speculation supplement or clarify God’s saving revelations on this important doctrine; they can only mislead and obscure. Luther, therefore, reminds his readers time and again that they must learn to adhere to the divine Word (sich ans Wort halten) and to desist from trying to fathom God by suggestions of human reason, since he cannot savingly be known outside his Word.

The Day Of The Final Judgment

As the Holy Scriptures declare, the final judgment will take place on a day definitely appointed by God. This revelation Paul by divine inspiration enlarges by adding that the resurrection of those asleep in Jesus and the transmutation of the living believers at Christ’s second coming will occur “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor. 15:52). Therefore, the final judgment, when the unrighteous “will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal” (Matt. 25:46), is not a long, protracted process, but a momentary act of God when time will have been replaced by eternity. As with Christ’s final triumphant coming, heaven and earth will pass away, so also time will then be no more. “The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Pet. 3:10). Schelling’s often quoted statement that the history of the world is also the world’s judgment (Die Weltgaschichte ist das Weltgericht) contains a quantum of truth, but God’s punitive judgment upon perverse nations in time is certainly not his final judgment at the end of time.

Judgment And Resurrection

At Christ’s triumphant second coming all the dead will be raised and made to appear before his judgment seat. “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations” (Matt. 25:31–32). In Matthew 25:31–46 the final judgment is described in detail. “Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (v. 34). “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (v. 41).

Properly speaking, the final judgment will be executed only upon the unrighteous, in particular, upon those who have rejected the saving gospel of Christ, as he himself tells us: “He that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16). It is to the wicked only that the Lord will say: “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,” and it is only they that “shall go away into everlasting punishment” (Matt. 25:41, 46). Believers in Christ, placed on his right hand, will hear only words of praise and welcome (v. 34) and will “go away into life eternal.”

Hell Not Intended For Man

On the day of the final judgment the divine Judge will command the unrighteous to depart into everlasting fire “prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). Therefore hell, the everlasting fire, has been prepared only for the devil and his angels and not for fallen men. Since Christ is the “Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) and has atoned for the sins of all men by his vicarious, substitutionary death (2 Cor. 5:19–21), heaven stands open to all who by faith accept his divine redemption (Matt. 11:28). Of course, those who reject the Gospel will be damned, but through their own fault (Hos. 13:9). “He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18).

As the believers in Christ will not be condemned (John 3:18), so also the holy angels will be free from the final judgment. They will rather aid their and our divine Lord in executing the final judgment (Matt. 25:31). Scripture does not reveal in what way this will be done, and so we must leave also this question to the many other details which now we are unable to know.

Seemingly Contradictory Passages

There are passages in Scripture which declare emphatically that believers in Christ will not be judged. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). On the other hand, there are passages which warn Christians most earnestly against falling from grace and becoming subject to the final judgment: “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). Most earnestly the Holy Spirit addresses us especially in such passages as Heb. 3:7–19; 6:4–6; 10:26–31; 12:14–17 and others. Scripture also warns us by many examples of persons who did not remain faithful to Christ such as Judas and Demas.

There is, however, no real discrepancy between these seemingly contradictory passages. Such passages as promise believers eternal life without judgment are pure Gospel, addressed to them according to their “new man” or to them as a “new creation” in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Again, those passages threatening believers with judgment, are addressed to their “old man” or to their “corrupt nature,” which does not do God’s will (Rom. 7:14–24; Gal. 5:16–21). It is in this sense that the Holy Spirit warned the seven churches in Asia: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches: To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7).

All Scripture passages, warning Christians or admonishing them, belong to the category of the Law. It is true, the believer as a believer does not need the Law, but only the Gospel (Gal. 5:22–24). However, inasmuch as the believer is still burdened with the “flesh” or corrupt nature, he needs also the Law (Gal. 5:24–26). Thus the Christian, being divided between two times—the earthly and the heavenly, needs the Law to restrain his flesh and the Gospel to comfort his spirit. The paradox of Law and Gospel finds its explanation in the believer’s paradox of flesh and spirit, and to this twofold nature the merciful God appeals at the same time by the Law and the Gospel (Rom. 7:25).

The Ground For Final Judgment

As the ground for final judgment, Scripture stresses the deeds which men have done in their earthly life. St. Paul writes: “Who [God] will render to every man according to his deeds” (Rom. 2:6). More specifically the apostle affirms: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every man may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10). The works of men attest their attitude toward Christ, as our Lord himself states when condemning the unrighteous: “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me” (Matt. 25:45). Deeds are manifestations of either unbelief or faith and so demonstrate either man’s rejection or his acceptance of Christ: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40).

Of course, many heathen did not have the Gospel and so could not know of Christ, the divine Saviour of the world. Nevertheless, “the judgment of God is according to truth” (Rom. 2:2), that is, according to justice. Just how God’s judgment will be according to justice, the apostle explains very clearly when he says: “For as many as have sinned without law [i.e., without the revealed Law] shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law” (Rom. 2:12). The heathen who did not have the saving gospel of Christ’s redemption, though knowing God, “glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” and “changed the truth of God into a lie” (Rom. 1:21–25). Hence even the pagan idolaters must acknowledge God’s righteous judgment on the last day, for they will be judged by the law of God which they had, but rejected, “so that they are without excuse” (v. 20).

So far as believers are concerned, their failings and shortcomings will not be mentioned at all in the final judgment, for God “will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Instead, the divine Judge will enumerate only their good works: “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in” (Matt. 25:35). That, too, is pure gospel preaching which the believer must not misuse to his eternal harm by permitting his corrupt nature to sin against grace. Nevertheless, Christ’s declarations definitely prove that true believers will not “come into judgment” on the last day (John 5:24).

Final Judgment Determined

With the final judgment, the destiny of both believers and unbelievers will be unalterably determined, for each class of men will then be assigned to their final, everlasting abode: “life eternal” or “everlasting punishment” (Matt. 25:46). The Greek original does not make the distinction between the modifiers “everlasting” and “eternal” which we find in the King James Version, but uses the same adjective aioonios to describe both the never-ending bliss of the righteous and the never-ending punishment of the ungodly. All attempts at explaining the everlasting punishment of the wicked as “annihilation,” fail in view of the clear and unmistakable Scripture passages which do teach the everlasting damnation of the unrighteous.

Unbelievers may scorn this Scripture teaching, but it comes from the infallible lips of the Son of God, our Redeemer, whose Word is truth. The doctrine of the final judgment, of course, is severe Law preaching, designed to terrify the wicked and also to warn believers inasmuch as they still are “flesh.” In view of the final judgment and the everlasting punishment of the unrighteous, believers should “work out their salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12), trusting at the same time in the divine promise that “it is God who works in them both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (v. 13).

With the final judgment the world will have come to its end, for the day of the final judgment will be the last day (John 6:44). Paul writes: “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power” (1 Cor. 15:24). In place of this sin-cursed earth there will be a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness (2 Pet. 3:13). Whether the passages predicting the end of this world and the new heaven and earth declare its renovation or its total annihilation has been a matter of discussion among theologians, for some Bible verses seem to speak of a renovation of this present world, while others undeniably assert its annihilation. But all exegetes are agreed on the apostle’s inspired teaching that “the fashion of this world passeth away” (1 Cor. 7:31). The new heaven and the new earth, no matter of what nature it may be, will be the believers’ everlasting home of glory, happiness and perfection, where God will wipe away all tears from their eyes” (Rev. 7:9–17).

Leads To Salvation

Mockery is not the answer to the Christian doctine of the final judgment. That was heard already when Peter proclaimed God’s final wrath and judgment upon the ungodly world of his day (2 Pet. 3:4). The Holy Spirit has graciously revealed this doctrine to men in order that they might seek the eternal life which Christ has prepared for all sinners and which they may now receive by grace through faith in Christ, the divine Redeemer of the world. The doctrine of the final judgment should cause the sinner to flee to the Son of God for salvation.

Not The Central Doctrine

The doctrine of final judgment is an important teaching of Christian theology and, in addition, a very fair teaching, by which the divine Judge frankly and mercifully foretells what he will do to all who reject his divine Gospel. Nevertheless, it is not the central message of the Bible. The central proclamation of God’s Word is the blessed Gospel tidings: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Those who accept this comforting Gospel truth of divine love do not fear the final judgment, but rather “look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working, whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself” (Phil. 3:20–21).

“For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2)

J. Theodore Mueller has long been identified with the Systematic Theology Department at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. He has passed his 73rd birthday, but continues on modified professorial service. He and Mrs. Mueller observed their golden wedding anniversary on February 25. He was ordained by the Missouri Lutheran Church 50 years ago.

Early in its history, Islam had had contacts with Africa. When the Islamic religion made its great sweep in the course of the seventh century, it moved across North Africa, sweeping everything before it from the Nile Delta to Gibraltar. It even crossed Gibraltar into Spain and across the Pyrenees into France. That year, 732 A.D., when the spearheads of Islam were blunted by Charles Martel at Tours, was one of the great hours of Europe and Christendom.

This sweep of Islam across North Africa, at the time the North African church collapsed like a house of cards, still puzzles us in many ways. Even today it makes strange reading. Why should groups of Christians in North Africa have welcomed the armies of Islam to their cities? Could they not realize what it would mean? What did they hope to gain through the Islamic conquests? Why exactly did this great North African Church of St. Cyprian and St. Augustine meet disaster and ignominy in this way? Why was it almost completely swept from the face of the earth with the exception of a few isolated Christian groups like the present day Copts of Egypt or the Abyssinians?

Some Reasons For Catastrophe

No single reason explains this vast catastrophe in one of the most promising areas of early Christendom. From a political standpoint, we can ascribe some of Islam’s early success to the fact that it moved into the vast power vacuum left after the enervating struggles between the Roman and Persian empires. This set the stage for the armies of Islam to sweep onward without any real opposition. It was like the opening of great flood gates over a vast flat land. Islamic armies were actually able to move for thousands of miles before they were blunted at Tours in France. But this factor in itself does not explain the favorable reaction which the North African church had toward the invasion.

Why did sections of the North African church literally welcome the armies of Islam as if they had come as liberators? Why did they not realize that for them this was the beginning of the end? The church of Origen, Cyprian and Augustine was to tumble into ruin.

It is sometimes said that the church failed to prevent calamity because it did not do missionary work. Up to a point this may be true, but it does not seem to be the basic reason. More probably the church in North Africa failed because it did not become indigenous. It failed to become a part of the very life of the people. It was too much of a Roman and Roman-controlled church for North Africans. And because the native peoples of North Africa hated Rome, the Roman-controlled church failed to win their deepest loyalties.

These people had had many grievances against Rome. We need only think of the vast system of absentee land ownership through which Romans owned large tracts of North African land. The local populations detested this system and everything that went with it. And when Islam moved in, some groups—even Christian ones—welcomed it as a liberator against Romanism.

What made this invasion worse was the fact that as soon as Islam moved in, the Roman Christians in North Africa moved out and went back to Sicily and Italy. The North African church was thus left in a sad plight and could in no way face up to the victorious onrush of Islam.

A Moslem Stronghold

Soon the vast stretches of North Africa, from Egypt to Gibraltar, were part of the new Moslem world. Today, after 12 centuries, Africa is still spiritually part and parcel of the world of Islam, although most of these regions have become independent states again or colonies of European powers like France or Spain. This vast area where the church of Augustine once flourished is now an almost solid and unbroken Moslem stronghold. Christian missions, which are few and far between, have made little impression.

The North African church was not so much destroyed by the sword of Islam as it was bled white through isolation from the main streams of Christianity. As a matter of fact, the church acquired some freedom under Islam, but a very restricted freedom; it was not allowed to expand under Islamic rule and lost contact with the rest of Christendom. For this reason, it slowly became exhausted. Today the remaining Christian groups in these areas represent almost petrified forms of Christianity. The victory of Islam was, to all practical purposes, complete.

From bases in Europe, the Christian church tried in succeeding centuries to reconquer Islamic North Africa. We need only mention the name of that great man and indefatigable fighter for the Cross, Raymond Lull, the Spaniard from Majorca, who made three journeys to North Africa and ultimately was stoned to death not far from the coasts of the Mediterranean. A great man of letters and a hero for the Cross, he confronted the Moslems with the challenge of Christianity and tried through argument to convince them.

Today it is often said that Lull’s method was not the most fruitful. On the other hand our failure through current methods to convert Moslems should make us less dogmatic in judging Lull and his methods. This lone man made a magnificent effort to take the message of the Cross back to Africa.

Islam In Africa Today

What are the relative positions of Christianity and Islam in Africa today? There is no doubt that Islam is still ascendant. But Christianity is also progressing at a very hopeful tempo.

As things stand today, one out of every three Africans is a Moslem. Because almost all the inhabitants of vast tracts of Africa are Moslems, it is relatively easy to make a fair estimate of their number in Africa. By general agreement Islam has from 65 to 70 million African adherents. More than 90 per cent of the African Moslems live north of the equator, but at many points the southward movement of Islam has crossed the equator. In most parts of southern Africa, however, Islam is limited to small groups of settlers especially from India. And in other areas we find Moslem communities like the Malays in Cape Town.

Events in North Africa, Egypt, the Nile Delta and the Middle East, however, all point to new life in Islam. The Moslem world is once more self-conscious and on the move. Missionaries and Western agencies find it increasingly difficult to continue work. The resurgence of Islam coupled with anti-Western sentiments are creating ever more formidable barriers in the path of Christian missions.

For generations we Western Christians have become accustomed to the fact that the nominally Christian nations of Europe or the West were the masters of the world, the great powers who controlled the masses of Asia, the Near East or Africa. Ours was the religion of the conquering West, of Western man, the rulers of the world. Up to a point this world situation favored Christian missions. We had open doors with at least a minimum of protection. Through hospitals, schools and other Christian agencies, we were in a position to help and influence and befriend these peoples.

The West Is Losing Face

But how rapidly this world picture changes! The West is losing face. Asia, as well as Africa, is on the move. Varied forms of nationalism and Communism are rapidly changing the spiritual climate of these countries.

When our descendants look back someday on this second half of the twentieth century, they may call it one of the great liberating and creative periods in history. Many age old shackles will be broken. What the ultimate result of all these movements may be, we do not know; we cannot even make a useful guess. But one thing at least is certain. While vast changes and liberating movements on the economic and political fronts are being consummated, the Christian church in all these areas will be confronted by stormy weather. It may have to face trying times; great disappointments may be in store for Christian missions. All the political and economic changes in the Islamic and Communist world may have far-reaching repercussions among the indigenous peoples of Africa, and may temporarily, at least, create obstacles in the way of Christian missions.

Christianity In Africa

How strong is Christianity in Africa today? If we take all types and groups of Christians into consideration and include also the 10 million Copts and Monophysites, the maximum number of Christians cannot be more than 30 million. For every Christian in Africa there are more than two Moslems. But every Christian church in Africa with which I am in touch is experiencing an upsurge of missionary fervor, and men are entering new fields of opportunity every day.

At the present time, all the material factors seem to favour Islam as the religion of Africa. But the day may yet come that Africa will be overshadowed by the cross of Christ. Christianity is making great strides. Its greatest problem, however, is as yet unsolved: How to create real deep community among different racial groups. If Christianity ultimately fails in this, it must fail to win the heart of Africa. For whether Christianity or Islam will be victorious in Africa may well depend on the solution of this problem.

The Lantern

I walked in darkness through a twisted maze,

But He who made the garden knows each path

As every bird sings hymns of sounding praise

I walk in confidence … my lantern, faith.

MAUDE RUBIN

Ben J. Marais is Professor of the History of Christianity in the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. Some of his graduate study was pursued at Princeton and Yale. Of his writings, some have been translated into English. Among these is Colour—Unsolved Problem of the West.

Sometimes it appears that the Church is being prostituted for purposes that were not given to it by its Lord. These may even be questionable ones, but most often they are good and things with which any Christian should concern himself. But Christ, the head of the Church, has given it a purpose which ought to occupy all its time. And any purposes other than the one only serve to divert its attention. It is true, there are various ways by which the Church’s aim can be served, but becoming involved in those things which have only a remote connection, if any, with the Church’s chief end must be avoided. There are many persons who consider themselves to be “working for the Church,” yet who have never thought of making disciples for Jesus Christ and teaching them all he has commanded. The reason may lie in the fact that there are so many names on the church roll who have no real conception of what it means to be a Church member, a part of the Body of Christ.

Making Disciples

It is the Church’s definite responsibility to make disciples and to teach them all the things that Jesus commanded. Is there any other agency, institution, or organization in this world charged with that responsibility? The truth is that it is the business of the Church to make new men, or rather to lend itself to the Lord so that he can make new men through it. Only new men can and will walk in the new ways of life that the Church ought to set before them. We must note that it is the “disciples” who are to be taught to obey Jesus’ commands, not men everywhere who probably do not know Jesus as Lord. We must remember that the Epistles were addressed to the Church, the society of the redeemed. And in one sense Christ’s parable of the wineskins applies here. How foolish it is to attempt to force a man to walk a new, more noble way of life when he is still a slave to sin. Such men cannot be made to do moral good by law or love their brethren by law. Now the Church is a society within a society. The Church is in the world, but is not to be of the world. Yet, if it remains true to its Lord, it can have a profound effect upon the world. Christians, living Christian lives, can be “light”; they can be “salt”; and their community will feel their presence. Society’s conduct will be influenced by them, indirectly if not directly.

We must confess, however, that the failure of members to live the life that the Church proclaims is a serious drawback to the work of extending the Kingdom. Evidently the mass of Church members do not yet realize they are Christ’s chief witness in the world. The Church is supposed to be made up of those who have been redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and whose lives have been transformed by his power. That the true (invisible) and the apparent (visible) church are not one and the same is sadly and only too obvious.

At present, the church, as an earthly organization, cannot decide what its mission in the world is. One of the mistakes that we have often made is that what the Church will do is determined largely by what is expected of it. Now, it is true that human institutions must often change as circumstances vary; in fact, their whole purposes may have to be altered due to external conditions. But this is not so with the Church. The Church is not a human institution governed by the laws and purposes of men. It has one head, one lawgiver, and one resolve. Now some men in the Church have appeared to assume these powers themselves, and this is unfortunate, even tragic. However, the fact that some will, out of vanity or ignorance, take these things into their hands in no wise affects the truth that they belong only in the hands of God.

What then constitutes the role of the Church as far as the serious problems that face our nation and world are concerned? Does it have a word to speak, a witness to give? And what is the manner in which it is going to perform these tasks? Many are the answers being put forward, both by those within the Church and those without; and this is the reason so many are so confused. Both conflicting leadership and a lack of understanding on the part of church members are obscuring the purpose which God has for his Church in this world.

We must note the fact, too, that the Church does not really belong to this world. Surely it is in the world, but not of the world. And just so far as the Church becomes a part of the world, so far does it cease to be the Church. This is true despite the urging of those who claim that the Church should be a part of the community. (There is indeed something anomalous in the very term “community church.”)

Speaking To The Times

Certainly the Church must put its message in the language of time and place if it is to reach people. It rightly offers temporal aids—the Church must deal with the whole man, and the soul can only be reached as it lives in the body. But in no way does this mean that its message can be altered or its purpose modified. The Church (and this means the members that make it up) needs to remember God’s admonition through Paul (as Phillips translates it): “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold …” Rom. 12:2a).

The “voice” of the Church is to remind the New Israel of its sins and to call God’s people to a life that becomes the followers of Jesus Christ. It is to remind them that their reconciliation with God depends upon a firm faith (not a shifting away) in the hope of the Gospel. And it is to bring to their attention constantly Jesus’ own words, “If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love” (John 15:10).

And while the “voice” of the Church calls its members, yea, insists that they follow Christ in their daily lives, the word to those outside can only be, and must be, “Come to Christ.” The Church must not forget nor forsake the revelation of God that the great need of all men is to come to Jesus Christ in surrender and to receive him as Saviour and Lord.

Three Pitfalls

In our day, and in any day for that matter, the Church must especially beware of three pitfalls: (1) Misleading men, or supporting those who do mislead people into thinking that the Church is an agency for securing certain rights or temporal benefits for men; (2) Lending itself as a pressure force upon the state to bring about reforms needed and even desirable from the Christian viewpoint; and (3) Confronting unregenerate men with a regenerate pattern of life and expecting them to walk in it.

Peril Of Misleading Men

The Church must beware lest it deceive or mislead men. In supporting the cause of minority or suppressed groups, the Church must take heed lest it attract those who see in it only a champion for their temporal rights. Christ was rejected because he insisted on holding true to his mission to free men from the tyranny of themselves rather than some external oppressor. Israel desired that God set them free from every form of earthly tyranny and oppression. But God had not freed Israel from Egypt simply that they might enjoy the “four freedoms.” The word of the Lord to Pharaoh was “Let my people go, that they may serve me” (Ex. 8:1; 9:1; 3:19; 4:23; 5:1).

We must remember that Christ did not come offering to remove all of men’s troubles. Rather, he warns those who truly seek to follow him to expect trouble in this world. “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19). “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Jesus admonishes us to enter the narrow gate, to travel the hard way; it is the only one that leads to life (Matt. 7:13).

Now someone may remind us that on Jesus’ first appearance in public ministry (according to Luke), he said that the portion of Scripture he had read was fulfilled. This was the portion: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has appointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (4:18, 19). But who among us takes this to read in its literal sense? Certainly not all the blind were healed in Jesus’ day, nor all the slaves freed, nor all the poor enriched. And he did not mean this in its literal sense to be the purpose of his Church. Indeed, our Lord rebuked those who followed him with the hope of receiving temporal benefits. He made it clear that he offered men the Bread of Heaven and there was no place in his Kingdom for those who sought only earthly bread—after which most of those who had been following Jesus left him (John 6). Is the Church today afraid to speak the truth because its proclamation will turn many away?

Not A Power Lobby

With regard to the second pitfall mentioned above, the Church cannot lend itself as a power lobby to bring pressure on the state. There is grave danger that in joining human agencies to support actions in the community at large (which we must admit is composed mainly of unregenerate men, or certainly of men little concerned with the will of God), the Church will play false even to those it professes to help. People will thus receive a wrong conception of the Church’s true purpose according to Jesus Christ, and for man, this will be travesty and indeed tragedy.

Is not the declaration of the Confession of Faith still the best rule for the Church? Synods and councils are to handle or conclude nothing but that which is ecclesiastical; and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth unless the way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or by way of advice for satisfaction, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate (Chap. 33, IV).

Diluting The Challenge

Furthermore, we may well ask that when the Church by its actions aligns itself with unregenerate “socializers,” no matter how good may seem their aims, is it not forgetting God’s warning about being unequally yoked together with unbelievers? Some may scoff at the thought that Paul’s admonition has any bearing here. But we must face his question: “What communion has light with darkness?” Can it be that the path by which the Church becomes “of the world” is that of aligning itself with secular and non-Christian agencies in the promotion of “good” causes?

Many may vociferously deny this, but even in participation in Brotherhood Week the Church has sometimes weakened its own witness. All men are not brothers in the most important sense. Surely Christians ought to be willing to associate and to cooperate with non-Christians. Christians must not look down upon others. But those who do not own Christ as Saviour and Lord are lost, and anything that we do to weaken our witness of this fact is unfair to our “brethren” who are not in Christ.

We have hereto covered the question of calling unregenerate men to walk in a regenerate pattern of conduct. But let the Church remember that its message to those outside Christ is the call to come to him in surrender of life and in accepting the difficulties of true Christian living for his sake. And let the Church remember that this is its message to all the unredeemed, oppressed and oppressor alike. Christ still says to men today, “Come to me … Take my yoke upon you … learn from me … You must be born again … Deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me.” Christ is the head, and the Church is his body.

Let The Church Be Herself

To be sure, the cry is raised that the Church must take its stand on issues facing our world today. But who says so?

During the last great war one wise churchman even suggested that even in time of war the Church has something more important to consider. Does not the Church have something more important to say and do today than become involved in the petty issues of the hour? (In the light of eternity, which of our disturbing issues is not petty?)

Surely Christian citizens as individuals must take the lead in seeing there is righteousness and justice in their governments, and as individuals exercise and fulfill their responsibility wherever it may fall. But who says the Church as such must do this? Does the Lord of the Church command it? And who or what is “the Church” that must do this? Who is to decide on which side the Church will take its stand? Do not the teachings of the Lord of the Church rather cut right across the issues and those who are in conflict over them?

A most important question for us is: Do we really believe that we today are wiser than the devoted Christians of yesterday? (The writer confesses he has met some who feel they have a better understanding of God’s will than had Peter or Paul, and much more than the writers of the Confession of Faith!) Of course, there are those with ready answers for all these questions. Perhaps we should respect their integrity and sincerity, but to accept their judgments and follow their lead is another matter. We must remember that even in these matters “there is a way which seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Prov. 14:12).

Preacher In The Red

WHO’S WHO

We had been expecting a missionary from Colombia, a Latin-American whom none of us had seen before. So when he arrived, my wife ushered him into the parsonage of our Chinese church and called me in the church office on the extension phone.

Before I could reach home, a young man from our downtown metropolitan neighborhood, somewhat under the influence of alcohol, came to the door. Thinking that perhaps the missionary could help the man, my wife led him into the living room.

“Oh,” exclaimed the astonished missionary, looking from one person to the other and obviously expecting to greet the pastor. “How—how are you, my—my brother!”

My wife scarcely had time to clarify the situation when I burst into the house. Looking forward to meeting a missionary, I was taken aback at the swaggering figure who dominated the scene.

“Hello!” I gasped. “What can I do for you—and your friend?”

There were three red faces—that of the alcoholic, the missionary and also his confused host.

—The Rev. HONG C. SIT, Houston, Texas.

For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Suite 1014 Washington Building, Washington, D.C.

W. H. Beckmann is a native of Georgia and a graduate of Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur. He is Pastor of Red Bank Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

In this year of 1958, when the world is so rent by divisive forces, America stands in great need of spiritual guidance. The country as a whole must draw from its great heritage of religious freedom, justice and liberty to meet the challenge of the future. Ministers of America are truly on the front lines of the battle for freedom. On their shoulders, in large measure, depends the future of our nation.

The Crime Wave

The threat of crime still looms heavily. After World War II there were hopes—now dispelled—that crime rates would subside. Many people thought: “Just wait until normal conditions return and then we’ll see life settling back in the good old ways.” This has not happened. In 1957, for example, major crimes jumped 9.1 per cent over the comparable figures for 1956! This is an extremely high increase and merits the careful attention of every individual interested in a better society. In 1957, over 2,700,000 major crimes were committed, representing a 23.9 per cent increase over the average for the previous five years.

The great tragedy, moreover, is the evil effect of crime on young people. Persons under the age of 18, for example, in 1957 represented 53.1 per cent of all arrests reported for robbery, auto theft, burglary and larceny. Here lies a most potent danger to law and order. The adult criminal is the product of the juvenile offender. The criminal habits which create the hardened, veteran criminal are formed very frequently in the years of youth.

Guidance Of Youth

That is one of our great challenges today—to make American youth into productive citizens of tomorrow. Young people are full of energy, initiative and talent. They are looking for something to do. They need guidance. The key lies here. If that guidance comes from evil minds, from men and women interested in exploiting youthful energy for criminal pursuits, then that youth’s life will be blighted. So often juvenile delinquency is actually adult delinquency—older persons through neglect or lack of interest allow youth to drift into illegal activities.

Neglect Of Family Life

The family is so important to the proper rearing of young people. Often today, unfortunately, the family is more a name than a fact. The home is merely a place to sleep, to catch a hurried meal or to display fine furniture. Frequently, for example, family members do not eat together—life is so busy! Often the remark is heard, “This is the first meal we have all eaten together for a week.” That is a terrible commentary on our way of life. A gathering of the family around the dining table should be encouraged as often as possible. There the saying of a blessing before the meal, giving thanks to Almighty God, is a tie which binds the family. This custom, often neglected today, is an essential ingredient in the rearing of young children. The conversation at the family dining table is vital to the shaping of growing minds. Here members of the family express their opinions, tell their experiences of the day and exchange information. To miss this fellowship is to deprive boys and girls of part of their rightful heritage.

Most important are family worship services. Here the reading of the Bible, the discussion of stories from Scripture, and prayer are invaluable in the developing of youthful character. Many men and women today remember these devotional services in their own family circle. Other facets of their early life have faded from memory, but that picture of father or mother reading the Bible remains bright.

The Minister’S Influence

We must all work together for a common aim. Ministers, in their contacts with young people and adults, are doing invaluable service in fighting crime. You, as ministers, probably do not realize the great help you can render in molding the career of a young man or woman. Time after time criminals, often with tears in their eyes, tell our special agents that they should have followed the advice given to them years before by their ministers.

What is needed are men and women willing to take the time to work with young people. How many times in churches, schools and civic organizations do you find this complaint: “We simply can’t find anybody who’ll work with our young people.” Why? Because many people plead they are too busy, that they have too many other things to do, to lend a helping hand.

Such an attitude is wrong. Our youth merit the very best of our attention. We are dealing with the leaders of tomorrow’s society. These youngsters need religious training; they need to know the Bible. Adults simply must take the time to work with them. The alternative is an ever-increasing crime-rate.

The Communist Challenge

Another challenge is that of Communism—the evil appeal of an atheistic doctrine which would destroy our way of life. The clergymen of America can make a great contribution to defeating this menace. Communism is evil. It is anti-God. It seeks to demean the human personality.

Under Communism the human being becomes a slave of the state. He is told what to do. He must think the way the state and party want him to think. Never must he question why.

Communism would destroy our system of free government. In a communist society the Church would be one of the first targets of secret police. Clergymen would be silenced or liquidated. No room exists in Communism for the free play of the human spirit. That is the experience of slave states behind the Iron Curtain.

The clergymen of America have a vital role in meeting this challenge of the future—to defeat crime and subversion. The Church is the heartbeat of America. By urging members to rededicate their lives to God, clergymen are striking against these evil enemies.

This nation was founded on religious freedom. Religions have guided us in years past. They must continue to be our guide in the future. An America faithful to God will be an America free and strong.

Carrying His Plea To The People

By varied means, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s crime appraisals have a way of consistently penetrating to grass roots. His interpretations of trends in lawlessness, which serve to arouse the citizenry, have been attracting ears, eyes, and minds for many years. This month, for example, news media are giving wide publicity to Mr. Hoover’s analyses in the two areas of “challenge” presented in the Christianity Today article—influences among youth and Communism. In a message to law enforcement officials, he called for public pressure to halt “ominous trends of crime glorification” in movies and television. In congressional testimony made public he warned that the Communist party in America has renewed and intensified its program of infiltrating mass organizations in order to disguise its operations.

“In the face of the Nation’s terrifying juvenile crime wave, we are threatened with a flood of movies and television presentations which flaunt indecency and applaud lawlessness,” Mr. Hoover wrote in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. “Film trash mills, which persist in exalting violence and immorality, spew out celluloid poison which is destroying the impressionable minds of youth.”

“No standard of decency or code of operations can justify portraying vile gangsters as modern-day Robin Hoods,” he added. “Not since the days when thousands filed past the bier of the infamous John Dillinger and made his home a virtual shrine have we witnessed such a brazen affront to our national conscience.”

One of the few immediate public reactions to the FBI chief’s charges came from Harold E. Fellows, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, who said: “To the best of my knowledge, and that of the members of the Television Code Review Board, there have never been released any authoritative studies, made by accepted scientific methods, supporting the contention that television contributes materially to juvenile delinquency.”

Industry expert Fellows thus implied disagreement with the considered opinion of a respected psychiatrist, Dr. Lawrence Kubie, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University. Mr. Kubie said in a CBS symposium a few weeks ago: “Quite frankly, I think the movies, TV, comics, the constant confrontation with killing, bloodletting in a form so realistic that to a child it’s as real as life itself, cannot fail to have an effect not on the impulse to rebel but on the form that your rebellion will take and what your standard then is of how you express the fact that you are rebelling.”

As for Communism, the threat is not waning, Mr. Hoover told a House subcommittee. “We now have approximately 150 known, or suspected, Communist-front and Communist-infiltrated organizations under investigation,” he said.

Here is a portion of his testimony:

“Certain organizations obviously dedicate their efforts to thwart the very concepts of this nation’s security programs.… They protest they are fighting for freedom, but, in reality, they seek license.

“They hypocritically bar Communists from their membership, but they seek to discredit all persons who abhor Communists and communism … they launch attacks against Congressional legislation designed to curb communism.

“Sadly, the cult of the pseudo-liberal, which is anything but liberal, continues to float about in the pink-tinted atmosphere of patriotic irresponsibility.… Every pseudo-liberal in this country should look inside his heart and give heed to the destruction he may be bringing upon the very country that permits him to enjoy this very freedom of thought.”—ED.

J. Edgar Hoover has been Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 1924. He holds the LL.B. and LL.M. degrees from George Washington University. Seventeen universities and colleges have conferred honorary degrees on him. Mr. Hoover first entered the Department of Justice in 1917.

Is there A conflict between Christianity and science? This is a question which has engaged the attention of scholars, both Christian and secular, ever since the time of the Copernican revolution, and the debate continues today with, if anything, renewed vigor. Critics of Christianity show no signs of forgetting that Galileo was condemned by an authoritarian church for his advocacy of the Copernican system—though they do not so readily remember that many of the church leaders of that day were convinced in their own minds that Galileo was right, but felt powerless to oppose the official machine of the Roman Inquisition. A most interesting book by Giorgio de Santillana on the Trial of Galileo has recently been published (London, 1958) and gives a full and very fair account of the whole sorry business. Little wonder that Galileo, who always protested that he was a loyal and dutiful son of the church (what else could he do?), was filled with frustration as he sought vainly for recognition and the acceptance of views the truth of which he was denied any opportunity of demonstrating to his accusers. Little wonder that he should have complained that “of all hatreds there is none greater than that of ignorance against knowledge.” His chagrin was not diminished by the realization that the Commissary General of the inquisitorial court which tried him was persuaded of the rightness of the accused man’s views, yet was ineluctably caught up in the authoritarian machinery of his high office.

The scientific doctrine of Galileo has long since been embraced by church as well as state and the Ptolemaic world-view disowned. Nobody now believes that the earth is the fixed central point of our solar system. But it does not follow from this that science is always right; indeed, it follows that science may be persistently wrong, as was the case for centuries during which the Ptolemaic interpretation continued unchallenged (and Galileo had scientific as well as theological opponents!), and as was the case, to take another example, with beliefs concerning spontaneous generation until Louis Pasteur demonstrated in the middle of the last century that all life comes from previous life of the same kind—a conclusion which has been amply confirmed by the development of the science of genetics. In every age there is a disposition to regard “modern science” as unassailable and authoritative, as though it has already spoken a final word. Christians, therefore, must treat the oracular pronouncements of science with caution and discernment; otherwise they may find themselves sharing an embarrassment similar to that of Emil Brunner who, having accepted the view that “modern science” precluded the possibility of there being, as Scripture foretells, a catastrophic end to our world, now finds it necessary to retract that opinion.

Far more radical is the approach of Rudolf Bultmann whose “demythologization” of Scripture involves the ruthless eradication of every supernatural element from the Christian faith, on the ground that “modern science” has shown our world to be a closed system which will not brook intervention “from without,” such, for example, as that implied by the doctrines (when literally understood) of the incarnation, resurrection, ascension, and ultimate return of Christ (see in particular the volume Kerygma and Myth, London, 1953, and also my Tyndale Lecture Scripture and Myth, London, 1956). This represents a complete capitulation to the supposed authority of “modern science” which, however, is scarcely modern any more; for Bultmann, as John Macquarrie says, “is still obsessed with the pseudoscientific view of a closed universe that was popular half a century ago” (An Existentialist Theology, London, 1955, p. 168).

In his book Modern Science and Christian Beliefs (New York, 1955) A. F. Smethirst (whose untimely death a few months ago removed a familiar figure from the convocation of Canterbury) maintained that “the antithesis between religious knowledge on the one hand and scientific knowledge on the other is … a completely false one,” since “religion by its very character must be concerned with the whole of reality, including the entire natural world and every type of material or spiritual existence” (pp. 71 f.). E. L. Mascall, another recent contributor to the contemporary debate, points out that “when people declare themselves unable to accept the Christian religion because of the outlook of science, the science involved very frequently turns out to be the now largely abandoned science of the nineteenth century” (Christian Theology and Natural Science, London, 1956, p. 32).

On the assumption that “the spirit of mutual respect for both science and Scripture preserves us from any charge of being anti-scientific or blindly dogmatic or religiously bigoted,” Bernard Ramm declares that “we must be as ready to hear the voice of science as we are of Scripture on common matters” (The Christian View of Science and Scripture, Grand Rapids, 1954, p. 32). It is somewhat astonishing to find a Christian apologist contending that “if the theologian and the scientist had been careful to stick to their respective duties, and carefully to learn the other side when they spoke of it there would have been no disharmony between them save that of the non-Christian heart in rebellion against God” (p. 58)—as though the non-Christian heart in rebellion against God were not the radical cause of all conflict between science and theology (and as though it were the scientist who always had the rebellious heart)! This, in fact, is the really crucial issue, for it is the revolt of the proud human mind against God, the Sovereign Creator of the universe, whose mind conceived the whole design of the order of the natural realm and is therefore the sole ground of all true knowledge and science, that corrupts unregenerate man’s understanding of things in their ultimate, that is, their most important, significance. That man may know certain things in connection with their proximate significance none will deny, but that he may know anything in its ultimate significance is impossible so long as he refuses to glorify God as God. And that is the nemesis which dogs all the science and all the philosophy of the unredeemed intellect.

Whether our contemporary would-be reconcilers of science and theology have succeeded in their object is certainly open to question. One suspects that in their acceptance of evolutionism, of the possibility of the formation of life from lifeless matter, and of the doctrine of progress by means of fortuitous and unpredictable mutations in the genetic structure, they are, after all, marrying the spirit of this age and will find themselves widowed in the next.

Pulpit Chronicle

A History of Preaching In Britain and America, by F. R. Webber, Northwestern, Milwaukee, 1952–1957. Three volumes. $7.00 ea.

The author will hardly need an extensive introduction to the clergy of America. His previous books, Studies in the Liturgy, The Small Church, and Church Symbolism are standard in their respective fields and have won him a reputation for sound scholarship combined with a high degree of versatility, always expressed in limpid prose, with Celtic verve and, frequently, in striking phrase.

Mr. Webber, for many years Secretary of the Committee on Church Architecture of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and editor of The Church Builder, is himself a preacher of wide experience in the pulpit of a large church in Cleveland. And although he is now listed by his denomination as emeritus, he still preaches every Sunday.

These three volumes, containing a total of more than 2000 pages, discuss the history of preaching in the British Isles and in America, much of which has never before been gathered into one place, and little of which, perhaps, has ever been so fascinatingly told.

In the first volume the author tells the story of preaching south of the Tweed from the time of the original Celtic preachers to the present day. His extensive chapters on the trends and movements of the theological scene provide invaluable background for the biographies of the many eminent men of the pulpit whom he presents.

Among the topics of this volume are chapters on the Celtic Church, the English Reformation, the Puritan Age, the Evangelical Awakening and the Tractarian Movement, besides a chapter on preaching in Cornwall.

The second volume treats preaching in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The Covenanters, the Field Preachers, the Marrow Controversy, the Evangelical Awakening and the Disruption of 1843 are the subjects of some of its chapters.

Volume III deals with preaching and preachers in America, from Elder Brewster, who came over on the Mayflower, to Gilbert P. Symons, who died in 1956; and it contains orienting chapters similar to those found in Volumes I and II.

Webber’s work is based for the most part on secondary sources. There are some repetitions which are inevitable, perhaps, when, after the discussion of an era, the biographies of the preachers of that period are related. Some sections have been carelessly proofread and are consequently blemished with more typographical errors than should be found in any work of its distinctive merit.

Mr. Webber is well known for his staunch conservatism. He does not slant his material. And although he presents few biographies of Lutheran preachers—none at all, of course, in Volumes I and II, he is frankly and honestly a protagonist of the theology of Martin Luther. But non-Lutheran Christians interested in the field that he covers will find compensation for that circumstance in his unconcealed and enthusiastic admiration of Calvinistic, Arminian and even, in some instances, Roman Catholic preachers. They will delight in the patent essential ecumenicity of Christian love with which he regards those not of his own denomination who hold the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Webber has knocked about a bit and knows that there are often good things and excellent men on the other side of the denominational fence. And in the present work he has gone to great lengths to search some of them out.

Somehow in this trilogy Webber has managed to combine the factuality and informativeness of a work of reference with an eminent degree of entertaining and—for most preachers, we should guess—fascinating reading. This is the magnum opus of its author, a work which should find an honored place not only on the shelves of the libraries of theological seminaries but also in the studies of Christian pastors, young and old, who are concerned with the effective preaching of the truths of Holy Scripture. For all Christian ministers who are concerned with effective preaching, these three volumes should prove a rewarding study and a powerful stimulus.

E. P. SCHULZE

Apostolic Religion

Paul and Jesus, by Herman Ridderbos, Presbyterian and Reformed, 1957. $3.75.

Each generation needs a fresh statement of basic biblical problems in the light of contemporary criticism. The relationship of Paul’s preaching and teaching to Jesus is one of these problems. J. Gresham Machen served his generation in this important area of New Testament studies in his famous Origin of Paul’s Religion. Now Herman Ridderbos, Professor of New Testament at Kampen Theological Seminary in the Netherlands, has put the present generation in his debt by his recent publication, Jesus and Paul.

Professor Ridderbos is primarily concerned with the origin and character of Paul’s religion, as the subtitle of his book indicates. He finds its origin in Jesus’ Kerygma about himself, and in the proclamation of the early Church. Both are important. To bypass the Kerygma of the early Church is not to do justice “to the position which the person of Jesus as the Christ assumes within Paul’s preaching … and to understand the faith of the early Christian church without accepting the factuality of Jesus’ Messianic self-disclosure and resurrection, brings with it unsolvable historical riddles.”

The primary sources of Paul’s preaching are revelation, the tradition of the Church and the Old Testament. Ridderbos recognizes Hellenistic influences in Paul but rejects with good reason the reconstructions of the religionsgeschichtliche school which would derive Paul’s Kerygma from the pagan world. It is in this regard that Ridderbos enters into vigorous debate with Bultmann and his Christology.

The general character of Paul’s preaching is eschatological. That is, Paul was “the proclaimer of a new time, the great turning point in the history of redemption, the intrusion of a new world aeon.” In this heilsgeschichtliche approach Ridderbos finds the answer to the question of the relationship between Jesus and Paul. Paul’s preaching in essence is “simply the expression of what Jesus referred to when he spoke of the kingdom of heaven being at hand.”

This is a stimulating book and a solid contribution to New Testament theology. Its value, especially to American readers, is further increased by its constant interaction with the best of European scholarship.

WALTER W. WESSEL

Scholarly Comment

Commentary on the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, by E. K. Simpson and F. F. Bruce, Eerdmans, 1957. 328 pp., $4.00.

This is the seventh volume now available in the New International Commentary on the New Testament, whose general editor is Prof. Ned B. Stone house. This series has distinguished itself as a standard of scholarly exactness and evangelical orthodoxy among those who take the Bible as the infallible Word of God.

Mr. Simpson writes the comments and notes on Ephesians; Prof. Bruce expounds Colossians. Both scholars maintain the Pauline authorship of these epistles. Technical problems are confined largely to the footnotes. Thus both the scholar and the general reader will find material suited to their needs.

Criticisms of this valuable work are few indeed. The somewhat elegant style of Mr. Simpson’s comments is distracting at times. Difficult words abound. On page 59, for example, are found such words as “mystagogues,” “pharos,” “pyrrhonism,” “purlieux,” and a Latin quotation. It is almost easier to read Paul’s Greek than some portions of Simpson’s English! We feel also that illustrations should have been cited more from the Septuagint rather than Greek and Roman writers. Modern problems of interpretation (such as the dispensational use of Eph. 3:5) are sometimes completely ignored.

However, there can be no doubt that we have in this volume a worthy addition to exegetical literature.

WICK BROOMALL

Pre-Exilic History

Fertile Soil, by Max Vogelstein, American Press, New York, 1957. 137 pp., $3.00.

This is a concise thought-provoking history of the Divided Kingdom from Solomon’s death in 933 B.C. (Vogelstein’s date) to the Babylonian Exile in 586 B.C. Although the subject is highly technical and bristles with problems on every page, the author’s treatment is so fascinating that he lures the lay reader over the pages without losing him in the problems. The expert, on the other hand, will not only find the problems, but will discern with delight that the author has wrestled with them and presented challenging, if not always convincing conclusions. Behind the author’s conclusions, whether one accepts or rejects them, can be detected original research.

Moreover, the college student or the seminarian will also find this volume an eminently suitable text on ancient Israelite history. Its clear outline by topics, its useful maps and its thorough use of original and other sources (there are 16 pages of single spaced notes), and its vigorous treatment will not only illuminate the student, but lend zest to any professor’s class.

Anyone conversant with the general period behind the Book of Kings will already be familiar with Max Vogelstein’s chronological studies dealing with this period. While all chronologists will not agree at all times with the details of his reconstruction of this era, the author’s thorough familiarity with the field does command attention. His chronological survey of the Divided Kingdom in the framework of the contemporary Near Eastern scene at the end of the book will be a valuable feature, enhancing the general brevity and lucidity of treatment.

Vogelstein still holds to the existence of Benhadad I, II and III. The reviewer maintains with W. F. Albright that the Melcarth Stele of Benhadad recovered from the Aleppo region of North Syria in 1941 argues for the identity of the so-called Benhadad I and Benhadad II (see Israel and the Aramaeans of Damascus, James Clarke, London, 1957, pp. 59–61; 141 f.). This evidence, however, has not been accepted by all scholars.

Dr. Vogelstein’s reinterpretation of the contemporary Assyrian records is stimulating, as well as his observations on the Zakir Stele and the Mesha Stone. The book simplifies an exceedingly complex period. The author is to be congratulated for his ability to say much in few words.

MERRILL F. UNGER

Handbook Of Evidences

Archaeology and the Old Testament, by J. A. Thompson, Eerdmans, 1957. $1.50.

It will be difficult to find anywhere else, in such brief compass, so much valuable material on the foremost subject in biblical studies. The author, who is a professor in the Baptist Theological College of New South Wales, Australia, is not a career archaeologist. Yet he has provided a collection of the most pertinent evidence from competent sources. He has also avoided extremes of interpretation of the facts.

The date of the Exodus from Egypt has long been a topic of discussion. Thompson presents a series of convincing arguments both from the Bible and from archaeology for a date about 1300 B.C. The encouraging feature is that he does it, not by discounting the statements of the Bible, but by seeking to show their consistency.

At certain points the author has shown how archaeology clears away some obscurities in the King James Version, indicating also that the Bible is an accurate source of ancient geography. For example, the King James Version, in 1 Kings 10:28, tells us that Solomon “had horses brought out of Egypt and linen yarn” (Hebrew QWH). Recent study has shown that QWH or Que, was a district in Asia Minor from which horses were procured (p. 84). According to the King James Version of 2 Kings 7:6, the Syrians fled from Israel because they thought they heard the sound of Hittite and Egyptian forces. It is now known that there was a land of Musur north of Palestine, and a proper reading would be “Hittite” and “Musurite.” The misunderstanding in the Authorized Version was natural enough, since the Hebrew root for Egypt was MSR. The combination of Musurites with nearby Hittites is undoubtedly more accurate, however (p. 101).

Joseph is described on p. 37 as “vizier” of Egypt. Some doubt has been cast upon this view by recent studies. Joseph may very well have been second only to Pharaoh in his ministry as supervisor of granaries.

On the whole, this is an excellent handbook for the student of the Bible, whether pastor or layman.

DAVID W. KERR

Anthology Of Mystics

Late Medieval Mysticism, edited by Ray C. Petty, Westminster Press, 1957. 424 pp., $5.00.

This thirteenth volume of the Library of Christian Classics consists of selections, none newly translated, from Bernard, the Victorines, Francis, Bonaventura, Lull, Eckhart, Rolle, Suso, Catherine of Siena, van Ruysbroeck, Theologia Germanica, Nicolas of Cusa, and Catherine of Genoa.

The editor notes that asceticism is the normal source and accompaniment of mysticism. Thus most of the mystics were monks.

In spite of this unhealthy and unscriptural mode of life, mystics sometimes write intelligibly and their thoughts are profitable, e.g. Bernard On the Love of God (p. 54). The selection from Ramon Lull is not so much mystical as it is a fanciful though serious plea for the study of foreign languages in preparation for missionary work.

Francis, on the other hand, shows his Mariolatry; and the Victorines are intolerably allegorical. So is Eckhart, who wrote, “Why did Christ say, Martha, Martha, naming her twice? Isidor says there is no doubt that prior to the time when God was man he never called anyone by name lest any should be lost whom he did not name and about whom it was doubtful. Christ’s calling I take it, means his eternal knowing.… Why did he name Martha twice? He meant that every good thing, temporal and eternal, destined for creature, was Martha’s. The first ‘Martha’ stood for perfection in temporal works; the second one for her eternal weal” (pp. 194–195).

The selections are good examples of the travesty of Christianity effected by monasticism, mysticism, and Romanism. The volume has carefully prepared indexes.

GORDON CLARK

Hot spring weather with intermittent storms greeted commissioners to the 98th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U. S., in Charlotte, North Carolina. Meeting April 24–29 in this stronghold of Presbyterianism, the clergymen and elders, hosted by historic First Church, promptly took their cue from the weather. If the heat and storms generated by the assembly did not match nature’s excesses, there were sufficient pressure areas in view to maintain a sense of expectancy on the floor and in the corridors.

Retiring moderator, Dr. William M. Elliott Jr. of Dallas, wasted no time in declaring the chief emergency area, In his year of travel for the church, he had discovered a “rampant … form of individualism and Congregationalism” which was manifesting itself in repudiation of “constitutional processes” and in “hostility” toward the “courts of our church, particularly her highest court.” The threat was to “ ‘the peace and unity of the church,” ’ (some delegates quickly pointed out that this quotation from their ordination vows was incomplete, the word “purity” having been dropped).

Dr. Elliott’s reference was obviously to the negative reaction of many to the church’s Council on Christian Relations, which has been reaffirming the 1954 General Assembly endorsement of the Supreme Court’s outlawing of segregation in the public schools. For a week the press had been heralding the coming battle on the race issue, but when it came—on the assembly’s last day—it was in terms of an ancient theological debate on the nature of the church, the significance of which was missed by many, who regarded this simply as a smokescreen.

Admittedly, the occasion of such a debate decreed the “loadedness” of both sides of the question. The assembly heard both the majority and the minority report from the Standing Committee on Christian Relations. The former recommended the adoption of the report of the Council on Christian Relations, the major part of which was entitled, “Speaking for God—the Prophetic Role of the Church.” The argument for this role was based upon the traditions of Old Testament prophets and on Christ’s prophetic office as well as on the history of the church, which “is impelled to declare the will of God for every morally and spiritually significant relationship of life.” Thus the council proposed through the General Assembly certain guiding principles for the Christian people of the South. These included repudiation of the branding of any people as inferior; recognition of the Supreme Court decision in question as the law of the land, unless “changed by legal and constitutional methods;” and the necessity for preserving and strengthening the public school system.

The majority report also asked the General Assembly to rule improper the use of Presbyterian church buildings for schools “designed to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling through the maintenance of segregation on the basis of race.” The report deemed unnecessary a provision for moral and material support by the General Assembly of “ministers involved in difficulties in the matter of racial reconciliation.”

There followed the presentation of the minority report by a recently-transplanted Northerner, Dr. John Reed Miller, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi, and former president of Knoxville College in Tennessee, a United Presbyterian-related Negro institution.

Exception was taken to the proposed continuity between Old Testament prophets living under a theocratic system of government, and the modern Church. The Westminster Confession was adduced as allowing for no further special revelation from God after the completion of the New Testament. The Holy Spirit works now in the capacity of illumining the “completed Word.” The Church’s “prophetic role” is the declaration of this Word.

Further appeal was made to the Confession as stating, “ ‘Synods and councils are to handle nothing but that which is ecclesiastical; and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs …’ ” The council’s report was thus declared to be out of bounds in calling, in “quasi-authoritative” manner, for such as the strengthening of the public school system, a matter left by the Bible to the individual Christian parent.

With regard to the use of church buildings for schools, the report stated “primary responsibility for the use of church property” to reside in the church session.

The report recalled that the Southern Presbyterian Church originally split from its parent body over a resolution which was “essentially” political. In recommending the dissolution of the Council on Christian Relations, the report disavowed any leanings towards individualism or Congregationalism, but warned against the substitution of “a new authoritarianism of church courts for the authority of individual conscience instructed by the Word of God” and “the assumption of authority by the church over all areas of thought and life.”

Subsequent debate as to acceptance or rejection of the minority report proved interesting even if it did not rise to the level of the highly-regarded reports. Southern eloquence seemed to soar more easily on this topic than on some others. Judge L. F. Hendrick of Central Mississippi Presbytery warned that “intervention in secular affairs would impair the spiritual mission of the church.”

Hungarian-born William Bonis of Austin, Texas, decried the church’s frequent lag behind the community in accomplishing integration. General Joseph B. Fraser of Georgia, speaking against the minority report, said the time had not yet come in the South for integration, but that the problem demanded facing.

Mississippian James Finch was convinced that the majority report “does not represent the ‘grass-roots’ views of the Southern Presbyterian Church.”

In summary, Dr. Miller warned that to break down the confessional safeguards of conscience in social and political matters, would be a “start down the road which leads inevitably, I feel, to the days before the Reformation.”

The assembly then voted, the count revealing the minority report to have been defeated, 288 to 124. The majority report was then accepted, with amendments providing consideration for opposing views and softening slightly proposed support of the U.N.

Thus the crisis was past with little apparent bitterness. Lending personal charm to his position, newly-elected moderator, Philip F. Howerton, Charlotte insurance executive and son of a former moderator, predicted to newsmen that this issue would return again and again to haunt future assemblies.

Another election saw the unanimous calling of Dr. James A. Millard Jr., for the post of stated clerk. If he accepts, he will succeed Dr. E. C. Scott, who retires in 1959 after 22 years in this position.

Occasionally in some of the ceremonies Wistful sounds were heard on possible future union with northern Presbyterians, such being considered an affront by many, since a majority of the presbyteries only recently voted down the proposed merger. One said, “We are not trying to maintain Southern Presbyterianism as such, but we are seeking to preserve historic Presbyterianism.”

Notable on the floor of debate was the historic procedure of repeated appeals to Scripture and to the Westminster Confession of Faith.

There were occasional rumblings in the debate on Christian relations that the seeds of schism were being sown. However, one minister said that he could put up with “political differences” but when the assembly proceeded to tamper with the Confession in the manner it had done on the divorce question, this was a vital issue which could lead to “my seeking another fellowship regardless of the cost.”

In point of fact, the assembly had voted to amend the Confession of Faith and the Book of Church Order to permit remarriage after divorce, with the blessing of the church, when the minister has satisfied himself as to proper penitence for past failure and firm purpose to make the new marriage truly Christian. Debate at times seemed to equate a continuing celibate state with an unforgiven condition.

Present church law allows remarriage after divorce only for the innocent party in cases of adultery and willful desertion. The approved changes now go to the 83 presbyteries for vote, three-fourths of which must give approval for the changes in the Confession to become church law. The chances for this eventuality are not bright, similar tries in the recent past having failed.

Some point to the fact that issues, such as the recent merger-plan, can be decisively passed in the assembly only to be decisively defeated by the presbyteries—demonstrating that the highest court is no longer as representative as originally intended. It is also said that the General Assembly is losing its features as a “deliberative body” and becoming more like a church “convention” with issues being pushed through with greater ease.

Another effort was made to change the Confession through a presbytery overture to remove what were termed “the harsher statements concerning predestination.” The assembly, after vigorous debate, upheld the recommendations of the Committee on Bills and Overtures that the overture be rejected. Chairman of the committee, Dr. J. N. Thomas of Union Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, while not believing the portions questioned to be fully biblical, spoke against tampering further with the Confession and thus depriving it of inner consistency. Rather, he would favor a complete revision of the entire Confession or the drawing up of a new document, maintaining the old as a “guide” and a “monument” of midseventeenth-century theology.

One authority said this to be the first such expression made on floor of the assembly. It was apparently disturbing to some. On the last day of the assembly a commissioner sought passage of a resolution that the church “does continue to stand on the Westminster Confession.”

But it was too late.

Worth Quoting

Heard at last month’s National Association of Evangelicals convention:

—A telegraphed message from President Eisenhower which congratulated NAE for “playing an important role in the life of the nation. Inspired by the precepts of the faith, you bring strength and direction by the daily work of many millions.”

—“Nine million card-carrying Communists are winning the world, while 600 million Christians are losing it.”—Billy Graham.

—“Theologians may well keep one eye on the stars while keeping another eye on the social challenges of immediate living. Heaven and hell do not only exist in outer space, they exist in the present state of human living.”—Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, pastor, Park Strec Church, Boston.

—“Revival is not schismatic. God offers a revival to the churches as they exist.”—J. Edwin Orr, evangelist.

—“All intervention by a secular state in the field of religious education is a two-fold travesty of justice. It is interference with legitimate private enterprise, and it is state intrusion in the field of religion.”—Dr. Mark Fakkema, educational director, National Association of Christian Schools.

Psychologists Meet

Nearly 100 psychologists gathered last month for the fifth annual convention of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies at Calvin Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The group will meet next year at Pine Rest Christian Hospital, an institution for mental patients, also at Grand Rapids, according to Dr. Cornelius Jaarsma, executive secretary.

P. D. V.

Niebuhr Illness

Professor Reinhold Niebuhr was reported ill to the extent that he was forced to cancel engagements.

The report said Niebuhr’s illness was not grave, but that “he is under doctor’s orders to drop all activities for the time being.”

Renewed Effort

The Protestant Council of New York will sponsor a Madison Square Garden evangelistic rally May 15, first anniversary date of the start of Billy Graham’s New York campaign.

Graham will greet the rally by direct wire from San Francisco.

Methodist evangelist Joseph Blinco of England will deliver the main address.

Musical guests scheduled to appear include soloists Ethel Waters, Jerome Hines, Arthur Budney, John King, and Richard Parke. Jab Williams will lead a 2,000-voice choir.

L. N.

New Crime Record

Crime in the United States during 1957 was at an all-time high, according to J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director.

He announced that an estimated 2,796,400 crimes were known to police last year, an increase of 9.1 per cent over the previous record set the year before.

“This is an extremely high increase,” said Hoover, “and merits the careful attention of every individual interested in a better society.”

Last year, a record number of 2,068,677 arrests were made by police, with one out of eight involving juveniles 17 years of age or under. Nearly one-third of all arrests involved young people under 25.

Bold Approach

Considering current missionary shortages, communist gains, and population growth, Park Street Church finds little reason to be satisfied with its $250,000-a-year missionary program, largest of any single congregation in the nation.

To arouse Christians anew to missionary responsibilities, the historic church adjacent to the Boston Common sponsors an annual missionary conference.

The 19th such gathering, April 25 to May 4, featured 60 missions leaders from all over the world in public services, luncheons, forums, and prayer meetings.

Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, pastor, saw the opportunity to stress a threefold need. He said that the most urgent area was in the field of literature, with more printed material required to counteract deluges of communist propaganda. He said that the other big needs were more missionary personnel and access to presently unreachable areas such as lands behind the Iron and Bamboo curtains.

The Park Street Church now supports 121 missionaries. Ten more candidates were to be presented to the conference this year. The church first sent out missionaries in 1819.

Baruch On Law

Statesman Bernard Baruch was appearing as a witness before the Senate Finance Committee. He was asked to suggest what Congress could do to prevent periodic ups and downs in the nation’s economy.

Said Baruch:

“Yes, pass law changing human nature, and make it retroactive to the Garden of Eden.”

Air Time Appeal

National Association of Evangelicals’ Board of Administration carried the gospel broadcasters’ fight against discriminatory air time policies to the Federal Communications Commission.

NAE President Herbert S. Mekeel submitted board-adopted resolutions which call for reports to the FCC by broadcasting stations on time given or sold to religious program sponsors.

The resolutions ask the commission to examine the reports and consummate “appropriate action … embracing … notification to all stations that qualified religious broadcasters must have equal opportunity with all other Americans (as citizens) in purchasing time any hour of the day or night.”

The board charged that (1) certain stations refuse to offer preferred time for religious broadcasting, (2) these stations cover themselves by allocating a small amount of sustaining (free) time for religious broadcasting, and (3) certain stations are reducing their number of Sunday religious programs.

Evidence Of Wrath

An archaeological expedition uncovered evidence last month indicating the destruction of the ancient city of Dothan in the period described in Bible history as the time of an invasion by Assyrian armies.

The expedition headed by Wheaton College Professor Joseph P. Free found shattered house walls and broken pottery among other ruins.

Professor Free and his wife are among 11 Americans who have been digging at the Jordan site, 60 miles from Jerusalem.

A Visitor’S Report

“The congregational singing was the most phenomenal I have ever heard,” said Congressman Brooks Hays after a two-hour service in Moscow’s First Baptist Church.

Representative Hays said 1200 people jammed the pews for Sunday morning worship, another 800 stood and “other hundreds” were turned away.

The Arkansas Democrat flew to Moscow for a four-day stay with Dr. and Mrs. Clarence W. Cranford. Hays is president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Cranford is president of the American Baptist Convention and pastor of Washington’s Calvary Baptist Church, which is affiliated with both the ABC and the SBC.

All spoke to the congregation through an interpreter. Most of the worshippers were older women.

Hays told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing upon his return to Washington that the liquor problem “is so serious in Russia that Mr. Krushchev has taken notice of it himself.” The remark was included in testimony given to endorse a Senate bill which would ban liquor advertising in interstate commerce.

Hays said his trip was financed by the Foreign MisSions Board of the SBC.

First Auca Convert

The first Auca Indian convert, a girl named Dayuma who fled the fierce Ecuador tribe before its warriors killed five American missionaries two years ago, was baptized as a Christian in Wheaton, Illinois, last month.

The girl is a language informant to Rachel Saint, sister of Nate Saint, one of the slain missionaries. Miss Saint has been studying the Auca language with the Wycliffe Bible Translators. She and Dayuma are to return to Ecuador. Both were seen last June on the television program, “This Is Your Life.”

Dayuma was baptized by Dr. V. Raymond Edman, president of Wheaton College and one-time missionary to Ecuador.

Latin America

Tribe Responds

Preaching the Gospel to Paraguay’s Chulupie Indians is a task to test the perseverance of any missionary. It took more than a decade to produce a convert.

Is it worth the effort? The North American Mennonite Brethren Board of Foreign Missions surely thinks so, now that 21 Chulupie men have been baptized into Christian fellowship. More than 2,500 persons attended the baptismal ceremony.

The Mennonite work among the Chulupies was begun about 12 years ago. Not until about a year and a half ago were there definite responses.

There is only one North American missionary couple present, the Rev. and Mrs. J. H. Franz of Coaldale, Alberta. The rest of the missionary staff is made up of workers from churches in Paraguay. They are also ministering to the area’s Lengua Indians. All the workers are Mennonites.

India

Limits Of Witness

Government workers in India must not use their influence to proselytize, warns a decree from New Delhi.

Public employees are free to profess and practice any religion in their private lives, but they must avoid the connection of any such activities with their official positions, the pronouncement said. Disciplinary action was threatened in case of violations.

The decree added, “Cases of government servants taking part in such activities are not likely to occur frequently.” One observer said he was not sure whether this was a compliment or an indictment of Christian witness.

The announcement was not interpreted as necessarily anti-Christian, for it will apply also to Buddhism, which is now experiencing revival. The ruling may be felt most among Hindus, who have often been somewhat careless about intermingling official functions with religious rites.

Australasia

Mormon Temple

The South Pacific’s first Mormon temple was dedicated near Auckland, New Zealand, last month.

David O. McKay, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, presided over the dedication of the million-dollar temple and its adjoining college campus which was developed at a cost of six million dollars.

The Latest Method

The Anglican Board of Missions in Australia had to find six missionaries in a hurry or close its New Guinea jungle outposts.

Off went a telegram to every unmarried Anglican clergyman with not less than two or more than 10 years service. The complete text of the telegram: “Will you place your future in the hands of your diocese and bishop offering yourself for service in the Highlands of New Guinea?”

Nineteen clergymen replied. Five said simply, “Yes.”