Africa News: June 24, 1957

Important Race

Racing against the tide of secular civilizations sweeping into Africa, the Sudan Interior Mission is launching a new literature project aimed at reaching African tribes with periodicals in their languages.

The West African Field Council has announced plans for producing a series of illustrated, colorful gospel leaflets under the initials “VIP”—Vernacular Illustrated Publications for Africa.

“While our Christian magazine, African Challenge, has been reaching English-speaking literates all over the continent, we have felt the need of reaching Africans who are literate only in their own tribal languages,” said the Rev. R. J. Davis, West Africa Field Director. “Western materialism flooding into the English-speaking coastal areas has not yet overcome inherent interest in religion in non-English-speaking areas. We plan to reach entire tribes with the gospel in print before materialism and cults reach them.

W. H. F.

Spreading The Word

There are about 80 languages in which short passages or collections of passages have been published, but they are not customarily counted in the total.

Three complete Bibles were published for the first time last year in Bemba (spoken in North Rhodesia); Nimbi Ijo (Nigeria) and Marovo (Solomon Islands).

An estimated 1,000 languages and dialects have no written form.

All-Africa Meeting

Nigeria will be host to an all-Africa Church Conference in January, 1958.

The Conference, to be held in Ibadan, Western Nigeria, will have as its theme, “The Church in Changing Africa.” Three sessions daily, in addition to a morning worship service, will be held from January 10–18.

Preliminary plans were made at a meeting in Lagos of the Christian Council. The chairman was Sir Francis Ibiam, president of the Council.

New Zealand News: June 24, 1957

Revival Nearer

A number of reports have reached America in recent months about an outstanding work in evangelism throughout New Zealand by Dr. J. Edwin Orr, internationally-known evangelist.CHRISTIANITY TODAYasked a special appraisal by Dr. E. M. Blaiklock, Professor of Classics, University College, Auckland. The appraisal follows—ED.

I do not propose to extend this report beyond the outer limits of personal experience. I do, however, feel competent to stress certain aspects of Dr. Orr’s work which a more factual account might disregard.

It is natural, perhaps, that I should first commend Dr. Orr as a students’ evangelist. Such preachers are a rare breed. Christian colleagues in universities and other institutions of learning will, I am sure, understand that relief with which a visitor is welcomed who can preach to a group of students with a clear understanding of their problems and prejudices, without embarrassed slurring of the essentials of the faith and without embarrassing the academic sponsors of his meeting with painful anecdote, arrogant dogmatism or irrelevance.

I have watched fairly closely Dr. Orr’s incidental work among the unions of the IVF (Inter-Varsity Fellowship) in this country, and could wish that it had been possible to use him more widely. He clearly understands students and knows how and where to win that contact with their thinking, which is the first requirement of effective preaching.

My own association with Dr. Orr was on the platform of the Ngaruawahia Convention. This interdenominational “Keswick” meets annually in a lovely place, rich in colonial history, at the junction of the Waipa and the Waikato Rivers.

The Convention is notable by any standards. Over 1,000 people gather for the major meetings, and as a past preacher at England’s Kewwick Convention, I can personally testify to the integrity of the message and the spiritual worth of Ngaruawahia’s annual effort. The peril, as critics of such work are prompt to point out, is shallow emotionalism and a fragile enthusiasm based on mass appeal and an over-charged atmosphere. On the occasions when I have served on such platforms, I have endeavored to relate my theme to Scripture, to encourage a biblical approach to devotion, to exalt the ethical, and to promote a deliberate examination of life and character in relation to the teaching of the New Testament.

It is my impression that Dr. Orr subscribes to the same principles. There is light and shade in his preaching; he is rich in relevant anecdote; but the solid biblical foundation on which he builds his appeal is always evident and ably laid. The response is heartening.

I should rank highly Dr. Orr’s work in the smaller and more closely knit communities. It is too often the fashion of leading preachers who visit this country to confine their ministry to what New Zealand calls “the four main centers,” in other words, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. These four cities strung down 800 miles of eastern seaboard have been well served and tend to be blase about organized evangelism. Like the Mild way team, Dr. Orr has paid some attention to the more needy and, in many ways, more fruitful field of the country towns.

I happen to have a personal interest in Dargaville, a dairy center some 100 miles north of Auckland. Many years ago I spoke on more than one occasion at the invitation of an ardent little evangelical group who kept up a firm testimony in the town. Dr. Orr reaped the later fruits of their witness. I have checked the details and find the story stimulating. There was active and expectant preparation, a large measure of cooperation among the churches and a wide public appeal. Dr. Orr aimed largely at consolidating the Christian witness and deepening the experience of the church people with a full discussion of sanctification. The limits of this column forbid repetition of the detail reported to me, but it was felt that the mission laid a firm foundation for future building.

That would be my summary of the whole. This country has never known revival, but this year’s events have brought it nearer!

New Zealand Vote

From June 14 to 24, all members of the Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational Churches and the Associated Churches of Christ in New Zealand will vote on the “principle of church union.”

The last vote, held in 1948 and excluding the Church of Christ, showed a majority of three-fifths in favor of union. If the June vote favors union by “a substantial majority,” a definite basis will be prepared for a future vote.

Far East News: June 24, 1957

Merger In India

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

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

Campaign In Japan

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

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

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

He left Japan for more work in India.

Books

Book Briefs: June 24, 1957

Supplement Volumes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ARTHUR W. KUSCHKE, JR.

Contemporary Liberalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

JOHN F. WALVOORD

Conservative View

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

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

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

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

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

R. J. RUSHDOONY

Reformed Worship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JAMES C. EELMAN

Medical Opinion

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRANK HOUGHTON

Perfectionist Activity

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

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

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

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

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

R. J. RUSHDOONY

Review of Current Religious Thought: June 24, 1957

G. C. Berkouwer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- More from G. C. Berkouwer

Cover Story

Dare We Revive the: Modernist-Fundamentalist Conflict?

The Editor

Whoever evaluates the modernist-fundamentalist controversy from the standpoint of the sixth decade must sense the current distaste for religious contention, must sense the deference to ecumenical cooperation. In the face of present pressures for unity and unanimity, the ministry no doubt reflects an increasing impatience with controversy because of its apparent historical fruitlessness and futility. Ecumenical inclusivism rolls on; each passing year registers new mergers and numerical gains while the outside minority diminishes.

An added pressure is the destructive impact of religious controversy upon the unchurched multitudes. For more than half a century liberal preaching defined the evangelical message as irrelevant and meaningless for modern man. Conservative pulpits, in turn, affirmed that whatever else modernism might be, it was not Christianity. As the decades passed, increasing multitudes detached themselves from the churches. All the while modernist inveighed against fundamentalist and fundamentalist against modernist. Unchurched multitudes have been watching from the sidelines, justifying their detachment from a pugilistic spirituality.

Alongside these pressures against church strife engendered out of consideration for the larger Protestant witness and for the unchurched masses, evangelicals within their own camp experienced disappointments due to religious controversy. Deploring the strategy that delivered one influential post after another to liberal denominational leadership, conservatives saw some of their own leaders fall prey to the lust for ecclesiastical prominence. Theological controversy got out of hand; not only was it appended to personal ambition, but it was made to serve unnecessary discord and division. The positive side of theological controversy (the case for great Christian beliefs) was yielded swiftly to the negative. Pulpit and convention became a platform for the denunciation of personalities and organizations.

Another reason to resist a renewal of modernist-fundamentalist debate centers in the present upsurge in church attendance by the spiritually illiterate. Stabbed by an inner uncertainty, insecurity and fear in the aftermath of two global wars, the American people now throng the churches in record numbers. Most of these churchgoers are unfamiliar with the specifics of the modernist-fundamentalist controversy. Shall they learn unhappy details of past theological and ecclesiastical tension and trouble before they are invited to saving faith in Christ? To keep the fire of faith burning brightly for those who throng the tabernacles of God today, dare we neglect a new perspective on the recent past?

Thus far we have dealt mainly with a mid-century ministerial mood and mind-set, namely, an aversion to perpetuating the modernist-fundamentalist debate. Because of the modern premium on ecclesiastical unity, because of the inelegant impression church controversy makes upon the world, because of the easy degeneration of theological conflict into negation and lovelessness and because of the rising generation of churchgoers who must be linked swiftly with the first generation of Christian faith, today there is a growing impatience with the effort to preserve the edge of past-generation theological debate as the permanent center of Christian polemics, apologetics and evangelism.

The Great Divide?

This impatience is by no means universal, however. In some circles the ecclesiastical encounter still follows the same lines shaped a generation or two ago.

Some vocal fundamentalists consider the modernist-fundamentalist divide the permanent razor edge to which all the destinies of twentieth-century Christianity must be exposed. This view is encouraged by men of influence in a variety of opinion-forming media—church councils, periodicals, schools, exclusivist movements.

The fundamentalist wing is not alone, however, in the tendency to perpetuate the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Even some liberals draw the lines of ecclesiastical dispute much as they were drawn a generation ago. They refuse to share Karl Barth’s and Emil Brunner’s sharp criticism of classic liberal theology.

No less a modernist than Harry Emerson Fosdick believes that the fate of Christianity still reduces to a necessary conflict between the old liberalism and fundamentalism. In 1927 Dr. Fosdick’s sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” made him the storm center of American preaching. Three decades later his highly readable autobiography The Living of These Years (Harper, 1957) spins a halo of self-justification over Dr. Fosdick’s vagabondage and endeavors to vindicate the liberalism to which he raised an altar. Dr. Fosdick guards his cherished liberalism from any need for repentance and radical revision. Likewise his verdict on fundamentalism is identical to that of thirty years ago.

If another example is needed of a modernist tendency to freeze the modernist-fundamentalist debate as the permanent center of ecclesiastical life, we may refer to that influential journal of liberal opinion The Christian Century, which has so unmistakably established fundamentalism as a color word, while vindicating a role of ecclesiastical dignity and respect for such terms as liberalism and modernism. The Century’s outlook today is little different: nothing good can come out of fundamentalism; the hope of the church and of the world is liberalism. Fundamentalist missionaries may die as martyrs, but they are dismissed as misguided; fundamentalist evangelism may strike into the barren churches of our centuries like lightning from heaven, but it is naive and socially irrelevant; fundamentalist scholarship may produce worthy textbooks and religious journals, but they are suspect and dangerous because they are not liberal; fundamentalists may even criticize fundamentalists but unless they defect from evangelical Christianity to liberalism they are still unacceptable.

Essence Of Christianity

The modernism of the past generation is therefore still regarded as the essence of Christianity. Liberalism thus confronts contemporary Christianity once again with two important and interrelated issues: (1) Is modernism acceptable as expressive of Christianity? and (2) Is the Christian church ideally inclusive of both modernists and evangelicals?

Dr. Fosdick gives us a recent answer to these questions, but it is not new. He describes himself as an “evangelical liberal.” And he so defines the term “tolerance” as virtually to mean the acceptance “of a church inclusive enough to take in both liberals and conservatives without either trying to drive the other out” (The Living of These Years, p. 145).

Today, on the other hand, the contrast between modernism and evangelical Christianity is being sketched anew from a quite different standpoint by theologians of former modernist sympathies to show the radical perversion of biblical Christianity of which classic liberalism was guilty.

Secondary Criticisms

Modern churchmen who permit only secondary criticisms of classic liberal theology make its adequacy a contemporary issue through continued espousal. Dr. Fosdick himself enumerates certain criticisms: liberalism adjusted Christian thought to the standard of secular culture, so that “the center of gravity was not in the gospel but in the prevalent intellectual concepts of our time” (p. 245); it was “too blind to the tragic sinfulness and plight of man” (p. 248); “it took too negative a view of the Bible” (p. 243). Although the first of these criticisms would be sufficient to discredit modernism as the bearer of the essence of Christianity, Dr. Fosdick nevertheless refuses to bring under vigorous criticism the liberalism that he represented. While conceding that he “took the optimistic color of our generation” (p. 237), he declines to be classified with main-stream liberalism, or rather, with those “extreme” liberals whose views are now under fire (p. 231). There were varieties of liberalism, and his variety, says Dr. Fosdick, did not share these objectionable features which later invited a criticism of liberalism as secular and non-Christian. He identifies himself with that “very considerable number” of liberals who rejected “automatic, inevitable social progress” (p. 237); who denied that the “Kingdom of God could fully come in human history on this planet” (p. 239); who refused to reduce Christianity to mere ethicism but widened it rather to include Jesus’ world view and his faith in God as well as his morals (p. 242). While extreme liberalism doubtless propounded an excessive divine immanence, Dr. Fosdick defends his as the New Testament view (p. 253). Moreover, notwithstanding European criticism and rejection for more than two decades of Dr. Fosdick’s diminution of divine revelation to prophetic initiative and insight, he evades any acknowledged support of liberalism’s exaggerated confidence in human reason (p. 256). Although writing appreciatively of neo-supernaturalism’s stress on a divine initiative in our religious experience (p. 236) and on the necessity and primacy of God’s self-revelation (p. 256), and although voicing his debt to Niebuhr for the emphasis that even our best good is corroded by egocentricity and pride, Dr. Fosdick nonetheless repeatedly declares his own brand of liberalism (p. 251) without need of neo-orthodox revision, since he did not join the “optimistic extremes” of other modernists.

Evangelicals will not lament some dangers (such as an excessive divorce of faith and reason, an unhealthy pessimism) that Dr. Fosdick senses in neo-supernaturalism. But protest must be made when he protects Fosdickian liberalism from criticism, when he insists that even neo-supernaturalism is best sanctified by liberalism and when he concedes that neo-supernaturalism attracts him in its disavowal of any final theology. Herein an unrepentant liberalism of the 1920’s is seeking immortality for itself in the 1950’s.

An Unchanging Modernism?

Curiously enough, Dr. Fosdick throughout his lifetime has professed the conditioning of every generation’s theology by its social matrix. Therefore, each theology sooner or later is destined for discard (p. 232). “Static orthodoxies,” he tells us, “are a menace to the Christian cause” (p. 230). “Theologies are psychologically and sociologically conditioned” (p. 231). “Theological trends … are partial, contemporary” (p. 232). “Dogmatism in theology, whether ‘liberal’ or ‘orthodox’ is ridiculous” (p. 231).

In view of Dr. Fosdick’s representations of theology as necessarily relative and changing, is it not incredible that he should wish for his own views a durability and an exemption from criticism which he denies to the views of others? Is it not amazing that Dr. Fosdick is unwilling to refer his own prejudices to this principle of inevitable change, which he has so confidently invoked against the orthodoxy of the past? It was on the ground of the supposed inevitability of theological change that Dr. Fosdick had in fact contended that “creedal subscription to the ancient confessions of faith is a practice dangerous to the welfare of the church and to the integrity of the individual conscience” and, moreover, is “hampering to the free leadership of the Spirit” (p. 172).

Dr. Fosdick even seems to arrogate to his views a veiled prophecy of finality: “neither the extremes to which liberalism often went nor the extremes to which neo-orthodoxy goes today will be the final word” (p. 265). Are we not, in context, to regard the stable view of Dr. Fosdick as that final word? Yet has he not elsewhere firmly disowned the possibility of any final word in theology? Are we not to expect that, as in the mid-20’s he urged the church to go beyond fundamentalism, and as in the mid-30’s he pleaded that “The Church Must Go Beyond Modernism,” so in the mid 50’s he would require that it go beyond Fosdick?

Dr. Fosdick himself complains that other liberals, after rejecting biblical positions, too often fell prey to a static orthodoxy of their own (p. 246). Assertedly, there is no genuine protection from theological relativism. Yet hesitancy and half-heartedness characterize his own application of this concept. Now and then Dr. Fosdick ventures to write not merely of “the basic Christian experiences,” but of “revelations of truth”; indeed, he insists that he himself maintains “the timeless values and truths of the gospel” (p. 147), and that liberals agree with the historic denominations “in the abiding substantial truths” they support (p. 163). The impression is unavoidable that Dr. Fosdick more consistently observed the limits of his approach when in decades past he spoke of theory rather than of truth in words like these: “In theology I hold the opinions which hundreds of … ministers hold” (p. 172). However halting the application to his personal positions, Dr. Fosdick has cut himself off in principle from any privilege to propose lasting truth.

This fact puts us on guard when we overhear Dr. Fosdick, quite indifferent to the limitations of his theory of knowledge, pleading with modernists to stop conforming Christ to contemporary culture but rather to challenge modern culture in the name of Christ (p. 246). Elsewhere he pleads for “well-thought-out, positive statements of liberal convictions in the realm of Christian faith” (p. 243). But where, within Dr. Fosdick’s approach, is the minister to find fixed and final concepts and ideas wherewith to challenge the prevalent intellectual concepts of the times? If the liberal minister is to avoid both a revealed theology and an adjustment to contemporary culture, in the name of what is he to discriminate permanent truths from impermanent opinions? For not only are dogmatic certainty and static creed elsewhere affirmed to be unnecessary and impossible, but dogmatism is dogmatically alleged to be a source of religious ruin (p. 233).

Prevailing Prejudices

Dr. Fosdick’s autobiography reflects the speculative assumptions that determine his readiness to delete the sacred doctrines of evangelical Christianity from his conception of vital religion. Two such controlling prejudices, contradictive of biblical Christianity, stand in the forefront: (1) the notion that man’s experience of God is immediate, without a necessary dependence upon past mediation; and (2) the notion of the human mind’s incompetence to grasp spiritual realities. It is not amiss to comment briefly.

Dr. Fosdick writes of “direct, immediate, personal experience as the solid ground for assurance” (p. 234). Stated this bare way, we seem to have here the reiteration of an important New Testament emphasis, namely, that Christianity involves no mere second-hand relationship to God. Assurance of salvation is not suspended upon the word of some priest or hierarchy, but rather is subjectively ascertainable through the immediate witness of the Spirit. Actually, however, Dr. Fosdick virtually excludes any historically mediated revelation and redemption in his emphasis on man’s present relationship with God. The implications stand out when we inquire into Dr. Fosdick’s conception of the Gospel. He tells us: “The essence of Christianity is incarnate in the personality of the Master, and it means basic faith in God, in the divinity revealed in Christ, in personality’s sacredness and possibilities and in the fundamental principles of life’s conduct which Jesus of Nazareth exhibited” (p. 269). Read these words often as one will, one cannot escape the conviction that Dr. Fosdick’s statement contradicts the New Testament view that the essence of Christianity is the good news of the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for doomed sinners (cf. 1 Cor. 15:1–4). Instead of depicting Jesus Christ as the redeemer of all men, Dr. Fosdick tells us simply that Jesus of Nazareth was the first and finest Christian.

Dr. Fosdick’s restriction of the relevance of reason in the spiritual world accounts for his concessions to metaphysical agnosticism; this weakness the newer neo-supernaturalistic views carry over from the older modernist tradition. It is curious to note Dr. Fosdick’s apprehension over Barth’s divorcing of revelation and reason, while yet he approves Barth’s emphasis that “our concepts are not adequate to grasp this treasure.” Nonetheless, Dr. Fosdick disallows us any final theological knowledge. Curiously, he tells us: “Ideas of God change and ought to, but that fact does not mean that anything has happened to God [How Dr. Fosdick came by this latter bit of fixed information he does not inform us].” Nowhere does Dr. Fosdick harmonize his own incidental references to enduring spiritual truths with his denial of the competency of reason in the spiritual world, and with the consequent assertion of theological relativity. While he appeals deferentially to “the life and words of the historic Jesus” (p. 247), he does not indicate why even those teachings of Christ which pass Dr. Fosdick’s censorship are exceptions to the rule that divine truths cannot be infallibly grasped and communicated in the dimension of humanity.

Dr. Fosdick’s affirmation of the theological relevance of last-generation liberalism comes as a keen disappointment to many evangelical leaders. Prone to assume that liberalism had been chastened, curbed and forced to abandon its defenses by the drift of the times, if not by the authority of biblical revelation, these evangelicals will find in Dr. Fosdick’s The Living of These Days a revelation that he has not really lived through our era with theological awareness; he moves still within the gates of a romanticized experiential Christianity isolated from the realities of history. Casting the fortunes of liberalism in this unrepentant mold will not only evoke wide disappointment, but it will provoke the conviction that the time for theological controversy is once again upon us.

Irrelevance Of Modernism

Evangelicals are not alone in their negative verdict on classical liberalism, Dr. Fosdick’s species included. Influential liberal circles see the necessity of superseding the Fosdickian views if Protestant theology in the 50’s is to maintain its vitality. In fact, the whole initiative in theology is now shaped by leaders who dismiss Fosdick’s The Modern Use of the Bible as a mirror of outdated prejudices. They do not share his reliance on the relevance of classic liberalism but have already conceded the irrelevance even of the Fosdickian version.

A sound theological instinct supports their uneasiness over the classic liberal position. Even at best liberalism reflected the invasion of a secular spirit. It exaggerated God’s immanence, minimized man’s sinfulness, concealed Christ’s supernaturalness and the centrality of his redemptive work, attached utopian expectations to history and ignored the task of evangelism. For half a generation, most centers of the old liberal thought have been compromising, adjusting and refurbishing the views of a generation ago. Their theologians and ministers are eager to get beyond the modernist-fundamentalist controversy. For them classic liberal theology was too strongly leavened with secularism to be cherished as a fixed point of theological debate. The fact that modernism evolved a counter-dogmatics to historic Christianity, a counter-ethics, a counter-ecumenicity, attested the radically different premises with which modernism began. These inevitably spelled out their counter-implications to historic Christianity. That modernism took this course was no reflection on Christianity; it was a commentary, rather, on the fact that modernism quite understood its starting point, rooted in speculation instead of in revelation. What is a reflection on Christianity, however, is that many Protestant leaders did not sense this alien starting point. They chose, rather, to defend it as expressive of the essence of Christianity. Moreover, some influential leaders today still glory in a speculative secular standpoint whose implications are disastrous for Christian faith. Yet neo-supernaturalists like Barth and Brunner have expressed themselves no less pointedly than did J. Gresham Machen, in Christianity and Liberalism.

Barth does not hesitate to speak of modernism as a heresy. “Within the organized unities of the evangelical churches we are faced with the fact of pietistic-rationalistic Modernism” in which, he writes, “we do not recognize faith and the Church,” and in encountering which Christianity is called “to purification, to a rendering of our account, to responsibility.” Over against modernism, “although it has neither been expelled from the evangelical churches nor voluntarily gone over to found a counter-church, we draw the line as definitely as over against Catholicism” (The Doctrine of the Word of God, Vol. I, Part 1, 36 ff.).

In the very year in which Fosdick delivered his great sermon against the fundamentalists, Brunner was delivering a series of lectures in the United States in which he said bluntly: “A first glance at fundamentalism shows its strength to consist in a negative; its criticism of modernism from the standpoint of Christian faith … A fundamentalist, possessed of a reasonably correct knowledge of Christianity, will have little difficulty in proving that the modernist teaches, under the label of Christianity, a religion which has nothing in common with Christianity except a few words, and that those words cover concepts which are irreconcilable with the content of Christian faith” (The Theology of Crisis, p. 9. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929). (TO BE CONTINUED)

This is the first of four abridgments of lectures on Evangelical Responsibility in Contemporary Theology delivered by Editor Carl F. H. Henry at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in May, and at Calvin College during the centennial observance of the Christian Reformed Church in June. The original titles are: “The Modernist Revision,” “The Fundamentalist Reduction,” “The Contemporary Restoration,” and “The Evangelical Responsibility.”

- More from The Editor

Cover Story

Through Gates of Splendor

Elisabeth Elliot

At four-thirty sharp Marj Saint eagerly switched on the radio receiver in Shell Mera. This was the moment when the big news would come. Had the men been invited to follow the Aucas to their houses? What further developments would Nate be able to report?

She looked at her watch again. Yes, it was at least four-thirty. No sound from Palm Beach. She and Olive hunched close to the radio. The atmosphere was not giving any interference. Perhaps Nate’s watch had run a little slow.

In Arajuno, Marilou and Barbara had their radio on, too. Silence. They waited a few minutes, then called Shell Mera.

“Arajuno calling Shell Mera. Arajuno standing by for Shell Mera. Any word from Palm Beach, Marj? Over.”

“Shell Mera standing by. No, no word as yet. We’ll be standing by.”

Not a crackle broke the silence.

Clinging To Little Hope

Were the men so preoccupied with entertaining their visitors that they had forgotten the planned contact? Five minutes … ten minutes … No, it was inconceivable that all five would forget. It was the first time since Nate had started jungle flying in 1948 that he and Marj had been out of contact even for an hour.

But—perhaps their radio was not functioning. It happened occasionally. The women clung to each little hope, refusing to entertain the thought of anything’s really having gone wrong. Their suspense was the sharper because most of their missionary friends on the network were unaware that Operation Auca was in progress. In Arajuno, Barbara and little Beth Youderian had primped up a bit, since it had been planned that Roj would come to Arajuno that night, while Pete took a turn sleeping in the tree house. Surely the little plane would come winging over the treetops before sundown. They walked up and down the airstrip, waiting …

Just after sundown Art Johnston, one of the doctors with Hospital Vozandes, affiliated with the missionary radio station HCJB in Quito, came into the radio room in Shell Mera. The radio was still on, but Marj sat with her head down on the desk.

“Is something the matter, Marj?”

She told him the situation briefly, but asked that he not divulge it yet. If nothing serious had actually happened, it would be disastrous to publicize what was taking place. There was little sleep that night for any of the wives.

By seven o’clock on the morning of Monday, January 9, 1956, Johnny Keenan, Nate’s colleague in the MAF, was in the air flying toward the sand strip which Nate had eariler pointed out to him. As he flew, Marj called me in Shandia: “We haven’t heard from the fellows since yesterday noon. Would you stand by at ten o’clock for Johnny’s report?”

It was the first I knew that anything was amiss. A verse God had impressed on my mind when I first arrived in Ecuador came back suddenly and sharply; “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.…” I went upstairs to continue teaching the Indian girls’ literacy class, praying silently, “Lord, let not the waters overflow.”

At about nine-thirty Johnny’s report came through. Marj relayed it to me in Shandia:

“Johnny has found the plane on the beach. All the fabric is stripped off. There is no sign of the fellows.”

In Shell Mera, a pilot of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Larry Montgomery (who is also a reserve officer in the USAF), lost no time in contacting Lieutenant General William K. Harrison, Commander in Chief of the Caribbean Command, which included the United States Air Rescue Service in Panama. Radio station HCJB, was also informed and news flashed around the world: “FIVE MEN MISSING IN AUCA TERRITORY.” By noon, all possible forces which might contribute to their rescue, including the prayers of thousands of people in all parts of the world, were set in motion.

Ground Search Party

On Monday evening it was decided that a ground search party should be organized, on the assumption that one or more of the men still lived, and Frank Drown, Roger Youderian’s colleague, a man with twelve years of jungle experience among the Jivaros, was unanimously elected to lead the party. Dr. Art Johnston offered to go along in his capacity as physician. Thirteen Ecuadorian soldiers promptly volunteered.

On Tuesday morning I was flown out of Shandia with Nate’s sister Rachel, who had been with me while the men went on the Auca trip. Frank was brought out from Macuma, and many of the missionary men arrived in Shell Mera from Quito, some as volunteers to go on the ground party. Word was received via short wave that a helicopter was on its way from Panama, which lifted the spirits in Shell Mera. That night the pilot of an Ecuadorian airline came to the house to tell the wives that he had flown over the scene at about six o’clock in the evening, and saw, a short distance upstream, a large fire, “without any smoke,” which would indicate perhaps a gasoline fire or a signal flare. Nate always carried signal flares in his emergency kit. This was a ray of hope for the five wives to sleep on that night.

Sighting The First Body

On Wednesday Johnny Keenan took off again in MAF’s second Piper Cruiser, a twin to Nate’s plane, on his fourth flight over Palm Beach to see if there were any signs of life. Marj, who had hardly left the radio since Sunday afternoon, stood by for his reports. Barbara, Olive, and I were upstairs. Suddenly, Marj called: “Betty! Barbara! Olive!”

I raced down the stairs. Marj was standing with her head against the radio, her eyes closed. After a while she spoke: “They found one body.”

A quarter mile downriver from the little denuded plane Johnny had sighted a body, floating face-down in the water, dressed in khaki pants and white tee-shirt, the usual uniform of the men. Barbara felt it was not Roger; he had been wearing blue-jeans.

Some of the land party went over to Arajuno to prepare the airstrip for the big planes which would be arriving soon from Panama. Late on Wednesday afternoon the roar of the planes was heard, and far on the western horizon where the volcano Sangay stands, a smoking pyramid, the great planes were silhouetted. As they drew near and circled the strip, the red, white, and blue of the United States Air Force became visible.

Expectation Runs Low

Dee Short, a missionary from western Ecuador, who happened to be in Quito when news of the disaster arrived, had come to Arajuno. As the party left, Marilou turned to him and said with finality: “There is no hope. All the men are dead.” Probably most of the ground party would have agreed with her but, nevertheless, every time they rounded a bend of the river they looked expectantly for one or more of the missing men.

Back in Shell Mera the radio crackled again. Marj answered: “Shell Mera standing by.”

Johnny Keenan reported: “Another body sighted, about 200 feet below Palm Beach.”

At about four o’clock in the afternoon the ground party reached Oglan, an Indian settlement situated at the place where the Oglan River meets the Curaray. Here camp was set up for the night. Frank Drown organized the group, appointing one man to hire canoes, one in charge of cargo, one to plan seating in the canoes, one as mess chief, two for safety precautions. That night they slept on beds of banana leaves. Watches were kept all night.

Before the party set off on Thursday morning, the missionaries offered up prayer, committing themselves into the hands of God; and the Ecuadorian soldiers, of a different faith, prayed with them. The party moved cautiously down the Curaray; the river was at its lowest, making navigation difficult, and special care was exercised in rounding the many bends, for it was feared Aucas might be lying in wait.

At about ten o’clock Johnny Keenan again flew over the ground party in the Piper, and Frank Drown was able to make contact with him by means of a two-way radio which the Air Rescue Service had supplied. Johnny told them of two canoes of Quichuas, proceding upriver in the direction of the ground party; he feared that in their excitement some one of the men in the party might shoot at the first sight of an Indian on the river. Soon the two canoes of Quichuas appeared. They were a small group of Indians from McCully’s station at Arajuno. On their own initiative they had boldly pressed into Auca territory ahead of anyone else, and had gone all the way to Palm Beach. The ground party was saddened when one of the Indians, a believer who had come to know Christ since Ed had gone to Arajuno, told them of having found Ed’s body on the beach at the edge of the water. He had Ed’s watch with him.

Now the missionaries knew who one of their fallen colleagues was, but a chance remained that at least three others had survived. They pressed on.

Wives Pray And Trust

As the wives hoped and prayed and waited the procession of flying machines moved slowly down toward Palm Beach, the airplanes circling to keep pace with the slower helicopter skimming along at treetop level and following the bends of the river. The airplanes chose different altitudes to avoid danger of collision as pilots circled with eyes on the jungle below. Johnny Keenan in the little yellow Piper was lowest. A few hundred feet above were the U.S. Navy R-4D (the Navy version of the familiar DC-3), and, higher, the big amphibian of the Air Rescue Service. Close by, Colonel Izurieta in a plane of the Ecuadorian Air Force flew in wider circles ready to help should decisions be needed. The teamwork of the United States Army, Air Force, and Navy and of the government and military services of Ecuador was heartwarming to the wives.

Air Force Major Numberg, riding in the Army helicopter, landed briefly to talk with the ground party, still some distance up the river from Palm Beach. Ed McCully’s name was mentioned guardedly on the radio. Those hearing guessed that somehow Ed’s body had been identified. Was his one of the two bodies that had been seen from the air? Had three perhaps escaped into the jungle? Or been taken captive?

After a few moments the helicopter moved on. Finally, rounding a bend, it came at last to Palm Beach and landed. Nurnberg, carbine at the ready, jumped out and looked around. Anxious minutes went by. Back in the “chopper” he radioed: “No one here.” Hope flickered brighter in those who heard.

The helicopter was off again and started slowly down the river. Crossing to the other side it stopped, hovering, the force of its downwash disturbing the muddy surface of the water. Minutes later it moved on, only to stop again two hundred yards farther on. A third and a fourth time Nurnberg and McGee hung motionless ten feet above the water, rotor blades beating dangerously close to overhanging jungle trees. Hearts sank in the aircraft above as those watching guessed the meaning of those stops.

The aircraft returned to Arajuno. Once on the ground, Nurnberg, his face showing strain, confirmed suspicions. Speaking in low tones to the tight circle of military men, he explained that McCully’s body, identified by the small party of Quichuas the day before, was now gone from the beach, no doubt washed away by the rain and higher water in the night. He leafed through his notebook for a moment. A few Indians stood silent in the tall grass nearby, listening and watching. “We found four in the river,” Numberg said, finally. “I don’t think identification will be possible from what I have here—” indicating his notebook. “One of them may be McCully.”

He did not have to say what was in every mind. There might be one who got away, possibly wounded, still in the jungle.

How To Tell Bad News

How to inform the wives was the question uppermost in military minds. Should Marilou be told? She was right there at Arajuno in the house.

“We’d better wait,” Nurnberg said. “DeWitt is running this show. Let’s get back to Shell and talk it over.” Captain DeWitt in the big Air Force amphibian was overhead, not wanting to risk a landing on the small strip at Arajuno. All returned to Shell and the military men gathered in the cabin of the amphibian. The wives would have to be told. But how?

Someone else had wisely decided to tell Marilou that four bodies had been found. Later in the afternoon Johnny flew her out to Shell to be with the four other wives.

In the end it was the wives who persuaded DeWitt and Nurnberg that there was no need to soften the blow. We wanted to know everything in detail. We gathered in Marj’s bedroom away from the children. Major Nurnberg opened his notebook and in terse sentences described what he had found. It was immediately evident that identification could not be positive. One body was caught under the branches of a fallen tree; only a large foot with a gray sock appeared at the surface of the muddy water. In reading his notes of another, Nurnberg said: “This one had on a red belt of some woven material.” Four of us turned our eyes toward the fifth, Olive Fleming.

“That was Pete,” Olive said simply.

As the Major concluded, it was still not known whether Ed’s body was one of those in the river. There was still the hope that one might have got away.

The Depth Of Trust

The military men, to whom the breaking of such news to loved ones was no new thing, left the bedroom silently. Their news had been met with serenity. No tears could rise from the depth of trust which supported the wives.

Barbara Youderian wrote in her diary:

“Tonight the Captain told us of his finding four bodies in the river. One had tee-shirt and blue-jeans. Roj was the only one who wore them … God gave me this verse two days ago, Psalm 48:14, ‘For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our Guide even unto death.’ As I came face to face with the news of Roj’s death, my heart was filled with praise. He was worthy of his home-going. Help me, Lord, to be both mummy and daddy. ‘To know wisdom and instruction …’ Tonight Beth prayed for daddy in Heaven, and asked me if daddy would come down from Heaven to get a letter she wanted to write him. I said, ‘He can’t come down. He’s with Jesus.’ She said, ‘But Jesus can help him come down, and God will take his hand so he won’t slip.’

“I wrote a letter to the mission family, trying to explain the peace I have. I want to be free of self-pity. It is a tool of Satan to rot away a life. I am sure that this is the perfect will of God. Many will say, ‘Why did Roj get mixed up in this, when his work was with Jivaros?’ Because Roj came to do the will of Him that sent him. The Lord has closed our hearts to grief and hysteria, and filled in with His perfect peace.”

Death In Muddy Waters

Starting out again at six in the morning of Friday, January 13, the party was on the last lap of its mission, with a date to meet the helicopter at Palm Beach at ten. The men had to hurry to get there and everyone was jittery from the strain of the trip and the thought of the job that lay ahead.

At last the beach was reached. There was no sign as yet of the helicopter. The ground party set to work, everyone having been assigned different duties: the Ecuadorian soldiers spread out in a semicircle in the jungle behind the beach to act as cover, two Indians set to digging a common grave under the tree house, others waded into the river looking for the men’s possessions. Dee Short and Frank Drown crawled up into the tree house to try to find a clue to what had happened. Some of the men began to dismantle the plane, others looked for bodies. It was not until the helicopter arrived at twelve-fifteen and hovered over the bodies where they lay in the muddy waters of the Curaray, that the ground crew was able to find them. Frank Drown told of the scene:

“First Nurnberg pointed out one body downstream and Fuller jumped into the water and pulled the body across. Then Nurnberg showed us Nate Saint’s body, and we got in a canoe and went downstream, and saw an arm coming out of the water, so I tried to attach a string to the arm and I just could not bring myself to do it. I’d reach out and try and then pull back, and have to try again until finally the man who was in the canoe with me did it. Now we were three canoes with three bodies attached to them, going upstream. We laid all four face down in a row on the beach. We never did get the fifth, which was Ed McCully’s body. Then I got over my feeling of hating to touch the bodies, because a body is only a house and these fellows had left their house and, after the soul leaves, the body isn’t much after all. The thing that is beautiful to us is the soul, not the body.”

Identification of the four bodies was finally positive from wedding rings and watches, change purse, notebooks. Ed was not one of the four, so it was finally definite: all five were dead. In the providence of God the missing body was the one identified by the Quichuas the day before. Not only had they brought back his watch, but also they had taken off one of his shoes (a tremendous shoe—size thirteen and one-half) and thrown it up on the beach. The day before, Nurnberg had picked it up and brought it back to Shell Mera.

While the bodies were being drawn ashore a violent tropical storm was gathering. At that moment the helicopter came in low and fast. Cornell Capa, a photographer-correspondent on assignment for Life magazine, jumped out, camera in hand, and ran across the beach. Then the full fury of the storm struck and the missionaries felt as if the powers of darkness had been let loose.

Earth’s Most Beautiful Cemetery

On Saturday morning Captain DeWitt of the Rescue Service asked us five widows if we would “care to fly over Palm Beach to see your husbands’ grave?”

We replied that if this were not asking too much, we would be grateful. The Navy R-4D took us out over the jungle, where the Curaray lay like a brown snake in the undulating green. Pressing our faces close to the windows as we knelt on the floor of the plane, we could see the slice of white sand where the Piper stood. Olive Fleming recalled the verses that God had impressed on her mind that morning: “‘For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’ He who has prepared us for this very thing is God … ‘Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.’ ”

As the plane veered away, Marj Saint said: “That is the most beautiful little cemetery in the world.”

Peace And Power

How good it is to turn aside

Each night and day

From fearsome clamoring of men

To praise and pray!

What a relief it is to be

With Him our Lord;

When nations o’er the earth have drawn

The steel of sword!

O what a privilege is prayer

In such an hour!

From bended knee alone

Come peace and power.

—EVA GRAY

The swift-moving epic of the five missionaries martyred in the attempt to evangelize the Auca Indians of Ecuador has just been published by Harper & Brothers under the title Through Gates of Splendor. The author, Elisabeth Howard Elliot, is already familiar to readers of Christianity Today through her inspirational article “The Prayer of the Five Widows” (Jan. 7). The above portion of the new book, reprinted by permission of the publishers, is an abridgment of the chapter tided “Silence.” The chapter is more than a graphic account of the tense hours in which the missionary wives—Marjorie Saint, Barbara Youderian, Olive Fleming, Marilou McCully and Elisabeth Elliot—first learned of the loss of their men; it is a story of heroic faith in a time of trouble. This book is a missionary drama moving with godly devotion. More than holy heartbreak, it is gethsemanic glory reflected anew. Reminiscent of the missionary stamina and sacrifice of the apostolic age, this twentieth century saga proclaims the high courage of Christian dedication and the high confidence that the risen Christ walks amid life’s shadows keeping watch over his own. The families of the five men are still at work in the jungle.—Ed.

- More from Elisabeth Elliot

Cover Story

The Christian Use of Leisure

W. E. Sangster

What is the Christian attitude to leisure? Is the old identification of holidays and holy days still valid, or is the subject of no religious significance at all?

The Opposition To Leisure

Some Christians—especially those in the Puritan tradition—have had little interest in holidays. Holidays to them have seemed largely a waste of time, and in their noble miserliness with their moments leisure has almost been deemed a sin.

John Wesley said as a young man: “Leisure and I have parted company. I am resolved to be busy till I die.” He was busy till he died. That amazing resolution of his youth he kept to old age, and he only ceased to work when he ceased to live.

But I am bold to say that John Wesley’s opposition to leisure was mistaken, and if anybody feels that that is a severe judgment on a great man, I would point them to the greatest example of all. It was Jesus who said to his disciples: “Come ye yourselves apart … and rest a while.”

Leisure Has Its Place

A normal man who never rests (and John Wesley was not a normal man) gets taut, overwrought, strained and ultimately breaks down. Leisure has its place in life. There is a rhythmic law underlying all existence; an ebb and flow; a movement of periodicity. And in that ebb and flow, work and leisure both have a place.

It is with the mind as with the soil. If you want to get the best out of your land, you must change the crops and sometimes even let the land lie fallow. One who never slackens the bow becomes at the last a work-ridden neurotic.

Moreover, modern life is going to provide more leisure than the mass of people have ever known before. The burden of work is to be borne increasingly by the machine. Despite the urgency of the times, many business houses are committing themselves to a shorter work week. Think of it! Only five working days in every week. That means two whole days off—normally, I suppose, Saturday and Sunday.

The Use Of Free Time

How is that leisure to be used? In some ways the battle of free time is over. The harder question—“what to do with the free time”—has now to be met.

A generation ago some people hardly knew what to do with a week’s holiday when they were given it.

A friend of mine, a Christian layman and the proprietor and owner of a chain of provision stores, came to the conclusion some years ago that, as a Christian man, he ought to be giving all his employees a week’s holiday with pay. He told me afterwards, with some amusement, of the reaction of the manager of one of his shops.

The man protested. He told the proprietor to his face that he did not want a week’s holiday, that he wouldn’t know what to do with it when he had it, that he supposed this was a way of pushing him out of his job—and did he think anybody else could run the shop if he wasn’t there? When my friend insisted that he take the week off, he spent the whole week hanging around the door of the shop, nodding to his customers as they went in and out and making rude remarks about the under-manager who was trying to do his job. His happiness when the week was over was unbounded, and when he tied on his apron on Monday morning, he said fervently to his employer, “Thank God, that’s over.”

Personal Preferences

No one with intelligence will deny, I think, that the mass of people seem to make a poor use of leisure now that it is theirs. Not that we must be superior about this. People enjoy themselves in their own way. One man’s fun is another man’s boredom.

Sir Harold Nicolson, in the columns of The Spectator, made a slashing attack some time ago on people who make a hobby of collecting stamps. He stigmatized them as people with an adolescent mind, and I need hardly say that the philatelists took up the challenge with gusto, and the honors were even at the last.

Unworthy Recreation

People differ, of course, in the things that recreate their minds, but surely we can say without offensiveness that the recreations to which the mass of people turn seem somewhat unworthy.

Think of the hours and hours men stand about in saloons engaging—if one judges by one’s recollection of Army canteens—in inane arguments, often on subjects they know little about and in which the honors go to the man who bawls the loudest. When one thinks of the hours spent and the money wasted filling up football-pool coupons (on which it is estimated that in Britain many millions of pounds change hands every year); when one thinks of the attraction and the banality and the dangers of these so-called fun-fairs, one cannot help wondering if nothing can be done to lift the level of leisure time spending and get it into the minds of people that even leisure is not ours to squander but is given us by God for a use in which mind, body and soul may be refreshed and strengthened.

What advice, then, can we give about the use of leisure?

The advice I would like to give would be an adaptation of Augustine’s famous rule: “Do what you like but learn to like the best things.”

If it is something you honestly don’t like, it can’t be leisure. One of the differences between work and leisure is that work must be done whether you like it or not, but leisure ought to allow room for the expression of preferences and the satisfaction of wholesome desires.

Let Leisure Be Healthy

Let your occupation in leisure be healthy.

Some people rush and tear about even on holiday so that they return to their work worse rather than better for the change. Vigorous activities ought to be interspersed with periods of quiet. Even the hearty extrovert, coping with a glut of social engagements and declaring that he “never needs a rest, only a change,” would be all the better for turning his thoughts inward occasionally, correcting the compass of his life, thinking on purposes and aims and taking his bearings in the universe as a whole.

I think it is better for young men to play games rather than to watch them; though the years come soon enough, of course, when it must be bowls rather than football. But if we can keep the parasite of gambling out of sport, I am going to say that it is a grand thing that the normal Christian takes a healthy interest in wholesome games. To see a vast crowd of men sitting in the sun and taking the keenest delight in a match is—to me—a goodly sight.

Some psychologists have said that one of the tragedies of the German people is that they have never learned to play (in the sense that the term is understood in America and in Britain), and that is, perhaps a chief reason why Germany is one of the countries in the world where the suicide of children is a not unfamiliar phenomenon.

Let Leisure Be Cultural

In the second place, don’t be afraid of a bit of culture. I think it was Goring who said, “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun.”

None of us wants to copy Goring. The recreational pursuits that give the deepest joys require the most mental concentration.

Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher, said: “Pleasure for pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry.”

You see what he meant? He was saying, in effect, that people who have had educational advantages must not be superior, and that if a simple game like push-pin—which was as common, I fancy, in the 18th century as darts are now—gave the people who played it the pleasure they sought, then it was as good as the most cultural interest in verse.

But that is just the point where I would challenge Bentham. It is not in the power of these shallow little occupations to give the joy that deeper pursuits can give. The people who have known both will bear me out there. Think of the joys a music lover has, or a student of the appreciation of art, or one really informed in the delights of our literature, or a really expert gardener.

Snakes and ladders, and ludo, and whist, and movies and watching other people play games are all right, but the deeper joys make the deeper demands and yield the deeper return.

The effort it takes to understand the best in music—if you have the latent capacity to appreciate it—or the best in art, is all worth it. Be on your guard against always wanting to be entertained. Learn to entertain yourself. Have a mental life of your own. There is bound to be something grand for which you have a latent aptitude. If it is not music, it might be fine art. If it is not books, it might be nature in her deeper ways. Get the bit of education it requires to appreciate the better thing and work at it yourself.

I ask the people reading this who are now in middle life whether it is not a fact that when we were children we were much more ready and skillful in making up our own games than children appear to be today? At the moment when we would have set about making up a game in our childhood, the child of today seems to whimper for the money to go to the movies.

God has crammed life with wonderful joys, but they are not all on the surface. It calls for some effort to nourish the taste, but the taste for higher joys is latent in us somewhere.

Let Leisure Be Spiritual

Finally, in all use of your leisure have a thought for your soul.

It has been a complaint of some people for many years that they don’t go to church on Sunday because it is their only opportunity of recreation in the week. With many, that was plainly not true. It might have been true of some. With others it was nothing but a shallow excuse.

But even that shallow excuse is likely to go now. With increasing leisure there will be opportunity for recreation on Saturday and the opportunity to consecrate time for God on the Sunday as well.

Don’t let us celebrate the acquisition of more leisure by a greater carelessness about our souls. A soul doesn’t grow on its own. It needs nourishment, periods of quiet, food for its sustenance. A man or woman without a concept of reverence is incomplete and without a window open to heaven.

Work is very absorbing in some lives, especially with the housewife and mother. She knows as well as the businessman what the hymnwriter meant when he said:

Around us rolls the ceaseless tide

Of business, toil, and care,

And scarcely can we turn aside

For one brief hour of prayer.

But we must! Frankly—as I see it—this is the first call on our leisure: to maintain our commerce with our God.

W. E. Sangster was President in 1950 of the Methodist Church in Great Britain. He is author of numerous volumes throbbing with evangelistic concern, and is an exponent of the relevance of Christian conviction to all the spheres of life and culture. Latest of his writings is They Met at Calvary. His earlier works include Methodism Can Be Born Again, These Things Abide, Ten Statesmen and Jesus Christ, The Pure in Heart, Approach to Preaching, Teach Us to Pray and Let Me Commend.

- More from W. E. Sangster

Cover Story

Working for Christ on the Job

Samuel M. Shoemaker

The vast majority of Christians are, of course, laymen. It is often said that they are closer to “the world” and its concrete problems and evils and opportunities than clergy. And it is certainly true that “the world” will take its measure of our Christianity, not so much by what ministers say in church on Sunday, as by what laymen do from Monday till Friday on their jobs.

This may make the work of a minister seem remote and even a little irrelevant. And, unless a minister is talking right to the practical minds of his laymen, dealing with life situations such as they meet day by day, and (as they would put it) “talking sense,” his work may indeed be very far removed from the life his people must live and especially from the work that they must do. Unless the minister is close to people—people in the raw, people in their shirt sleeves—he may very well spend his major time in a little church world of his own, from which he emerges for an hour on Sunday morning and about which he talks, sometimes interestingly, sometimes dully; but often seeming to belong to a completely different world from his hearers.

A Coach To Laymen

Now the minister is supposed to know more about the technicalities of the Christian religion—its beliefs, its history, its relation to modern thought—than a layman will probably have time to know. He ought to be invaluable to laymen as a kind of research expert, helping to avoid mistakes, bringing historic corrective, et cetera. He ought to do more than this, and specifically two things: first, he ought to know human nature, and to be familiar with God’s ways with men, not alone from books on religious experience and psychology, but from continuing firsthand experience of his own; and second, he ought to act as a kind of coach to his laymen, teaching them the rules of the game because he plays it himself and knows what they are, taking a group of them aside from time to time for a real course of study and application. Besides these things, he ought to be constantly talking with individual laymen and bringing them to deeper understanding and experience of Christ. He ought always to have their daily jobs as much in his mind as they have. He may not know its technical problems, but he will know some of the more general ones, especially the whole matter of their getting along with other people.

It sometimes seems a terrific drop from what we hear and say on Sunday mornings, to the things that go on during the week downtown. Some laymen have accepted this gap completely, and become fatalistic about it. Worship is for them a kind of escape from the worries of mundane life into the upper ether of the ideal. Surely we need to bring our lives back again and again, in worship, to the perfection and love and grace of God; but having received from Him there, we should certainly return to Monday morning with more hope and love and prayer and expectation in our hearts than many of us have. We seldom hear sermons directed at the daily job, and sometimes when they are, they don’t hit the mark. So we have separated Sunday from the rest of the week, thereby doing no service to make Sunday more “spiritual”—only more remote—and leaving the daily job as if it were a hopeless “necessary evil” to make a living with which to care for the family.

The first thing we need is some new thoughts about the practicalities of daily life in relation to our religion. We often behave as if God were interested in religion, but not in life—in what goes on in church, but not in what goes on in a mill or a farm or a broker’s office. This point of view overlooks something. It forgets that Christianity began, not when religion got carried farther up into the skies, but precisely when it was brought “down to earth.” It has often been called the most materialistic of all religions, because it is constantly concerned, not with a God above the skies, but with a God who came to earth and lived here. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.…” That’s where Christianity begins and where it must always look to set its sights aright. Some of us are seeking after a false spirituality: we might almost better seek after a true materialism, in the sense of a better interpretation of the business and politics and industry on which most of our waking hours have to be spent.

Using Things For God

As Christians, we are not called to leave behind us the body, money, work, amusements, statecraft: we are called upon to redeem these things by using them for God. Unless we hear this kind of teaching in churches, we are not hearing an authentic preaching of the religion of the Incarnation—which means the enfleshment of the Son of God. Jesus’ coming into the world has forever banished the idea of the incompatibility of material with spiritual things. They are not the same, of course, and materialism without God is pure paganism. But letting God into the material is something quite different. I say it without hesitation: there is nothing more “spiritual” or holy about going to church than about going to the office, if you go to both places to serve and obey God.

But how is this spiritualization of the material to come about? Business is so vast, so impersonal, so hard at times—where shall anything spiritual take hold, or seem other than a sentimental intrusion? If anything is to happen, to Christianize business, it must concern, first, the changing of the individuals who are part of the business scene, in some of their basic attitudes and beliefs; and, second, it must manifest to them that there can be a different kind of human relations in business, and that this is the primary situation where God enters the picture of business.

Extension Of Conversion

Our first need, then, is to let our conversion extend to our job. We cannot close this gap between “God” and “the world,” but we can lessen it. There is no use in our saying we are even attempting to be “converted” when we live as if our faith and our job were in two irreconcilable compartments. Much nonsense has been talked during the last seventy-five years about the need for a “social gospel” as well as a “personal gospel.” Christ made no such distinction. But it certainly did not occur to him to stay up on the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James and John where they had had a transcendent spiritual experience together, when, down at the foot of the mountain there was a boy in an epileptic fit who needed to be healed. One wonders whether the openness to God which made the Transfiguration possible on the top of the mountain was not also the identical openness to men which made the healing possible at its base. Jesus surely hated slavery, and political injustice as practiced by Rome. However, he seems to have said little about them, but instead to have released forces that would one day effect the reform he wanted to see. We can’t talk pious on Sunday and then treat our employees or our boss like objects and obstacles during the week. We cannot have the kind or relations some of us have on a spiritual level with our colored friends, and then run up a practical barrier that excludes them as if they were inferior to ourselves. We cannot profess Christ on Sunday, unless we are willing to let that profession get down into the bones of weekday practice. The least we can aim for is common justice. Yet many Christians dare not raise their eyes and look at the actual situations—bad housing, poor pay, inadequate recreational facilities—which they tolerate and even profit by. The conversion must extend to the job, or else it will wither. “If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”

A New Motivation

The second thing that can happen is: God can give us a new motive for business. To be sure, we must be practical and realistic concerning “profits,” for unless a business is successful enough to be making money, it cannot meet its own payroll, let alone anything due to investors. Making things, selling them, and receiving money for them, is of the essence of business. Do no let us fool ourselves here: schools sell education, hospitals sell health, churches sell faith, and all of them—however noble their motives—are in some sense in business. They must exist in a practical world where we find ourselves all together and all interdependent. But the things we sell may have a very true value to the person who buys it, and it may be a real service to him that we make it available. No man ought to market anything he knows is inferior to what he says it is. We can put honesty above sales.

Pursuit Of General Justice

A third thing which can happen is that an individual, or group of individuals, can go to work to establish more of what may be called general justice. We have already seen how one young man, convinced about his Christian faith, started to change the practice of one smaller company in relation to the employment of members of another race. Manifestly, justice demands that in a free and democratic society a qualified person should be given a chance to do any work of which he is capable, without regard to religion, color, or anything else that differentiates him from the majority or from the ruling group.

A fourth thing that every individual can do is to release a new spirit in an office or business. We all know what a wrong spirit can do.

Teaming Up For Christ

A fifth possibility is starting a group within the company. A man’s influence is not doubled, it is multiplied, when he gets into fellowship with another man, and they pray, and feel their way with God and act. Start praying for a spiritual teammate. Get into solid fellowship with him. Draw in one or two or more as it seems guided. Soon there will be a nucleus with which God can begin doing business in the company.

There seem to be three natural steps in such work: first, the enlisting of the interest of an individual; second, the manifestation of a new attitude on his part toward people; and third, the winning of people to Christ and his program.

Making Business Christian

I believe business is meant to be a channel of God’s power, the main and chief extension of the church in the world. God may never have any other access to certain people except that one who believes in him happens to work alongside them. When they see peace, poise and power they will become curious and be persuaded that religion is not a “racket,” but a source of light. Obviously, life and deeds have to precede words—the life and deeds, not of a great and mature saint, but of a sinner who has quit bluffing and is trying to do what God wants him to do. The spiritual opportunity that confronts a man in any kind of job whatever is unlimited, if he has the imagination to see it, and the courage to grasp it.

It is a very great task to attempt to make business Christian throughout, to serve God effectually on the daily job, and to make our profession or business work for God. Our daily work, like our human nature, cannot be made statistically good. No hope can come from the superimposition upon business of “systems” which sound and look good, but do not reckon with the ever-present problem of human nature. We can only hope to make real progress in the Christianizing of business by the Christianizing of the men who manage and work in it. If this is carried far enough, these men will use their freedom to obey God more fully in their business relations. I am convinced that God enters the business scene in two ways: first, through converted men and women whose hearts he has touched and changed and who carry his Spirit with them at all times; and second, in human relationships that are different because he has become third party to them. Slowly Christian persons and Christian relationships permeate the business situation. Prayer, good will and fellowship are a powerful combination. The Spirit of God uses them to change man’s mere self-interest into the wider interest of the whole. Slowly, but (under these conditions) steadily, “the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.”

A Pastor’s Sermon To Himself

A pastor must be truly great, but in humility;

Of noble bearing as of royal descent,

Yet willing to bow down to the sorrow-bent.

A sinner who with sinners has trod

The road to forgiveness after wrestling with God.

A source of strength for those who are weak,

A scholar who for truth must seek.

Never influenced by money or might,

Always defending the poor man’s right.

A beggar with outstretched pleading hands,

An ambassador who richly Christ’s substance commands.

A man at the battlefield where men are led,

A woman when he stands at a hospital bed.

Old in experience, yet young in ideas,

Reaching for the sky while crushed to his knees.

Clear in his thoughts, true to his word,

A faithful servant to his Lord.

Dedicated to God until he die:

O so different, so different than I.

ADAM SCHREIBER

(Translated from the German)

Samuel M. Shoemaker was rector of Calvary Episcopal Church, New York City, before his move to Pittsburgh in 1953 as rector of Calvary Episcopal Church there. He is author of many books, most recently The Experiment of Faith, the story of the principles and practice behind “the Pittsburgh Experiment.” This abridgement of the chapter “How to Work for Christ Through Your Job” is reprinted by permission of Harper & Brothers.

- More from Samuel M. Shoemaker

Theology

A New Johannine Manuscript

R. Schippers

According to Professor Kurt Aland, whose task it is to keep track, there are now 4,678 known manuscripts of the New Testament. With microfilm more than a hundred manuscripts can be placed at our disposal at one time. An expedition to Mount Sinai in 1949–1950 brought back more than 150 New Testament manuscripts, photographed and microfilmed in the St. Catherine Monastery. In the midst of this volume of manuscripts comes a single papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of John, published toward the end of 1956 by Professor Victor Martin, chairman of the Association Internationale des Papyrologues. It is called papyrus 66, and we immediately ask, what is the special significance of this new manuscript?

Age And Text Significant

Its significance and value lie in the following:

This manuscript is a papyrus, and there are only 68 papyri known, with fragments of the Greek text of the New Testament.

It is extraordinarily well preserved, by far the finest and most intact papyrus manuscript I have known. Letter for letter, all 108 pages of the fine Greek handwriting are very readable.

For a papyrus manuscript, it is extensive. With the exception of 20 verses of chapter 6, virtually 14 chapters of the Gospel of John are in the publication. This is two-thirds of the chapters and about 70 per cent of the whole text. This is next to the largest papyrus manuscript of the Greek New Testament in our possession. When we recall that our smallest fragment of biblical papyri totals only 32 words or fragments of words and that most papyri dating from the third century give us a good deal if they offer two chapters in more or less damaged pieces, we may understand the enthusiasm of the experts over papyrus 66.

The manuscript is old. More than 1700 years ago it was placed, by order of a church or an individual, in a scriptorium. Conservative estimates place its origin about A.D. 200, perhaps earlier.

It is a codex, not a roll. The earliest Christians in Egypt were among the first users of this early form of book. This we already knew, but we were not so certain what an old Greek codex looked like. Papyrus is very brittle, and what remained of ancient papyrus codices were only loose, numbered pages, usually torn and broken at the edges. This newly discovered papyrus fills a lacuna in our knowledge. It is the extensive remains of a firmly bound book and thus lets us see how the most ancient of Greek books appeared.

The publication of papyrus 66—or Papyrus Bodmer II, its library designation—is significant, then, first, because of its age and, second, because of its text. A good Greek text is imperative for Bible translation. It is common knowledge that there is nothing preserved of the autographa, of the handwritten copies that the evangelists and the apostles or their secretaries wrote. Until the modern art of printing books, the text was patiently copied by hand. The medieval monks were illustrious for this work. It is also well-known that in the copying mistakes and even willful changes and additions were brought into the texts. It is the task of textual criticism to discover the best manuscripts and from these to bring together a text of the Greek New Testament as close to the original texts as possible.

The Number Of Manuscripts

We are a good deal further along in this task than were the students who published the Greek New Testament in the era of the great Reformation Bible translations. When Erasmus published the first printed Greek New Testament in 1516—the one used by Luther for his translation—he used no more than four manuscripts. He knew of a few more, but felt that his four were enough. Gradually, the number of manuscripts known to the critics grew. In the sixteenth century there were 22. In the eighteenth century there were already 330. There are now more than 4,500. Most of these date from the thirteenth and fifteenth century. The farther we go back to ancient times, the fewer are the manuscripts. As a general rule, the oldest texts are the best. Considered the best of all have been the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, two excellent parchments. They have been available for scientific study for only eighty years. The best text that can be constructed is based primarily on these two manuscripts, which date from the first half of the fourth century.

The oldest and best manuscripts, then, date from about 250 years after the original New Testament was written. If we recall that the Gospel of John was written probably around the year A.D. 90 [some authorities now defend an even earlier date—ED.], we will understand how important the recently discovered papyrus 66 is. It dates from about 125 years before the great parchment manuscripts and about 100 years after the writing of the Fourth Gospel. It is from the time of Clement of Alexandria and Origen, who died in A.D. 212 and 245, respectively.

The question that interests us most is the relationship between the text of papyrus 66 and the text forming the basis of our present translations. Does papyrus 66 support our present most dependable text of John 1 to 14? Or must we revise our opinions of the value of our best texts? What about certain passages, such as the pericope of the adulterous woman in John 8 or the verses containing the descending angel of the Bethesda pool in John 5? These well-known passages in the first fourteen chapters of John are usually placed between brackets in the newer translations because they are missing in the best manuscripts. These passages are missing as well in papyrus 66, and, at least on this point, we seem to have been on the right track in our search for the original text.

We might also compare the famous Chester Beatty papyrus, papyrus 45, which contains chapters 10 and 11, and the same chapters of papyrus 66 with the text of Nestle. Nestle’s text is universally regarded as being a very good one, offering a profile of the best and most important manuscripts. Putting the variations within these three texts in parallel columns, we are able to view the divergences. First, the differences in themselves are minor ones. They are on this order, for example: “gathered” or “gathered together”; “once again” or “anew”; “to give his life” or “to offer his life”; “he said” or “he spoke.” This sort of variation constitutes about 99 per cent of the cases in which variations occur. Now, after putting these minor variations in parallel columns, we may underscore with red pencil the places where papyrus 66 and Nestle agree, with blue pencil where papyrus 45 and Nestle agree and with green pencil where papyrus 66 and papyrus 45 agree. If we now count the pencil underscores, we see that there are 50 red, 13 blue, and 20 green underscores. This means that our present published text is generously supported by the oldest witness that we have. The basis of our present textual criticism, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, is sound. With papyrus 66, we are now 125 years closer to the original than with these two famous codices. Yet the text is practically the same.

Such confirmation is sensational in a way. It is also something for which we can offer believing thanks.

R. Schippers holds the Th.D. degree from Free University of Amsterdam, where he now serves on the faculty in the New Testament field. He has ministered in Dutch Reformed churches in Rotterdam and Amsterdam and has written two books in the area of New Testament studies.

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