NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Some 12,000 Southern Baptists, representing the South’s largest Christian body, converged on air-conditioned Houston, Texas, May 20–23, for their annual convention. Famed for a rapidity of growth both foreign and amazing to many denominations, the Southern Baptist “messengers”—not “delegates,” in keeping with Baptist church government autonomy—were exhorted to advance yet further and faster. If, in taking their good news from the South to Ghent, Rio, Calabar, and Chicago, they felt any inclination to slow to a canter, ample spurring was provided by inspirational messages portraying the staggering needs of the world.

Bugles were heard morning, afternoon and evening in the form of outstanding oratory and moving pageantry. The assault upon ear-gate and eye-gate was reminiscent of The Holy War, by a great Baptist of another century. One is inclined to read a Southern Baptist invasion of a city in terms of a great religious festival and feels that the legions of Lucifer must surely be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers. There is a sweeping momentum which knows no trumpet of retreat.

Rate Of Growth Unparalleled

The Southern Baptists, coming from humble and predominantly rural beginnings, have grown big and rich. At present constituting the second largest Protestant denomination, numbering close to 9 million, they heard themselves described as the fastest-expanding of them all, with every prospect of an accelerated pace in the future. They learned from their executive committee that convention assets as of December 31 were $164,422,978, an increase of $15,000,000 over the previous year. Then they adopted a budget of $17,500,000 for 1959, this representing an increase of $1,000,000 over 1958. They listened to a telegram from President Eisenhower describing them as “a most constructive force in the life of our people.”

It is particularly when one looks at the Southern Baptist home mission program that he is somehow reminded of the bursting expansiveness of America’s frontier days. There are now more than 31,000 Southern Baptist churches. A movement has been launched to establish 30,000 new churches or missions between 1959 and 1964. That this is more than an idle dream is indicated by the recent record.

In 1940, Southern Baptists served 19 states as against 43 today. In 18 years their territory has increased by three times and its population by three and one-fourth. A convention was organized in California in 1940 with 13 churches. This number has jumped to 642. In Kansas there were seven churches in 1946. Now there are 135. Since 1948 10 churches in the Washington-Oregon Convention have mushroomed to 143. Ohio’s 40 churches in 1954 have now become 134. Alaska had three Southern Baptist churches in 1946, but now she has 21 churches and 9 missions.

“Southern Baptists,” you say? As a matter of fact, there is talk of name-changing to something more realistic. Indeed, one of the convention debates was concerning the role to be played in Canada. The vote revealed the messengers to be in favor of giving aid to any Baptist church or churches in Canada but opposed to seeking alignment of any of these with the Southern Baptist Convention, fearing impairment of relations with other Baptist bodies.

Vacuum In The American North

But no such reservations mark the advance northward of Southern Baptists in the United States. They have heard a Macedonian call, though assuredly this was not uttered by northern Baptists. Southern Baptists declare they are not seeking competition but rather are stepping into a vacuum, particularly in the midst of the large cities where Protestantism has so often defaulted. Many Christians will surely rejoice if Southern Baptists, with their great resources—spiritual and material—are able to counteract the growing paganism of the large metropolitan areas of the North.

Their strong emphasis upon evangelism is well-known. Famed pulpit orator Dr. Robert G. Lee of Memphis moved the vast Coliseum audience with his plea for “making disciples by righteous living,” pointing to the 30 million youth in this country with no religious affiliation.

Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, in stirring fashion warned that “America can be lost. And if America is lost to the evangelical faith, the world is lost.” Cruel as are her external enemies, he contended, America’s worst enemies are on the inside, such as drunkenness, materialism, and debauchery. He called for revival and evangelization of the uncommitted multitudes, reminding his listeners that Baptist-founded Providence and Rhode Island are now the most solidly Roman Catholic city and state in the union. “It is a stark fact of history,” he cried, “that men are lost without God. Before tomorrow’s dawn, 130,000 people will face God’s judgment.”

Southern Baptists do not make headlines for the development of new doctrines, but the success with which they apply the old ones is startling to many. Dr. Theodore F. Adams, widely-known president of the Baptist World Alliance, explained the presence of Baptists in Russia where there are few other Protestants, by saying simply, “Baptists are people of the Book.”

The “Convention Preacher,” Dr. Robert E. Naylor, named the Bible “the heartbeat of the denomination.” Preaching on sin, he said, “We have been putting on poultices when the world needs a blood transfusion.”

Another sign of the northward advance of the Southern Baptists is the location of two of their most recently-established seminaries. Midwestern Baptist Seminary opens this autumn—in Kansas City, Missouri. Golden Gate Seminary in San Francisco opened in 1944. Its president, Dr. Harold K. Graves, said the current Billy Graham Crusade had already moved forward local Baptist work a decade.

Votes, Future Sites

The Southern Baptist Convention re-elected Democratic Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas as its president.

Dr. Chester L. Quarles, executive secretary of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, was elected first vice president; Dr. Archie Ellis, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina, was elected second vice president.

Other re-elections included James W. Merritt, of Gainesville, Georgia, senior secretary; Joe W. Burton, editor of the Baptist Home Life Magazine, secretary; and Porter Routh, executive secretary of the convention’s Executive Committee, treasurer.

Next year the convention will be held in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1960 it is scheduled for Miami and in 1961 the “messengers” will meet in St. Louis.

But the Southern Baptists’ vision penetrates beyond the cities of the North. For the better part of an evening the foreign mission challenge was made strongly to the messengers. The Rev. James D. Belote of Hong Kong spoke of a “Sin Curtain” separating men from God. Given the degree of sacrifices many communists are making for their cause, he envisioned a Christian missionary advance “as yet undreamed of.”

Foreign Mission Board Executive Secretary Baker J. Cauthen expressed gratitude for the 1200 missionaries on the field but called for double that number, saying that the time had come for a new rocket-like thrust. He then led in a 20-minute prayer service.

An international vision was the burden of many of the remarks of Congressman Brooks Hays, who was re-elected president of the convention for the customary second term. He called election to this office the greatest honor he had ever received, noting he had learned his first lessons on democracy in a Baptist church as a lad. He told of his recent trip to the Soviet Union and of his speaking in a Baptist church in Moscow, where he contradicted to the congregation Marx’s axiom that religion is the opiate of the people.

Calling for “open doors” between America and Russia, the congressman declared his hope for “massive reconciliation” (this not compromising determent through arms) through “heart power, a passionate concern for humanity.” Toward this end he led in setting up a nine-man committee, including himself and Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, to explore ways in which Southern Baptists can contribute to the promotion of world peace through “Christian love and the application of Christian principles to human affairs.” The international organization and contacts available through the Foreign Mission Board would be at the disposal of the committee.

The few road blocks in the way of the convention’s sweeping advance were quickly vaulted. The specter, by now painfully familiar, of integration-segregation controversy made its appearance. Adams had challenged the ministers in plain terms, pointing out the anomalous situation which found mission field converts unwelcome in the churches which had set out to convert them. Hays had supported the convention’s Christian Life Commission, saying, “It would be tragic for us to assume that we can function as a Christian body without assigning to trusted representatives of the convention the task of pointing out our Christian duty with respect to social evils and current conflicts.” Not only had the commission spoken out against obscene literature and alcoholic beverages, but it had also said that each citizen should “help and not hinder the progress of justice for all peoples.” Furthermore, “he must challenge the threat to the public school system” and also seek the “restoration of communication and fellowship with people of every race and nationality.”

Up rose the Rev. Montague Cook of Georgia who quoted Webster in seeking to demonstrate that “fellowship” is synonymous with “integration.” He held that the report should not be received until the local churches had expressed themselves, for newspapers might give the public the idea that the convention favored integration. Hays pointed out that no local church was bound by the report, and the vote was subsequently heavily in favor of receiving it.

A motion was later made that the commission return a grant of $15,000 from the Ford Foundation through the Fund for the Republic, on grounds of a purported congressional investigation. The motion was defeated by a large majority.

Newsmen sat up late one night in a hotel lobby awaiting an important verdict by the trustees of Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. Thirteen faculty members had threatened to resign over what they claimed was arbitrary control of the school’s program on the part of the administration. A party close to the situation claimed that the president, Dr. Duke K. McCall, believed the seminary should reflect the views of the denomination, while the dissidents felt the seminary should be at liberty to lead the denomination. The verdict, when it finally came after long deliberation, was unambiguous. The trustees came down solidly on the side of the president. The next move belonged to the dissenters.

One of the more important items of convention business was consideration of the report of the Survey Committee. Significance lessened, however, when some of the key items were returned for a further year’s study. The aim of the recommendations was said to be a slight structural tightening for the better co-ordination of the convention’s many activities. However, the sections dealing with the powerful Home Mission Board, which were deferred a year, would have transferred power from the board to the state conventions.

In effect, the Southern Baptists stand as an island of resistance in a great sea of increasing centralization in any and all areas of life. The Rev. Ralph Herring, while pointing out that certain missionary and other needs are such as to require more than the ability of a local body of believers, emphasized that the local body always has “prior claim” upon its members’ loyalties.

Thus, Southern Baptists affirm that the autonomy of each local church is a “major factor” in their not being a part of the National or World Council of Churches. The convention simply cannot commit its cooperating churches in such a matter.

The convention has been criticized for its size and crowded agenda, and thus its “machine-like efficiency,” with most of the business being handled by committees. It is at present undergoing self-examination on these matters.

Cooperation of Southern Baptists with other Baptists is seen in its very active participation in the Baptist World Alliance, in the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs in Washington, D. C., and in a six-year program of preparation for the Baptist Jubilee of 1964.

Dr. Clarence W. Cranford, president of the American Baptist Convention and a member of the Southern Baptist Convention as well, addressed the Houston convention on the spiritual tie which binds all Baptists.

Another area of cooperation among 20 million Baptists in seven major North American bodies is a program of national revival centering about the Southern Baptist television series—the cooperative program to be called “Televangelism.”

As the convention rolled toward its conclusion, messengers discovered yet more achievements and heard yet more challenges. A two-volume Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists had been published earlier in the year. The Chaplains Commission reported that all active duty quotas in all branches of the services had been filled. The Sunday School Board announced that it had grossed over 23 million dollars in 1957. Its headquarters are in Nashville, a city second only to Washington, D. C. in the amount of second class mail handled. The biggest customers are the Baptists.

Adams said, “Atomic power is nothing compared to the power exploded from Calvary.” The Rev. Mr. Herring said, “We are here with the resources of the Gospel to make of the barriers of this world bridges over which Christ may enter the hearts of men.” A Texas voice said, “Tomorrow is a big day.”

A bugle was heard. And it was not taps.

F. F.

A Barber’S Witness

All was not violence during Vice President Richard M. Nixon’s trip to South America.

In Quito, Ecuador, diplomat Nixon seized an opportunity for making a contact with the common people by stopping in a barber shop for a haircut. The barber, as it happened, was an enthusiastic Protestant believer.

In the course of the ensuing conversation, carried on through an interpreter, the barber pulled a Spanish New Testament from his pocket and requested the vice president’s autograph. Nixon complied in a very cordial manner and listened with interest while the barber gave testimony to his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

A. V. D. P.

Praying For The French

A Methodist prayer leader was appealing to colleagues in 112 countries to conduct urgent intercessions for French crises.

The request came from Dr. Thomas A. Carruth, director of the World-Wide Prayer Movement of the Methodist General Board of Evangelism, who said his action was prompted by word from Dr. J. E.P. Edwards, American Protestant pastor in Paris.

An evangelistic campaign was being held in Paris even as reports of threatened revolution continued. Edwards’ letter said: “Many prayer groups have sprung up in the most unexpected places in France, and more and more our people are praying with urgency, realizing that only divine intervention can save this wonderful country from the perils of religious counterfeit and the stranglehold of materialism.”

U. P. Centennial

In Pittsburgh, more than 10,000 persons joined in a dramatic observance of the centennial of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, May 23–25.

Pageants, tours, and special services marked the event which came on the eve of the church’s merger with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

The new church will be known as the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

The centennial pageant, “Prologue to Tomorrow,” was held in Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh’s largest auditorium, and was witnessed by near capacity audiences.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Dr. Robert G. McCutchan, 80, dean emeritus of DePauw University School of Music and noted hymn compiler, in Claremont, Calif.… Miss Hilda Brown and Miss Mary Woodhouse, both of the Church Missionary Society of London, in a New Delhi plane crash … Dr. Corydon M. Wassell, 74, medical missionary and naval officer, hero of World War II, in Little Rock, Arkansas … Mrs. W. Darst Newhouse, 62, Presbyterian missionary to Cameroun, in New York … Dr. Barnett R. Brickner, Cleveland rabbi and foremost leader of Reform Judaism in the United States, in Spain … Samuel Alphonsus Cardinal Stritch, 70, only American-born prelate elevated to the Roman Catholic governing curia, in Rome.

Elections: As president of Chicago Theological Seminary, Dr. Howard F. Schomer, effective January 1, 1959 … as president of Philadelphia Bible Institute, Dr. Charles Caldwell Ryrie, effective August 1 … as president of the Primitive Methodist Church, the Rev. Richard I. Purnell … as acting dean of Philadelphia Divinity School (Episcopal), Dr. Albert H. Lucas.

Appointments: As professor of New Testament at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Krister Stendahl … to the pastorate of the Seminole Heights Baptist Church of Tampa, Florida, Dr. John Summerfield Wimbish … to pastorates in the Philadelphia Presbytery, Dr. Walton W. Rankin, former publicity director of the Presbyterian General Assembly, and Richard S. Armstrong, former publicity head of baseball’s Baltimore Orioles … as president of Cornus Hill Bible College, Earl Marcus Jensen … as bishop of the Diocese of Funen in the Lutheran Church of Denmark, the Rev. K. C. Holm … as military representative for international Christian Business Men’s Committee, Colonel Cecil R. Hill … as senior representative in Great Britain of the Lutheran World Federation’s Department of World Service, the Rev. William B. Schaeffer.

Resignation: As head of St. Paul Bible College, Dr. George D. Strohm.

Award: A Fulbright Scholarship to Professor Morton H. Smith, chairman of the Bible Department at Belhaven College. Professor Smith will study for a doctorate at the Free University of Amsterdam, Holland.

Grant: To International Christian University in Japan, $30,000 from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., Indianapolis.

Rebuilding: McCormick Theological Seminary plans to spend $10,000,000 for a new set of buildings.

Statistics: Roman Catholics claim 36,023,977 members in the United States and its territories, according to the Official Catholic Directory for 1958.… Russian Orthodox churches in the Soviet Union now number more than 22,000, while those of other denominations total 18,000, according to a Moscow Radio report.

Digest: Dr. Karl Barth and Dr. Emil Brunner are backing plans for the first international Protestant radio station in Europe, to be built in Switzerland … “Communicating the Gospel world-wide” is the theme of the second World Conference on Missionary Radio scheduled for June 12–14 at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago.… Staffs of the Lutheran World Federation and the Rhenish Mission Society of Germany were continuing work despite rebel activity in Sumatra, according to reports received in Geneva, Switzerland … Circulations of the Congregational Christian Church’s Advance magazine and the Evangelical and Reformed Church’s Messenger will be combined into a new publication to be called United Church Herald. The United Church was formed last June in a merger.…

London’s Central Hall, one of the most famous Methodist churches in the world, appears on a newly-issued United Nations stamp which commemorates the meeting of the first General Assembly there in 1946 … Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip headed an overflow congregation which witnessed the reopening of the east end of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The building was badly damaged in World War II bombings.

From the bitter struggles of the Covenanters in seventeenth-century Scotland through the General Assembly of 1858 in Pittsburgh which formed the United Presbyterian Church and the General Assembly of 1958, when yet another major union was to be consummated, the pageant traced Presbyterian history.

The play was written by Paul Gamble and directed by the Rev. Kenneth E. Grice. Dozens of persons took part.

Major Work

Leading evangelical scholars are preparing a new exposition of the English Bible in five volumes. Tentatively titled The Living Theme of the Great Book, the major work is scheduled for publication in 1960 by A. J. Holman Company.

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, is listed as consulting editor for the Bible exposition project which will have 65 contributors, among them scholars from Europe, Africa and Australasia. At least a dozen major denominations are represented.

In addition to outlines and expositions of each Bible book, the volumes will contain introductory essays by Wilbur M. Smith, F. F. Bruce, Oswald T. Allis, Andrew W. Blackwood, Everett F. Harrison, Julius R. Mantey, Francis I. Steele, and J. Kenneth Grider.

A Minister’S Return

The Rev. John Gerberding, who resigned as pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church near Milwaukee in 1955 after being acquitted on heresy charges, returned to the ministry last month by taking up the pastorate of the Epiphany Lutheran Church, Denver.

Asked whether his theological views had changed during the last four years, Pastor Gerberding replied, “I do not wish to comment on that.”

A Final Appeal

A church-state issue over the cut-rate sale of land to Fordham University was put in the hands of the United States Supreme Court last month.

A final appeal to the nation’s highest tribunal sought to reverse lower court rulings which refused to recognize the transfer of New York City property as any violation of church-state separation guarantees. Fordham, a Roman Catholic school, agreed to buy the land from the city at a price considerably less than the city paid for it. Plans called for redeveloping the area in New York’s Lincoln Square into campus grounds.

Charges have been made to the effect that transfer of the property under proposed terms would amount to an outright grant to Fordham.

Palace Progress

No one visiting the Cow Palace on a Thursday night could doubt that the Holy Spirit’s greatest work in the San Francisco Bay Cities Crusade is being done with young people. The seed of a new Christian commonwealth is being planted on the West Coast as thousands upon thousands of children of the atomic age continued to stream forward at the Billy Graham mass evangelistic campaign.

Out of the weird nihilism and moral anarchy of the “beat generation” are coming these youthful pilgrims, at the behest of a messenger who dares to liken their environment to that of Sodom and Gomorrah, and points them to the purity of Jesus Christ. The eagerness with which they respond is strangely stirring. A young prostitute telephoned from her brothel for help after a telecast. An eighth-grade girl “stood up” a sneak drinking date with boys the Saturday night after her decision. Duck-tailed young housebreakers and car-stealers are now thumbing painfully through the Gospel of John for the answers to “Lesson One: the Saviour and Eternal Life.”

Crusade momentum was felt in other ways, too. Pastors were astonished as decision cards began to choke their mailboxes. Some were delighted, others discomfited to find their church pillars had been “going forward.” Dr. Gilbert F. Close, pastor of San Francisco’s Portal-hurst Presbyterian Church and a consistent opponent of the campaign, acknowledged that he was “thrilled” when two students at San Francisco State College applied for membership in his church following their decisions. The Rev. Baldwin Sherman of Havenscourt Colonial Church, Oakland, cancelled choir rehearsals and told his people, “You’ll gain more by singing for Cliff Barrows.”

The unique telephone ministry that marked the New York Crusade is proving in San Francisco that it is a valid—if overlooked—arm of the Church. On May 19 it was extended to cover both sides of the bay. The nightly telecast had hardly flashed the new number before all eight lines were ringing and counselors were answering, “Billy Graham Crusade—may I help you?” (One woman replied, “I don’t know whether you can or not; my husband just punched me on the nose and walked out of the house.”) Chairman Don Lehmann, pastor of San Francisco’s Glad Tidings Temple, says that one out of every three calling in is making a clear commitment to Christ, and is being referred to a pastor and followed up. The telephone counselors use a non-directive technique, referring to the Scriptures after first clarifying the inquirer’s thoughts by restating his expressed feelings.

The nation-wide Saturday night telecasts were bringing thousands of letters telling of conversions. Twelve Canadian stations joined the network until virtually every metropolitan area in North America was covered.

On the surface, the city by the Golden Gate seemed its old gay, insouciant self. Police reported no lessening of the crime rate or the number of arrests. Bartenders around the Visitacion Valley area were said to be complaining, but elsewhere “business” was as usual. The city wore no sackcloth, and its only ashes were those of the 1906 earthquake and fire, still piled behind the Cow Palace.

Yet there was no doubt that things were happening. God was at work. San Francisco’s peripheral population is far smaller than either London or New York, yet the Cow Palace is averaging 5,000 per night more than Harringay, and a greater number were coming forward than at Madison Square Garden, according to Crusade Director Walter H. Smyth.

Dr. Graham’s fire and zeal are seeming inexhaustible. He has greatly expanded his ministry to include daytime addresses at the leading seminaries and universities, mass meetings in downtown San Francisco and Oakland, talks to overflow crowds at service clubs where he received standing ovations, and before the American Red Cross national convention. He testified before a legislative committee investigating indecent literature, “America needs a moral bath and a spiritual awakening,” and declared that California is the heart of the nude photo industry.

A memorable visit was paid to San Quentin Penitentiary, where Dr. Graham told four thousand convicts, “You are all spiritually on death’s row awaiting execution.” Six hundred of them responded to his challenge to live for Jesus Christ behind bars.

And each night he has returned to the Cow Palace to preach a gospel of sin and forgiveness in simple Anglo-Saxon phrases of great force. “So amazing is God’s love,” he told the vast assemblage, “that he erases your sins from his mind as a tape recorder erases its sound track.” Then follows the invitation, and as hundreds of inquirers make the long trek to the front, counselors appear as if by magic to stand alongside. Together they move to the counseling room where the straight and narrow path begins.

A cook from Florida, who jumped bail after being arrested for passing worthless checks, repented at the Cow Palace and then turned himself over to the FBI. He has gone back to face sentence. A woman alcoholic came forward to make her decision, then presented herself at her pastor’s study next day and demanded that he give her something to do. A pastor found tears in the eyes of his bus driver on the trip home and led him to confess his faith in Christ. A 22-year-old man, with scabs on his wrists from a suicide attempt, was heading for a bar and a bridge leap when he followed the crowd into the Cow Palace out of curiosity. He made his commitment in the counseling room and began attending crusade meetings regularly.

Since the meetings began the crusade has been singularly free from criticism. City officials have been friendly. Meanwhile, plans were being shaped for a gigantic visitation evangelism program June 23–26, with 10,000 laymen participating all over the bay area under the auspices of the crusade. If Billy Graham and his team have done nothing more than create a spiritual appetite and a hunger for God among the residents of the West Coast, they have already rendered a memorable service.

S. E. W.

Garden Glow

A spirit of evangelism still glows in New York. Seventeen thousand persons filed into Madison Square Garden on the cool, wet evening of May 15 for a rally marking the first anniversary of the start of Billy Graham’s campaign a year ago. The rally was sponsored by the Protestant Council of the City of New York, which also promoted last summer’s great New York Crusade. The group is planning still another Garden evangelistic meeting on Reformation Day, October 30.

The first anniversary rally had a nostalgic air about it. In a brief recorded message, Graham called on New Yorkers to carry the message of Christ to “thousands of people that are suffering from a thousand different problems.”

“Evangelism is not optional,” he said, “it is an obligation. We should all be engaged in evangelism.”

Principal speaker was the Rev. Joseph Blinco, Methodist evangelist from England and a member of Graham’s team, who asserted that “the good old days” had nothing on the present age.

Evangelist Blinco said we live in times “as dramatic and decisive as ever the Exodus was … (intellectually and philosophically) as dynamic as ever the Renaissance was … and (religiously) as potent as the Reformation.”

Blinco, who attended Cliff College in England and has been an evangelist ever since, wore the clerical white collar and gray suit. When he extended the “second chance” invitation, 128 stepped forward. Following the pattern of a Graham meeting, all were led to an inquiry room for counsel. During his address to the congregation, the evangelist asked how many present had made a decision for Christ the year before during the New York campaign. An estimated 6,000 stood. Last summer’s 61,000 inquirers all received follow-up counsel, according to a report by the Rev. Dan M. Potter, executive director of the Protestant Council, largest interdenominational church group serving Greater New York. Potter said that a visitation program, moreover, had added 1,000 persons to church rolls since the New York Crusade.

How valuable was Graham’s great evangelistic effort in behalf of the nation’s largest city? For lack of an adequate human unit to measure spiritual progress, a number of the evangelist’s opponents have used statistics as a basis for continuing criticism. “Little lasting effect” is a charge used to attack his policies. “Decision totals exaggerated” is another.

Even if the accusations were true, one irrefutable conclusion appears in all of Graham’s crusades: at least some inquirers are genuinely converted, and it is very likely that others are moved to make a decision for Christ even though they do not respond to public invitations. It is with this in mind that Graham asks:

“How many need to be converted before we rejoice?”

This is not to say that he disregards follow-up. Under commission from the Graham team, Dr. Robert O. Ferm, Houghton College dean of students, has been interviewing New York pastors and inquirers for months. He observes that a great majority of those who signed decision cards still affirm their decision.

(High School Evangelism Fellowship of New York reports continuing effects of the Billy Graham Crusade among teenagers. The group has inaugurated a quarterly publication which features in the first issue reports of follow-up work.)

Potter’s report, given as a rally preliminary, listed other evangelism-correlated efforts being carried out by the Protestant Council. He urged New York churches to hold more summer vacation Bible schools and to maintain full summer programs as deterrents to juvenile delinquency. He said the council will intensify its own services to youth during the summer. The group sponsors nine youth centers and helps young people find seasonal jobs.

Other rally preliminaries focused on the 2,000-voice choir led by Jab Williams. At 7:20 p.m. the strains of “How Great Thou Art” filled the Garden, unmistakenly reminiscent of Graham meetings. The choir also sang “Blessed Assurance” and “To God Be the Glory,” the latter title appearing on a banner strung on the edge of a tier overlooking the choir. Choir director Williams, who had assisted Cliff Barrows as music director, made the sign. He is a commercial artist.

Jerome Hines and his Metropolitan Opera company presented a moving Last Supper operatic dramatization. Congregational singing was under the direction of the Rev. Albert Gates. A Salvation Army band presented a pre-rally sacred concert. Miss Ethel Waters also sang. Chairman of the rally was the Rev. Ralph C. Drisko.

Counsellors for the inquirers had been rounded up from crusade mailing lists. So were choir members and ushers.

Love From Hate

Bombings prompted by racial hatred evoked an expression of indignation from the ministerial alliance of Jacksonville, Florida, which issued this statement:

“Any difference, however trivial and needless, is always worsened and aggravated with hate and suspicion, by violence and brutal disregard of the rights of others. The bombing of the James Weldon Johnson Junior High School and the Jacksonville Jewish Center, and the threatened bombing of the Jacksonville Labor Temple, are tragic and deplorable.

“To ignore them or tacitly accept them as the unavoidable accompaniment of disagreements and differences which confront us is to encourage a tendency and a train of thought which can carry us back to the barbaric jungle of human existence where the stronger and more vicious is the ruler.

“It is to be hoped and prayed that the violent, regrettable acts and threats of the past few days represent the isolated thoughtless violence of a few misguided people who will be brought back to saner thoughts and more responsible behavior by seeing what frightening and undesirable results can flow from such actions.”

The bombings may even have had an inadvertent effect for good. Resulting discussions may well bring about more sympathetic attitudes toward the people who were targets of the bombs.

R. K. M.

Exit Addenda

The Navy says it will not allow any more religious medals to accompany Vanguard rockets into space.

A St. Christopher medal was attached to the second stage of a three-stage Vanguard rocket which succeeded in putting the Navy’s first satellite into orbit.

The Navy advised Protestants and Other Americans United last month that steps have been taken “to prevent future similar departures from the universal scientific nature of the Vanguard project.”

Goal: 1,000 Missionaries

The Christian and Missionary Alliance will seek to increase the number of its missionaries serving overseas to 1,000 before the end of 1960. The society now has 822 on 22 mission fields.

The goal was announced by Dr. H. L. Turner at the group’s 61st annual General Council, held in Winnipeg.

South America

A Contact Lost?

The first Auca man to trust American missionaries is reported dead.

The death of the Ecuadorian Indian tribesman, who befriended five missionaries subsequently martyred, was reported by Elisabeth Elliot, wife of one of those slain. He had been dubbed “George.”

Mrs. Elliot is studying the Auca language with two tribeswomen who escaped the jungles last November. She is the author of Through Gates of Splendor and Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot, which will be published by Harper and Brothers.

Meanwhile, a Roman Catholic doctor from Montreal had not been heard from for three months after entering the Auca jungle.

England

Cms And Independence

Talk of “missionary imperialism” in West African history is so much nonsense, Canon Max Warren implied in his general secretary’s report to the 159th annual meeting of the Church Missionary Society in London.

Fifty years before Nigeria was under Britain to any appreciable extent, Warren said, CMS was preparing Africans for independence.

“That is both spiritually and politically a fact of some importance,” he said, “that the celebration last autumn of the Centenary of the Niger Mission was, together with much else, the celebration of an act of missionary statesmanship.”

In his presidential address, Sir Kenneth Grubb said it was clear that the services of missions would be requested by the churches of the greater part of Africa “for many years to come.”

Many American mission leaders seem to be still suffering from the shock of China, Grubb added, and unable to envisage much beyond a fairly abrupt termination of their work.

“We of this society do not share these misgivings,” he said. “We have abundant evidence of the genuine and earnest demand made … for our cooperation.”

Africa

The Warfare

Islamic penetration into the cultural and religious life of Nigeria is causing considerable Christian concern.

An Islamic mission plans to establish a new Arabic college while another Nigerian school now offers a course on Islamic thought and culture. Demands are growing for a deeper understanding of Islam because of its impact on West Africa.

Vatican Radio last month said a “veritable race” is taking place in Africa between Christianity and Islam.

However, the Anglican bishop of Lagos said that with Nigeria’s independence in the offing, no useful purpose could be served by Christians and Muslims attacking each other. The Rt. Rev. A. W. Howells told the 13th Synod of the Lagos Diocese that everything possible would be done to arrange exchanges of views on Islam and Christianity.

J. L. J.

Middle East

Israeli Drought

A severe spring drought forced cattle raisers in the Negev area of southern Israel to move flocks because of dried-out pastures. Crops were also damaged.

One report, which called the drought one of the most severe in many years, said that the roadsides out of Jerusalem have been dotted by flocks of sheep and goats turned out to forage on badly-burned grain.

However, an Israel Embassy spokesman in Washington said the lack of rain was not considered a “major” emergency.

The spokesman said damage from droughts has been declining in recent years with the advent of more and improved irrigation systems.

A Step For Prestige?

“Integration” moves by Arab Presbyterians may help American Presbyterian missionaries regain lost prestige in Lebanon and Syria.

National Presbyterian synods in the two Middle Eastern countries are expected to take formal action next month on plans to “merge” with U. S. missions.

The actions would amount to dissolution of the American missions in favor of a national Christian organization, though abandonment is not intended. Missionaries from the United States will continue in present posts as “fraternal workers” under the direction of the national church. Similar moves have been made in India, Thailand, and French Cameroun, in keeping with Presbyterian aims to strengthen national churches by turning over to them the organizations and institutions which hitherto have been entirely controlled by Americans.

In some instances, the “integration” has led to enlargement of established work and appointment of additional personnel from the United States.

Presbyterian U.S.A. observers see increased influence among American missionaries when they no longer represent a foreign agency but a national Christian organization.

In Iran, similar plans have been in the offing for some time. The Iranian Evangelical Church, as far back as 1936, began to assume responsibility for mission projects when the government prohibited foreign-operated grade schools to enroll Iranian children. Mission schools in three cities were taken over by the church and now are expanding. Full indigenization of the Iran Mission has been delayed primarily because of the relative paucity of national leadership and the steady drain on church membership by the emigration of Assyrian and Armenian families.

F. T. W.

[Some missionary boards and missionaries seriously question “integration,” feeling that the inclusion of missionary personnel in the national church and the turning over of mission funds to the national church is a distinct step away from the strengthening of an indigenous church. On many mission fields the national church has been developed and strengthened without either of the above mentioned steps. In some instances nationals have been encouraged by missionaries to demand the integration of the missionaries into their churches, along with subsidation from abroad, only to regret their impetuosity in the light of the effect on the national church.—ED.

HAVE SAINT, WILL TRAVEL

There is always an extremist to run something into the ground. That fellow who roars through the village in a yellow hard-top convertible used to have six racoon tails streaking behind. That was four cars ago. Next his aerial wobbled under two fake TV antennae, then it was three confederate and two pirate flags. Now he still has a doll with blinking eyes in the rear window, but the cluster of baby shoes is gone from the rear view mirror and the dash ledge is populated with saints.

Not one saint, you understand. That would not be unusual. There is some talk in Detroit of developing a dashboard image as optional equipment. But this character has his ledge crowded with a whole company of saints. I haven’t identified them individually from the fleeting glimpses that are possible. I think there are more than twelve, though they may be the Apostles with some supplementation. They all seem to be plastic, have long robes, and face to the rear. Perhaps they are all replicas of St. Christopher, installed on the assumption that a proper image-horsepower ratio should be maintained.

The first manufacturer to develop a forward looking saint for hood ornamentation should earn the blessings of the whole auto industry. These plastic dash figures go back to plaster-of-paris originals of the last century. They are not designed for the current sport car. A figure in golden aluminum alloy, the motif taken from contemporary ecclesiastical art, but with a horizontal movement.… This would catch the eye of our convertible friend (and thousands like him, well-known to motivational research analysts); he would promptly buy the new Christopher Cruiser and get it off to a jet start all over our area. Later, of course, as they became available, he could add aluminum images to the front fenders, and mount two on the fish tails to share with motorists missed in passing.

EUTYCHUS

HUMANISTS AND TENSIONS

“Do Humanists Exploit Our Tensions?” … by Arthur H. De Kruyter (April 28 issue) … is indirectly a powerful indictment of the Christian churches … How many pastors and representative church leaders are members of Local, State or National Associations of Welfare or of Mental Health or Council of Social Agencies? Here where they would be in position to bring to bear the Christian ministry and judgment of the Christian faith is the place they should be rather than standing outside and criticising the efforts of the humanists. Truly, De Kruyter is right when he says that the humanists moved into a vacuum left by the withdrawal of the Church.

Kentucky Council of Churches

Lexington, Ky.

Perhaps the success of the movement (of Mental Health) is, as De Kruyter says, an “indictment of the Church.” If so, the great increase of mental patients brought the Church under indictment long before. How long has it been since the Church has sent a herd of swine crashing into the sea?

Adelaide Street Baptist

London, Ont.

Psychiatry is somewhat schizophrenic (a splitting the mind from reality) when it refuses to acknowledge sin. There is a vast difference between admitting the fact of sin and an attempt to get at the cause of the sinful behavior. An internist does not deny the existence of pain and physical damage to the human organism simply by concentrating on the etiology and symptoms of a disease. Yet, some psychiatrists often do this very thing in dealing with mental illness. Both the Church and psychiatry ought to describe immoral behavior as sinful, moral behavior as righteous, and amoral behavior as neither “bad” nor “good” … Denominations have all kinds of departments—maybe we need another one dedicated to the improvement of mental health among our church members.

Dean

Alderson-Broaddus College

Phillippi, W. Va.

De Kruyter … mentions Dr. G. B. Chisholm as “quoted approvingly as a ‘psychiatrist of wide recognition’ ” in The Interpreter’s Bible … It is true that the quotation … is correct and is used to describe Dr. Chisholm. This statement in itself is not in any manner a statement of approval. This is a cold, hard fact. But in no manner is approval given to the man or his thought. In fact he is quoted to show the fallacy in this position.

The author has a right to show disapproval of The Interpreter’s Bible, and there are parts of it I do not care for myself. However, by implication he is saying that this commentary approves of the humanists’ doctrine. There may be other quotes that may imply this, but the one in question certainly does not.

Rockland Methodist Church

Belpre, Ohio

• Reader Quick’s criticism is justified. The Interpreter’s Bible indeed goes on to speak of a “more profound perception” than that of Dr. Chisholm.—ED.

The Mental Health Association … is headed up … by psychologists and psychiatrists who differ … widely on their theories of psychology … These men have had no training in theology, and … frequently use theological terms such as sin and guilt in a different sense than we do … Most of the leaders of Mental Health would deny that all feelings of guilt are wrong, just as most ministers would deny that all feelings of guilt are good. When they speak of guilt, they are referring to those destructive emotions in a state of depression when insignificant acts of misbehavior are exaggerated … out of proportion to their reality, or of that in people who actually attribute to themselves certain things for which they feel guilty and yet of which they are innocent … People in such a state of mind are not under the conviction of sin brought about by the work of the Holy Spirit, but … are manifesting symptoms of deep emotional disturbance which can lead to suicide … They are not able to accept the assurance of forgiveness from God in many instances, until they have received treatment from a psychiatrist.

Hope Presbyterian

Portland, Ore.

Before allowing your columns to condemn the mental health movement, I suggest that your editors make a study of the number of persons who now lead normal lives after having psychotherapy.

Shorewood, Wis.

We agree with … De Kruyter’s views and wish to congratulate you for featuring his enlightening article.

President

Station WMAQ

Chicago, Ill.

A book entitled “Mental Robots” … by Dr. Lewis Alesen … points out that we are being cleverly and skillfully deluged under schemes of the Mental Health Program. The thesis of this work is that collectivists now turn to the field of mental health as a means to effect the coup de grace … Lavrenti Beria has given the avowed mission of the Soviet “psycho-politicians” in stating, “With the institutions for the insane, you have in your country prisons which can hold a million persons and can hold them without civil rights or any hope of freedom … The tenets of rugged individualism, personal determinism, self-will, imagination, and personal creativeness … are no more than illnesses which will bring about disaffection, disunity …”

Spring Lake Christian Reformed Church

Spring Lake, Mich.

The article … is superb.

Larkspur, Calif.

De Kruyter moves with a sure hand to expose what I consider a grave danger connected with certain aspects of the so-called “Mental Health Movement.” It is quite evident that there are strange forces at work in this movement which have little to do with the true mental health, which comes only from God, and much to do with subverting loyalty to God and country in favor of secular internationalism and totalitarian regulation of every phase of human life.

Dept. of Psychology, Rollins College

Winter Park, Fla.

I am … securing reprints for sending out to our chairmen.

Anti-Communist League of America

Park Ridge, Ill.

De Kruyter came close to the most vital matters in his piece on humanists! God have mercy on us if we fail to understand! For the humanism based on evolution is an atheistic system planning the utter end of both Christianity and all supernaturalism, in the name of scientific socialism at whose topmost pinnacle it stands as the new “religion”—a religion with man as Supreme Being!

Anti-Evolution Compendium

Henniker, N. H.

JEWISH EVANGELISM

Dr. Gartenhaus (Apr. 14 issue) talks of … “old prejudices … yielding … so that the New Testament has penetrated into many Jewish homes and hearts.…”; some there may be who may wish to re-evaluate; that there are many, I doubt. Otherwise the results would become more apparent.… Jewish evangelism, I believe, will meet the same obstacles today as in the days of the Acts, but the distressing difference between those days and ours lies in the fact that then Christians were concerned with their spiritual responsibility to the Jews, while today a great many are, at the most, benevolently indifferent.

Emmanuel Center

Baltimore, Md.

He … made me feel guilty of my failures to attempt more seriously to reach for Christ the members of our Jewish Community.

College Church

Hampden-Sydney, Va.

DIVISION IN RELIGION

Most certainly the Foundation for Economic Education has done and is doing a splendid job, but it is as rash as it is unseemly for a writer (Mr. Howard, Mar. 17 issue) to declare that this much younger organization, not organized until 1946, has done more with the religious community than Constitutional Educational League, Committee of Constitutional Government, American Legion Anti-Subversive Committees, or perhaps even American Economic Foundation or America’s Future.

… I would have been loud in his praise had he stated the well-known fact … that there is a division within the religious community.… The principle group representing organized Protestantism, the National Council of Churches, and its principle affiliated denominations, are dominated and controlled completely by a leadership which is devoted to politics and economics rather than religion, promoting the preaching of Communism-Socialism under the fancy names of “social gospel” and “social action.” Minorities in the churches and some non-affiliated church groups protest, but their voices do not ring out loudly or clearly because all avenues of communication are almost entirely denied to them.… In … 1953, the NCC issued a … pamphlet … titled the “Facts about the NCC” … devoted to castigation of the American Council of Christian Laymen, its officers and publications, with some futile attempts to refute charges made against NCC. Thus NCC “told the world” just who and what were troubling it …

American Council of Christian Laymen

Madison, Wis.

ART AND WORSHIP

Those who criticized Roth’s criticism of “Head of Christ” (Mar. 3, issue) missed the whole point of his article.… In a word, he said that art must be worship, or it has no right to exist. Worship certainly cannot be a subjective matter. It can only turn to God with his due. Sometimes this “due” is difficult to give. Sometimes it is hard to extract the “I believe.…” But we know that we must, or perish.

At very best, the “Head” is subjective. It enables the moralistic pietists to find there just what they are looking for, a “goody-goody” whose chief aim is to stay on friendly terms with everybody, but quick to turn up the Pharisaic nose at one who would polish his shoes before church on Sunday morning. Roth’s description of the painting is indeed clever and intriguing—but true, completely.

Those who criticized this one point of his article, then, failed to understand the major premise. Perhaps they were just too hurt by some sentimental worship objects being attacked. Worship is objective, but once we worship objects, such as a painting, then we have succumbed to thinking we can comprehend God. Worship goes out to God, but it does not enclose him.

St. Timothy Luthern Church

Hickory, N. C.

According to the second commandment … it is just as wicked to paint the likeness of a man as it was for the Israelites to make the golden calf.

First Baptist Church

Wilmington, Ill.

I told [an Arizona Indian chief] our Bible story.… He was very much impressed.… And then came the climax.… He said that one day he was talking to God … when suddenly he saw a strange face, very beautiful, and he had always wondered whose face it was.… I had in my pack a copy of “Sallman’s Christ” … and I placed it in his hands. He gazed at it intently, and with a smile remarked, “Same face I saw.” You can imagine what followed. He accepted the Christ, and after … much deep thinking, he was baptized.

Trinity Cathedral Offices

Phoenix, Ariz.

Anyone with the right attitude can look at this picture and feel warmth, strength, courage, tenderness, and love—and receive inspiration through the Holy Spirit to face every task with renewed confidence. Perfection in creation—God’s masterpiece—is another impression to be gained. Note the splendid physical structure. Jesus himself did not mar any of this by unkind thoughts, words, or deeds.…

And so, to me, this picture very definitely portrays Christ. For, I too, have had the privilege of a vision, in which his heavenly appearance, although very similar, was much more glorified.

Berlin, N. J.

Were I an artist capable of portraying Christ, I would try to paint him according to Isaiah 53.

Ashland, Ore.

THE MEALS WE SERVE

“The confusing ‘C’ in the YMCA” (Apr. 14 issue) was most sensible and interesting.… The main thing in [early] days was to line up every “Y” member and see that he knew the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour and help him give a glowing testimony.… We went to the jails, workhouses and hospitals and took a “Y” group Sunday nights to set the churches on fire with our ringing testimony.

These days as I contact the YMCA … and ask them about their Christian testimony and Bible classes they answer me something like the … secretary did … when she said, “We show our Christianity by the kind of meals we serve.” … Yet I believe there is beginning to be a turn toward the spiritual in the “Y”.…

Long Beach, Calif.

In very effective phrasing the author has taken our thinking back into the holy order of the spiritual, where God lives in the abundance of his promised heritage through the Son—Jesus—whom he sent to be the living expression of his love and wisdom for humanity.

Claremont, Calif.

How wonderful it is to have in these materialistic days with their danger and disillusionment the Anglican communion service with its reiteration in the consecration prayer … the direct reference to the Lord’s second coming unequivocably; which is heard by the people in 25,000 churches in England every Sunday morning.

St. Albright’s Rectory

Stanway, Colchester

OPTIMISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY

In the April 28 issue … you printed comments by H. D. Sanders … upon … “Sex and Smut on the Newsstands” (Feb. 17 issue).… The … comments seem to be based upon a purely optimistic anthropology.… He has apparently forgotten that man is by nature the child of disobedience and that his basic drives are no longer subservient to the Creator but to the inherent sinful nature.

Johnson City, N. Y.

Insofar as procuring “voluntary” cleanups from dealers is concerned, I believe it is the business of the Church to proclaim its belief in any matter and let those who have ears to hear, hear; not to attempt to enforce these beliefs on the public by group pressure. Regarding bringing such dealers into court, the Church, in this country officially and by its own desire separated from the state and having nothing to do with the making of laws, seems to me a particularly inappropriate agency for demanding the enforcement of laws which the community as a whole does not seem concerned with.

… Paganism is neither obscene nor illegal. I have the feeling that the members of your commission … have been operating under the assumption that “contemporary community standards” are identical with, or at least very similar to, the standards of Christianity. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In the overwhelming majority of the heavily populated areas of the country these standards have virtually no connection with Christian morality. They are themselves, to put it bluntly, what the Church would—and should—call pagan.

St. Peter’s Episcopal.

Pomeroy, Wash.

Our society, as a matter of civil law, has adopted the ideal of monogamy as its basic unit.… Every state and every community has laws regulating marriage, prohibiting polygamy, adultery, bigamy, incest, and carnal knowledge of young girls. In all states except Nevada, easy divorce is discouraged. Rape and sodomy are punished.… In the process of defending the ideal of one man married to one woman as the central unit of the social order, we must restrain those who exploit sex for base purposes.

Washington, D. C.

MEDITATION MULTIPLIED

I’ve just read “Meditation” (Mar. 31 issue).… I think I can understand something of the kind of cynicism that gives birth to a piece of this kind. It has a depressing effect whenever I meet it.… Mr. Hough understands the thing that is bad.… Mr. Hough has no understanding of the thing that is good. He sees very little.

St. Mary’s Episcopal

Eugene, Ore.

Do you not think, dear Mr. Hough,

Your “Meditation” slightly rough?

With all my teeth I find it so,

In case the name is Mr. Hough.

That we love souls more than our stock

You should be told, dear Mr. Hough.

Real prayer and praise ascendeth oft In old cathedrals, Mr. Hough.

Great churches have religion too.

Where have you been, dear Mr. Hough?

All Saints Cathedral

Albany, N. Y.

I wonder when Mr. Hough last spent more than five minutes in a church ‘or, better still, a Cathedral?’ … May I quote a saying attributed to William Penn of blessed memory: ‘O God, help us not to despise or oppose what we do not understand.’

St. Peter’s Vicarage

South Wimbledon, London

Jesus, where’er thy people meet

There—even in an Episcopalian Cathedral—they behold thy mercy seat.

… God fulfils himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world (or the Church).

The Rectory

Cong, Ireland

PRIVATE POLL

Desiring a magazine that would reach the ministry on a non-denominational basis, I polled the ministers in town here and am happy to tell you that your magazine was the winner on a 10–3 vote.

Mesa, Ariz.

I tape record the magazine for my father who is blind.

Belmont, Mich.

Joel

The Book of Joel furnished one of the texts for the first sermon after Pentecost (Acts 2:16–21), but preachers have not frequently followed Peter’s lead since. The absence of some of the great prophetic themes—indictment of specific sins, sensitive social consciousness, etc.—coupled with the difficulty of interpretation has caused some preachers to shy away from the message of our prophet. However, the description of God’s swift and awful judgment by means of the locust plague, the heralding of the day of the Lord, the call to repentance because of the gracious nature of God, the outpouring of the Spirit, the picture of security and prosperity in Judah and Jerusalem after the nations are threshed in the Valley of Jehoshaphat—these themes, and many more, may provide nourishing food for sermonic thought.

Authorship And Date

We know nothing of the personal history of Joel except the name of his father, Pethuel. It is improbable that our prophet can be identified with any of the several Joels (“Jehovah is God”) mentioned in the Bible. The prophet does not tell us where or when he lived. The answer to the former question may be inferred from the many references to Judah and especially Jerusalem and from the constant concern over the Temple sacrifices; but the question of the date of Joel is not to be answered so readily.

This problem has traditionally been solved in one of two ways: 1) by attributing Joel to the period of the minority of Jehoash (Joash) toward the end of the ninth century B.C., or 2) by dating the prophet after the return, near the end of the fifth century B.C. The statement of G. A. Smith is characteristic of the attitude of most scholars toward this problem: “In the history of prophecy the Book of Joel must be either very early or very late, and with few exceptions the leading critics place it either before 800 B.C. or after 500.”

Recently A. S. Kapelrud has argued that Joel originated in a period between the two extremes mentioned and should be dated just after the death of Josiah who perished at Megiddo in about 609 B.C. In this view, which had been suggested much earlier by Konig, Joel would be a contemporary of Jeremiah and Zephaniah. Kapelrud’s approach has not yet gained acceptance, although in many ways it commends itself as a compromise between two extremes. The last word has not been said about the date, but our understanding of the prophet’s message does not hinge on the time of his prophecy. In few Old Testament writings is the date of so little practical importance.

The unity of Joel appears to be accepted by most modern scholars, in spite of the questions raised in the commentaries of Duhm and Bewer, who attributed the apocalyptic portions to a later hand. A. S. Kapelrud, A. Bentzen, and R. H. Pfeiffer are among those who (along with conservatives) have gone on record in favor of the unity of the book.

Structure And Style

The book divides into two almost equal parts: 1:1–2:17 and 2:18–3:21. In the first section the prophet speaks; in the second, the Lord addresses his people and the nations. The following is a suggested outline:

I. The Locust Plague and the Day of the Lord—1:1–2:17

A. The Awful Plague—1:1–20

1. Its unique nature—1:2–4

2. Its effects upon the people—1:5–14

3. Its relation to the day of the Lord—1:15–20

B. The Imminent Day—2:1–17

1. The army of destroyers—2:1–11

2. The hope of deliverance—2:12–17

II. The Coming Victory—2:18–3:21

A. Restoration of the Plague Damage—2:18–27

B. Outpouring of the Spirit—2:28–32

C. Threshing of the Nations in Judgment—3:1–15

D. Rescuing of Judah—3:16–21

Students of Joel have been virtually unanimous in acclaiming the high quality of his poetry. S. R. Driver calls it “bright and flowing,” and Bewer gives the following evaluation: “His style is clear, fluent, and beautiful. The lyrical quality of some of his lines places them among the best of their kind in the O.T., while his graphic, terse descriptions are exceedingly effective” (I.C.C. p. 68). Unfortunately, the English translations are hard-pressed to render satisfactorily the nice word-plays. One might add at this point that the Hebrew text of Joel is in an excellent state of preservation and, in contrast with many of the prophetic writings, presents few knotty problems to the textual critic.

Interpretation

Three types of interpretation have dominated the study of the book of Joel—literal, allegorical, and apocalyptic. According to the literal view, the locusts described in both chapters one and two are actual insects which the author likens to an invading army and depicts in poetic imagery which at times is hyperbolic. Keil, G. A. Smith, Wade, Kirkpatrick, J. A. Thompson, and many others have embraced this interpretation.

Those who hold the allegorical view—among whom may be numbered the Targum, some of the patristic commentators, Pusey, and A. C. Gaebelein—maintain that the locusts are to be interpreted as foreign armies which successively ravage Judah. Pusey names the four invaders corresponding to the four words for “locust” used in 1:4 and 2:25: “Assyrian, Chaldean, Macedonian, and Roman.” He carries the allegorical interpretation a step further when he quotes with favor a patristic interpretation which equates the four types of locusts with “four chief passions” which “desolate successively the human heart.” The subjectivity of this approach has not commended it to most modern commentators, who accept the force of the argument that chapter two compares the locusts to an army. It is unlikely that something would be compared to itself. Those who contend for the apocalyptic method of interpretation, especially Merx and von Hoonacker, view the locusts as apocalyptic creatures who will leave catastrophe in their wake at the day of the Lord. However, the graphic description seems to indicate that the narrator is himself a witness to the devastation which he claims has taken place “before our eyes” (1:16). Furthermore the use of the past tense in the narrative makes it, in Keil’s words, “perfectly obvious that he is not speaking of something that is to take place in the future, but of divine judgment that has been inflicted already.”

Some scholars, such as Bewer and Pfeiffer, have combined elements from two of these interpretations and have held that chapter one is to be read literally while chapter two represents an eschatological or apocalyptic approach. For want of stronger evidence to sustain the allegorical and apocalyptic viewpoints, it seems safe to hold that the locusts of Joel are literal insects which, on this particular occasion, came in successive waves over a period of more than a year (“I will restore to you the years”—2:25) and which may have entered Palestine from the North (2:20) rather than from the South, their more usual point of entry. The prophet sees the calamitous havoc which they work as an harbinger of the day of the Lord which is to bring destruction from the Almighty.

The Day Of The Lord

The terrifying experience of the onslaught of locusts reminds our prophet of the day of the Lord, the time of God’s judicial intervention in the affairs of men. So fraught with terror and so complete in destruction is the insect invasion that Joel cannot help but connect it with the final day of God’s wrath. His picture of the day as a time of destruction and darkness seems to presuppose the great declaration of Amos 5:18–20, in which the Tekoan seeks to obviate the older notion that the day was a season of joy and light. Joel labors under no such misapprehension but accords fully with the tone of Amos’ message. Joel’s correspondence with the emphasis of Amos should be borne in mind in any discussion of the date of Joel.

Though the day of the Lord is great and terrible, there are some redeeming features according to Joel: The Spirit will be poured out on all Israel (so the phrase “all flesh” seems to signify in the context), and deliverance will belong to all who sincerely trust in God for refuge. Joel, like the other prophets, did not distinguish between the time of God’s grace when the Spirit would be outpoured and the time of God’s wrathful intervention at the culmination of human history when the nations will be trodden as grapes and threshed as grain in the valley where God judges, the Valley of Jehoshaphat. For an enlightening discussion of the concept of the day of the Lord, one may consult Professor H. H. Rowley’s The Faith of Israel (London: 1956), pp. 177–201.

Joel And The New Testament

In addition to providing the text for Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (which is quoted almost verbatim from the Septuagint), the book of Joel has left its stamp on the New Testament in several apocalyptic passages. John’s picture of the locust plague in Revelation 9 is certainly based on Joel’s description: the locusts are said to look like horses arrayed for battle (cf. Rev. 9:7 with Joel 2:4); they have teeth like lions’ teeth (cf. Rev. 9:8 with Joel 1:6); they make a sound like chariots (cf. Rev. 9:9 with Joel 2:5). In addition Joel may have made some contribution to the apocalyptic discourses of our Lord in Matt. 24:29 and Mark 13:24 where the darkening of the sun and moon is depicted in terms reminiscent of Joel 2:31. We should also note Paul’s quotation of Joel 2:32 in Rom. 10:13 where he cites “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” as a proof of the universality of God’s offer of salvation. Paul’s use is interesting in light of the fact that in Joel the passage seems to refer to God’s deliverance of Judah.

The Abiding Message

Joel has painted for us a striking picture of God. He is the sovereign Lord who commands hosts of locusts as a general marshals an army. All nature stands ready to obey his dictum whether for bane or for blessing. Prosperity and disaster both stem from his will. When he unleashes his wrath no nation or coalition of nations can stand secure; when he “roars from Zion” the universe trembles. The question “who may abide the day of his coming?” goes begging for an answer.

Yet the portrayal of God’s awful wrath and judgment covers only half of the canvas. The God of Joel is also “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.” Cordial repentance will bring his abundant forgiveness. Some have criticized Joel for failing to indict the nation because of sin. This verdict seems a bit hasty. The prophet and the people stood in the midst of a disastrous predicament. Solution, not cause, was the pressing problem. The locust plague itself had, in all probability, quickened the conscience of the people so that they did not need reminding of their heinous sins but did need to know that in wrath God would remember mercy if hearts were rent in repentance before him.

Joel does not picture a personal Messiah but he does herald the approach of the Messianic age. He saw a time when God’s blessing would rest upon men and women, young and old, slave and free—a time of universal spiritual prosperity. We who live on this side of Pentecost can confirm personally the accuracy and clarity of Joel’s prophetic insight.

Tools For Exposition

In addition to the standard commentaries on the Minor Prophets—the works of Keil, George Adam Smith (Expositor’s Bible), Pusey, and Wade (Westminster Commentary)—there are several other volumes which should prove helpful. As always, the work of S. R. Driver (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges) is thorough and thoughtful and contains a weighty presentation of the evidence for a post-exilic date. An excursus on locusts is just one of the features that make his work essential for the study of Joel. For a dispensational, premillenial approach to our book one may consult the commentaries of A. C. Gaebelein (The Prophet Joel, 1909) and Charles Feinberg (Joel, Amos, and Obadiah, 1948). Of the many summaries of prophetic teaching, I prefer A. F. Kirkpatrick’s The Doctrine of the Prophets which gives an excellent presentation of the arguments for an early date. The chapter on Joel in G. L. Robinson’s The Twelve Minor Prophets may serve as a good introduction to the book. The most controversial work on Joel in recent years is the commentary by the Scandinavian scholar A. S. Kapelrud, Joel Studies (Uppsala: 1948). Although

many scholars have objected to what may be termed an over-emphasis on Canaanite elements in Joel, Kapelrud’s work is of interest because of his fresh approach to the date of Joel and his stress on Joel’s affinities to Jeremiah and Zephaniah. A useful summary of the critical problems of the book is found in John A. Thompson’s study in the Interpreter’s Bible.

DAVID A. HUBBARD

Professor of Biblical Studies

Westmont College

The words “righteous,” “righteously,” “righteousness” and “righteousnesses” appear in the Bible about six hundred times, their opposites such as “unrighteous” and “unrighteousness” also appearing a number of times.

A term so largely in use indicates its importance in God’s message to us. Just what does it mean?

In the broad sense it means being right in conduct and attitude while in the theological sense it means being accepted in God’s sight and on God’s terms. From the Bible it is obvious that sin is the antithesis of righteousness. Our Lord’s coming into this world, and the Gospel message which has resulted from his redemptive work, centers on the fact of the sinfulness of man and the righteousness of God which is made available to man in and through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, says: “For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3).

Paul was speaking of his own nation, Israel. But he is also speaking to a worldwide situation having to do with men of all races and of all generations. Within the human heart there is an almost universal sense of need. This is expressed in multitudes of ways but the Bible makes it plain that man cannot make himself righteous by anything he does. It is God offering man the righteousness of his Son that is the supreme evidence of his love, his concern and his mercy.

Within the Bible there are repeated incidents of men employing their own devices to make themselves acceptable in God’s sight. Adam and Eve are pictured making aprons of fig leaves to cover their shame. Cain made an offering much more esthetic than the slain lamb of Abel his brother. But God accepted the latter because it was offered in obedience to his command while at the same time he rejected Cain’s offering because it was a rejection of the divine plan. The writer to the Hebrews says: “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous” (Hebrews 11:4).

Unregenerate man hates to admit that he is a sinner. Isaiah’s affirmation that “we are all as an unclean thing, and our righteousnesses as filthy rags,” is hard to take. We greatly prefer to believe that we are pretty good folks after all and that there lies within us the power to reform and make ourselves righteous. “Bootstrap religion,” as it is aptly called, appeals to the pride of man but it is as effective as our attempts to overcome gravity by the power of our wills or muscles.

The whole concept of righteousness, as revealed in the Bible, is entirely different from that of the world. As J. B. Phillips has translated the proposition so aptly, it is not a matter of achieving but of believing. It is not a matter of doing but of accepting that which has been done for us. In Romans 1:16, 17, we read: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth … For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith.”

That divine righteousness is a matter of imputation is also abundantly clear. In II Corinthians we read: “Him (Jesus) who knew no sin, he (God) made to be sin in our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

The Chinese character for righteousness is remarkable in its composition. It is made up of the character “wo” which means “me,” the personal pronoun, and the character “yang,” indicating a lamb. When this character representing a sheep or lamb, is placed above the character representing the personal pronoun it immediately becomes “I,” which means righteousness. No one knows how this happened back in the antiquity of Chinese hieroglyphics, but the fact remains that according to that character (and also according to the Scriptures), when God looks down from above and sees the Lamb of God over me I am then righteous in his sight.

Many years ago a prominent young banker in a large northern city was noted for his profligate habits. With it all he was desperately disgusted but he was unable to overcome when the various temptations came. One day, walking down the street he saw a large poster which read:

“The wages of sin is death.” Because of this message he made a herculean effort at self-reformation, gave up his heavy drinking and gambling and renounced many of his former companions of both sexes.

One day he noticed this same poster again but this time he read all of the message. True, it did say that the wages of sin is death, but it did not end there and these words burned into his mind and heart: “But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Only then did he realize that righteousness was not a matter of reformation but the receiving of a gift from God through his Son, Jesus Christ.

It is the ignorance of God’s righteousness which is a barrier to millions around the world and it is the preaching of the Gospel, which proclaims the righteousness of Christ as a free gift from God which turns men from their own ways to God’s ways. Man may say that he can save himself but God tells him that by the works of the law shall no man be justified and points us to Christ, of whom it is affirmed: “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.”

To become righteous in God’s sight requires an act of supreme humility, a willingness to recognize that Christ can do something for us which we cannot do for ourselves. All of this is involved in conversion: awareness of sins, repentance for them, confession of them and turning to Christ for forgiveness, cleansing and trusting in him for salvation.

The Bible tells us: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

The robe of the believer’s righteousness has been woven by Christ. The perfect obedience rendered by the Son of Man is placed to the account of those who have faith in him. The believer’s sole desire is to “be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:9).

Let us never forget: Righteousness is not a matter of achieving, but rather of receiving.

L. NELSON BELL

James Denney was incontestably right: our churches need pastors who are both theologians and evangelists, men who know theology and who at the same time have the pastoral spirit and the evangelistic burden. For no minister of the Gospel can be abidingly effective unless he obeys the Pauline exhortation: “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

Yet how can a hard-pushed preacher possibly continue to engage in the study of theology? First, he has no money to buy books except occasionally a dog-eared volume from a second-hand dealer or a selection by some club or other. Think of the rising cost of living. Think of the sheer necessity of purchasing a new Ford annually if a clergyman is to hold his head high in Suburbia. Think of the miscroscopic salary that many churches pay. No! Books are a luxury that must be ruthlessly pared from the parsonage budget.

Second, what conscientious servant of Jesus Christ has time to study theology? Consider his exhaustive responsibilities. He must oversee the complicated activities of a fellowship which has wheels within wheels, and he must keep those wheels lubricated—and sometimes placate the bigger ones! He must direct a program of education which stretches from the cradle to the grave. He must spearhead the evangelistic outreach of his people. He must promote and sustain an intelligent concern for the missionary enterprise. He must participate in counseling situations that would tax the combined resources of King Solomon, Sigmund Freud, and William Menninger. He must raise enough money to support this whole structure without abandoning his role as a man of serene faith who eschews mundane realities. He must all the while be a model husband, a devoted father, and a responsible citizen. Oh, yes, and incidentally he must preach several times a week, and his sermons must be interesting and edifying so that his members not only grow in grace but grow in knowledge and thus are able to apply Christian principles to the problems of industry, sex, war, justice, race, and what not. All of these things make a burden heavy enough to crush a spiritual Hercules.

Is Theology Superfluous?

Is it realistic, then, to urge that ministers add to their work load the straw of theological study? Remember the camel’s back. Consider too that the study of theology is really of very little value after college and seminary have been left behind. If a man buries himself in his books, he will neglect his primary duties as the shepherd of the flock. And, worse still, he may unthinkingly begin to soar above the heads of his poor congregation, talking in unintelligible and profitless gobbledygook. Or perhaps his devotion to Jesus Christ will slowly evaporate, his evangelistic passion burn low. No, the serious study of theology has definite drawbacks. It is a danger, a danger likely to breed carnal conceit, a danger to be studiously avoided!

Furthermore, the study of theology is a superfluity. In order to be a pastoral success in this lush epic of American history, a man does not need theology. He needs the knack of winning friends and influencing people. He needs a course in personality development so that he may radiate a Norman Vincent Peale kind of dynamic magnetism. He needs administrative know-how. He needs skill in organizing a Sunday School. He needs an inexhaustible supply of snappy subjects and stirring stories. He needs glibness in dispensing streamlined advice. Yes, these are the tools that he needs rather than familiarity with theology, whether classical or modern. Churches are not especially interested in spirituality. They are looking for efficiency, drive, and sparkle. And Hodge, Strong or Barth can contribute nothing of that nature. In short, the serious systematic study of theology is alike impossible and unnecessary.

These objections are undeniably formidable. But perhaps a few qualifications are in order. Certainly a man needs to be adequately equipped in the fields of administration, publicity, counseling, and homiletics. Certainly our churches desperately require the leadership of first-rate pastors rather than the services of tenth-rate Hebraists who may rashly rush into an exegetical thicket where even a Gesenius might fear to tread. Certainly we must avoid pedantry and irrelevant erudition. Nevertheless, in obedience to our Lord we are under obligation to make our minds servants of Christian love; and that act of spiritual obedience necessitates a measure of intellectual discipline. To be specific, it necessitates the serious systematic study of theology.

You see, we are confronted by the antithetical perils of an overemphasis and an underemphasis on scholarship in the ministry. And the peril of underemphasis is by far the more prevalent and menacing. In our evangelical circles today we have succumbed to a disease which seems to be afflicting the whole of American life: that disease is anti-intellectualism, the contaminating dread of the egghead. That is why we fall ready victims to doctrinal vagaries and excesses. That is why we can seize upon one detail of eschatological chronology, the time of the rapture, and let it assume bizarre proportions. That is why our sermons lack depth and power. That is why our evangelism is frothy, sloganistic, and shallow. That is why we are failing to make any significant impact upon the entrenched forces of liberalism. God may be doing so in our day, but we are not lending him any particularly effective help. That is why we are frustrated and bewildered as we confront our world with its conflicting ideologies, its communism, naturalism, secularism, Roman Catholicism, existentialism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, and other philosophies which by the dozen are competing for the allegiance of human minds and hearts. And that is why evangelicalism has been dismissed by many intelligent people and by huge masses in the Orient and Africa as a dead option.

A Primary Responsibility

Ignoring all of this, however, we must keep on insisting that the serious study of theology is a primary responsibility of a pastor no matter how crowded his schedule may be. Why so? Suppose we counter that question with this question: what is the ultimate, last-ditch purpose of our ministry, the objective of all the administration, all the educational program, all the counseling, all the evangelism, all the preaching, all the outreach in missionary enterprise and social action? What is it all for anyway? How is it relevant to life in the twentieth century or indeed to life in any century? Let Paul Tillich and Immanuel Kant explain.

Now Paul Tillich, whose writings are not the kind of thing one reads for relaxation unless he is trying to conquer insomnia, constructs his interpretation of man and the universe by what he calls the method of correlation. Philosophy, he says, raises certain problems, issues which spring inescapably from the very structure of human experience, and theology furnishes the solutions to those problems. Accordingly, the task of Christian thinkers—and the pastor certainly belongs in that category—is to correlate the disclosures of revelation with the persistent inquiries which haunt our minds. This method of correlation is a principle of tremendous range and value. We can and must jettison much of the speculative superstructure which Tillich builds upon this foundation, but we can unhesitatingly utilize the foundation itself. For existence confronts our people with agonizing questions, regardless of how unphilosophical our people may ordinarily be.

Here we are in a vast cosmos which seems to be utterly inscrutable and heartless. Indeed, sometimes it seems to be mindless as well. Here we are then, instinctively longing to preserve our lives yet knowing that we are doomed to death. Here we are then, environed by mystery; we are in the darkness, and yet like Alfred Lord Tennyson we are praying for light. We wonder with an insatiable wonder, and in our bewilderment what is it about which we wonder? Immanuel Kant summed up the matter succinctly. “What may I know?” We wonder about that. “What may I hope?” “What ought I to do?” “What is man?” We wonder about these. And in this revolutionary age, as in every age, it is the preacher’s ultimate responsibility to correlate the revealed answers of the Bible with the questions which haunt the minds of people hurled unasked out of nothingness into being.

A Holy Privilege

It is the preacher’s task to show that the Gospel of Jesus Christ meets with amazing adequacy the total predicament of his congregation in a world where every security is threatened and where the profound anxiety of man can be overcome only by a profound message concerning God. It is thus the preacher’s holy privilege to bring man into a redeeming experience of the grace and power of Jesus Christ who alone can meet our deepest need. And never forget that it is the preacher’s supreme joy in the discharge of his pastoral duties, not only to give man information about God, which of course must be correct and gripping, but to bring man into continual encounter with God by proclaiming the re-creative Word under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

But to do this as he ought to do it the preacher must study persistently. He must steadily grow in knowledge, for to genuinely grow in the knowledge of God is to grow in the grace of God. The pastor must correlate divine revelation with human predicament. And in order to do this he must read the theological classics of days gone by, and he must also listen to the theological conversation of our day. Very few of us are equipped to join in that conversation, but we can listen in. Hence the pastor must listen to what is being said by the resurgent evangelicalism of which Carl Henry and Bernard Ramm are typical. He must listen to what is being said by dispensational biblicism of which Chafer and Walvoord are representative. He must listen to what is being said by Dutch Calvinism of which Berkouwer and Dooyeweerd are champions. He must listen to what is being said by neo-orthodoxy—if there is any such identifiable animal in the theological zoo—of which Karl Barth and Emil Brunner are the embattled antagonists. He must listen to what is being said by irenic Anglicanism of which William Temple and Allen Richardson are authentic prophets. He must listen to what is being said by American liberalism of which Harry Emerson Fosdick is still the shining symbol. He must listen to what is being said by religious naturalism of which Henry Nelson Wieman is a distinguished torchbearer. Most emphatically he will not concur with everything he hears. He cannot! Certainly he will have staunch convictions and justified prejudices. But just as certainly, and precisely because of his convictions and prejudices, he will listen with attention and care.

For The Gospel’S Defense

He will listen, for one thing, in order to be set for the defense of the Gospel. Too much of the evangelical criticism of contemporary theology has been intemperate, uninformed, and distorted. And this has been especially so in some cases when criticism has been made from the pulpit. Instead of being rigidly objective (and objectivity is the strongest basis for devastating criticism), it has frequently been hysterical and badly deficient, calculated to score a polemical victory even though the cause of honesty and graciousness may have suffered a blistering defeat. Thus the pastor must listen to what is being said in order that his appraisal of deviants from orthodoxy may be accurate and well-grounded.

But that is not all. We evangelicals must listen in order to learn. Everything that we hear must be evaluated with caution and conscientiousness in the light of the cherished and changeless criteria which generations of devout scholars have drawn from God’s self-revelation recorded in the Old and New Testaments. Much that we hear from some quarters can at once be discarded as worthless. But again and again as we listen we will come to realize that God by his common grace has been operative in the thinking of men who share neither our understanding of divine truth nor our experience of him who is the truth. Again and again we may be compelled to remember Jehovah’s word to pagan Cyrus, “I girded thee although thou hast not known me” (Isa. 45:5). In short, the pastor must critically evaluate and judiciously appropriate, profiting by the insights of some theologians who, while by no means evangelical, have nevertheless wrestled strenuously with the existential and intellectual problems which confront ourselves and our people.

A Divinely Assigned Task

The gist of this plea is simple. As pastors we have a divinely assigned task. Essentially our task is to correlate the revelation of God with the problems and needs of the people whom we serve. That job, however, cannot be done as it ought to be done—and must be done—unless we become acquainted with the whole range of theological reflection, whether classical or modern—whether, in some significant instances, heterodox! In our revolutionary day a pastor must speak with authority and clarity. He must bear in mind the fervent exhortation of the Marine commander to the chaplain as a detachment of men were preparing to invade a South Sea island during the Second World War. “For God’s sake, padre, if you have anything to say, say it now.” We evangelicals do have something to say, the only message which can meet man’s need. May we say it, then, and say it with the authority and clarity which spring from the serious and systematic study of theology.

We Quote:

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

Secretary of State

Our nation was founded as an experiment in human liberty. Its institutions reflected the belief of our founders that men had their origin and destiny in God; that they were endowed by him with certain inalienable rights and had duties prescribed by moral law; and that human institutions ought primarily to help men develop their God-given possibilities. We believed that if we built on that spiritual foundation we would be showing men everywhere the way to a better and more abundant life.

We realized that vision. There developed here an area of spiritual, intellectual and economic vigor, the like of which the world had never seen. It was no exclusive preserve; indeed world mission was a central theme. Millions were welcomed from other lands, to share equally the opportunities of the founders and their heirs. Through missionary activities, the establishment of schools and colleges and through travel, American ideals were carried throughout the world. We gave aid and comfort to those elsewhere who sought to follow in our way and to develop societies of greater freedom.

Material things were added unto us. Our political institutions worked. That was because they rested upon what George Washington said were the “indispensable supports” of representative government, that is morality and religion. And, he added, it could not be assumed that morality would long prevail without religion.

Our people enjoyed an extraordinary degree of personal liberty. That was because the individuals making up our society generally accepted, voluntarily, the moral law and the self-discipline, self-restraint and duty to fellow-man that the moral law enjoins.…

I hear it asserted today that the qualities that made America honored and judged great throughout the world no longer have an adequate appeal and that we must invent something new in order to compete with Soviet dictatorship and its materialism.

My first reaction is that faith is not something put on, taken off or changed merely to please others.

My second reaction is to challenge the correctness of the assertion. It may be that, partly through our own faults and partly through communist publicizing of our faults, the image of America has become distorted in much of the world. Our individual freedom is made to appear as individual license and a casting aside of those restraints that moral law enjoins and that every society needs.

Sales talk based on the number of automobiles, radios and telephones owned by our people fails to win converts, for that is the language of the materialists.

Our capitalistic form of society is made to appear as one devoid of social responsibility.

I do not believe that human nature throughout the world has greatly changed from what it was when “the great American experiment” in freedom caught the imagination of men everywhere. I am afraid that the fault, if any, may be here at home in that we ourselves have lost track of the close connection between our faith and our works and that we attempt to justify our society and to make it appealing without regard to the spiritual concepts which underlie it and make it work. So many material things have been added unto us that what originally were secondary by-products now seem to rank as primary. And if material things are to be made primary, then it is logical to have a materialistic creed that justifies this primacy.—In an address to the Military Chaplains Association on April 22, 1958.

ALEXANDER MILLER

Associate Professor of Religion, Stanford University

In the present confrontation with Soviet Communism the Christian citizen will be concerned with the issue at all four levels—power, politics, economics and faith: but he will be more aware than the generality of men that the issue could be won on one level and lost on another, and he will be wary of turning what is certainly in part an issue of faith into an all-out religious war, as if Christianity were domesticated in the West.—In an address on “Christianity and Communism: Two Faiths in Conflict” at the University of Chicago Conference on “Religion Faces the Atomic Age,” Feb., 1958.

Vernon Grounds is President of the Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado, where he served as Dean from 1951–1956. He holds the A.B. degree from Rutgers University, B.D. from Faith Theological Seminary, Ph.D. from Drew University, and D.D. from Wheaton College. He has written The Reason for Our Hope and many magazine articles. His special interests are in psychology and counseling.

The subject of the final punishment of reprobates is fraught with inexpressible sadness. Some who are moved no doubt by a generous impulse, have sought to eliminate it altogether by holding to a belief of the ultimate salvation of all rational creatures (Universalism). Others have attempted to relax the torments of the damned by limiting their duration or by urging the view that reprobates vanish into nonexistence (conditionalism or annihilationism). Still others feel that the whole topic is in bad taste and that it is wise to pass it under silence altogether.

Yet on this theme the Bible speaks very plainly, and what the Bible says the evangelical believer unhesitatingly accepts and proclaims.

The Nature Of Hell

On this topic the Scriptures use various forms of language, destined no doubt to convey a cumulative impression.

1. Separation from God. “Depart from me” (Matt. 7:23; 25:41), “these shall go away” (Matt. 25:46), and cast him out (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30; Luke 13:28), “outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30), “without are the dogs” etc. (Rev. 22:15), far “from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power” (2 Thess. 1:9)—all these phrases describe separation from God. In the same way in which life can be described as the knowledge, presence and fellowship of God (John 17:3), death and hell can be summed up as separation from him by whom we were created, for whose service we were made, and outside of whom there is nothing for man but utter futility and hopeless frustration.

2. Destruction and death (2 Thess. 1:9; Matt. 10:28; Rev. 20:14). This form of language does not so much imply in Scripture cessation of existence as complete deprivation of some element essential to normal existence. Physical death does not mean that body or soul vanishes away, but rather that an abnormal sepation takes place which severs their natural relationship until God’s appointed time. Spiritual death, or “the second death” (Rev. 20:14; 21:8), does not mean that the soul or personality lapses into non-being, but rather that it is ultimately and finally deprived of that presence of God and fellowship with him which is the chief end of man and the essential condition of worthwhile existence. To be bereft of it is to perish (John 3:16), to be reduced to utter insignificance, to sink into abysmal futility. Even everyday language can illustrate this: an automobile is adjudged a total wreck not only when its constituent parts are melted or vanished, but also when they have been so damaged and distorted that the car has become completely unserviceable. Some such conception is perhaps latent in the word Gehenna (Matt. 5:22; 10:28; 18:9; 23:33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47), the refuse heap of Jerusalem, where rubbish was burned.

3. Fire. Fire is most beneficial to man when kept under control and at a safe distance; otherwise it may develop as a terrible scourge. As a recent writer puts it:

Its touch is so sharp as to afford, in itself, a shield against its own destructive effects. At the moment of assault, it is as though a whole series of alarm bells jangled furiously in every part of our nervous system, even before the mind has fully grasped what is taking place. It is pain that can neither be ignored nor forgotten, like many of the lesser things that trouble us, because of its imperious and urgent claim upon the attention. And it is in such suffering as this that the lost must live, and forever (Walter Jewell, The Fact of Hell, p. 13).

In scriptural language, no other descriptive terms have been used as commonly as fire: “the devouring fire … everlasting burnings” (Isa. 33:14), fire unquenchable (Isa. 66:24; Mark 9:43–48; Luke 3:17), “everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41), “the lake of fire” (Rev. 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15; 21:8), “he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone” (Rev. 14:10). The story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31), although descriptive of the intermediate state between death and the final resurrection, is also significant here (cf. v. 24, see also Matt. 5:22; 13:42, 50; 18:8, 9; 2 Thess. 1:8; Jude 7, 23). From the frequency of this form of language, many have concluded that fire of a physical kind burns the resurrected body of the reprobates. While this is not strictly impossible, it appears unlikely to us for the following reasons: a. the idea of a physical fire is in conflict with some other scriptural expressions descriptive of hell (outer darkness, etc.); b. it seems ill-suited to resurrected bodies insofar as we may know them; c. the imagery of fire in a vivid form is used with reference to the rich man, who was presumably disembodied (Luke 16:19–31); d. fire is prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41; Rev. 20:10, etc.) who are probably incorporeal beings. The spiritual fire, however, which consumes and sears the soul is probably more terrifying and excruciating than physical burning.

4. Darkness. “Outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12; 24:13; 25:30), “everlasting chains under darkness” (Jude 6), “the blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 13). Since God is light and the source of every light, it is not surprising that separation from him implies the night of the soul.

5. The bottomless pit. This expression, found only in Revelation (9:1, 2, 11), may also refer to hell. It indicates a condition where all footing has been lost and where the soul sinks endlessly away from God.

6. The worm that dies not (Isa. 66:24; Matt. 24:46, 48). This may well refer to the gnawing pains of self-inflicted misery eating away at the vitals of the soul.

7. Anguish, torment (Rom. 2:9; Luke 16:23–28; Rev. 14:10, 11; 20:10). These emphasize the conscious suffering of the damned. So does the word punishment (kolasis) used by Jesus (Matt. 25:46) as well as the passages where our Lord speaks of weeping, wailing, or gnashing of teeth (Matt. 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28).

8. A final form of biblical language may be noted in those verses which speak of the damned as being under the wrath of God (Jer. 17:4; John 3:36; Rom. 2:5, 8; 9:22; Heb. 10:27; Rev. 14:10), or subject to everlasting contempt (Dan. 12:2). Those who are in this condition are lost (Mark 8:26; Luke 9:25) and damned (John 5:29; 2 Peter 3:7).

When all these terms are taken together, in spite of their remarkable sobriety, their cumulative effect is more pungent than the luxurious imagination of a literary genius like Dante. In fact, both the variety and the restraint in expression suggest that there is a depth of sadness in the misery of the lost which our minds are unable to plumb in this life. In the presence of this biblical restraint, it is unfortunate that many unwarranted and unworthy conceptions are commonly received. For instance, that the reprobates will be actively tormented by demons in hell, and that there are even pictures which represent the devil and his cohorts armed with huge pitchforks and finding great delight in plunging men and women into boiling cauldrons find no support whatever in Scripture. These are ideas due probably to the unfortunate influence of Moslem thought or uninspired Jewish speculation.

The testimony of Scripture is very plain that the terrors of hell are endless. This appears from the fact that frequently the adjective everlasting (ordinarily aionios in Greek) is used: “everlasting chains” (Jude 6), “everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2), everlasting destruction (1 Thess. 1:9), everlasting fire or burnings (Isa. 33:14; Matt. 18:8; 25:41; Jude 7), “everlasting punishment” (Matt. 25:46). Furthermore, the expression for ever, or even for ever and ever, is repeatedly found (Jer. 17:4; Rev. 14:11; 19:3; 20:10). Now it has been suggested that the word aionios means “of the ages” and does not imply eternity. But this interpretation appears very precarious, for the Bible mentions only two ages—the present age, limited by individual death or by the coming of Jesus Christ, and the age to come, for which it never assigns any limit. In fact, among some 66 occurrences of aionios in the New Testament, some 51 cases apply to the eternal felicity of the redeemed, where it is conceded by all that no limitation of time applies. It is very unlikely that the same term, when used of the lost, should be understood to admit of such limitation, especially since both are sometimes found together in the same immediate context (Matt. 25:46).

Further evidence along the same line may be derived from the expressions, fire unquenchable (Isa. 66:24; Matt. 3:12; Luke 3:17) or “that never shall be quenched” (Mark 9:43, 45), the worm that dieth not (Isa. 66:24; Mark 9:44, 46, 48), “the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36).

In the presence of such evidence, it is not surprising to find that the overwhelming majority in Christendom has understood the Bible to teach the doctrine of endless conscious punishment.

Alternative Views

There has been, however, almost in all ages since Origen a fringe of Christians advocating universal salvation. But apart from the evidence thus far adduced in the present article, they face immense difficulties with the passages relating to the unpardonable sin (Matt. 12:32; Heb. 6:4–6; 1 John 5:16, 17), with the “impassable gulf” mentioned in Luke 16:26, with the statement of Jesus “Whither I go, ye cannot come” (John 8:21), with his remark about Judas—“It had been good for that man if he had not been born” (Matt. 26:24), not to speak of the constant note of Scripture that this life’s decisions have everlasting and irrevocable consequences. In spite of its good intentions, Universalism cuts the heart of the urgency of the Gospel and of the missionary task of the Church.

Conditional immortality or annihilationism may be viewed as less dangerous, although here also considerable exegetical difficulties arise, as the summary review of the biblical data given above may well indicate.

But, it is urged, the doctrine of endless conscious punishment is in conflict with God’s justice, love and wisdom:

1. With his justice, because it would not be equitable to punish a finite fault with an infinite penalty. To such an objection we reply with Anselm of Canterbury, “You have not yet considered the true gravity of sin.” While sin is committed by finite beings in the course of a life limited in time, it is an offense against the infinite God. It is a part of the terror of hell that there will be no repentance there, but a continued obdurate rebellion against God, endlessly worthy of his wrath.

2. With his love, because a God of love could never permit any of his creatures to remain in a state of endless suffering. But the love of God expresses itself supremely towards the elect, not towards the reprobates, who have rejected his laws and his love. Furthermore, we cannot forget that it is those who have transmitted to us the most impressive revelation of God’s love who also speak most about hell. The New Testament has much more to say about it than the Old, John in the book of Revelation says much more than the other New Testament writers, and our Lord Jesus Christ speaks of it by far the most of all!

3. With his wisdom, for it would be unwise of God to allow a dark comer to subsist eternally in his universe. Here, confessedly, we deal with a difficult problem, and it is only a slight alleviation to note that hell may well be a comparatively insignificant place in the total orb of God’s eternal order. It is difficult for us to perceive rationally the wisdom of God in permitting sin at all. But if we have such a problem with the origin of sin, why should we expect to have a ready answer in regard to its destiny?

Somehow the practice has been rather common, even among evangelicals, to speak lightly and in jest concerning the sufferings of hell. On the part of those who do not believe the biblical doctrine, this may perhaps be excused, although it is surely not in good taste. But those who do believe in hell should certainly refrain at all times from joking about the misery of the lost, a subject which cannot be humorous in the slightest degree to Christians with a heart, and which should bring tears to our eyes rather than smiles to our faces.

Admittedly, the doctrine of hell is the darkest subject on the pages of Scripture, but it provides the necessary background to an understanding of the true gravity of sin, of the magnitude of the human soul, of the depth of Christ’s redeeming work, of the power of divine grace which plucks man out of the abyss like firebrands, of the urgency of the Gospel call, and of the supreme importance of the ministry of preaching and of missions. It is an integral and vital element of our Christian faith.

Roger Nicole holds the M.A. degree from the Sorbonne (Paris), Th.D. from Gordon Divinity School, and is a candidate for the Ph.D. at Harvard Divinity School. He is Professor of Theology at Gordon Divinity School in New England, and former President of Evangelical Theological Society.

Here is your assignment for next Sunday. Write a paragraph entitled, I saw. Make it prose or poetry or both. Do not write what you think or feel; put down only what you see, for your imagination, you know, is joined to your eyes.

Now, before I tell you of the material that came to me the next week from our group of villagers and church people, let me give a little of the background of the experiment.

From the pulpit of my church, I had announced one morning a special class to study “Basic Ideas of Calvinism.” The class was to be held for a period of nine weeks at the end of which some kind of exam would be given. Of course, an “exam” frightened many; but surprisingly enough, several were willing to accept the challenge on being assured that the study would be worth their time and effort and not be above their heads. Where would we meet? There being no suitable place in the church building, we agreed to hold our class in the basement of the manse.

On the morning of the first session, 27 appeared, a rather evenly mixed group of men and women, each a little apprehensive as to what to expect. I opened the class by reading the beautiful passage of Isaiah 40. Then we turned to the study at hand and carefully proceeded to trace and discard the more popular and inadequate notions of Calvinistic belief. After a while we began to see in it a God-sized religion, the very thing we needed in our age. We discovered that the sovereign decrees of God included all the free acts of men and were thus the only answer to fatalism. “Let God be God” was the word in every realm—truth, science, art, and morality.

God And Creation

We learned, too, of God’s immensity, how he is everywhere present in the whole of his being (not thinned out as some might define omnipresence), and how “Coram Deo” meant that man stands each moment before the face of almighty God. Man cannot hide from the omnipresent God.

Next came the concept of creation, the fact that all things reveal God, and “all reality is revelational” (this was from Dr. Van Til). Could we see God in nature? Yes and no. Nature reveals God, but only as clothing blown against the body of man.

Our wonder increased as we remembered that man was to think God’s thoughts after him. These thoughts could be followed in nature, in political philosophy, in international affairs, in science, education, culture and the arts, music, plumbing, child problems and human relationships of many kinds. In truth, we could say that Newton calculating the heavenly bodies, a truck driver performing his job well, and a man climbing the hill called Calvary were, in each case thinking God’s thoughts after him. But for the most part, we were reminded that our minds could only function on these things like geiger counters—they could register when approaching a thought of God’s, but never fully grasp it nor hold on to it. This was especially true, some said, when listening to great music.

God And Culture

We went on to a discussion of Christianity and culture. With Richard Niebuhr we found that Christ was not the product of culture, as the liberals have thought; nor was Christ outside culture as Rome has taught; nor was Christ against culture as some fundamentalists have insisted; rather the Son of God was a transformer of culture. And by “culture” we were not talking of “polish” or “sophistication”—the art of holding a teacup and the like.

The culture we knew in our particular area, for instance, was agriculture, so we started there. Agriculture meant the cultivation of fields, the acquiring from them the total, latent potential. But culture in regard to refinement of tastes also demanded the same sort of treatment.

But what did Christianity have to do with the “arts,” specifically? Now we were in deep water. A few folks dropped from the group at this point. We read a little of Wordsworth, “Pied Beauty” by Hopkins and “Go Down Death” by James Weldon Johnson, and after reading these, we were bent on more. That God should choose to reveal himself in poetry as well as prose gave us a fresh appreciation of the Bible. We reread the Sermon on the Mount and found it rhythmic like the waves of the ocean. The prophecies of Amos, the herdsman, came to us in words of haunting beauty, and the words of Isaiah rolled forth in rich musical sound. Even Moses in the law had his own majestic cadence. Beauties in the Bible of which we had never dreamed were revealed. But what was beauty anyway? Looking in Aquinas we pulled out the threefold definition: “unity, proportion, and gloritas.” That third word we could not define, but everybody claimed he knew what it was. Gloritas in anything was the glory of God appearing in wondrously mysterious fashion. And we also found that we were to believe in the beauty of holiness—this did not mean, of course, a holiness of beauty, nor a worship of art for its own sake.

The Gift Of Poetry

Still, we had not touched upon man’s imagination. Here was a new trail to blaze. We found that few writers had speculated upon the human creative gifts, those God-given powers of forming images of truths not fully present to the senses. We came to realize that souls must pass beyond the understanding derived merely from demonstration, or go unsatisfied; that the wider and deeper harmonies and stimuli come from imagination. God does not always present truth in propositional form. The prophets of old had been men whose imagination and vision mirrored the truth. The poetic imagery of David in the “green pastures,” the overflowing cup, the “valley of the shadow,” and others proved this.

But a word of caution! Imagination was not merely fancy or daydreaming. Its purpose was rather to serve a man’s convictions, and hold a healthy lens to his eyes. It could be a film on which eye objects were registered; and the more sensitive film was, the richer one’s life became. There was no need, then, to go on a journey to find the wonderful. Every square inch of the universe shouted with glory. One had only to stand still and behold it.

Challenge And Response

“So,” I said to the group at the close of one of these sessions, “write on what you see. And when I read your work next Sunday, what you have observed may be a startling revelation to us all.”

Something happened in our people that week, something that will be a part of their lives forever. I should repeat, my class of adults were very ordinary people. Some had gone through high school, and some had not; a few had gone a little beyond, but it did not matter. Men and women totally unused to writing struggled to describe and put into order some of the things they saw. And the result was, they found themselves creating from the most common of objects thoughts that were new and wonderful.

For instance, one farmer, looking at two dead birds lying upon a sink drain board, marveled at the design of their feathers and the way in which the soft colors were reflected in the light. It was winter and a housewife, who had hung out her wash after snowfall, saw in a new way the difference between God’s whiteness and man’s. Another wrote of her walk to church, and of the snow that fell on her sleeve in hexagon designs. She headed her paragraph “God’s Design.” And a truck-driver told of arriving home to find his wife fairly excited over a tree in the back yard holding new-fallen snow in “its upreaching arms.”

To be sure, each paper showed struggle. There was nothing of genius, perfection, or polish about any of them. But they did show, indeed, a genuine freshness of vision and understanding.

The experiment was a revelation. Permit just one illustration of a paragraph written by a plumber:

Winter’S Night

I watched the powdery snow fall from out the black vault of night into the streetlight’s peaked arch;

I saw the slotted shadow of the picket fence lie over the deepening snow;

I saw dead dry weeds stand stiffly in the shadow, historians of last year’s negligence, prophets of another June;

I saw the sentinel trees with their empty arms outstretched;

I saw light and dark, silhouettes and shadow,

houses with dark roofs merged into night,

flat snow-powdered roofs ready for baker’s dough.

A barren willow with snow encrusted limbs became a giant fountain spray from out my ermine lawn.

Preacher In The Red

GETTING THE BIRD

I had just started my sermon when a bird flew the length of the church. A few minutes later it flew back again. I proceeded only to have the bird repeat the performance. At last it decided that it would not stay still even for a few minutes. Up and down the church it flew and I had to stop. I saw it flutter to a tall window and I called out to a man sitting nearby: “Mr. H … that window opens.” He got up, opened it and the bird flew out. I tried to pick up the threads of my sermon and brought it to a conclusion. Then I announced the last hymn, “Pleasant are Thy Courts Above.” I did not dare look at the congregation as we sang the second verse:—

“Happy birds that sing and fly

Round thy altars, O Most High.”

—The Rev. PETER TADMAN, Saint Andrew’s Church, Sidcup, Kent, England.

Robert K. Churchill is Pastor of Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Cedar Grove, Wisconsin. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Westminster Theological Seminary, he pursued further studies at Marquette University and Berkeley Divinity School. He is a Westminster Seminary trustee.

The Church of Jesus Christ is in the world for a divine and blessed purpose. The Lord himself stated this purpose in the words, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” The divine purpose and function of the Church on earth is to bring Christ to people and people to Christ. The Lord builds his Kingdom through those in his Kingdom. His Church is extended by those who are the Church. Always the Lord depends upon his people to be “laborers together with him” in making known the “good tidings of great joy.”

We may speak of immediate and ultimate objectives of evangelism. The ultimate objective must always be the new birth of which the Saviour spoke to Nicodemus when he said, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” This purpose is variously stated in the Scriptures. It means bringing the unconverted, regardless of age or race or condition in life, into a blessed relation with their God and Saviour. No one is born a Christian. We become God’s people by the divine miracle of regeneration. The Christian’s final objective in all his missionary activities will always be to labor together with God in saving people from hell and for heaven. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16).

Great and incomparable are the benefits and blessings that come to mankind through the missionary activities of God’s people and through the sanctifying work of the Holy Ghost. In this manner sinful man, dead in trespasses and sin, is made spiritually alive, brought to a living, active, saving faith in Christ, absolved from all guilt and sin, and is clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ. Thus, he has bestowed upon him the peace of God which passeth understanding, is enabled to live godly and to be rich in good works, is given victory over self, Satan, death and hell, and made an heir of life eternal in the mansions of the Father. Great is our salvation!

Individual Approach Essential

The accomplishment of these ultimate and glorious ends involves intermediate steps. The individual to be won for Christ must be encountered. Biblical evangelism is retail, not wholesale, work. People must be brought face to face with their sin and lost condition, with the Christ who redeemed them, and with the great issues of life, death, and eternity. A study of the person-to-person evangelism recorded in the Gospels and the Acts is both instructive and rewarding (outstanding examples are John 1:43–51; 3; 4; Acts 8:26–40 and 16:25–40).

In a general way those living without Christ and without hope in this world may be divided into two groups: the self-righteous and indifferent, and those troubled and disturbed. In meeting the needs of the first group, the immediate objective must be to create in people a sense of guilt, to arouse them from false security, to bring them to agonize in face of the Law, and then in love and concern, to bring them to faith in Christ the Saviour from sin. Until the individual knows his lost condition, he will not be interested in the divine remedy. Those troubled by a sense of guilt must, in the second group, be assured and comforted with the unconditional Gospel promise that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin.

An understanding knowledge of the individual and a correct diagnosis of his religious thinking and spiritual condition are essential. These requirements are attained by careful observation and, in many cases, patient and sympathetic listening. Of equal importance is the wisdom of “rightly dividing the word of truth,” and of knowing when and how to apply Law and Gospel.

The Old as well as the New Testament portrays the Lord’s deep concern for the salvation of all mankind. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16). “The Lord is … not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). This same genuine passion for souls characterizes the apostles. Peter and John said, “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” Paul, so deeply concerned for his mission and responsibility, exclaims, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” The loveless indifference of Cain, expressed with the question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is entirely foreign to all Christian thinking and conduct.

This attitude of concern for the lost is basic in true biblical evangelism. It is an awareness of one’s obligation and duty as an ambassador of the King of kings. It makes and keeps Christians, both laity and clergy, sensitive to and conscious of their purpose in this world and of their high calling in Christ Jesus. In this concern the apostle Paul said, “Woe unto me, if I preach not the gospel of Christ.”

The Pastor As Shepherd

A study of the New Testament reveals the strategic importance of the local congregation in the whole structure of the Church, particularly in the work of evangelism. And the God-ordained, God-given leader is always the pastor. The pastor of the congregation is a keeper and shepherd of the souls already in the Church. “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseer, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). And he is also the God-chosen leader in the congregation’s mission and evangelism work. To be such requires a true shepherd heart. First, he himself must be a winner of souls. Secondly, he must lead, train and equip his parishioners in true biblical evangelism.

The Christian pastor will give this twofold mission his constant attention and prayerful devotion. His position and responsibility has no parallel. In the faithful discharge of it he will often be afflicted with a feeling of inadequacy. But the Saviour’s promise to his ambassadors still stands, “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me … (Acts 1:8).

In serving his Lord and his Church as a winner of souls, the Christian pastor has the apostle Paul as his great example. Paul’s supreme purpose was that he “might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). The apostle’s farewell address to the congregation at Ephesus, recorded in Acts 20:17–38, reveals how self-sacrificingly he labored in the accomplishment of his evangelism purpose.

The pastor who would be successful in bringing people into the kingdom of God must himself know what it means to be saved by the grace of God. And he will be very conscious of his unique and high calling in Christ Jesus, he will love Christ and will have a compassion for souls. His knowledge that he is but an instrument of the Holy Spirit will give him strength, patience and humility. In public and in private he will speak convincingly and with clarity of the Christ of the Scriptures. He will seek to lead people to an understanding of salvation by divine grace through faith in Christ. He will make personal calls, and thereby build the Kingdom “house to house.” And still, he will guard against cold professionalism, for “where professionalism reigns spirituality wanes.” Finally, he will pray for himself as he thinks of his great responsibility and the apostle’s words “who is sufficient unto these things?”; and he will pray for those whom he is to lead to Christ and into heaven.

The pastor’s daily schedule of work should allow time for personal soul winning. The larger the congregation, the less time there will be for seeking out those “not yet in the fold.” But if he devotes the morning hours to necessary study, and the afternoons and some evenings to making calls, he will, in addition to the visits among his parishioners, have time to make mission calls. The most profitable and necessary visits are with the husbands and fathers, and he will find many doors open to him. Personal soul winning is one of the richest experiences of the Christian ministry, and the pastor will learn to know people and develop a sympathetic understanding of problems and creeds.

The Pastor As Leader

The other important function of the pastor as leader in biblical evangelism is to enlist his congregation in this service of God. Ephesians 4:12 makes the outfitting, the equipping, the guiding and teaching of people for the work of evangelism an important function of the ministry. The hands of God’s people receive from God that they might dispense to the world. This follows the Saviour’s own pattern. When the Lord had added Philip to his disciples, Philip went to Nathanael and said, “We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John 1:45). The apostle Paul was not only an ardent winner of souls himself; he constantly enlisted and trained those whom he brought to Christ to witness for Christ.

The missionary potential in the apostolic age was in the whole church. Also today it is in the whole congregation, both clergy and laity. It has well been said that the Church is “off center” when the pastor does it all, and it is “off center” when the people do it all.

In Acts and in the Epistles, we find the pattern for Christian evangelism. A part of that pattern is the important place of the local church in the spreading of the Gospel. “New Testament local churches were nerve centers of evangelism, and in this respect constitute a pattern for local churches” (Whitesell, Basic New Testament Evangelism, p. 133).

To the local congregations of Christians have the mysteries of God and means of grace, by Word and sacrament, been entrusted. These means are to be faithfully employed for the saving of people and the edification of the saints. A general church body, synod, district, commission and board can make plans, develop programs, and pass resolutions—all of which may be necessary and important. But God’s kingdom is extended only in the measure in which pastors and people of local congregations separately and together evangelize. The local parish is the front line where those who are faithful wage and win the spiritual battle.

The greatest missionary responsibility and opportunity in our country is where there are Christian congregations with a well-equipped physical plant surrounded with people who are unchurched or who are in churches but not in a blessed relationship with Christ. All too often congregations fail to reach people in the number and measure in which they could and should be reached and brought under the sanctifying influence of the Gospel. A congregation functions best as a divine agency in the building of God’s kingdom when on Sundays and on weekdays, through clergy and laity, the unconverted are confronted with the convicting power of the law of God, with the faith-generating power of the Gospel, and with the great issues of God’s plan of salvation. Where an effective evangelism program on the congregational level is developed and energetically pursued, many of the problems that have a tendency to plague the church and disrupt its effectiveness will disappear.

Program And Aims

As long as Christian congregations are within easy reach of people who are not affiliated with a Christian church and of people who are affiliated with a church but are not in a state of grace, the congregation has a mission field and is in need of an evangelism program.

Such a program should bring information, instruction and inspiration to the members of the church. Christian people need to be kept informed and aware of their soul-winning responsibilities and opportunities. The part of the program designed to reach the unsaved and unconverted must be definite. Various methods and organizational procedures may be developed and followed, but these should be the definite aims:

1. Contact—People must be individually and personally contacted by the members of the family of God.

2. Concentration—By this we mean, “staying with it.” It takes more than one or two efforts to bring in an individual. The teaching of biblical evangelism is an on-going process. It takes time to learn to walk with God. Christians should not become impatient, but clearly, repeatedly and humbly testify and speak the great truth of God’s plan of salvation.

3. Conversion—The great objective of all mission activity and personal evangelism must always be conversion and sanctification of the sinner. “This is the will of God, even your sanctification” (1 Thess. 4:3).

4. Conservation—Soul keeping is an essential part of soul winning. Integration and assimilation of people into the family of God is essential for the development of Christian faith and life. Having brought people under the influence of the Gospel, the church must keep them under the sanctifying power of the means of grace.

A congregational evangelism program with these four essentials will occupy a high priority in the work of the church. Individual members, officers, committees, and organizations can move in one direction. The one great purpose of the whole congregation is the reaching out to immortal souls, purchased and redeemed by the blood of Christ, to make them heirs of life eternal. Christians, laity and clergy, are “laborers together with God.” A congregation that has a biblical evangelism program, has a program that works. Its next concern is simply to work the program.

When an individual knows Christ as his Saviour, knows the nature and purpose of the means of grace, and has become convinced that the doctrines of the Church are in full accord with the Word of God, he should be encouraged to confess his faith and be received into fellowship with the Church. The one essential book for the teaching of religion is the Bible, and it is of utmost importance that the holy truths therein be presented with warmth, with Christian conviction and faith, in terms and phrases which people understand, and related to the needs of man in this life and to his eternal salvation.

The establishment of new congregations is an important part of the Church’s mission and expansion program. The mobility of the American people (30 million change their addresses each year), the growing population, the development of urban and suburban communities, and the many areas and communities which are still under-churched make necessary the establishment of congregations. The church must be where the people are. Where people move and live, the church must follow. And every time a new Christian congregation is born, the whole Church of God should rejoice. Generally too few, rather than too many, congregations are ever established.

In pursuing their high calling as witnesses for Christ, God’s people will pray much and often. They will pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit, for wisdom, and patience and grace. They will pray for one another in the performance of their evangelism responsibilities and privileges. They will pray for individual souls to be brought to Christ.

Arthur H. Haake is Chairman of the Board for Home Missions of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, of which Board he has been a member the last eight years. He is a graduate of Concordia Seminary, served as Pastor in British Columbia from 1930–1941, and in California since 1943 pastoring the West Portal Lutheran Church, San Francisco. The present article is an abridgment of a chapter of a new book on Pastoral Theology to be published by Concordia, St. Louis.

(Part II will appear in the next issue)

No theme is more worthy than the Word, whether the Incarnate Word or the Inspired Word. And surely renewed interest in special revelation is timely and necessary for our befuddled world of thought and action. We are all aware that in this century speculative idealism has passed its prime, naturalism has gained ascendancy, and Communism incorporates into modern history a world-life view resolutely anti-supernatural. It is indeed the good providence of God that we are once again permitted, even forced to, the biblical heritage of Western culture.

Emil Brunner has said, and I think rightly, that “the fate of the Bible is the fate of Christianity.” When we interpret such expressions, we are all concerned to avoid both understatements and overstatements of the significance of the Bible. How shall we properly relate the Bible to divine revelation? This question continues to be a fundamental issue in modern theology. Karl Barth, for example, in The Doctrine of the Word of God, speaks of doing the Bible “a poor honor” by identifying revelation with the Book. On the other hand, evangelical Protestantism believes that despite the new emphasis on the Bible as “witness” to special revelation neither Barth nor Brunner nor neo-orthodox theologians generally honor Scripture as they ought. Meantime evangelicals are charged with exaggerating the role of the Bible—with making it a “paper Pope,” with worshipping it, with allowing it to crowd out the authority of God, the authority of Jesus Christ. What shall we think and say of these matters?

We dare allow only one final authority in the Christian life. We dare acknowledge the authority of no other god than the living God who made heaven and earth and man in his image. We dare acknowledge only the authority of the living God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, the authority of the living God who regenerates and reigns in the life of believers by the Holy Spirit (“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” 1 Cor. 12:3, RSV). Must we not also acknowledge the living God, incarnate in Jesus Christ, renewing believers by the Holy Spirit, as the authoritative source of sacred Scripture, the divine rule of faith and practice (All scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable … that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, 2 Tim. 3:16)? To affirm the authority of Scripture neither undermines nor threatens the living God as final authority in the believer’s life; but rather, like the recognition that the Spirit regenerates and rules, and that Jesus of Nazareth is Saviour and Lord, it guarantees the removal of illegitimate aspirants or pretenders to his authority.

Thrust Of Neo-Orthodoxy

To exhibit the divergent views I shall present the basic issue from two sides, noting first, that the neo-orthodox rival view fails to do justice to the status of the Bible as revelation; and second, that the evangelical view honors the revelation-status of the Bible.

The main premises of the neo-orthodox view of the Bible, as I see them, are (1) the Bible is the indispensable witness to special redemptive revelation; (2) no identity exists between the Bible, in its written form of words and sentences, and special revelation; (3) the Bible is the instrumental frame within which God personally encounters man and actualizes revelation in the form of dynamic response.

Instability Of Liberalism

This view brought welcome relief to the problems that harassed Protestant liberalism for half a century. Remember that Wellhausen’s post-evolutionary criticism had narrowed the traditional confidence in the infallibility of Scripture by excluding matters of science and history. The Bible was then considered reliable only in matters of faith and practice. Next, William Newton Clarke’s The Use of the Scriptures in Theology (1905) yielded biblical theology and ethics to the critics as well as biblical science and history, but reserved “Christian theology,” or the teaching of Jesus Christ, as reliable. British scholars took a further step. Since science and history were involved in Jesus’ endorsement of creation, the patriarchs, Moses and the Law, English critics more and more accepted only the theological and moral teaching of Jesus. Contemporaries swiftly erased even this remainder, asserting Jesus’ theological fallibility. Actual belief in Satan and demons was intolerable to the critical mind, and must therefore invalidate his theological integrity, while the feigned belief in them (as a concession to the times) would invalidate his moral integrity. Had not Jesus represented his whole ministry as the conquest of Satan and invoked his exorcism of demons to prove his supernatural mission? The critics could only infer his limited knowledge even of theological and moral truths. The Chicago school of “empirical theologians” argued that respect for the scientific method in theology disallows in toto any defense of Jesus’ absoluteness and infallibility. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s The Modern Use of the Bible (1924) championed only “abidingly valid” experiences in Jesus’ life that could be normatively relived by us. Gerald Birney Smith took the final plunge in Current Christian Thinking (1928): We are to gain inspiration from Jesus, but it is our own experience that determines doctrine and a valid outlook on life.

This history of concession and retreat had one pervading theme, namely, that the Bible differs from other so-called sacred books only in degree; it contains the highest religious and ethical insights gleaned from universal divine revelation. Liberalism moved from the fallibility of the Bible to the fallibility of the God-man to the fallibility of the indwelling Spirit to the fallibility of everything except, perhaps, of contemporary criticism! The resulting confusion and chaos were therefore a propitious time for a view which recognized that the perplexing problem of religious knowledge could not be solved in so narrow, so artificial a framework. If that new view, moreover, could dissolve the need for identifying the Bible in part or whole as the Word of God—thus rising above the fatiguing and exasperating game of epistemological “blind man’s bluff”—it could attract the liberal theologian and critic even while it disputed him.

Neo-Orthodoxy’S New Look

Neo-orthodoxy sets out with a new look at controlling ideas of the nature and activity of God. It rejects liberalism’s metaphysics of extreme divine immanence and accepts instead a reactionary doctrine of extreme divine transcendence. Furthermore, neo-orthodoxy rejects the post-Hegelian epistemology of extreme monistic realism that virtually identifies God’s knowledge with man’s knowledge. But its doctrine of subjectivity perpetuates the error of epistemological dualism, bridging the tension between eternity and time not conceptually but dialectically and/or existentially in dynamic faith-response. Gordon H. Clark traces this development of modern counter-thrust to the excesses of Hegelian rationalism in his book Thales to Dewey. He discloses the generous philosophical rather than biblical indebtedness of recent theories of God and revelation. One could say of the contemporary theology of revelation that its vocabulary is the vocabulary of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but its plot is the plot of Kant and Kierkegaard, of Ebner and Buber.

Our immediate concern, however, is the role of the Bible in the new theology of the Word of God. Assuredly, the current interest in special revelation has stimulated fresh exploration of the Bible. As opposed to the old liberalism, neo-orthodoxy no longer gears Scripture to a naturalistic, evolutionary development of religious experience, nor demeans the Bible as a human interpretation of a universal divine activity. Instead, the Book’s theological message is an authentic witness to God’s unique self-disclosure in Jesus Christ.

Evading The Biblical Witness

Precisely this profession of neo-orthodoxy, however, to honor the Bible as a witness to special divine revelation, is an Achilles’ heel. For the witness of the Bible does not conform to the dialectical and non-rational exposition of revelation affirmed by the contemporary theology of the Word of God. Because of this divergence, neo-orthodoxy ultimately must choose one of two alternatives: either the new theology must abandon its merely formal appeal to the Scriptures as witness to special divine revelation, or neo-orthodoxy must dissolve its antithetical exposition of revelation and reason.

If the inspiration and revelation-status of the Scriptures as depicted by neo-orthodox writers is set alongside the witness of the biblical writers, their conflict becomes apparent at once. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, translator of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, has long observed that whereas Barth emphasizes the “inspiringness” of Scripture, that is, its dynamic potency in religious experience, the Bible itself moves beyond this claim to assert the very “inspiredness” of the writings. The decisive reference here, of course, is 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is inspired by God.…” This passage identifies Scripture itself as “God-breathed”; the writings themselves, as an end-product, are a unique product of divine activity. The divergence of crisis theology from the biblical witness is even more apparent in neo-orthodoxy’s claim that divine revelation does not assume the form of concepts and words. This assertion runs so directly counter to the specific claim of the biblical writers that Emil Brunner, uneasy in the presence of the repetitious Old Testament formula “Thus saith the Lord …,” concessively called this prophetic ascription of words and statements to Deity “an Old Testament level of revelation” (Revelation and Reason, p. 122, n. 9).

One of Brunner’s students, Paul King Jewett, has long since pointed out that to admit such propositions as revelation, whether low or high, breaks down the assumption that revelation is conceptually and verbally inexpressible, and unwittingly surrenders the thesis that divine revelation must take a form that impinges dialectically upon the mind of man. Not alone do the Old Testament prophets provide a biblical basis for identifying the inspired spoken and written word with the very Word of God; this selfsame identification is made by the New Testament apostles as well. Paul wrote that the Thessalonian converts “received the word of God which you heard from us … not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13, RSV). Peter declared that “no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:21, RSV). The writer to the Hebrews repeatedly ascribes to God what the prophets had spoken. One senses their uniform readiness to regard the sacred teaching as sharing the authority of divine revelation.

Certainly both the evangelists and apostles distinguish Jesus of Nazareth as the supreme and final revelation of God. Matthew records Peter’s confession that he truly is the Christ, the Son of the living God (16:16). John writes that “no one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (1:18, RSV). Paul finds the climax of the gospel in redemption personally secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:1–4). But the New Testament writers never make this staggering fact of God’s personal relevation in the flesh by Jesus Christ the occasion for depriving the inspired utterances of the sacred writers of a direct identity with divine revelation. In thus honoring the prophetic word as the veritable Word of God (cf. Paul’s characterization of the Old Testament as “the oracles of God” in Romans 3:2), the disciples and apostles had the sacred example of their Master and Lord; he spoke of himself indeed as the one “the Father consecrated and sent into the world,” yet he spoke at the same time of those “to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken)” (John 10:35).

Besides this validation of the divine authority of Scripture, Jesus’ followers heard him ascribe absolute significance to his own words and commands uttered in their hearing. The dialectical theory, if true, would preclude any direct identification with divine revelation of the spoken words of Jesus, no less than of prophets and apostles. In line with its presuppositions neo-orthodoxy distinguishes constantly between the Word of God as revelation and the “pointers” to revelation or assertedly fallible human ideas and words. But this distinction will not bear the scrutiny of Jesus’ teaching. For Jesus held men responsible not only for hearing his “word” (John 5:24), but for Moses’ “writings” and his own “words” (5:47). Indeed, he specifically identifies his own words and commands with the Father’s word: “The words that I say unto you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.… He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.… If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.… If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 14:10, 24; 15:7, 10, RSV).

Integrity Of Theology

All this may seem like a needless revival of marginal concerns in circles throbbing to modernist traditions. But the very integrity of theology is at stake. As a theology that professes to honor the biblical witness to revelation, neo-orthodoxy must face the fact that it does not really derive its doctrine of revelation from the witness of Scripture; it does not have an authentically biblical concern for the fundamentals of that doctrine.

The new theology may disparage identification of the Bible in whole or in part with revelation as a kind of bibliolatry, as dishonoring to the idea of revelation, or as injurious to faith. Yet several facts remain clear. The new theology cannot find support for its anxieties over the evil implications of the traditional view in the biblical witness itself. The Bible nowhere protests nor cautions against identifying Scripture with revelation, but rather approves and supports this turn. Whoever evades these verities in constructing a doctrine of revelation, however vocal his plea for biblical theology, shows greater concern to baptize biblical criticism with an orthodox justification than to confirm the central features of the scriptural view.

The neo-orthodox rejection of the Bible as revelation rests actually on rationalism rather than on reverence. To expel Scripture from the orbit of revelation itself to the sphere of witness, and subsequently to ignore that witness in forging a doctrine of revelation, reveals speculative rather than scriptural and spiritual motives. The devout considerations by which neo-orthodoxy ventures to support its maneuver are unpersuasive. A radical skepticism in metaphysics, a relational theology still tainted with the philosophical influence of Kant and Schleiermacher, determine its elaboration of divine revelation.

Editor Carl F. H. Henry’s address was delivered at Union Theological Seminary in New York City recently under auspices of the Student Forum Committee. An evangelical symposium on the same theme will be published later this year by Baker Book House. Dr. Henry is serving as general editor of the project, which will include chapters by distinguished scholars chosen from the major denominations in many lands.