Slaves Of Devil

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, has denounced the rulers of Russia as being “to a unique degree the instruments and slaves of the devil.”

In his most outspoken attack on Russian communism, he declared that the Soviets had become known throughout the world as the universal enemy of mankind.

Dr. Fisher, speaking in support of the Lord Mayor’s fund for Hungarian refugees at a meeting in Albert Hall, London, said:

“Today we stand amazed before an act of government altogether evil, with no admixture of any good purpose or any worthy of decent motive, utterly empty of any spark of human kindness, a total denial of freedom and God.

“Because the rulers of Russia have expelled God from their belief, they are able to violate and outrage not only all the laws of God but all the hopes and aspirations of the human spirit. Having left themselves nothing to worship but themselves, they have become to a unique degree the instruments and slaves of the devil.

“It is just here, in this extremity of evil power, that the glory of Christ, Saviour of the world, shines out in its purest. It is when Christian people find themselves impotent, scourged and crucified before an unveiled manifestation of evil that they best learn the power of Christ, of His sufferings and of His resurrection.

“Hungary’s sufferings are not in vain. The Soviet government is known throughout the world as never before to be the universal enemy of mankind. Her own action has disrupted communism in the West and discredited it in the East. The despots of Russia have found their circle of adherents on whom they can rely much smaller than they supposed. They know there are only two choices before them: desperate action or defeat.”

A minute’s silence was observed after the Archbishop’s speech, in honor of Hungarian martyrs and refugees. Resolutions were passed calling for the immediate return of deported Hungarians, the introduction of United Nations observers into Hungary and the holding of free elections.

F.C.

Surge In Norway

Thousands of new members were brought into churches during an intensive week-long evangelism campaign conducted simultaneously in Oslo and Stavanger.

More than 50,000 homes in 61 parishes were visited by laymen during the drive. Overflow crowds, the majority without previous church affiliation, filled the churches in a series of special services at the conclusion of the effort.

Similar campaigns are planned in other sections of the country.

Abiding Results

Rumors have circulated during recent months that lasting results of the 1955 Billy Graham Crusade in Glasgow, Scotland, proved negligible.

Some have stated there has been a decided fall away in church attendance since the campaign.

But Dr. John Highet, lecturer in sociology at Glasgow University, said such rumors have been found to be groundless. After a census of church attendance in Glasgow, he presented figures showing that church attendance and membership have risen.

Dr. Highet said nearly 6,000 more people were attending church in Glasgow a year after Graham’s departure.

The Christian, a widely-read magazine, pointed out that such statistics provide one significant result but do not tell the whole story.

“The fruitfulness of the crusade,” said the Christian, “is manifest still in many ways that do not lend themselves to statistics. It is seen in its influence on ministers and lay preachers who have been stirred up to make their preaching more evangelistic, in the quickening of spiritual life in churches that supported the crusade, in a deepened prayer spirit and in many young lives that responded to the call for service.”

‘Deeper Meaning’

East German Christmas parties, by order of the Communist Soviet Labor Unions Association, expressed the “new deeper meaning Christmas has in the Workers and Peasants’ Republic.”

Christmas songs and poems were restricted to those telling of the “democratic unity of Germany, peace, friendship and a prosperous socialist future.”

Plays featured “only such themes as the possibilities of a peaceful use of atomic energy and the discovery of outer space.”

The directive said Christmas festivities “quelled the working people’s joy of life” because they were “rooted in mysticism and promoted superstition.”

Famed Church Rebuilt

St. Mary’s Church, Islington, in North London, described as “The Cathedral of Evangelism” before being wrecked by Nazi bombs in 1940, was reopened this month.

A plaque was unveiled, bearing the inscription, “Destroyed by war—Restored by faith.”

Many well known evangelicals have served the parish during the last 200 years. Charles Wesley was at one time a curate of Islington. The present vicar is the Rev. Maurice Wood, a gifted preacher and evangelist.

For well over a century, the Vicar of Islington has arranged an annual conference for evangelical clergymen of the Church of England. The 123rd conference will take place January 8.

Freedom In Italy

A bill has been submitted to the Italian Parliament concerning the free exercise of religious rights and government relations with non-Catholic denominations.

Non-Catholic bodies in Italy are ruled by the restrictive laws enacted in 1929 and 1930 under the Fascist Regime—a sharp contrast with the Republican Constitution of 1948.

The new bill provides that “the exercise of religious rights by the evangelical religious confessions, their members and institutions should be recognized according to the terms, modes and limits appropriately established by the Constitution.”

Strange Broadcast

A church organ in Blackpool, England, startled parishioners when it “broadcast” a BBC weather report during a service.

Investigators found that a piece of wire had dropped among the tubes and caused the instrument to pick up radio signals.

Digest …

► Dr. George Otto Simms, 46, elected Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. Formerly Bishop of Cork.… Soviet Zone city of Rostock designated 1957 “City of Church Reconstruction” by Evangelical Church in Germany. Only three of city’s Protestant churches survived war without damage.

► Evangelical Church of Germany opens center at Mainz-Kastel to train Protestant ministers for pastoral work in industrial areas.… Dan Piatt, European director for Navigators, reports opening of fourth Christian Servicemen’s Center at Bitburg. Others at Naples, Wiesbaden and Kaiserslautern.

‘Deep Divisions’

Cutting the Gospel “down to a size that fits” into our culture has resulted in “one of the deep dilemmas facing contemporary overseas mission work.”

In expressing this opinion at the annual meeting of the National Council of Churches’ Division of Foreign Missions, Dr. Eugene L. Smith of New York, chairman of the division’s executive board, charged that Protestant theology in the United States has been moulded by “our fabulous and unmatched prosperity.”

The official, in his address to some 300 representatives of 45 Protestant denominations at the five-day conference in Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, stated:

“To the very degree we become successful, influential and established, we move away from the radical and, therefore, disturbing elements of Christian truth. We expurgate the Gospel of those elements which embarrass us by their radicalism, their grandeur or their terrifying purity.…

“By preaching a culturally-rooted Christianity, many have been guilty of theological parochialism at its arrogant worst. From such aggressive blindness, the Church has suffered deeply, and there have developed some of the deep divisions within Christianity.”

Charging that contemporary preaching often smacks of “obscurantism” and “lack of clarity,” he said ministers frequently feed their congregations “theological half-truths” and fail to preach “the whole Gospel” in terms that can be understood by the average man.

Dr. Roy G. Ross, general secretary of the Council, said Christianity in the Far East was hampered by Protestant divisiveness and an awakened new missionary zeal on the part of other religions.

Much of the divisiveness in Asia was attributed to “sect groups.”

Referring to a mass resurgence of Buddhism in the Far East, he said Buddhists “plan to train and send missionaries throughout the world.”

Dr. Leslie E. Cooke of Geneva, Switzerland, director of the Council’s Division of Inter-church Aid and Service to Refugees, said “the new independence of overseas churches established through western missionary activities does not mean they no longer need our help, but it does require the development of new patterns of assistance.”

He said a “significant part” in determining the new strategy for missions may be played by the growing program of inter-church aid in which Christians of one nation share funds and material goods with those of other nations in times of emergency.

Dr. Cooke emphasized, however, that inter-church aid can never be a substitute for missions.

Deadline For Ministers

Most ministers will forfeit their coverage rights under Social Security if they fail to file application forms by April 15, 1957.

The only clergymen not faced with the deadline are those already covered and those who became ministers after January 1, 1955. New ministers have at least two years after their ordination.

Under changes made in the Social Security Law by Congress in 1954, ministers for the first time can be covered. But each minister must decide whether he wants to be covered.

The coverage will be as a self-employed person, even though he receives a salary from the congregation. Each must file by April 15 a report of earnings to the Internal Revenue Service, along with the regular income tax form. A Social Security tax of three per cent will be paid on earnings up to $4,200. The tax will increase to 33/8 per cent for 1957.

Churches and institutions are not involved or obligated in any way. Many churches, however, are adding the cost of the tax to the salaries of ministers.

God Is Good

A young woman missionary, who helplessly watched her baby son slowly freeze to death and later saw hope ebb for the safety of her missing husband, will continue evangelistic work among the nomadic Indians of a lonely sub-Arctic outpost.

The husband, Albert Kelly, 26, serving with the Central Alaskan Mission, disappeared in a skiff while seeking help after his family was marooned on a desolate island in Glena Bay. His wife, Vera, 25, was later rescued from a rocky beach with her daughter, Rebecca, 3.

They had been without food or shelter for four days and nights. Nearby lay the frozen body of four-month-old Thomas, a victim of starvation and the bitter Alaskan cold.

Mrs. Kelly, recuperating in a hospital, said:

“My husband may be dead. My baby is dead. But I still have my faith in God. Despite everything, God has been good to us and I want to continue in His service.”

Inauguration Decanters

President Dwight Eisenhower has pulled the plug on plans of distillers to promote the sale of whiskey in special inauguration bottles listing the names of all U. S. Presidents.

Gerald Morgan, special counsel to the President, sent a protest to Judge William C. Bryant, Ohio liquor director, resulting in sales of the decanters being stopped there.

Clayton M. Wallace, executive director of the National Temperance League, said he had been informed that Morgan’s letter to Judge Bryant stated, “The President wished it known that he had not been asked to give his consent to his name appearing on the bottle, and that he had not given such consent.”

Assembly Line Art

“The most callous people in the country are making cheap church art by the tons; the most devoted people are sitting in front of it every Sunday, and somebody is taking in the cash at the expense of good art and good people.”

So said artist Siegfried Reinhardt while in Des Moines, Iowa, to judge a religious art competition. A teacher of advanced painting at Washington University, St. Louis, he assailed what he called a “cultural delinquency” in American church art and urged wider use of original paintings in churches.

Christian Athletes

A Fellowship of Christian Athletes is flexing physical and spiritual muscles for a big job in American cities.

Talks are planned before high school and college audiences by a star-studded lineup of speakers, including such noted athletes as Donn Moomaw, All-America football player at U. C. L. A.; Otto Graham, retired quarterback of Cleveland Browns; Robin Roberts, pitcher with Philadelphia Phillies; Doak Walker, former All-American and all-pro in football; Carl Erskine, no-hit pitcher with Brooklyn Dodgers, and others.

In a four-day conference at Estes Park, Colorado, this year the athletes gave tips to several hundred young men on how to play well and live right. Remarked Moomaw, regarded as one of the greatest linebackers in the history of football:

“You are either on the team of God, or you’re off. There is no in between … no second team. If you’re on God’s team, Jesus Christ is your coach and quarterback and you follow Him.”

The athletes have received a number of requests to appear in schools throughout the country. A few of the city fathers, however, added provisions that the talks be about God in general and not Jesus Christ in particular.

FCA directors have adopted a policy against the acceptance of invitations where members are not free to witness for Christ.

The decision, in addition to the conviction of members, was influenced by such remarks as the following from a track speedster at Michigan University:

“I’ve just realized I’ve been trying to lead a Christian life without Jesus Christ. It can’t be done.”

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

Not In Vain

The killing of five American missionaries by Auca Indians in Ecuador last January had a direct effect in the volunteering of some 2,000 young persons for foreign missions work.

This report was made by the Rev. Robert B. Savage, program director of radio station HCJB at Quito, Ecuador. He said he heard of the volunteers through the ministers of various congregations.

Digest …

► Dr. Arthur R. McKay, 38, pastor of First Presbyterian, Binghamton, New York, appointed president of McCormick Theological Seminary.… American Bible Society plans 225 translations of Gospels into new languages in next quarter century.

► Southern Baptist Convention announces goal of 425,000 converts for 1957. Denomination baptized 416,867 in 1955.… 100,000 new Protestant churches seen as need in next 20 years.

► Methodist Church increases membership to new high of 9,444,820.

► Missionary radio station HCJB celebrates 25th anniversary.… U. S. tobacco acreage allotment cut 175,000 acres for 1957.…

► Howard A. Hermansen, associate pastor of Moody Church for 10 years, resigns. No future plans announced.… 1957 budget of $13,290,000 adopted by General Board for National Council of Churches—including $7,636,000 for relief, rehabilitation and world missions.

► Presbyterian Church in U. S. A., with record budget of $9,112,398 for overseas missionary work, votes to dissolve three missions in India so work can merge with United Church of Northern India.

► Dr. V. Raymond Edman, president of Wheaton College, and Mrs. Edman plan to spend some of Christmas holidays in Ecuador with missionaries and the five missionary widows. As missionary in Ecuador, Dr. Edman was smitten with fever and once given up for dead. This will be Mrs. Edman’s first trip back in 25 years.

► Dr. Powhatan W. James, biographer and son-in-law of the famed preacher, George W. Truett, dies in Dallas, at 76.

The Second Coming

The Blessed Hope, by George Eldon Ladd. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1956. $3.00.

Dr. Ladd of Fuller Seminary has followed up his earlier book, Crucial Questions about the Kingdom of God, by dealing directly with a vital part of the believer’s faith: Just what is the Blessed Hope? “The central thesis of this book,” he says, “is that the Blessed Hope is the second coming of Jesus Christ and not a pretribulation rapture” (p. 11). He continues: “The Blessed Hope is not deliverance from the Tribulation; it is union with the Lord at His coming” (p. 12). He shows that this was the historic view of premillennialists until about 125 years ago when J. N. Darby and others introduced a belief in a pretribulation rapture. Chapter 2, “The Rise and Spread of Pretribulationism,” traces this belief in England and America down to the Scofield Bible but also notes that important premillennialists up to the present day have rejected it. There follows a biblical study of the passages dealing with the Blessed Hope, the Tribulation, the Rapture, the Resurrection, and there is found “no support for the idea that the return of Christ will be divided into two aspects—one before and one after the Tribulation” (p. 89), but rather that the Blessed Hope is that reunion with Christ which “occurs at the Revelation of Christ in glory” (p. 100).

With this aspect of the book not all will agree, but we think Dr. Ladd has proved his point. Perhaps he might have made it even stronger by showing that a correct exegesis of Daniel 9:27 declares Christ, not the Antichrist, to bring sacrifices to end in the midst of the 70th week, thus leaving no foundation for a supposed three and a half-year tribulation under the Antichrist or a supposed seven-year lapse between the rapture and the glorious appearing of the Lord.

This book, however, is not only directed against the idea of a separate rapture but it is also directed against the idea of the “any-moment” coming of Christ, and there the reviewer feels bound to take issue with Dr. Ladd. He argues that, since such events as the tribulation and the preaching of the Gospel in all the world have yet to be fulfilled, the Lord could not come now. The command to watch “cannot be used to prove an any-moment unexpected coming of Christ for which the believer is to watch, for the day of the Lord will come only after definite signs such as the Antichrist and the apostasy which will indicate that the end is near” (p. 109). It is “a false assumption,” he says, “that belief in the any-moment return of Christ is identical with a biblical attitude of expectancy” (p. 153). In a chapter entitled “Watch,” he examines scriptural passages such as Mark 13:33–37 and Luke 12:37–39, and concludes, “The point of the warning is that we cannot say it will be soon; we do not know when” (p. 116).

But the point of the warning in these passages is rather that since we do not know the time, therefore we cannot say it will be either soon or distant and we must always watch. It is just as wrong to say, “My Lord delays His coming” as it is to insist that He must come now. No doubt Dr. Ladd would agree to this. His terminology may be elastic. He says, “If we are awake and Christ comes today, we are ready. If we are awake and Christ does not come until tomorrow, we will still be ready” (p. 115). And yet, in his identification of the pretribulationist view with the any-moment view of our Lord’s coming, and his emphasis on those events which must first be fulfilled, and in repeated rejection of the any-moment coming (“the biblical teaching of watching is not the equivalent of watching for an any-moment of Christ,” p. 163) he gives the impression that our expectancy of the Lord’s return ought not to be such as to allow us to sing, “Jesus may come today.”

Of course, the great problem is just how it is possible to expect Christ to return at any time, even immediately, if we also believe that certain signs of his coming have not yet been fulfilled. The most difficult sign is perhaps the conversion of the Jews. If this outpouring of God’s grace must precede the appearing of Christ, must we not then postpone His coming or at least hold our expectancy in abeyance, until the Jews turn to him? No. In matters of prophecy we have to distinguish between events about which we can have a high level of assurance as to their specific fulfillment, such as the Resurrection and the Judgment, and those of a lower level such as the exact nature of the millennium. And firmly on the higher level of assurance is the joyful duty of watching at every moment for the coming of Christ, for we are told again and again in the plainest language always to be ready because we know not at what hour the Lord will come. On a lower level of assurance are the signs: the salvation of the Jews, antichrist, tribulation. They may be fulfilled or may have been fulfilled in another way than we would expect.

To reject the separate, secret rapture is not to reject the any-moment coming. The any-moment glorious appearing of Christ, whether now, soon, or distant, is in the reviewer’s estimation the Blessed Hope.

ARTHUR W. KUSCHKE, JR.

Not Orthodox

The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, by Hans Hofmann. Scribner’s, New York, 1956. $3.95.

This is a painstaking and faithful interpretive summary of the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, which traces its development from its earliest inception in his pastoral experiences in Detroit to its mature expression in The Nature and Destiny of Man and Faith and History. Hofmann uses a great number of quotations, often letting Niebuhr speak for himself.

Even though Niebuhr’s major works are readily accessible, a summarization is not out of place. An understanding of the background and development of Niebuhr’s thought is important, and this cannot be had by reading even his most systematic work. To get a rounded view without such an interpretive summary one would have to make a long and arduous study of a number of Niebuhr’s works.

Hofmann’s treatment is divided into four major sections: “The Beginning,” “Religion and Society,” “Sin as Man’s Severance of His Relatedness to God and Society,” and “Faith and Society as the Poles of the Original and True State of Man.” The treatment, therefore, revolves around the correlation of God, man, and society, in which man is the key link (pp. 91, 110). As Niebuhr sees it, the problem is not in God or in religion as such, nor is it in the external conditions of society. The problem lies first of all in man himself. Because of a disturbance of man’s relationship to God, his relation to society and society itself are disturbed (pp. 114, 236 et. al.).

The main source of difficulty is found in man as sinner (p. 113 f.). Hofmann believes that Niebuhr’s entire theology may be expounded around this theme. His book was originally published in Switzerland under the title, The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, in the Light of His Doctrine of Sin.

Sin is indeed a major theme in Niebuhr’s thought. In terms of it he has criticized some of the most cherished tenets of social and theological liberalism. But to look at Niebuhr’s position from the biblical point of view is to rejoice on the one hand that he recognizes sin at all and especially that he sees the spiritual nature of sin; and yet it is to regret on the other hand that he refuses to recognize, e.g., an actual pre-fall state and an historical fall. Looking at man here and now, Niebuhr says, without any concern for his historical origin or development, what tools do we need to interpret his present condition? The answer is that we need certain myths that have come to us in the Christian tradition: e.g., the fall and original sin. The Christian doctrines are myths, supra-scientific, imaginative expressions which must be taken seriously but not literally, which God has used for his revelation of himself and of the state of man. As with the other doctrines of the Christian faith, we have in Niebuhr’s view of sin a basic reconstruction of the biblical position.

The question of myth has been widely discussed lately, and the controversy is by no means closed. Very interesting is Hofmann’s comparison of the position of Niebuhr and Rudolf Bultmann, who is famous for his program of demythologization (p. 75 ff.). Niebuhr sees the supposed myths in the Scriptures as indispensable vehicles of divine revelation, while Bultmann finds the essential thing in the existential meaning underneath the form of mythical speech. But it is clear that Niebuhr is as radical as Bultmann in relegating biblical material to the realm of myth (cf. p. 92 f.). For both men such doctrines as the original sinless state, the fall, the preexistence of Christ, the doctrine of the two natures of Christ, the ascension, the session on God’s right hand, and His coming again in glory are myths and cannot be taken literally in any sense. Observing closely one sees that the current fray is a variation on the theme of supernaturalism versus anti-supernaturalism. Whatever remnants of supernaturalism might remain in Niebuhr (as Tillich claims), he is quite solidly anti-supernaturalistic.

With this in mind, it is noteworthy that Hofmann’s book is almost entirely free of criticism. In addition, we note that Hofmann has not fully laid bare the change of meaning that standard theological terms have undergone in Niebuhr’s thought. I would judge that while Hofmann has been faithful in his presentation, he has pictured Niebuhr as somewhat too orthodox, just because he has not always let Niebuhr’s terms be seen in their changed meaning. Niebuhr’s theology is indeed a modification of liberalism, but it is in no instance a return to orthodoxy.

ROBERT D. KNUDSEN

Wisdom Of Prophets

The Parables of the Old Testament, by Clarence E. Macartney. Baker, Grand Rapids Michigan. $2.00.

There is an abundance of material on the parables of the New Testament, but very little that deals with the parables of the Old Testament. In his research preparatory to the writing of this volume, Dr. Macartney discovered that neither in America nor in Great Britain could he find a single book that dealt with the parables of the Old Testament. In the preparation of this volume, therefore, he described his feeling as being similar to the experience of the men of the sixteenth century who sailed upon seas that never before had been cleft by the keel of a ship.

Dr. Macartney finds that the principal difference between the parables of Christ and those of the Old Testament consists in the fact that nearly all of the parables of our Lord taught spiritual truth that is timeless, whereas the parables of the Old Testament were messages for a special occasion. Despite this fact, the author maintains that the parables of the Old Testament teem with suggestions of truth, which are relevant for any age, and in many instances they may be made the vehicle of evangelical truth.

Included in this volume are two fables, the only ones in the Bible, that of the Trees and that of the Thistle and Cedar. The general purpose of the fable and parable is the same, said Dr. Macartney, to illustrate moral and spiritual truth by comparison with what actually transpires. But the fable differs from the parable in that in the fable the subjects of the mineral or vegetable or animal kingdom “feign to speak and act with human interest and passion.”

The content of this volume will provide biblical material that will be new and fresh to most congregations.

The nine chapters in this volume, as Dr. Macartney expresses it, represent the garnered wisdom of prophets, chroniclers, and seers, some of them known and some of them unknown, but all worthy of a better acquaintance.

Dr. Macartney has written scores of volumes, but it is doubtful if any contains the marked originality, vivid description and powerful presentation equal to this work produced in his earlier ministry and reprinted for readers of today.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Typology?

Devotional Studies of Old Testament Types, by Fred H. Wight. Moody, Chicago, 1956. $3.50.

Perhaps no area of biblical interpretation has suffered more acutely at the hands of the higher critics than Old Testament typology. The reviewer once sat under a seminary professor who hurled the typical approach wholesale to the rubbish heap of antiquated imaginations. Wight justifies the method by appealing to Jesus’ and Paul’s use of it, an observation that ought to silence all objections.

Discreetly the author, a Baptist minister, in his introduction first defines a type as “a person, thing or event in the Old Testament designed (underlining my own) to represent or prefigure some person, thing or event in the New Testament.” It is regrettable that his presentation of the subject in many instances repudiates that definition by confusing and equating analogies with types. We could illustrate at length for the examples are numerous, but several will suffice. All are taken from the chapter on I and II Samuel: “The Kingdom of Saul, a Type of the Self-Life”; “David at the Cave of Adullam, a Type of Christ Our Captain”; “Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, a Type of Revival in the Church”; and “Mephibosheth, The Type of a Sinner Saved by Grace.” Parallels of this kind may be drawn by analogy, but they certainly do not belong to typology. Incidentally, this mode of exposition is largely responsible for bringing typology as such into disrepute.

Wight is at his best when he deals with characters who prefigure Christ, like Joseph and Moses, studies of interest and value. Elsewhere, however, he tends, even within the bounds of legitimate typology, to fanciful and exaggerated conclusions which bear reminiscences of Origen’s allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament and Augustine’s comments on the parables. This of course critically weakens the historical impact. He further forces certain features into his dispensational eschatology.

The book exhibits a tendency to needless repetition, at times a lack of correlation of points and occasional deceptive literalisms. Though solidly evangelical and loyal to the Scriptures as the fully-inspired Word of God, it is difficult to recommend this volume. It will confuse and mislead the theologically unoriented and prove too much of a surface study for preachers who will want to stretch their mental muscles with works like those of Fairbairn, Habershon and Baron.

RICHARD ALLEN BODEY

Perfumed, Beribboned

The Old Story of Salvation, by Sophia Lyon Fahs. Starr King and Beacon, Boston. $3.00.

It is evidently the author’s purpose in this book to retell the Story in the Bible (she would distinguish this from the story of the Bible) as a living narrative which may be found woven through the largely extraneous material from Genesis to Revelation; and then to discuss the meaning and significance of that story for the purposes of modern, liberal religion. The book is in two parts. The first is the aforementioned historical narrative and is a very fine, condensed Bible Story which includes, uncritically, the traditional theophanies, miracles, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, etc., to the end of the Revelation. The second part, which is the meat of the author’s writing is called “The Unanswered Question: ‘What is Truth?’ ” In this last 40% of the book, she offers her opinions on the religion which she believes may be found, not by mutilating the story, but by understanding it as a myth and fable. The result is a perfumed and beribboned Hegelian idealism in modern dress. Except that not even Hegel would have taken such liberties with traditional religious concepts.

The author, who has no evident use for orthodoxy, whether traditional or “new,” identifies herself with the Council of Liberal Churches. She explains, in a burst of confidence, that she developed her ideas while working with the boys and girls in the Church School of the Riverside Church of New York City.

One of the milder views she elaborates in the discussion section is the now familiar one, that the “original” Christian faith was “not what Jesus believed, but what the Christian church early came to believe about Jesus.” And the author believes that her’s is “not a study of history directly, but rather of a great tradition which has molded history.”

She feels that it is “crude reasoning” to present the death of Christ as an atonement. He died, essentially for the same reason that Socrates and Ghandi died, an ideal person going down in defeat, despised, rejected, his cause apparently lost. Moreover, Jesus never thought of himself as a Messiah, never sent out disciples to preach and baptize in His name, never would have claimed to be the only savior among the world’s saviors. One’s heart goes out to those boys and girls at the Riverside Church.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Popular Biography

By Faith Alone, by W. J. Kooiman. Philosophical, New York, 1955. $6.00.

It is not necessary for any reviewer to tell evangelical Christians how valuable Dr. Martin Luther, whose biography is ably and attractively presented in this excellent book, is for our present-day evangelical believers who adhere to salvation by faith in Christ without works. But there may be a need to introduce the readers to Professor Kooiman of the University of Amsterdam since he may not as yet be known to many evangelical Christians in America. To say it briefly, he is instructor of church history in the University of Amsterdam and is a most influential preacher and radio speaker in the Netherlands, whose interest in Luther is deep and inspiring. Believing that evangelical Christendom must hold to the doctrine of God’s free grace in Christ Jesus, he proclaims this precious doctrine with a conviction that stirs and enlivens those who listen to him. His Life of Martin Luther was written as a pastor who keeps in mind his parishioners, both young and old. In 1954 the reviewer read it in Holland in the original. Later, he read it in a German translation, and now he has read it in an English translation by Dr. Bertram Lee Woolf which is so masterfully done that no fault can be found with it. Dr. Kooiman’s biography of Luther is not scientific in the strict sense of the term, but rather is popular. Yet in accuracy, depth, and comprehensiveness, so far as Luther’s life and work are concerned, it is truly scientific within its scope. The reviewer recommends Kooiman’s By Faith Alone to all evangelical Christians and hopes that it will become as popular in the English-speaking countries as in the Netherlands and Germany.

JOHN THEODORE MUELLER

That indefatigable searcher for facts, Wilbur M. Smith, reports some interesting findings in Moody Monthly (Aug., 1956). An analysis of the 29th volume of Who’s Who in America, that is, of pages 13–112, yields this result, namely that 30% of those listed indicated some religious affiliation. Of the 1650 biographical sketches 53 were of clergymen. “The list reveals more Episcopalians and Presbyterians than all the other denominations combined.” However, “by far the greater number of the more prominent educators, scientists and writers do not indicate any religious affiliation. The same goes for playwrights, musicians, radio and TV men.” What mean these figures? Has religion become peripheral among those who mould the American mind? Or are they merely too shy to disclose their deepest loyalties?

“All this, and Revival, too” thus runs an article in The Christian Herald (Sept., 1956) on the Sector Plan of the American Baptist Convention. This plan is helping the churches utilize their total resources in new communities. During the past five years more than 3000 churches, Baptists and other communions, have used the plan with remarkable results in spiritual growth and power.

Canon Wedel writes a welcome warning in The Journal of Religious Thought (Spring-Summer, 1955) on “The Meaning of the Church”:

The phenomenal growth of the Pentecostal ‘sects,’ which ignore, for a time at least, the call to erect Gothic shrines, could remind us of the fact that “Church” in the New Testament, meant first of all a people of God united by a common faith and the living presence of Christ as Holy Spirit and not by institutional ambitions.

Wedel decries the mania for pompous church buildings in America. Air-conditioning, luxurious appointments, expensive side chapels and streamlined nurseries are the order of the day. But can they ever be a substitute for what really matters in the house of God? Wedel speaks prophetically when he says that “the body of Christ is something more than genial sociability. It stands under the judgment of holiness.”

Cross Currents, a Catholic journal, contains a challenging article by Father Henri Dumery on “The Temptation to Do Good” (Winter, 1956). It is a serious and eloquent plea for full religous liberty. Read and ponder: “What faith finds is God Himself, and not dogmas”; or: “But we do not become believers by assimilating a theory, reciting a history or riveting together syllogisms”; or: “Faith does not recopy a formula, and it does not blindly underwrite a formula; Faith opens itself to a presence, it receives a new life, and is bound to a new significance of existence of history.” But what elates both mind and heart are words like these: “Only the belief that liberty of conscience is inalienable will re-establish true faith; with the correlative paradox of a sincere unbelief and an apparent incredulity which is faith within non-belief.”

Will some of the Catholic bishops in beautiful Spain take Father Dumery’s words to heart? This Catholic priest is absolutely opposed to any form of coercion against unbeliever, schismatic or heretic. Truth, argues Father Dumery, is always ready to hear St. Paul; it will refuse to listen to Torquemada.

Professor Bela Vassady, an exile from stricken Hungary, in an article in Theology Today (July, 1956) plows a deep furrow as he writes on “The Power of Christlike Living.” Over against the cults of assurance Vassady stresses the need of negative thinking in terms of the Gospel’s call for self-depreciation, self-denial, humility and repentance. But though we are summoned to lose our lives for Christ’s sake, this demand “is always embedded in the proclamation of a new, divine positiveness.” The bootstrap strategy of the cults of assurance, Vassady rightly maintains, cannot lastingly dissolve man’s feelings of loneliness, emptiness and insecurity. But where men experience by faith the divine pardon of their sins, wondrous powers of the spirit are being released. In view of man’s introvert face-saving, that is, bribing one’s own conscience or the ever present extrovert or manward face-saving—“the selling of lies, the playing up of vices for virtues in the sight of others,” or, what is by far the worst, Godward or vertical face-saving—“the most stupid as well as wicked act of man the sinner to strive to deceive God and to believe in the success of his Godward camouflage,” there is but one remedy, namely saving faith! Concludes Vassady: “Saving faith is just the reverse of the complex of facesaving. Whoever dies and is risen with the Lord is saved by faith, and no longer needs to take refuge in a technique of face-saving. The crisis of facing the loss of faith is by such a man again and again overcome by a voluntary act of face-renunciation in the sight of the Lord who died for him.” This is sound pastoral theology because these insights are rooted in God’s holy Word.

Writing on “The Literature of the Fulton Street Prayer Meeting” (Moody Monthly, Jan., 1957), Wilbur M. Smith is convinced that “the Revival of 1858 is the kind of revival America preeminently needs today: caused by a mighty outpouring of the Spirit of God, on every city and hamlet, from the Atlantic to the Pacific; a time of contrition and confession of sin; a time when waves of prayer will sweep over our land; when noonday meetings will see greater audiences than Sunday morning services now see; when ministers with even few gifts well speak with new power never before known by them, and will see hundreds coming forward to receive Christ in an otherwise ordinary service. This could be more nation-wide than any religious movement ever known in America, if a great work of God results from the Billy Graham campaign in New York, and millions are allowed to see, watching televised services in their own homes, the mighty working of the Spirit of God bringing eternal life to those who are receiving Christ as their Saviour.”

Indeed! Be it so! The Lord’s arm is not shortened that he cannot revive his people and with them this great land of ours. Though we perceive it not, spiritual battles are going on in our midst. God’s Spirit is striving mightily with the minds of men. May we acknowledge Christ’s absolute Lordship in all of life, whether in school or shop, home or hearth, in national and international relations, or in our relations with our neighbours of another race. Sursuam corda! Lift up your hearts! Regem habemus! We have a King, His name is Immanuel, God with us, the herald and bringer of life, joy and grace.