Pauline Hermeneutics

Paul’s Use of the Old Testament, by E. Earle Ellis, Eerdmans, 1957. 204 pp., $3.00.

This volume is further evidence that there is arising in this country a group of young and capable evangelical biblical scholars. Dr. Ellis has only recently (1955) completed a doctorate at the University of Edinburgh and is now Assistant Professor of Bible and Religion at Aurora College in Illinois.

Investigations of Paul’s use of the Old Testament have met with various pitfalls. One of these has been to explain everything in terms of Paul’s background in Judaism. Although one must not minimize the importance of this in any attempt to understand Paul, the fact remains that the Damascus Road experience transformed the Old Testament for him. The disciple of Gamaliel became the disciple of Christ, and this made the Old Testament a new book for Paul. Especially is it true that it is impossible to explain Paul’s principles of interpretation in terms of contemporary Judaism. But where then did Paul derive his hermeneutics?

To answer this question Ellis examines Pauline passages parallel to Christ’s teaching and to other New Testament writers and concludes that the interpretation and application of the Old Testament texts are “too varied, for the most part to support a theory of borrowing or direct dependence. The most likely explanation is that these ideas, and these ideas associated with these particular O.T. texts, were—more or less—the common property of the apostolic church.” The author rejects R. Harris’ “Testimony Book” hypothesis in favor of C. H. Dodd’s “text plots.” This theory maintains that the early Church applied an interpretive method to selected Old Testament passages which were viewed as “wholes,” and “verses were quoted from them not merely for their own significance but as pointers to the total contexts.” Who pointed out these pertinent Old Testament sections and developed the interpretive principles by which they were to be understood? Ellis follows Dodd in maintaining that it was probably Jesus himself.

Only about half of Paul’s citations follow the LXX. Of the rest, a considerable number follow other versions fully or in part. The variations cannot be accounted for on the basis of textual study. The answer is to be found in the hermeneutical principles which govern Paul’s citation of the Old Testament. The last chapter of Ellis’ book is a fascinating investigation into Pauline exegesis. This exegesis the author describes as “grammatical-historical plus.” By this is meant that although Paul does not disregard the significance of grammar and history, how he renders a passage is often determined by how he is going to apply it. Paul, in doing this, was only following the hermeneutical methods of the early Church.

Of special interest is Ellis’ application to Pauline material of the results of K. Stendahl’s investigation of the Old Testament quotations in Matthew.

This is a scholarly and definitive volume. Industry and research are everywhere present. The footnotes contain enough bibliographical data to draw up an amazingly broad and extensive New Testament bibliography.

WALTER W. WESSEL

Sermons On Church Year

The Sermon and the Propers, by Fred H. Lindemann, Concordia, 1958. Vol. I, Advent and Epiphany, 197 pp.; Vol. II, Pre-Lent to Pentecost, 243 pp., $4.00.

This is a scholarly work by a preacher who holds to the old Lutheran custom of preaching on the appointed epistles and gospels of the standard pericopal system of the Western church. Essentially these two volumes are books of sermons and outlines covering the entire historical year of the Church. The propers for each Sunday and festival, with the exception of the epistle and the gospel, are given in full.

What makes these two volumes distinctive is the introductory material, which is the same in both volumes (pages 1–14). Their purpose is frankly stated in the first sentence: “to encourage preaching according to the Church Year and in harmony with the appointed propers.”

The preacher on “free texts” will point out the lack of close correspondence in the themes of epistle and gospel on some Sundays, at least. He may ask, “Does the congregation need what is suggested by the epistle or the gospel at that particular time?” There is trouble in the church, perhaps, and a particular congregation is crying for a sermon on love, or on peace. Should we ever preach on Gospels the mere reading of which will edify the simplest as well as a 20-minute sermon could? Shall we ever preach on such a text as Galatians 4:21–31 (Fourth Sunday in Lent)? Why not substitute Romans 6:14, which is much more readily intelligible today and presents the same truths? And then, what about preaching from other pericopal systems, keeping the introit and collect of the ancient series? All other considerations aside, perhaps the answer to these questions is, as Lindemann says, that “the sermon should be in harmony with the chief thought of the day if the service is to constitute a well-rounded, purposeful whole” (italics ours). It is obvious that he has an irrefutable point there.

E. P. SCHULZE

Optimistic Eschatology

The Millennium, by Loraine Boettner. Presbyterian and Reformed, 1958. 375 pp. $4.50.

So the world is growing better—day by day and altogether! Such is the theme song of Dr. Boettner’s latest book. Here we have postmillennialism, which some of us thought had been decently buried by World Wars I and II, resurrected out of its grave and given new life in an age that nonchalantly supposed that its Armageddon was just around the next historic corner.

Not so, we are confidently informed in this book. The race is merely in its infancy. Don’t become pessimistic concerning present world conditions; they are but the sombre prelude of a majestic symphony of glory that awaits the world beyond the present gloom. It may take, of course, many centuries before that glory, through the Church’s activity, is fully (even if imperfectly) revealed.

Boettner, staunchly orthodox as he is, firmly believes, on the authority of his interpretation of Scripture, in the inevitability of the world’s betterment. This ultimate Christianized world is to be realized by the gospel of redemption—not by the emasculated “social gospel” of modernism.

In the first part of his book Boettner defends his type of postmillennialism, which turns out to be the same kind as held by such scholars as David Brown, J. H. Snowden, B. B. Warfield, and others. No new arguments are advanced in favor of this eschatological system. In his chapter entitled “The World Is Growing Better,” the author carefully cites facts supporting his view but just as carefully ignores facts detrimental to his position. The increase in the sale of the Bible and the increase in church membership prove that the world is growing better (pp. 40 ff), but why shouldn’t the astounding increase in pornographic magazines and books, not to speak of the alarming rise in juvenile delinquency, point in the direction of the degeneration of “this present evil world” (Gal. 1:4)?

In the middle portion of his work Boettner gives about 30 pages to a rather scant treatment of amillennialism. One feels here that the author would rather not “pick a fight” with this system, for he is hurrying along to the main bout—against premillennialism.

The major part of The Millennium (about 225 pages) is thus devoted to an attack on premillennialism, which the author identifies with dispensationalism, maintaining that the two systems cannot “be logically separated and kept in watertight compartments” (p. 375). His refutation of dispensational premillennialism follows the pattern already established in the writings of Mauro, Reese, and Allis.

Boettner is undoubtedly more persuasive in his interring dispensationalism than in his resurrecting postmillennialism. In fact, his postmillennialism still seems rather macabre; it refuses to come to life in the glaring light of Scripture and of history.

Quite arbitrary statements are made in defense of postmillennialism. For example, we are told that “A careful reading of Paul’s words [in 2 Thess. 2:1–12] should convince an open-minded Bible student that the antichrist and the apostasy are long since past” (p. 218). We are likewise informed that Paul’s description of “the last days” in 2 Timothy 3:1ff. refers to the time of the early days of Christianity rather than to the time preceding the Parousia. “It is illegitimate, therefore, to say that the New Testament teaches that the times will grow worse and worse” (p. 344). On the basis of this kind of interpretation, one wonders what Paul should have written in these places if he had believed that, after a temporary recession, Christianity would flourish according to the postmillennial pattern.

At times rationalizing methods of argument are used, reminding one of similar methods in Roman Catholicism. We are told that this world is very, very old; but God could not have spent all that time preparing the world if, according to premillennialism, this old world is corrupt and about to pass away. Rather, we should look for the millennial glory of the Church—so our author argues—on the assumption that God, having spent such a long time in the world’s preparation, will surely spend a millennium, more or less (probably more), in the world’s betterment (pp. 346 ff.).

Boettner’s work is quite readable; it contains long extracts from various authors; and it is as persuasive as any work on postmillennialism can be. But many readers will be inclined to believe that, in this case at least, it will be better to let postmillennialism lie in its grave until and unless we have better arguments from Scripture and from history for its resuscitation.

WICK BROOMALL

View Of The Scrolls

The Scrolls and the New Testament, edited by Krister Stendahl, Harper, 1957. 308 pp. $4.00.

For 10 years speculation and controversy have raged over the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now an attempt is being made to give a “mature summation of the verdict of original scholarship” concerning the influence of the Qumram sect on the New Testament. Fourteen essays by leading critical scholars who have worked with the Qumran texts are brought together to give the conclusions reached. The thesis of all the writers seems to be: “The abiding significance of the Qumran texts for the New Testament is that they show to what extent the primitive church, however conscious of its integrity and newness, drew upon the Essenes in matters of practices and cult, organization and constitution” (p. 87).

According to the conclusions reached by the authors, the New Testament draws most of its concepts from the Essenic Qumran sect. John the Baptist was really John the Essene who left the narrow confines of the Qumran community to proclaim the Messianic hope of the Essenes to the nation as a whole. The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount is an attempt to purify the false interpretation of the Essenes, who are in view in the words “You have heard that it hath been said.…” All the positive precepts in the discourse are adopted from Essenic teaching. The Lord’s Supper is unrelated to the Passover meal, but rather is an adaptation of the communal meal of the sect. In the New Testament Church order Essenic influence is especially prominent. The concept of the foundation of the Church by the outpouring of the Spirit, the ideas of communal sharing, communal meals, the grace of poverty, government by apostles and elders, the repudiation of the Temple, all had their origin in the Qumran community life. The thesis is presented that the connection between the Essenes and Christianity was the Hellenists, who are thought to be former members of the sect who followed John the Baptist and then left him to follow Christ, who contributed their thought to the New Testament concept.

The authors are careful not to equate Christianity with Essenism, even though they emphasize the contribution of Essenism toward the formulation of New Testament thought. They recognize that the Teacher of Righteousness differs from the scriptural concept in both the value of his death and in the contrast between the two-Messiah concept of Essenism as opposed to the biblical doctrine of one Messiah who is prophet, priest and king.

It is frequently observed that the “assured results” of critical scholarship, propounded by a critical school, are swept aside by some new theory, which comes into ascendancy and claims to speak authoritatively. Criticism seems to thrive on change. The main theses of this book illustrate how scholars will turn to a new basis in their attempt to explain the origin of the Scripture on a naturalistic basis. Essenism is presented today as the new key to unlock the sources of the New Testament. Doubtless the day will come when that which is here presented as the result of mature scholarship will give way to some new theory in turn. Such is the prospect of those who reject the scriptural doctrines of revelation and inspiration.

J. DWIGHT PENTECOST

Implementing True Love

Clinical Training for Pastoral Care, by David Belgum, Westminster, 1956. $3.00.

David Belgum is Associate Professor of Pastoral Counseling at Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary in Minneapolis. This book aims to be “a guide to students of pastoral care, whether they are in theological schools and clinical training centers or actively engaged in the parish ministry.”

The author indicates that the Church has always had an interest in the care of the sick. Recent trends of increased interest are encouraging because “Christianity is able to generate wholesome, constructive emotions and attitudes, as well as provide means of dealing with destructive ones.”

In the same connection, Prof. Belgum states, “Christianity, viewed psychologically, strives to equip the individual with spiritual resources to meet the stresses of life with faith, hope and love, and to provide security, purpose and wholesome interpersonal relations for his life here and now as well as for eternity” (p. 20).

The contents of chapter two, “The Health Team,” will be of primary interest to chaplains and students who are preparing for the specialized ministry of the hospital or institutional chaplaincy. Chapter three, “Resources of the Pastor,” contains many helpful psychological insights which can be instructive for pastors. For example, the author says, “Frequently, a patient will ask a seemingly academic question about some biblical character such as Job; but underneath lies the implicit question, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ Therefore, the Bible should not be used mechanically, nor administered as an injection of just so many verses at random, but rather with an alert awareness of the patient’s needs and what the biblical reference might mean for him. Then it is recognized as a living and relevant word of God to him in his individual need.”

The most valuable section of David Belgum’s book is the material found in chapter five, “Learning from Clinical Experience.” The samples of the verbatim reports are worth much and the comments on the students’ reporting are pithy and arresting.

The orientation of Dr. Belgum appears to be that of responsive counseling, an excellent aid to the counselor to help him discover “where the patient is” and to help him determine how he can best reach him. But there must also be an alert awareness for the time when the Christian pastor can seek to use “indirect direction” to bind his counselee to Christ (cf. Matt. 19:16–22 and John 4:7–26). Religious counseling orientated to the historic Christian faith must proceed from a love for and a commitment to Jesus Christ, the chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4). The pastoral obligation to bind counselees to Christ is also involved in ministerial ordination (2 Cor. 4:6 and 5:20).

WILLIAM L. HIEMSTRA

Reporter’S Account

The Healing Power of Faith, by Will Oursler, Hawthorne, New York, 1957. $4.95.

“All informed persons … would agree on one fact: since the end of the Second World War there has been a steadily increasing interest in religious healing, not only in Roman Catholic shrines and Christian Science, but also in all major Protestant faiths,” declares Will Oursler. “I have tried … to hold the reporter’s point of view” in investigating the phenomena behind this rising interest, he declares, and have deliberately limited “this work to investigation of healing falling within what is called the Christian-Judaic tradition.”

To this end Oursler reports upon a wide range of viewpoints from the general results of a survey by the National Council of Churches, the Episcopal Order of St. Luke, the Methodist “New Life Movement,” Christian Science, Roman shrines, and Oral Roberts. The report is devoted largely to the contemporary American scene. This is not a textbook in the methodology or practices of faith healing.

Though Oursler sets forth his study as a “reporter’s” work and professes “objectivity,” no one actually escapes his own bias and bent. The author’s bias is of no little import to the reader who is to place an interpretation upon the work. And knowing nothing of Oursler’s personal faith, nor as much his religious affiliation, except for an assertion in the book that he is a “Christian who believes in God and in prayer,” I would venture to say that he is a theological liberal who has been strongly influenced by the supernaturalism of neo-orthodoxy. This predisposition would seem to underlie such statements as, “Among the gifts Christ brought to man is the concept of … a love that can have no part of sickness or pain … Ancient concepts of a God of vengeance and punishment and pain are swept aside.… The illogicality of a God who punishes the individual by making him sick, but allows him to engage a physician to make him well, thereby thwarting the punishment, finds no place in the new religion.”

It is significant, I think, that few if any of the persons interviewed by Oursler can conceive of a divine purpose, much less a blessing, in illness. Most, including the author, would seem to agree with Oral Roberts, “I don’t believe it is the will of God that man be sick. It cannot be the will of God that man suffer. It cannot be the will of God that man endure poverty or despair. And nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus say or indicate that his teaching requires us to believe in a God of punishment.” Just how much of the Bible have such people read? Or accepted? Or understood?

Another common concept among faith healers of many stripes is the recognition that man must be brought into vital contact with God for the achievement of healing. This is good, but it is disturbing that none of these men or movements, at least set forth here, conceives of Jesus Christ as the essential link between God and man. One must have faith, some kind of faith, and Jesus taught about this faith. But nowhere is Christ set forth as the heart and object of this faith. Oursler himself declares, “We are told that the Kingdom of God is within us.… Thus we must seek faith within ourselves.… It is a demanding mission.… It is the exploration of the Kingdom of God of which Jesus spoke. It is where faith is found.”

Healing nonetheless does take place. “Records are available in many cases, with X-rays, statements of witnesses and hospital reports. Dismissing all of it as medical error, hypnotic suggestion or hysteria which will wear off, does not meet a scientific standard of objectivity. Psychosomatic medicine can explain some of the cures but not all.”

What shall we say then? Is this another of those areas to which too little attention has been paid by those who espouse the historic Christian faith? Should we consider seriously the words of Christ when the disciples complained, “Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followed not us: and we forbade him, because he followed not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak of me. For he that is not against us is on our part” (Mark 9:38–40). Perhaps we who think of ourselves as “orthodox, evangelical and conservative” should pay more heed to this aspect of the earthly ministry of Christ.

G. H. GIROD

Not The Christ Of Scripture

The Ontological Theology of Paul Tillich, by R. Allen Killen, Presbyterian and Reformed, 1956. $3.50.

Dr. Killen, of the Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, has done evangelical Christianity the great service of presenting the full sweep of the complex theological thought of one of the world’s leading, contemporary existentialists in systematic form, complete with an extensive evaluation. This able and comprehensive volume is his dissertation for the doctorate at the Free University of Amsterdam. It was written under the guidance of the pre-eminent, Reformed theologian, G. C. Berkouwer.

The study is divided into three parts: biography, doctrine, and critique, with the expository section being the most extensive. The attempt is to do justice to Tillich as both a philosopher and a theologian, although Killen limits himself “to his theology and to the philosophical problems which influence his system” since “his philosophy forms the foundation of his theology and therefore requires special and separate treatment which must be left for someone else to perform” (1). Any reader looking for an appropriate doctoral project, please take note.

In the biographical section, Killen offers a chronological development of Tillich’s fundamental concepts in terms of their roots in his personal experience. He credits Tillich with developing the first completely ontological philosophy; he believes that this is the reason for the great interest his system has attracted (7). While basing all theology upon philosophy, Tillich places the two disciplines in separate circles, so they cannot undermine one another: “Philosophy asks the questions and theology gives the answers” (7). Killen notes that a thorough study of his system reveals that it is actually philosophy that does all the talking (8). “Tillich applies his ontological philosophy to theology but he does not systematically develop the individual doctrines of theology, nor the ontological philosophy itself” (9).

In the second and main section of the volume, Killen outlines Tillich’s views on the main doctrines of Christianity: revelation, truth, God, Christ, evil, and eschatology. He shows how his concepts of Being and Non-Being underlie all these doctrines and he deals with some of the problems that grow out of Tillich’s transcendental philosophy. Since there is not space in a short review to deal even in general with this extended exposition and accompanying criticism, we shall turn to Killen’s over-all evaluation of Tillich’s theology.

Part III is entirely critical. Here he sums up the best and the worst that he can say for Tillich. He returns to each of the separate doctrines discussed in Part II and considers the main points involved. Before he does this, however, he deals with what he judges to be the key problem in Tillich’s system: truth. Only God is absolute, therefore, truth is only relative (206). Yet, Tillich believes that he escapes a thorough-going relativism in two ways: first, he understands dynamic, changing truth to be “a correlation of the existential situation and the Logos principle in God, and which he calls truth in the kairos”; second, he attempts to solve the moral dilemma consequent upon relative truth by asserting that truth is absolute but only in and for the moment it fits into its corresponding kairos, and it is dynamic since it advances to different kairoi (206–7).

Man can existentially transcend the dilemma of relativism-absolutism by making his decisions in reference to truths of revelation and metaphysics, in love; however, the decisions thus reached are not eternally valid since each correlation is only for its contemporary situation (207–8). The trouble with fundamentalism, says Tillich, is that it attempts to live on the basis of past and thus no longer valid correlations (208). What is the valid correlation for today?—the “New Being in Jesus Christ” (208). For tomorrow?—perhaps Tillich’s view of the dynamic God (cf. Being, Non-Being, and the Power of being) will be replaced by a fundamentalism suddenly up-to-date! Certainly, Tillich’s thinly disguised relativism cannot deny the possibility.

Killen’s conclusion is no overstatement: “Christ as the truth, and the revelation of truth in the Bible, cannot be separated, for as soon as they are separated Christ himself is lost. The Christ which Tillich produces is not the Christ of the Bible” (239–240).

LLOYD F. DEAN

Protestantism In U. S.

The Spirit of American Christianity, Ronald E. Osborn, Harper, 1958. $3.75.

One interested in understanding the complexity of American Christianity will find help from this book. Its purpose is not to present a systematic treatment of theology nor church history, but to discover “the reasons for the distinct quality” of American denominations and to appraise their ecumenical significance.

The work is slanted to non-Americans, but will be read with interest in this country as well.

A more accurate title for the book might have been “The Spirit of American Protestantism,” since only a passing notice has been given to the activities of non-Protestant groups. The author draws heavily upon his own experiences as a member of the Disciples of Christ in which he has served as pastor, editor and professor. One feels, though, that he has been fair and objective in the treating of his subject.

Since American Christianity grew up in the atmosphere of religious freedom, all groups have “had to make headway up the same stream.” With no favored religion present, there has resulted a feeling of personal responsibility for the support of the church, a necessity for evangelism and a personal identification between pastor and people.

In appraising recent developments, Professor Osborn points out that liberalism came as a reaction against a traditional faith which had lost its vigor amid the scientific age. To correct the extreme humanism of the liberal movement, fundamentalism appeared on the scene and restored the place and dignity of Jesus in the Christian faith. Neo-orthodoxy seems, in the mind of the author, to be bringing the whole of man’s endeavors under the scrutiny of Christian criticism which liberalism failed to do.

Professor Osborn is disturbed by the so-called revival in America. He is not pessimistic about it, but warns against the power of conformity which would cause persons to join church just because it is the popular thing to do.

RICHARD L. JAMES

Guidance In Music

Church Music Comes of Age, by Ruth Nininger, Carl Fischer, New York, 1957. $4.00.

Ruth Nininger’s first published book, Growing a Musical Church, appeared more than a decade ago (1947) and enjoyed a good sale. The present volume of 157 pages is a guide for pastors, church musicians, and workers in the field of religious education. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, and educated at Westminister Choir School, Princeton, New Jersey, Miss Nininger brings wide experience in church music to the writing of this book.

Twelve chapters cover topics such as congregational singing, the “minister’s viewpoint,” selection of a choir director, and the training of graded choirs. The author obtained much material directly from church musicians and pastors by correspondence. Such material appears frequently in the book. An example is the 28-page listing of suggested choir anthems and organ music found at the close of the book (pp. 129–157). The style of the book would have been improved had the extensive excerpts from letters in chapters VI, IX and XI been incorporated within the text itself.

Basic thesis of Church Music Comes of Age is that in the last 10 years great progress in choir and congregational singing has taken place in American churches. Suggestions and sample programs are given as a means of promoting further progress. Although experienced musicians will have limited reason to learn from this book, church musicians with less experience and laymen may find it helpful.

DICK L. VAN HALSEMA

The Prophets: Liberal View

The Prophets: Pioneers to Christianity, by Walter G. Williams. Abingdon, New York. 1956. $3.50.

The author of this volume is professor of Old Testament Literature at the Iliff School of Theology, Denver, Colorado. This book purports to show the indebtedness of Christianity to the Old Testament prophets. We are indeed aware of our deep obligation to these faithful servants of the Lord, as God has made them known to us in Scripture. However, the portrayal of the prophets as given us by Dr. Williams seems quite different from that which has been given us by God.

I find myself in continuous disagreement with Dr. Williams. He makes many statements that any self-respecting and consistent conservative would reject. For example, he declares that he does not believe there is any theology in the Old Testament. To speak of the Old Testament as pre-Christian literature is said to be misleading. The laws of God, the covenants and the prophecies are not presented as revelations given by God, but rather the results of the development of an evolution of religion and of personal and national experience. The story of creation as set forth in Scripture is traced to the efforts of a priest who rewrote a polytheistic poem.

Part Two of the book is titled, “Man Discovers God.” The idea of God revealing himself to man is summarily dismissed. Monotheism is said to be a highly developed concept. It seems at times that nothing the Christian holds dear shall escape the destructive pen of the author. The miraculous element comes in for its share of twisting. The miracles of Elijah are called “mimetic magic.” He states that he thinks it strange that Elijah during his contest with the prophets of Baal should resort, as he says, to magical techniques. Hosea would undoubtedly be surprised to learn that, according to the writer, he learned of the love of God through an observance of Baalism.

Consistently adhered to is the liberal theological explanation of Scripture—from error to less error, but never seemingly arriving at the truth. Here are but a few more of the unacceptable presentations: Abraham’s offering of Isaac was but the following of a religious precedent in which the first-born was regularly sacrificed to Deity. There are said to be at least two Isaiahs. The Book of Daniel receives the late dating of two hundred B.C. Dr. Williams belittles future significance to prophetic utterances, declaring that the prophets were not interested in distant events.

The key to the author’s thought seems to be found in experience or pragmatism. The prophets and Jesus were said not to have been orthodox because they could not appeal to history but rather, because they appealed to their own experiences.

When you have finished reading the book you realize that many things the historic Christian Church has held precious have been attacked, e.g. the plenary and verbal inspiration of the Scriptures and the infallibility and authority of Holy Scripture as set forth in the Old and New Testaments. We might continue, for certainly this does not exhaust the list. The author is to be commended in the fact that he does not permit the reader to remain in doubt concerning his liberal theological position. The conclusion of the book reveals the basic point of view of Dr. Williams: “Theologians must build their systems of religion from the experiences that are common to all men.” This is obviously pragmatism.

It should be quite clear that I do not recommend this book but rather reject it as being out of accord with the Word of God and with the Christian faith.

E. WESLEY GREGSON, SR.

Gospel Portraits

They Knew Jesus, by George W. Cornell, Morrow, New York, 1957. 288 pp., $3.75.

Because of their human appeal, studies of biblical characters, if well done, always stimulate interest. The present volume by the religion editor of the Associated Press, however, does much more than stimulate the reader’s interest. It stirs the depths of one’s soul.

In 24 exciting chapters (two are given to Mary of Nazareth), Cornell sketches 23 of the greater and lesser persons who, for good or for ill, came face to face with Jesus Christ in the days of his flesh. An epilogue is devoted to Saul of Tarsus.

The author has based his studies on careful historical research among extra-biblical sources, as well as the New Testament; and thus he probes beneath the surface of the sacred text and behind the actions and attitudes of his subjects. His interpretations reflect a large measure of human understanding and sympathy which enable him to set in a new light individuals like Thomas, who have long been seen through the eyes of prejudice and misunderstanding. He writes in the dramatic style of an on-the-scene-reporter. His treatment is faithful to the biblical record, it is reverent, and is colored by restrained imagination.

But this book is not only an analysis of characters who knew Jesus. It is pre-eminently a portrait of our Lord himself, for his shadow is cast across the lives of those who speak from these pages. Actually, what we have here is a step-by-step account of the life and ministry of Jesus which come to a crashing climax in the darkness of Calvary and the radiance of the empty tomb.

The reading of this book will help the preacher to vivify his sermons and the layman to catch something of the realism of the Gospels. It is especially appropriate to the Lenten season.

RICHARD ALLEN BODEY

Meditations

Journey to Easter, by Laurence N. Field. Augsburg, Minneapolis, 1957. $2.00.

This book of 46 brief meditations for the Lenten season, designed for use in daily devotions and family worship, achieves its purpose admirably. An appreciation of the purpose and design of the volume can be gained by quoting from the author’s own foreword: “The many events, concentrated as they are pretty much into the last night and day of our Lord’s suffering, are not easy to spread out over 46 days and keep the proper order intact. And the six Sundays of Lent, with their texts, are anything but amenable to chronological regimentation. Nor is the exact sequence completely agreed on by scholars. But surely this does not matter a great deal, since the Bible has left it so. We make therefore no apologies for an occasional aberation, and only ask the reader’s indulgence. We have spread plot and chronology over a period of 46 days, in presenting the divine epic that transcends them both! We have striven to make the sermonettes brief, simple, and personal. We hope that this will make them more graphic and helpful.”

Written in crisp, concise style these meditations will catch the readers’ interest and stimulate his thinking on many significant themes of sacred history. As musician and hymnologist the author reveals his broad familiarity with music and poetry. The prayers at the close of each meditation are well adapted for inducing true worship.

The value and charm of this book are enhanced by the manner in which it reveals the personality of the writer. Dr. Field is known as a whole-souled forthright individual, impatient with cant and pretense and dominantly a man of action. As a consequence his writing at times lacks the smoothness one is accustomed to find in devotional literature. Yet this in no wise detracts from the usefulness of the book, but rather helps to stimulate and hold the reader’s interest. The man in the pulpit will find here seed thoughts for many telling sermons.

ERIC EDWIN PAULSON

While Chicago was shyly emerging into springtime, National Association of Evangelicals met April 14–18, to bask in recent evangelistic and theological gains in American life. By its 16th convention, NAE—“a service organization, a fellowship of believers, and a means of identification”—had gathered 41 cooperating denominations into its orbit and spawned an impressive array of affiliated agencies (Evangelical Foreign Missions Associations, National Association of Christian Schools, National Sunday School Association, National Religious Broadcasters, and many others). The Chicago gathering was unproductive of spectacular achievements, but 1,000 churchmen and lay delegates shared a common faith and fellowship that vigorous leadership could weld to a crusading spirit.

Behind the scenes conferences in Hotel Sherman were almost as plenteous as public sessions. Off-the-record discussion of ecumenism closeted some of NAE’s past presidents (Harold John Ockenga, Bishop Leslie R. Marston, Stephen W. Paine, Paul S. Rees, R. L. Decker, Frederick C. Fowler, and H. H. Savage) in an unofficial way with churchmen whose denominations (like Southern Baptists, Missouri Lutherans, Christian Reformed) make up some 22 million evangelicals outside both the National Council of Churches and NAE. Twenty additional churches and five organizations were accepted into NAE membership.

Mekeel New President

New president is Dr. Herbert S. Mekeel, pastor for two decades of First Presbyterian Church of Schenectady, New York.

Also named: first vice-president, Dr. Thomas F. Zimmerman, of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, Springfield, Missouri; second vice-president, Dr. Charles Seidenspinner, president of Southeastern Bible College, Birmingham, Alabama; secretary, Cordas E. Burnett, Springfield, Missouri; treasurer, Robert C. Van Kampen, of Wheaton, Illinois.

The Rev. Fred G. Ferris was appointed Executive Secretary of World Evangelical Fellowship; Dr. J. Elwin Wright remains as honorary chairman. Moving from Boston, WEF dedicated new Chicago headquarters at 108 North Dearborn during the convention.

Retiring Leader’S Appraisal

Dr. Paul P. Petticord, retiring president, depicted evangelical Christians as “a remnant of spiritual unity upon which to build anew the Christian character of the United States.” The nation presently is “vulnerable,” he said, “and lacking in power to generate the moral and spiritual integrity necessary to inaugurate a crusading spirit against the enemies of unrighteousness.”

Dr. Petticord stressed that NAE was born not “to combat someone or some organization,” nor “to penetrate or infiltrate National Council of Churches or organizations for the purpose of dividing its forces,” but to make possible an evangelical witness in the face of liberal Protestant challenge and opposition. “The NAE is not a splinter group from the NCC … the reverse is true. Liberals withdrew from the original Evangelical Alliance because they found themselves in the minority and without hope of changing the theology … therefore, they formed … the ‘Open Church League’which in 1900 became the National Federation of Churches of Christ in America and in 1950 became the NCC.… The NAE … went back to the original Evangelical Alliance for a basis of cooperation.”

A Bare Sketch

While identifying the evangelical movement as “a positive effort, an advance” Dr. Petticord’s address sketched positive principles only in a bare way. (“The evangelical does not seek unity, he has unity, he possesses it in Christ”; “In the body of Christ not only are God and man reconciled but those afar off socially are brought near. Racial inequality ends.…”)

His appraisal in fact, fixed an eye on NCC strategy and on the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. “To assume that the day of controversy is over is only wishful thinking … and I would say … that ‘We dare to open the controversy again.’ ” The new theological attack, he said, is “against the Word of God, the Bible as the final authority and against the person of Christ.”

Dr. Petticord depicted ecumenical inclusivism as a scheme to frustrate evangelical belief. “Theological liberalism attempted to destroy evangelicalism, now neo-orthodoxy wants to contain evangelicalism.” He cited Walter Marshall Horton’s Toward a Reborn Church (1949) for “the long view” of ecumenism. [Horton writes: “I do not believe the leaders of the ecumenical movement are going to be able to change the feelings or allay the suspicions of these Conservative Evangelicals sufficiently to bring them into the IMC or the World Council in the near future; but they can do two things which may make future reconciliation possible:

One, keep in personal touch with the evangelical leaders, answering their sometimes captious criticisms with patience and not with scorn; and two, conduct evangelistic campaigns and world missions with an earnestness which their rivals cannot fail to respect and a constant willingness to collaborate on particular evangelistic projects.

Eventual Unity?

A generation of such tolerance and respectful relations might actually lead to unity.…”] Dr. Petticord commented: “This method of attack suggested by Dr. Horton has been followed very carefully, even to this present hour.… Possibly the most popular method of limiting and ameliorating the evangelical witness is to place the evangelical in compromising positions while complimenting him on his fundamental theology.… While a few evangelicals are generously treated the rank and file … are denied such privileges. This is all clearly evident when we enter the fields of comity, radio and television.” He warned that “almost all” who join “with the idea of redeeming a segment” of NCC are “swallowed up in the whole, and even though their personal voice is still evangelical, their affiliation seems to nullify their witness because the predominant voice is in another direction.…”

Dr. Stephen W. Paine, president of Houghton College, delivered a study of “Christian cooperation” comparing and contrasting NCC and NAE. He criticized the “Federal Council-National Council” for “lack of interest in Christian theology,” its historical opposition to a “straightforward evangelical basis of faith,” and its tradition of liberal leadership; for preoccupation with economic and social problems, often deferring to a planned economy and other collectivistic concepts; for concern for political influence and persistent public pronouncements on subjects only distantly related to the church’s primary mission; for its “monopolistic and illiberal” attitude toward religious broadcasting; and for its endeavor to capture the world missionary movement for inclusive ecumenism.

Graham’S Plea A Climax

Dr. Petticord hailed evangelist Billy Graham’s ministry as “another evidence of the resurgence of evangelical faith.” He commented that “most converts of recent Graham campaigns have come from churches belonging to the NCC.” (“I would assume that … many people in Protestant churches today … have little knowledge of the new birth”).

Graham personally addressed the convention’s closing luncheon and gave a stirring call for evangelical and evangelistic impact of the present social crisis. The convention featured an all-night prayer meeting for his San Francisco campaign. The previous midnight, NAE’s board of administration was on its knees in prayer both for Graham and his critics.

Convention resolutions expressed the movement’s concern over the spread of obscene literature, the imposition of minimum wage laws on volunteer religious workers, the growing pressures on evangelical broadcasts and liquor advertising on television.

Some of America’s foremost pulpiteers, aswell as Christian leaders in other spheres of vocation, were program participants and shaped the evangelistic and devotional convention mood: Billy Graham, Robert G. Lee, Harold John Ockenga, Wilbur M. Smith, Leon Sullivan, Richard Woike, J. Edwin Orr. Smith said that the hopes that this century would usher in a new age of Holy Spirit have thus far been disappointing.

C.F.H.H.

Canada

Taking Sides

Dr. James S. Thomson, moderator of the United Church of Canada, says he would like to see the Dominion be neutral in any future global war.

He said a start toward the outlawing of war had to be made somewhere, and as a leader of small nations it was fitting for Canada to tell the large nations “where to get off.”

No one could win today’s style of war, Thomson added, and “it was time somebody stood up and said: In the name of God, war is not the way.”

Prayerful Prediction

“If what I have seen in Calgary is indicative of Canadian crusading, and if the many, many calls I have received from the Dominion of Canada are any indication of coming events, I would prayerfully predict the beginning of a miracle-harvest in the land of our northern neighbors.”

So summarized American evangelist Merv Rosell after a two-week campaign drew capacity crowds to Calgary’s Jubilee Auditorium despite a Manitoba cold wave which dropped the mercury below zero.

Europe

Distaff Ordination

The Swedish Parliament approved a bill authorizing the ordination of women in the state Lutheran church. The bill cannot become law, however, until approved by the Lutheran Church Convocation, which holds a veto power over legislation which affects it.

The measure climaxing a 39-year legislative fight would permit women to receive the priestly office in the state church as of July, 1959. Action by the convocation is expected in a special session next fall.

Last year, the convocation voted 62 to 36 against the ordination of women.

Any more vetos may touch off drives to abolish the veto privilege of the convocation. Demands may even rise to divorce church and state.

The fight for the ordination of women first began in 1919.

The Right To Meet

Religious News Service says that Italian Protestants are seen to benefit by Constitutional Court decisions upholding the right to public assembly.

The decisions of the court, highest in constitutional matters, involves the Italian charter of 1948 which grants freedom of peaceful assembly in places open to the public.

The court ruled that an article of the charter must prevail over another in police laws of 1931 which required police authorization for such gatherings.

A spokesman for the Federal Council of Italian Evangelical Churches was quoted as saying that the court’s decisions were handed down in cases not directly involving Protestants. However, he said, they had a positive bearing on the life of the Italian evangelical communities “because there have been many manifestations of police intolerance of evangelical gatherings.”

Africa

Over A Barrel?

To what extent should missionary efforts be devoted to secular aspects of education?

Missions in Congo are wondering how far Christian education should go. The schools on the field present great opportunity for evangelism, but the secular trimmings are getting ever more costly in time, effort and money.

It is not a question of whether to support education, for no church can be expected to grow in an illiterate society. But how much education?

Years ago, the little class sitting in the sand under a palm tree was nothing more than a novelty. Interest was limited, for few cared about laborious study which seemed to hold no reward for the man in the bush.

It took the impetus of developing commerce after World War I to make Congolese youth realize that even a meager education was a paying proposition. There was a demand for clerks and salesmen, not to mention the prestige of being part of the “educated” class.

Missionaries generally were glad to see the influx of youth into the schools. Chiefs came from afar demanding teachers. Christian instruction blossomed.

But as the schools grew, costs rose. Then came the depression and it became increasingly difficult to carry on educational activities.

Roman Catholic schools won subsidies from the government for “national” missions starting in 1925. Non-Catholics missed out until after World War II and the change to a liberal-socialist government in Belgium.

Protestants had been hard-pressed until official government recognition and financial help came. Education costs were soaring far beyond limited missions budgets. Diplomas awarded were worthless to job seekers because the government had not accredited the institutions.

Finally came accreditation, but with it responsibilities. Teachers required more training to meet government standards, basically desirable though expensive. Curricula had to be formulated to suit government specifications. Courses had to be programmed, text books printed, reports submitted. All this for a chance to present the Gospel.

How much do missions contribute to the educational system in Congo? Roman Catholic sources say a government school costs four times as much as individual subsidies to mission institutions which accomplish comparable educational ends.

Finances are not the only concern, for missionaries now find themselves spending more and more time in educational activities removed from direct spiritual instruction. Children’s workers who came to the field to tell dark-skinned youngsters about Jesus are teaching them to count instead. Ministers who gave up comfortable parishes in America to take the Gospel to unreached tribes are occupied with reading and writing instruction. One small secondary school requires the efforts of at least four missionary couples.

Then with increasing interest in education comes the need for specialized schools and colleges. Belgian Congo has only two universities, one run by the government, the other by Catholics.

In most of Africa the opportunity for evangelism is unprecedented. How to meet this chance is a principle which demands comparison with the question of who holds the responsibility of public education. Missionaries are eager to establish a solid indigenous church. They must have schools to take advantage of the present opportunity. Yet they must weigh their investments into purely secular phases of instruction.

Is it worth the time and expense of carrying out unlimited secular education to be able to preach the Gospel to students? Should the missionary be obliged to work for the government in order to have an effective witness? Protestant missions in the Belgian Congo must decide where to draw the line.

Daughter To Sister

The Evangelical Church of Egypt came of age last month.

In Cairo’s historic Ezbekia Church, where the first Evangelical congregation was organized 96 years ago, the bang of a gavel opened the first formal meeting of the Synod of the Nile since its break with the United Presbyterian Church of North America.

Now the Synod, largest and oldest of the Protestant community in Egypt, is a sister church to the United Presbyterian movement which mothered it.

The Evangelical Church today has nearly 30,000 members and many more adherents in some 200 congregations throughout Egypt, led by 175 pastors and lay evangelists. Cairo is labeled “the third largest United Presbyterian city in the world,” giving way only to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in number of members.

In keeping with nationalistic spirit, Egyptian United Presbyterians last year petitioned the denomination’s General Assembly for permission to change from a Synod into an independent Evangelical Church. The permission was granted, and a number of Presbyterian officials in America were commissioned to witness the initial gathering of the separated sister church. Among those on hand were Dr. Robert N. Montgomery, president of Muskingum College and moderator of the General Assembly, and Dr. Park Johnson, field representative of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church of the U.S.A., with which the United Presbyterian Church is merging.

At the meeting, delegates elected the Rev. Labib Mishriky as its moderator for 1958.

The American United Presbyterian Mission in Cairo will continue liaison activities.

Korea

A Korean First

The first honorary doctorate ever conferred upon a missionary by a Korean government university was given last month to Mrs. Archibald Campbell of the Presbyterian mission in Taegu by Kyong Pook University for outstanding service in education.

Her citation for the degree of doctor of literature reads, “Distinguished educator … in the religious, academic and humanitarian institutions of our land; distiller of the joy of learning; inspirer of the love of scholarship; able interpreter and teacher of the English Bible; generous benefactress of the orphaned and unfortunate; exemplar mother and loyal co-worker with her missionary husband; erudite instructor …; for forty years the devoted friend of the people of Korea.…”

Mrs. Campbell is the wife of Dr. Archibald Campbell, president of Keimyong Christian College and a former president of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary now located in Seoul. The couple is retiring this year.

S. H. M.

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Reports from all over the nation confirm renewed interest and increasing activity over the question of Sunday business. Merchants who want to operate seven days a week are meeting stiff opposition from forces who seek new Sunday legislation and enforcement of similar existing laws.

The New Jersey State Assembly was ready for a keen floor struggle on a bill for stricter Sunday legislation. The Sunday opening of 200 supermarkets in the Detroit area was suspended following mounting remonstrances by church groups.

In Toledo, Ohio, Big Bear chain stores tried Sunday business for a month, then closed with the statement that “Sunday should be a day of worship, rest and recreation—a together-time—for our employees as well as our customers. We believe sales gains—in dollars and cents—are less important than the well-being and high morale of our associates and customers. We want our friends and customers to know that we tried it and don’t like it. We urge our competitors who are still open on Sunday to review their position and arrive at the ‘right’ answer.” A Toledo Real Estate Board survey showed 85 per cent of local realty firms opposed to keeping houses open for inspection on Sunday.

In New York, the National Retail Merchant Association came out against the opening of major stores on Sundays, excepting “those primarily engaged in selling articles absolutely necessary to the health and welfare of the community.”

Sunday business is rising rapidly as a leading issue in American political, social, and religious life. The pros and cons were joined this month in unique fashion when the matter was debated on the American Religious Town Hall Meeting, a nationwide telecast which brings together clergymen of different faiths to discuss “important questions affecting human rights and the dignity of man.” Seven programs were filmed in the Academy of Music and Congress Hall, Independence Square, in Philadelphia, for future release. Thirteen panelists, representing Protestants, Roman Catholics and Jews, and including officials of the Lord’s Day Alliance, participated in the discussions.

The general lines of debate found Dr. Frank H. Yost, Seventh-day Adventist editor of Liberty magazine, joining Jewish rabbis against his fellow Christians, a familiar if anomalous procedure. Panelists engaged themselves in such vigorous and heated exchanges that permanent program moderator Bishop A. A. Leiske, Seventh-day Adventist, expressed supreme confidence that no slump in listener ratings would result from the series. Indeed, the audience, heavily Adventist in sympathy, had to be verbally restrained from the platform. Seeking to quiet the panel at one point, Bishop Leiske intoned, “Now, we’re all Christians here” at which pronouncement the rabbi on the panel managed to conceal any surprise or amusement he may have felt. The charge was later made that the bishop had not wholly succeeded in the rather formidable assignment for an Adventist of keeping his comments entirely neutral as the Sabbath debate swirled about him. He likened his experience to that of Daniel in the den of lions.

The program topics, having been worked out within an orderly thought progression, manifested careful planning. Broader aspects of the problem were first considered, such as the separation of church and state, a principle agreed upon by nearly all Americans, who then proceed to evolve countless variations on the doctrine by differing as to the degree of separation which is to exist.

Dr. Clifford A. Nelson, Lutheran minister, declared that complete separation, toward divorcing religion from the state, was impossible. A sacred relation exists between them, he said, for “God is the author of liberty.” The Rev. Melvin M. Forney, general secretary of the Lord’s Day Alliance of the United States, pointed out that this country’s founding fathers, while establishing no single church, did place chaplains in the army and navy, enact Sunday legislation, and the like. The individuals composing the state had to express their convictions in the state.

On the other hand, Dr. Yost and Rabbi Arthur J. S. Rosenbaum, one of three Pennsylvania rabbis participating, called for as complete separation as possible. Dr. Yost would allow chaplains to teach “spiritual ethics” only, which seemed meager fare to the other Christians on the panel. Mr. Forney quoted William Penn, “Unless men are governed by God they will be ruled by tyrants.” Dr. J. Ernest Somerville, transplanted Scots Presbyterian minister, wanted it emphasized that church-state separation was not an eternal verity in the same category with basic Christian doctrine. “I know a land where the two are not separate and neither has been harmed thereby.”

Another question debated was whether the state is supreme over conscience. Methodist District Superintendent Ira B. Allen affirmed this to be so upon certain occasions when man’s conscience is untrustworthy, as when it would allow theft. Dr. Somerville said that while the state was not supreme over conscience, it often must stand in judgment upon it. Dr. Yost and Rabbi Rosenbaum held that the state has no control over conscience, though the former admitted that when conscience worked itself out in activity it was subject to as little government control as possible.

Next on the agenda was the question as to whether the state should foster religion. Baptist minister Mahlon W. Pomeroy averred that the state should provide an atmosphere where religion and worship can flourish. “The state must foster religion,” agreed Dr. Ellsworth Jackson, President of the Lord’s Day Alliance of Pennsylvania and Presbyterian minister of Philadelphia, for the state is “ordained of God.” It has “moral personality” derived from those who compose it. “Forty-two of our State constitutions acknowledge God.”

“The state must either foster religion or atheism,” continued the Rev. James H. Brasher, a Philadelphia Methodist minister. The state will “serve God or the devil,” and our coins say, “In God We Trust.” Dr. Yost expressed himself as being in favor of removing this inscription from our money, saying that religion is a “personal thing” and the government intrudes only at “great peril.” Dr. Jackson retorted that the state “cannot be neutral” and in fact already is fostering religion by such acts as governing the proximity of saloons to churches.

It was then asked whether the United States should be considered a Christian nation. Judge Anthony W. Daly, Roman Catholic from Alton, Illinois, stated that while the majority of those in our country are Christians, the government could not be so considered, being limited to the civil and moral realms. Mr. Forney, on the other hand, pointed out that the nation was named Christian in a Supreme Court decision never reversed. Dr. Somerville saw our government principles growing out of the Christian faith, while Rabbi Harold B. Waintrup declared that “we are Judeo-Christian inspired, though not having a Christian government as such.”

Mr. Allen claimed we were not Christian inasmuch as we worship gods like Mars and Bacchus. Dr. Somerville immediately interposed the distinction between perfectionism and Christian discipleship. America is not perfect, but as Sir Winston Churchill has said, she is noted for having committed some of the “least sordid” acts of human history.

A Call To Voters

On the issue as to whether there should be a religious test for public office, Dr. Yost said that such was disallowed by the Constitution. Sidney Orlofsky, Jewish lawyer of Philadelphia, opposed himself to “saints by law and hypocrites by action,” placing the burden on the churches and synagogues to make the voter religious. Mr. Pomeroy called for the voters to elect men of religious backgrounds and thus possessed of rootage for high ethical principles. “A man’s faith in God,” affirmed Dr. Jackson, “will guard him against corrupting influences.”

The debate which all awaited was of course whether or not America should repeal all her blue laws (named originally for the color of paper on which they were written), or whether it was right to establish a Sabbath by legislation. Adventist minister and announcer Dr. Horace J. Shaw emphasized the importance of the issue by declaring that the future freedom of Philadelphia may hinge on the answer given. Dr. Yost began the discussion by condemning the Sunday ordinances as “discriminatory, unfair, and unenforceable.” Being religious in nature, they are no rightful concern of the state for “there should be no law to direct religion.” Does not the Constitution “forbid the establishment of religion?” Therefore, these laws “should all be repealed.” Rabbi Waintrup named the laws “illegal.”

Far from being such, countered Mr. Forney, the constitutionality of the laws has been upheld as recently as 1957, and before that by the Supreme Court as well as by many state supreme courts. These are civil laws and “have been a part of our way of life from our earliest days,” he continued, “with the first thirteen states adopting such regulations, while today all of the forty-eight states, save only Nevada, have some kind of Sunday laws on their books.”

Preserving The Sabbath

Mr. Allen warned that “no nation can long survive when it tramples the Sabbath as does America” and pointed to French national decay in a period when she did away with the Sabbath. Dr. Nelson explained that man’s need for a rest day in seven is part of his nature as constituted by God. Thus while he is opposed to legalism, he sees the necessity of safeguarding a rest day for the working man by law.

Judge Daly would amend the laws rather than repeal them all. He looks on them as providing not a holy day but a day of rest. Replying to Rabbi Waintrup’s cry of “smokescreen,” Mr. Daly pointed out that the courts have upheld the Sabbath laws on health grounds.

Mr. Pomeroy sees an alleviating factor in the whole situation through the growing universality of the five-day week, which will leave both Saturday and Sunday free for worship. To destroy Sunday, he claims, is to work an unfair advantage in competition against the Christian businessman.

Mr. Brasher pointed out that in opposition to a tyranny of the minority, the majority has a right to its Sabbath and the laws to protect it. “Just any old day becomes no day at all, and the dyke is down before the wave of paganism and godlessness that sweeps in.” With prophetic fervor, Dr. Jackson proclaimed that the Sabbath is ours by divine right, having been included in the Decalogue which was given to Moses, a civil leader. “Our forefathers accepted this, and far from proving a limitation upon freedom, America became known as a haven of liberty around the world. Immigrants knew of the laws here and came anyway in search of freedom. Nowhere in the world are minorities treated better than in this country.” What limitations there may be (and he discovered some as a member of a minority group in Israel during the Sabbath), these are more than compensated for in countless ways.

One of the most frequently heard criticisms of the foregoing debates was the inadequacy of the period of 28½ minutes for six men properly to present their convictions on large subjects. Though it may come as a surprise to some that once one has announced his belief in church-state separation, there is still more to be said.

Indeed, here is one of the most difficult problems of Christian social ethics, plaguing scholars since first enunciation of the “rendering unto Caesar and Christ principle.” The Sunday laws are a part of this problem, all the more so because of their surprising latter-day resurgence. For better or for worse, they are a part of the American heritage, and they place us now in the stance of decision. Do they simply constitute a legalistic anachronism with which we should do away as soon as feasible, or do they provide a vital part of a disciplined check upon materialism which paradoxically has enabled the English-speaking peoples around the world to enjoy the highest living standards attained by men. De Tocqueville saw in the nineteenth-century American Sabbath one of the chief secrets of American greatness.

A Broader Context

In any case, before sacrificing a part of this country’s heritage for a doctrine of church-state separation which our fathers did not envision, it would seem to behoove the populace to do some very serious thinking. No less a nineteenth-century theologian than Charles Hodge devoted considerable space in his Systematic Theology to a vindication of the Sunday laws. And he saw the issue within a broader context. He saw the gross oversimplification of the human situation in holding forth the ideal of a complete separation of religion and state. He saw the goal of moral government apart from religion as unrealistic and unattainable. And he saw the impossibility of a neutral state. Secularism and naturalism are not neutral. Can a state long survive, regardless of the number of Christians it contains, when it officially snubs God?

As this question gains greater prominence, the Christian will be called upon to re-examine his own keeping of the Lord’s Day, remembering Voltaire’s aphorism, “As long as the Sabbath remains, the Christian religion can never be destroyed.” But let it not be a Sabbath simply of abstention. Rather, let every Sunday be an Easter Sunday!

F. F.

A Bridge To Cross

This week the San Francisco Bay area seemed closer than ever to spiritual revival.

Would the “city by the Golden Gate” span the hiatus between an eight-week evangelistic campaign and a true spiritual awakening? Does the April 27 opening of the San Francisco Bay Cities Crusade signal the start of the West Coast’s first big moving of the Spirit of God?

Not even the evangelist could answer those questions.

“Certainly the possibilities are there,” said Billy Graham as he prepared for the nightly meetings at the 18,000-seat Cow Palace, so called because of its association with livestock exhibitions.

For about the past 10 years, according to Graham, revival prayer groups composed of ministers and laymen have been meeting throughout the bay area.

Prayer interest, moreover, virtually snowballed as the crusade drew near. Throughout April, more than 3,000 prayer groups met four times a week in homes and offices. All-night prayer meetings were scheduled in a church in each of 11 bay area cities. A local radio station was carrying daily prayer broadcasts.

“We appeal to Christians everywhere to unite with us in intercession for this crusade,” said the Rev. George E. Bostrom, prayer chairman.

Truly the course was charted, as sensed by Graham: “The preparations are by far the most encouraging we have ever experienced.”

The 5,000 counsellor trainees, among them many ministers, busied themselves with six weekly meetings devoted to methods of personal evangelism. The fact that the number of counsellor volunteers continued to increase as the crusade drew near was another unprecedented development.

The Crusade Executive Committee headed by Dr. Sandford Fleming, president emeritus of Berkeley Baptist Divinity School, met every Tuesday at 8 a.m. Pre-crusade meetings for choir members and ushers also were scheduled along with prayer instruction assemblies.

The 1200 cooperating churches represented a wide area of northern California. (In San Francisco itself there are a total of about 430 churches. Not all of them are cooperating in the crusade.) Graham said church support surpassed that of last summer’s New York Crusade.

This Saturday night, the first of a series of telecasts was planned to bring the crusade into the homes of millions across America via the American Broadcasting Company network. The hour-long programs originating at the Cow Palace will be seen live by East Coast audiences at 10 p.m. The national television coverage will be augmented by 15-minute nightly telecasts over a San Francisco station.

There was much evidence that San Francisco is a needy city. Here a metropolis stands almost astride of the San Andreas fault that bred the disastrous earthquake of 1906. It is not inconceivable that the masses of rock on either side of the fault line will reach the limit of their elasticity. The result could be loss of life and property of catastrophic proportions.

Does this grim possibility deter godlessness? Not according to statistics which show in San Francisco that one of every two marriages ends in divorce, that the city has an alcoholism rate several times the national average, that in a population of 800,000 not more than 10,000 are found in church on any one Sunday morning. (Only five per cent of the population is affiliated with Protestantism.)

Yet “where sin abounded,” as Graham quoted Romans 5:20, “grace did much more abound.” The evangelist said that sometimes “the darker the picture, the greater the victory.”

People: Words And Events

Elections: As member of the General Board of the National Council of Churches representing its Division of Life and Work, the Rev. Charles C. Webber, AFL-CIO representative for religious relations; as president of the Methodist Council of Bishops, G. Bromley Oxnam; as a co-secretary of the Congregational Christian Churches, the Rev. Nathaniel M. Guptill.

Citations: From the Washington Pilgrimage, an association of clergymen who study religious heritage, to Dr. Joseph R. Sizoo, Milbank professor of religion at George Washington University, as “Clergyman of the Year”; to movie producer Cecil B. DeMille as “Lay Churchman of the Year”; to Dr. Georgia Harkness, of the Pacific School of Religion, as “Church Woman of the Year.” The group’s “Faith and Freedom Award” went to Louis Cassels of United Press.

Ceremonies: Commemorating 400th anniversary of the death of Johann Bugenhagen, noted Protestant reformer and close friend of Martin Luther, held throughout East German Province of Pommerania.

Grants: To the World Council of Christian Education and Sunday School Association, $25,000 to aid delegates to the Second World Institute on Christian Education in Japan, from the Lilly Endowment; to Westmont College, $25,000, from the United States Steel Foundation.

Appointments: As secretary of the Bible Lands Agency North, American Bible Society affiliate in Beirut, Lebanon, the Rev. James A. Weeks; as executive secretary of the American Scripture Gift Mission, the Rev. James O. Palmer.

Deaths: Dr. Richard Tyner, 81, Church of Ireland (Anglican) Bishop of Clogher since 1944, in Dublin; Mother Maria Wolff, 104, believed to be the oldest deaconess in the world, at the Lutheran deaconess training center in Nuremberg where she began her career in 1871.

Crusades: With evangelist Torrey Johnson in Liverpool, England, next month, to be followed by rallies in Oslo and Stockholm; with evangelist Eugene Boyer in Paris, April 26–May 11.

Authorization: To release the film Martin Luther for television, announced by Lutheran Church Productions, Inc.

Resignation: As Archbishop of Uppsala and Primate of the Swedish state Lutheran church, Dr. Yngve Brilioth, upon reaching the retiring age of 67.

He calls attention to the writings of a Methodist bishop back in 1904, when Wales was sensing revival. Said author Warren Candler:

“The next great awakening will … bring forth … mighty men of God (who) will do something more than stir a local interest or excite a transient enthusiasm. Aided by all the modern devices of transportation and communication, they will be able to extend their influence as the revivalists in former times could not.… In America we may reasonably expect a great revival, the center of which will be in the West, and the power of which will be felt all along the Pacific Coast.”

“Perhaps,” commented Graham, “we are standing on the threshhold of the fulfillment of this 50-year-old prophecy.”

(Candler’s statement appears in his Great Revivals and the Great Republic and is quoted in Dr. Sherwood E. Wirt’s Spiritual Awakening.)

But what can such a metropolitan phenomenon mean to the individual clergyman? Said Dr. Louis W. Pitt, rector of Manhattan’s Grace Episcopal Church and chairman of the counselling committee for Graham’s New York meetings: “There is no question that the crusade can be the means of tremendous spiritual blessings for ministers.” Referring to the crusade, Pitt said there was “nothing quite comparable” in all of his ministry.

The San Francisco minister who holds the post corresponding to Pitt’s is the Rev. Joe R. Kennedy, pastor of the West Side Christian Church, who said:

“I sense a growing expectancy in the hearts of ministers, who witness for Christ in this metropolitan area, for the opportunity of leading those into full commitment with Christ and the church, who take the first step during the Graham crusade.”

The Great Stakes

Representatives of religious groups took part in a “National Conference of Organizations on International Trade Policy” which was addressed by President Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and other government leaders.

A total of 120 national organizations took part in the Washington conference at which administration leaders urged a broader policy of trade relations with other nations in the interest of world peace and economic prosperity.

Among those represented were the Catholic Association for International Peace, Jewish War Veterans of the U. S. A., National Catholic Rural Life Conference, National Council of Churches, National Council of Jewish Women, Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice and the Young Women’s Christian Association.

Mr. Eisenhower expressed “grateful thanks … for this magnificent bi-partisan citizen effort to rouse Americans to the great stakes all of us have in widening and deepening channels of world trade.”

COMPARATIVE ECCLESIASTICS

At the Women’s Auxiliary Buffet, Pastor Weems, Dr. Ivy, and Dean Drinkwater were chatting as Weems finished a second slice of chocolate whipped cream cake. Studying the trio, I was reminded of the importance of Comparative Ecclesiastics, the psychosomatic study of atypical clergy. The following introductory descriptions are of value to research assistants, pulpit committees, and prospective ladies of the manse.

Ecclesiastics Ectomorphus. Solid supporter of church suppers, bake sales, teas. Often visits in the homes of his parish to encourage hospitality. A weighty opponent of asceticism. Prefers Genevan robe in pulpit (52, short). Jolly sermonettes a specialty.

Clericus Mesomorphus. Enthusiastic keystone of young men’s activities, notably at second base on the soft-ball team. Develops small group emphasis throughout the church year: bowling, basketball, tennis, golf in season. Muscular preaching with booming cross-nave volley. Casualties from handclasps at the door.

Doctorandus Endomorphus. His immortal sermons never die, they just fade away. He carries the groceries with a scholarly stoop and drives his vintage Packard with philosophic detachment. He can sometimes recall the name of a parishioner by associating him with a Continental scholar.

Predicandus Amorphus is all things to all men. An evangelicalliberal with leanings toward and away from neodoxy and paleoism. Heartily concurs in both sides of every argument—with minor reservations. Man of many deep convictions which last for days.

Your cooperation is invited in compiling profiles of other notable types. Studies are in progress on Tyranothesaurus Rex who hurls synonyms like thunderbolts and defies you to break into his conversation, and Dialecticus Non Dubitandum.

EUTYCHUS

THE GRAVECLOTHES

Hillyer Straton’s article on the resurrection of our Lord (Mar. 31 issue), on the whole, was very well done. For me, however, the paragraph about the napkin that had enwrapped the head of Jesus, left something to be desired.… What convinced John that Jesus had risen as he promised was the fact, obvious from their position, that no human hands had touched these graveclothes to empty or rearrange them. For the body indeed was gone. The physical remains had been transformed on the third day into that wonderful and incorruptible thing St. Paul called the “spiritual body.” But the linens still lay in the place where the head and torso of Jesus had rested. They had, however, collapsed from the weight of the spices. The Greek word translated “rolled up” in the Authorized Version and “wrapped together” in the Revised Version, used to describe their condition, does not mean that the linens had been folded and placed in piles. On the contrary, it means that as the linens collapsed they retained the annular, ringlike shape that had been given them by the use to which they had been put. Such a sight would indeed open the eyes of one who had the capacity for insight enjoyed by the Beloved Disciple.

So we read (John 20:8), John “saw, and believed.”

Wichita, Kan.

THE CROSS

Your editorial on “Preaching the Cross” (Mar. 17 issue): we distinguish between the fact and the philosophy of the Atonement.… By the Atonement as fact we understand the gracious work of the Lord Jesus for the blessing of men. All else is theory and mode of putting. One might well hold fast to the fact with all conviction and devotion, and at the same time find no acceptable theory.

Nobleton, Fla.

Your editorial … rates the highest comment of praise! May the all-sufficient grace of God lead you to give us more editorials of this sort!

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church

Vincennes, Ind.

In the Roman Catholic church the crucifix stands upon or over the altar. In this house, in every chapel, in every room there is a crucifix.… The Protestants are the ones who have removed the cross from the buildings and from their altars and from their homes.

The Order Of The Holy Cross

West Park, N. Y.

LIBERTARIANS

I wish to express my appreciation to you for … one of the finest magazines of its sort to which I have ever subscribed.… I feel compelled, however, to protest about … “Christ and the Libertarians” (Mar. 17 issue).… It seems to me to be a tragic mistake to interpret evangelical Christianity as being favorable to economic or political fascism. As a fundamentalist, I am convinced that the so-called “creeping socialism” of the New Deal was far closer to the Christianity of the Bible than anything set forth by those peculiar organizations to which Mr. Howard makes reference.

First Presbyterian Church

San Diego, Calif.

I take exception to Mr. Howard’s article. I have long been dissatisfied with the “social gospel” approach and cannot always agree with the National Council of Churches. I support the Spiritual Mobilization movement as a libertarian, and think that you have done that organization a grave injustice by allowing such an un-Christian, humanitarian, bigoted movement as the Christian Freedom Foundation to be compared with the high, spiritual, Christian purposes of Spiritual Mobilization!

Union Presbyterian Church

Lost Nation, Iowa

Christian Freedom Foundation has been called many things, but I think this is the first time we have been charged with humanitarianism! That label we accept! We are humanitarian! We believe in seeking the welfare of man—under God—and are convinced that the welfare of man is advanced better in a free society than in any kind of a socialistic system.

With that Spiritual Mobilization would agree also. In fact, the Christian Freedom Foundation and Spiritual Mobilization would agree on their political and economic views anyhow. The only difference, which I pointed out in the article in question, is a difference of emphasis. Christian Economics has been more biblical and evangelical. This is not to say that what Faith and Freedom has published has not been true. As a former writer for that publication, I certainly hope that was the case.

Christian Freedom Foundation, Inc.

New York, N. Y.

“Christ and the Libertarians” was of particular interest. It has always seemed to me that the Scripture as a whole upholds our so-called “American way of life”—private ownership of property, employer and employee, etc., rather than depending so much on government. The article brings out many factors of truth on the question.

Publisher

Martinsville Daily Reporter

Martinsville, Ind.

Inasmuch as there can be no genuine morality apart from the regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit, we conservatives should be in the forefront of a movement to restore freedom to our land, whether it be religious, political or economic.…

Chapelgate Lane Church

United Presbyterian

Baltimore, Md.

THE FINAL TEST

I wish to heartily commend L. Nelson Bell’s “Bricks Without Straw” (Mar. 17 issue). Dr. Bell’s contentions are profoundly true, … show up humanism for what it is and bound to do good.…

But … it is a fact … that fully 50 per cent of the membership of the churches … is worthless to the church.… Surely all of this is not due to modernism. So maybe Dr. Morrison and Chas. B. Templeton have something when they contend for a reformed evangelism. So give us a method that will be as good as the one on message and we will be twice grateful to you. Is it not true that the final test of a thing is the quality of its product?

Franklin, Ky.

It has become apparent that such papers as The Christian Century and Advance have adopted the belief that Christianity is a “corporate religion” of the kind criticized by L. Nelson Bell. The Congregationalist, which first appeared in February, 1958, under a name which for years was most highly honored in American religious journalism, is dedicated to the belief that “the church” is primarily a company of individuals who are disciples of the Lord Jesus.

National Association of Congregational Christian Churches in the U. S.

Melrose, Mass.

Conversion and church membership are not two steps but one. There is no “clear distinction” between them. The decision to receive Christ and the decision to be a part of the church are one.… Great weakness stems from those who claim the Faith but have never joined the church either in the technical or the broader sense of the phrase. Either act alone is incomplete.

First Baptist Church

Bonesteel, S. D.

FAITH AND PHYSICAL FORCE

There is something I want to say regarding “Catholics in the News” (Mar. 17 issue).… Having spent seven years in South America, traveling extensively in every country of that continent, I know that the church is the government, and when the church condemns for heresy, the state imposes the penalty prescribed by the church.

Their denial of persecutions of Protestants in Columbia are such rank falsehoods that in spite of their adroit duplicity, no well-informed person is fooled. You may be in possession of the following, but I pass it on to you anyway:

“The church has persecuted. Only a tyro in church history will deny that. One hundred and fifty years after Constantine the Donatists were persecuted, and sometimes put to death. Protestants were persecuted in France and Spain with the full approval of church authorities. We have always defended the persecution of the Huguenots and the Spanish Inquisition. Wherever and whenever there is honest catholicity, there will be a clear distinction drawn between truth and error, and catholicity and all forms of heresy. When she thinks it good to use physical force, she will use it. Will the Catholic Church give bond that she will not persecute at all? Will she guarantee freedom and equality of all churches and faiths? The Catholic Church gives no bonds for her good behaviour” (The Western Watchman [Roman Catholic], Dec. 24, 1908).

… The attitude of the Catholic Church toward Protestants is clearly and boldly stated. In view of this I am amazed that many of the so-called outstanding leaders of Protestantism, and especially those who are working so hard to bring about a union of all churches, are flirting with the Catholic Church authorities, making concession after concession, in their determined endeavor to bring that church into the union. And almost in the same breath they quibble about whether Seventh-day Adventists are to be classed as evangelicals or not!…

Eric Tracy, the Roman Catholic Archdeacon of Halifax, York, forecast that by the end of this century the Anglican Church (England) will no longer be an established church. I quote his words: “A nation with a predominantly Roman Catholic population will by then have the constitution of the country changed, so that the cathedrals and ancient parish churches are made over to the Roman Catholics; the king (or queen) of this country is crowned by a Roman Catholic prelate; and the Anglican Church and its clergy are deprived of the privileges that now belong to them as ministers of the establishment.”

This is a fair example of the aims and purposes of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, not merely for England, but for the United States, as well. Their aims and purposes as regards our educational institutions are only too apparent.…

Arlington, Calif.

THE ‘PURITANS’

“Sex and Smut on the Newsstands” (Feb. 17 issue) made me slightly ill—but not for the reason you think. But for these:

1. The magazines are sold openly; hence they must be legal; hence they come within the strict censorship laws that the powerful and holier-than-thou Puritans have foisted on us.

2. They are perforce “suggestive”—but not in an obscene sense—since they must abide by the blue laws. Hence they cannot deal adultly with sex. And let’s face it—sex is here to stay!—God-created … in every normal male.

3. Evidence of this is the wide acceptance of these magazines—which keeps them in business.

4. “Suggestive” features of these publications are, as mentioned, entirely due to the bluenoses. Attack these latter, rather than the symptoms, viz. “suggestive” mags.

5. If the powerful Puritans did not keep the U. S. in diapers (cf. the more enlightened European nations), there would be no need for males to search for information in these periodicals.

6. My hackles are raised by the reference to photos of the female body as “smutty.” The most beautiful thing the good Lord created is that same female body.

7. Notice authors of the article read “hundreds of the stories in those magazines.” Thus, by this time and according to their own reasoning, they must be utterly depraved. Hence their views are not to be respected by a normal person like myself.

But why go on? The Puritans, who live in constant fear that someone, somewhere may be enjoying sex, have lobbied through the strictest censorship. Now, they are freshly alarmed that red-blooded males may be enjoying the little they have allowed to trickle through.

New York, N. Y.

We who profess to be Christians must … realize that it has been through our inability to properly present our side that has furthered Satan’s reign. We as Christians must be able to meet every challenge and it is our God-granted duty to show why and how our way is the best and we must do this because … to legislate sin out of existence is an impossibility.

Memphis, Tenn.

BLUEPRINT OF MORE YALTAS?

An analysis of the current objectives of Soviet foreign policy.

The prime objective of current Soviet foreign policy is a summit conference. The communists are in the midst of a very strong campaign to force the United States into an international conference with Soviet leaders. The Soviet leaders have led the neutralist leaders to believe that the USSR might be willing to make concessions which would enhance the possibility of world peace. For this reason the neutralist leaders devote themselves wholeheartedly to the achievement of the sort of international conference the communist leaders desire. The United States, having suffered severe losses at Yalta and in almost every subsequent international conference, has been strong in its opposition. John Foster Dulles, as the Secretary of State, spelled out the United States position in a way that precluded misunderstanding.

Once the United States had taken a position, especially an uncompromising one, the Soviet Union called attention to this position, and suggested that in reality, it was the United States that actually blocked the path to peaceful co-existence. This touched off a very bitter attack on the United States in general and John Foster Dulles in particular. The British Labor Party, Canadian Liberals, and many of the socialist leaders of Europe denounced Dulles and the U. S. in terms almost as vehement as those of Khrushchev. Covert and overt socialists in the United States joined the drive in savage smear attacks on Mr. Dulles. In an all too frequent pattern the socialist parties lent their strength to the attainment of Soviet objectives in isolating the United States from all its allies in a futile effort to gain the sympathy and cooperation of the Soviet communists. The Soviets exude an air of reasonableness, and push the old program of the “front populaire”, while Western socialists devote all their strength to the achievement of the objectives of Soviet foreign policy. Khrushchev and the socialists become allies in the necessary task of painting John Foster Dulles in the blackest terms possible and isolating the United States from all sympathy and help.

When the pressure from America’s “allies” and well-wishers became irresistible, the United States was forced to alter its position and admitted the possibility of an international conference under certain conditions. In such a conference, the United States cannot fail to lose its shirt. For the two camps are Russia on the one side, and the United States and its “allies” on the other. England is the “ally” of the United States to exactly the same degree that the U. S. was England’s ally in the “Suez venture.” France is the U. S. “ally” to the same degree that the United States supports French interests in North Africa. Just as the United States has not hesitated to sacrifice British or French interests in the pursuance of its own objectives, so neither England or France hesitates to sacrifice American interests in an effort to purchase peace from the Russians.

The United States, with England and France and others as ostensible allies, is pitted on the one side against a united and determined Soviet delegation. Could anyone imagine that the United States could do any “hard bargaining” in this situation? Of course not; the inevitable result must be more Yaltas, and a further weakening of the United States, with its consequence, the strengthening of Russia.

Khrushchev wants an international conference because he knows it will produce more victories for Soviet foreign policy. He sorely needs these cheap and easy victories to balance against domestic difficulties in Russia. Communism’s disillusionment from within, and internal economic problems have so far baffled all attempts at solution. With cheap victories in foreign policy, Khrushchev can offer the plausible argument that at any rate he has successfully followed and duplicated Stalin’s foreign policy successes, and therefore deserves the support of all Russians, since there is no excuse for breaking up a winning combination. He also gains respect in the eyes of communists and communist sympathizers outside of Russia for having contributed to the growing strength of the fatherland of Communism.

There is little doubt but that American indifference, British and French sabotage, both based on an ignorance of the objectives of Soviet foreign policy which is inexcusable at this late date, will give to Khrushchev the victories he so sorely needs.

University of Washington

Seattle, Wash.

RELISHED OPPORTUNITIES

It seems that a great amount of correspondence that you receive is from theologians, pastors, and other religious adherents who relish in their opportunity to make public their refutations, negations and denials of the great fundamental tenets of Christianity.…

If these gentlemen would either accept, embrace and declare the great teachings that they deny and attempt to undo, or bow completely out admitting their agnosticism, Christianity, with access to modern communications and a purged fold, would surge ahead with an unequalled conquest in history since Pentecost.…

Sao Paulo, Brazil

I am enjoying reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The material is of a high standard and even the letters interesting, although not necessarily acceptable in viewpoint. One does not have to agree with another’s argument to appreciate that he might be correct or is as honest in his approach to the correct answer as we are.

I make one observation. One correspondent says, “I am a born-again Christian.” Now, what other kind is there? Surely if one is saved, he is born again. He is a Christian. If he is a Christian, he can only be such by being born again. A saved man is regenerated—there are no degrees. There may be some degree of consecration or holiness, but if he is born again, he is a Christian without any prefixes.

Toronto, Ont.

SPRING FASHION NOTE

The only truly appropriate garment for this current wicked and perverse generation would seem to be sackcloth and ashes. Our fashion designers have now given us “The Sack,” but where are the ashes?

Stuttgart, Germany

Orthodoxy is not an end but a means. As an end in itself it can be deadly; as a means to an end it leads the Christian into a full and glorious experience, not only of Christ as Saviour from sin but also of Christ as daily companion and Lord of life.

It is not enough to be orthodox in belief, for the Scriptures tell us that devils believe and tremble. They believe every essential doctrine of the Christian faith but remain devils.

During our Lord’s earthly ministry the most orthodox people with whom he had to deal were the Pharisees. But the most scathing denunciations to fall from the lips of the gentle Saviour were reserved for these men who knew the letter of the law but whose hearts and lives were so far from the truth.

Make no mistake: I believe the very heart of the Gospel centers in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I accept the Christ of the Scriptures—pre-existent with God, born of a virgin, truly God and truly man, the second person of the Trinity. I believe the record of his miracles. I believe his deity as presented to us in the Bible, that he was verily the Son of God. I believe he died on the Cross as a substitute for me and that by the shedding of his precious blood a way of cleansing and redemption was opened to all who would believe. I believe that the third day he arose again from the dead, that he had the same body although there were changes our finite minds can neither understand nor adequately explain. I believe that he ascended into heaven, sending the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, into the world to dwell in our hearts and to woo us to him. I believe he is surely coming again and that he will judge the quick and the dead and that he shall reign forever as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Believing all this without equivocation, I am convinced that if man’s faith and life stops at this point he will find himself in a most dangerous position, for, if orthodoxy of belief does not lead to Christian living it is a barren thing indeed, for Christian living is the fruit of a life redeemed by the Christ of Calvary.

The Bible is crystal clear in its affirmations that we are saved by the grace of God as he gives to us faith to believe and accept that which he has done for us through his Son. It is equally clear that none of this can be earned or deserved, that it is a matter of believing, not achieving, and that even the faith to believe is a work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

But the Bible is equally clear that not every one who says, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but rather those who do the will of God. It is his will that we shall live lives consistent with the faith we profess.

The Apostle James, rather than contradicting Paul’s strong assertions with reference to the just living by faith, simply shows the other side of the coin—that a saving faith will show itself in a saved life. As the body without the spirit is dead so a faith without commensurate works is also dead.

John the Baptist demanded that the Pharisees and Sadducees bring forth fruits consistent with the repentance they professed. Our Lord insisted that we who follow him should by good works bring honor and glory to his name.

It is hard for me to overstate my conviction with reference to certain essential doctrines of the Christian faith. There are such doctrines and they are essential because they have to do with what we believe about Christ, both as to his person and also his work of redemption. It is because of lack of conviction on these essential matters that so many have no saving faith or message. But the point of this article is to insist that unless the things we believe have eventuated into a new life in Christ there is something deadly wrong.

An orthodoxy which permits men to hate instead of love, to bear false witness instead of telling the truth, to rejoice in evil rather than to sorrow over it, to proclaim the sins and mistakes of brother Christians rather than to cover them in love, to assume a negative form of religion rather than a positive way of life in which Christ is made the center and his glory the objective: such an orthodoxy is a deadly thing and needs to be repented of in sackcloth and ashes.

Over the years there has been a great controversy over the content of the Christian faith. I believe that one of the great weaknesses of the Church today is her lack of concern as to what must be the heart of the Christian message, while she spends much of her energies in secondary matters.

At the same time, I believe the cause of Christ has suffered greatly at the hands of those who, proclaiming their orthodoxy to the skies, have shown themselves totally lacking in Christian love, courtesy and forbearance. The Apostle Paul writes: “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, forbearing”; but how often we who regard orthodoxy as so important fail to heed this warning!

The fruits of the Spirit should be evident in the lives of the orthodox more than in any other people. Listen: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Does orthodoxy produce such fruit in your life? Does it in mine?

Is not the answer to this riddle that only an orthodoxy of belief which is anointed by and filled with the Holy Spirit is truly worth while?

Our Lord knew the Pharisees were versed in the law and careful about the keeping of its ceremonial requirements. But he likened them to sepulchres filled with dead men’s bones; to cups which had been washed on the outside but were filthy on the inside.

In our contention for the verities of the Christian faith let us be very sure that the faith we so loudly proclaim has really done something to our lives. Unless we are new creatures in Christ, showing something of his transforming and keeping power; something of his love and compassion; something of his concern for the needy as well as the lost; something of his patience and forbearance under provocation—unless others can see in us something of his likeness, then for God’s sake—and we say this with the deepest reverence—let us stop and examine our orthodoxy and see what manner of men we truly are.

Paul, that stalwart for orthodox belief, that great spokesman for man’s sinfulness and God’s complete provision for that sin, says in Romans 2:13, “For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.” Let us make sure that we have not simply heard with the ear and given an intellectual assent to divine truth, but let us never rest until the living Christ is both our Saviour from sin and the Lord of our daily lives.

(In an early issue we shall consider the dangers of liberalism.)

L. NELSON BELL

Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven (Acts 1:11).

In the ascension He becomes invisible not by a process of spiritualization or translation into deity. What happens is an exchange of place. He was on earth and he went to heaven. He went up from a specific place, the Mount of Olives, less than a mile from Jerusalem in the direction of Bethany. Before he separated from his disciples he blessed them. In an attitude of blessing he leaves the earth and goes up to heaven. Thus he had come, thus he had lived, and thus he now returned. He is himself the content of all the blessings of God, the achiever, the possessor, and the distributor of them all (Eph. 1:3).

The great future belongs to Jesus Christ and to his Church. This is the ultimate meaning of New Testament apocalyptic. Our Lord is the Coming One. When or how he shall come we know not; generations may have to run their course first, and in the end the Advent may be far other than we anticipate. But of one thing we are assured by our Christian faith: beyond the furthest limits of human history there is an age of fuller knowledge, larger power, more splendid achievements, a more perfect life, than the existing order can attain to. No progress of scientific discovery, no changes of social conditions, no system of education or politics or ethical principles, can abolish Pain or Death or Sin; only the faith of Christ can promise that Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more; the first things are passed away … and there shall in no wise enter … anything unclean.

The chief thing to which the angels called the attention of the disciples, and ours should be directed, is the certainty of his second coming; for this is an event, which, although an object of dreadful expectation to the unbelieving and impenitent, is fraught with hope and joy to those who love and obey the truth. The person who shall appear, will be “that same Jesus who was taken up into heaven,” clothed with the same nature, sustaining the same relations to us, animated with the same love, and carrying on the same gracious design.… Oh! how joyful the meeting, so long promised, so eagerly expected! It will be the day of the gladness of his heart, to behold around him those for whom he died upon the cross, and has ever since ministered in heaven: it will be a source of ineffable felicity to them, to see him whose glory was the subject of their contemplations in this world, to be taken under his immediate care, to be admitted to the most intimate fellowship with him, and to know that no event shall ever separate them again.

Why Stand Gazing?

They need not stand gazing up skywards, said the two visitants. “This same Jesus” would indeed come back in the way in which he went—but the implication is that he would not appear again immediately. They had seen him go in cloud and glory; in cloud and glory he would return. But an interval was to elapse between his exaltation and parousia, and in that interval the possession of the Spirit was to be the pledge of the coming consummation of glory. Christ is ascended, but his abiding presence and energy fill the whole book of Acts, and the whole succeeding story of his people on earth.

F. F. BRUCE

There was something hard and chilling in the very form of address, “Ye men of Galilee”; not, “Ye satraps of the King of Kings,” nor “Ye captains in the mighty Victor’s host.” So then the glory had departed. They were humble fishermen and peasants still, simple inhabitants of a despised province, doomed to a life of vulgar toil and commonplace cares. A fit introduction this to the rebuke which follows, “Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” “Face the stern realities of life at once. You have work to do, which will tax all your energies. There is this tremendous load of sin, under which mankind is sinking, and you are called to remove it; there is this dense cloud of ignorance, which shrouds the heavens from them, and you are charged to scatter it. There is a whole world to be conquered for Christ, and you must conquer it. What matter it to you when he will come—this very moment, tomorrow, next year, centuries hence? Cease to gaze up into heaven. Earth is the scene of your labors now; earth must be the center of your interests.”

J. B. LIGHTFOOT

According to the system of the Jews, there were three heavens;—the aerial heaven, which is the region of clouds and meteors; the starry heaven, in which the celestial luminaries are fixed; and the heaven of heavens, in which the throne of God is erected. Our Redeemer ascended above the two former, or the visible heavens, and entered into the latter, which is concealed from mortal eyes by an impenetrable veil. Where the highest heaven is seated we cannot tell; but, agreeably to an idea which seems to be natural because it is common, it is said to be above us; and hence his passage to it from this world is called an ascent. It is the place in which the glory of God, which is partially seen in his works, is fully revealed, angels and departed spirits of the just at present reside, and the redeemed, after the resurrection, will have their everlasting habitation.

JOHN DICK

In Like Manner

This same Jesus shall come again in his own person, clothed with this glorious body; this same Jesus, who came once to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, will appear a second time without sin. He who came once in disgrace to be judged, will come again in glory to judge. This same Jesus, who has given you a charge, will come again to call you to give account, how you have performed your trust.

THOMAS SCOTT

Our Lord ascended in human nature. The man Christ Jesus has left the earth, and entered into that invisible region of the universe where God sits on the throne of his majesty. To his followers, it is a source of high consolation to know, that he has not laid aside their nature, but retains it amidst his glory; because they can look up to him with confidence, in the full assurance of his sympathy, and see, in his exaltation, an earnest of their future glory.

JOHN DICK

Note the significant use of the name “Jesus,”—the name that speaks of his humanity, with all its tenderness and brotherhood. Note the triple recurrence of “heaven.” Note the emphasis laid on the parallel between the manner of departure and of return: “so,” “in like manner”; that is, in clouds (Rev. 1:7), corporeally, visibly. Note that they are not told that they shall see the return, as they have seen the ascension. The angels’ message was not to make them know the times and seasons, but to turn them from vain gazing into an empty heaven to strenuous work and to triumphant hope.

ALEXANDER MACLAREN

Christianity is a life of triumph because it is life in the risen Christ. And it is precious to know that each born-again person is marked by God himself for a glorious destiny—that is, “to be conformed to the image of his Son”; to be a living stone in that magnificent structure of pure gold which shall come forth as a “bride adorned for her husband”; and “that in the ages to come he will show us forth as tokens of his grace.”

Can we fully appreciate all that will be included in that day when we are shown forth before the heavenly host? May the blessed Holy Spirit take these truths and seal them to my own heart—and to yours—as our special blessing for this, another Mother’s Day.

The Saviour Without Room

It is still true that “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Prov. 14:34). It is two thousand years since God’s Son was on earth, proclaiming to all a way out of every difficulty. At his birth angels announced: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.” But men of earth said: “No room for him in the inn.” Their attitude did not change with time, for we read in John 1:11. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” What a sad statement, yet how true today.

“Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” These words, spoken nearly two thousand years ago by the writer of Romans (10:1), today might well be upon the lips and planted deeply in the heart of every Christian.

When we sense the widespread confusion on the national and international scene, as well as in the minds of individuals, it behooves Christians to be much in prayer for the salvation of those who do not know Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.

Mothers In The Home

Christian mothers do not want Mother’s Day to be one of self-congratulation. It is a day for heart searching and for a new awareness of the vital role God has given us in the home, in the lives of our children, and in the life of the nation as a whole.

The resources of the Christian mother are limited solely by the love and grace of God. It is to him that she turns in prayer, not only for the strength needed for each day but also for blessings for her children. Through prayer there comes wisdom, understanding and grace. As our children sense our prayer lives they too learn the vital place of communion with our Heavenly Father.

The Bible is also our unswerving guide. How often in the silent watches of the night the precious promises of the Word become our stay and comfort! At early morn and at the close of day our children learn that man does not live by bread alone. When God and his Word are given their rightful place in the home it is then that we who are mothers have in some measure discharged our responsibility to those God has given us. Then, and only then, can we look at our children and at the future with confidence.

Morrow Coffee Graham (Mrs. William F. Graham), is the mother of evangelist Billy Graham. Her solicited Mother’s Day meditation comes from a heart yearning to reach those who do not know Christ. She resides in Charlotte, N. C.

A distinctive feature of Seventh-day Adventist teaching is the “heavenly sanctuary” doctrine. On the day after “the great disappointment” in 1844, Hiram Edson assertedly experienced a vision of heaven in which he saw Christ, the High Priest, entering the most holy place in heaven to cleanse it. Here then, of course, lay the readiest explanation for the failure of Christ to return to earth as had been expected by the Adventists.

What was the purpose of this supposed cleansing of the sanctuary in 1844? To learn this, the Adventists turned to the biblical account of the yearly day of Atonement, and found there, presumably in type, the explanation of this new phase of the ministry of Christ in behalf of sinners.

A passage from Mrs. White’s writings, reprinted by the Seventh-day Adventists in 1947, summarizes the meaning of this doctrine:

As the sins of the people were anciently transferred, in figure, to the earthly sanctuary by the blood of the sin offering, so our sins are, in fact, transferred to the heavenly sanctuary by the blood of Christ. And as the typical cleansing of the earthly was accomplished by the removal of the sins by which it had been polluted, so the actual cleansing of the heavenly is to be accomplished by the removal, or blotting out of the sins which are there recorded. This necessitates an examination of the books of record to determine who, through repentance of sin and faith in Christ, are entitled to the benefits of his atonement. The cleansing of the sanctuary, therefore, involves a work of investigative judgment. This work must be performed prior to the coming of Christ to redeem his people, for when he comes, his reward is with him to give to every man according to his works.

The Need For Buttressing

This passage is neither out of context nor unrepresentative of Adventist thought. Several matters here require attention. Something might well be said respecting the Adventist view of the time of Christ’s entering the most holy place. The New Testament informs us that in connection with his atoning work at Calvary, Christ entered once for all into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us, and a reading of the book of Hebrews alone ought to make this clear enough. It might be urged too that this whole system has based an idea of the Atonement around a precarious interpretation of a difficult prophetic theme, rather than deriving it from a treatment of those passages of Scripture which deal explicitly with the subject—certainly a most unfortunate way of dealing with the Bible. Lacking a special theory of this kind, who would ever have thought of understanding the Scriptures to teach that Christ “in 1844 entered the 2nd apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, and that he had a work to perform in the most holy before coming to this earth”?

The Investigative Judgment

But, most important, we must ask just what, in the Adventist view, is Christ doing in the most holy place in heaven? He is carrying on what is described as the investigative judgment, the purpose of which is to determine who, from among those sinners whose sins have been forgiven by faith in him, are entitled to the benefits of his atonement, and thus have their sins finally blotted out. The question that interests us here is, who are shown to be entitled to the benefits of the atoning work of Christ? The answer to this question is found in the writings of Mrs. White, who was assertedly given prophetic insight into these matters. This passage is also quoted in Questions on Doctrine, latest publication of the Adventists explaining their views to the public.

All who have truly repented of sin, it says, and by faith claimed the blood of Christ as their atoning sacrifice have had pardon entered against their names in the books of heaven. “As they have become partakers of the righteousness of Christ, and their characters are found to be in harmony with the law of God, their sins will be blotted out, and they themselves accounted worthy of eternal life.”

Now it must be emphasized that the Adventists do not say that salvation is through keeping the Commandments. In their view it is not possible for a sinner in his own strength to reach the stage where his character is found to be entirely in harmony with the Law of God. The situation is rather that Christ imparts his character to believers, as they allow him to, keeping the Law in and through them, that they may be found acceptable in the great assize. Moreover, the Adventists do not teach that any believer will keep the Law perfectly; continual cleansing from sin is necessary and is provided for; in their words, “When the name of a true child of God comes up in the judgment the record will reveal that every sin has been confessed”—that in itself, as Martin Luther would testify, is a large order—“that every sin has been confessed and has been forgiven.”

The Crucial Point

When we have given full weight to these reservations, however, it remains true that at the crucial point, the point at which the destiny of the sinner is forever settled, the righteousness of Christ is not the sole ground of his hope; it is the righteousness of Christ and, in some measure, his character which is the basis of his acceptance. Thus, at that moment when, in the view of Adventism, life and death hang in the balance, the appropriate word is not, after all, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” For in Adventism at least one stitch in the saint’s celestial garment shall be of his own making. And if it is thus, then grace is no more grace.

Legalism And The Law

This brings us to the question of legalism. In the various books and pamphlets which oppose the Seventh-day Adventist movement, a prominent note is criticism of their legalism. That Adventism has elements of what is undoubtedly a real legalism, by which is meant that there is the note of salvation by character, has, I think, been demonstrated. It is also true that they are legalistic in the sense that they presume to legislate the details of Christian conduct beyond what the Scriptures require. An Adventist, for example, must not only forego the use of alcohol and tobacco, but is forbidden, under penalty of sin, to indulge in tea, coffee, ham, shrimp, lobster, clams, oysters, snails. Much of the anti-Adventist polemic, however, takes them to task for something which is not legalism at all, namely, for their affirmation of the perpetual and universal validity of the moral law as the standard of conduct which is pleasing to God. It is most distressing to read in Eternity magazine statements such as “[The Adventists] take a position, [to us very illogical] that the Ten Commandments are to be obeyed.…” But that Adventists so believe is no reason for barring them from evangelical fellowship. For it is not their honoring of the Law, but their wrong use of the Law, which constitutes their fatal error in understanding the way of life.

The Sabbath Question

Again, what of this matter of the Sabbath? In Adventism this question, of course, looms large. As worked out in the early days of the movement by Edson and Bates, afterwards with the help of the Whites, the “history” of it is that originally the Christian Church kept the seventh-day Sabbath. All too soon, however, the Church was corrupted from its primitive purity and, along with the rise of the papacy, a false Sunday sacredness came to be accepted. At last, during the reign of Constantine, Sunday was established by civil law as the Sabbath day. Thus for some 1500 years, the Church manifested its apostasy by keeping Sunday. Even the Reformers of the sixteenth century unwittingly gave the Pope his due by failing to recognize that the seventh day is the Sabbath.

With the beginning of this new phase of the ministry of Christ in the heavenly temple, however, the Church was to be recalled to obedience to the Commandments. Indeed, Mrs. White herself reported that she had been given a look inside the heavenly ark of the covenant, where the originals of the two tables of the Law are kept, and the Fourth Commandment appeared to glow more brightly than the others. This vision of course, did not originate the doctrine; as always, it simply “confirmed” it and pointed out erroneous ideas. The “real basis” for this teaching is found in the Bible; for the Fourth Commandment says that the seventh day is the Sabbath, and, further, the message of the third angel of Revelation 14, who, along with the other two are manifestly intended to describe the several phases of the Adventist movement, speaks of the “mark of the Beast” which again, by every “sound rule” of exegesis, is to be equated with worship on the first day. Thus the Seventh-day Adventists, being a commandment-keeping people, are the “real” remnant church and the rest of Christendom is Babylon. It is to be marked well, I realize, that Adventists acknowledge there are true believers in the apostate churches; not all have come to understand that by honoring the first day they are breaking the commandment; moreover, no one has yet received the mark because the Sunday Sabbath has not yet been made the universal law. (Perhaps the observation is unnecessary that it is small comfort to be told that what one does is the same thing as having the mark of the beast, but that as yet it has not been ineradicably graven on his forehead.)

Learning From Adventism

I am convinced that any approach to this movement which views it as just another evangelical denomination is mistaken, and cannot help but bring about greater confusion in the Christian world than exists already. Nevertheless, we would be very unwise not to be willing to learn even from those who differ with us. There are several respects in which the Adventists can be our instructors. For one thing, I think that they can show us that we are wrong if we think that high standards are in themselves an impediment to the growth of a church or to its impact on a community in which it is located.

Every now and then one hears it remarked that a church which takes seriously a full-orbed confession of faith cannot but be at a disadvantage in competing with other groups in which there is no concern for sound doctrine. Consider, however, that in the eyes of the man on the street, the gate to full-fledged membership in the SDA church is considerably straiter than it is, as far as I know, to any other within the Christian tradition. For entrance into this church requires not only the knowledge and acceptance of its distinctive doctrines; not only agreement to forego the items of diet against which they legislate; but it requires further the honoring of Saturday, with attendant economic disadvantage and sometimes ridicule. On top of all this, it requires the payment to the local church of 10 per cent of one’s income plus regular offerings for the denominational program.

But this does not keep SDA from growing; on the contrary, it seems to afford them a rate of growth which compares favorably with that of most other groups, and, unlike most other groups, it assures them of a thoroughly committed and active constituency, and financial resources in abundance. This, of course, does not mean that we ought to make entrance into the church more difficult, certainly not more difficult than the Word of God requires; but it may well mean that if our impact is not what it should be, we ought to look elsewhere than to our purity for the reason.

And this brings me to a second and final observation; namely, that the Adventists can also instruct many who have an incomparably better theology that there is a distinction between the idea, as Robert Churchill has put it, of preaching in a place and preaching to a place. How do the Adventists preach to a place? In many ways, but the most significant is by training, and in some way or other setting on fire scores of lay workers in every area that they enter. Their zeal, though misguided, is astonishing in its fervency.

Over the past decade or so I have had contact in one way or another with dozens of workers connected with the Adventist movement: literature salesmen, lay preachers, house-to-house evangelists, and the like, each one of them convinced that his message was “present truth,” the only gospel that can bring hope and salvation to a confused and fearful age. As far as I know, however, with the exception of some of their foreign missionaries in Ethiopia, not one of these has been an ordained person fully supported by the church; they have been laboring men, housewives, students. Thus the Adventists have grasped, to a degree which few others have, the scriptural principle that every member is a witness, and have implemented that principle with remarkable success. Cannot we, and those to whom we minister, be provoked to jealousy by the Seventh-day Adventists, and, while there is yet opportunity, be up and doing?

Herbert S. Bird is on furlough from missionary duties in Eritrea, Ethiopia, where he has served since 1952. His A.B. degree is from Wheaton College and Th.B. from Westminster Theological Seminary, where he is taking graduate study.

Of all Christian denominations, the Roman Catholic church is the one that counts the most members in the world. She also possesses the most elaborated doctrinal structure and the strictest disciplinary organization. However, it is not the purpose of this article to argue whether numbers, for a religion, are an absolute title of pre-eminence, and whether the spiritual action of a church depends upon a centralized mechanical bureaucracy. I only intend to focus objectively Roman Catholicism just as it is and the impact it is making on Italy today.

What Rome Asserts

The Roman church claims to be the true and unique depository of Christ’s teaching and the matchless administrator of his saving power. To sustain these assertions, Rome states some fundamental points.

First, she affirms, as a matter of course, that any religious society, and the Christian Church in particular, ought to be visible. Secondly, that the sacred deposit of divine revelation was concluded with the death of the last Apostle.

Thirdly, and most important, as the process of revelation has been completed, the ministry of original teaching therefore has been replaced by the ministry of credited interpretation; Peter and his lawful successors have been vested, till the end of the ages, with the responsibility of vigilance (infallibly) for the conservation of the revealed deposit and the homogeneous discipline of Christian believers.

But unfortunately, having clothed the divine deposit with the rationalistic philosophy of Aristotle and Pelagius, the Roman church has turned the Christian faith from a dramatic mystery of salvation into an idyllic evolution, the attainment of which is a matter of ordinary administration of sacraments. This explains why Roman Catholicism, like an immense insurance company against the risks of after-death, has developed such an enormous religious discipline and practice today.

Moreover, being the heir of an age-long tradition which embraces nearly 2000 years of history, Rome, strong and proud of her incomparable past, looks with an imposing attitude and contempt on all separated Christian denominations. These, according to her, are condemned to wear out and disappear like drizzle; but for the time being they constitute a religious and social peril which must be fought. The Roman church is convinced that all movements that come out of the Reformation are Satanic lacerations of Christ’s seamless robe. They may search, in a mechanical way, for a common ground of approach. But, she admonishes, the reconstruction of Christian unity cannot be reached unless the dissident churches are prepared to pay the price of an unconditional surrender to the Roman religious teaching and ecclesiastical government.

Repression Of Free Inquiry

Now a position like this means that the Roman church has lost the vital force of a genuine evangelical experience. She thinks that her essential mission today is to keep jealously the patrimony accumulated through the ages past. Consequently, she conceives the task of her ministry primarily as one of vigilance and guardianship on positions to be defended at all costs. To this end she has created seminars, where the young candidates to priesthood are detached from any contact with the world and constrained into a training which gives a rigid orientation to their mind and soul. And in order to realize world uniformity to her theological teaching, the Vatican has created in Rome a flourishing garland of seminars for foreign students, almost one for each country, where young candidates of the whole world receive, from trustworthy Jesuit teachers, a theological training, safe from any free thinking, and nullifying to both personality and a sense of self-responsibility.

This authoritarian and inquisitional regime of ecclesiastical government has succeeded in avoiding further collective heresies and schisms. The last movement that attempted reform inside the Roman church was a so-called “Modernism”—which aimed at setting Catholicism free from the bonds of a heavy tradition. It was crushed by a Papal Encyclical Letter “Pascendi” in 1907, which marked the total excommunication of its leaders, outstanding among whom was the late Italian priest Ernesto Buonaiuti, a firm believer, an unforgettable teacher and author of countless books and writings on Bible doctrine, Church history, homiletics, research studies—all marked on the Vatican Index as forbidden literature.

In The Land Of The Vatican

By virtue of all her machinery and defense measures, we should conclude that everything goes smoothly within the Roman church, and that her position, especially in Italy, holds fast and is unshakeable. But a keen, objective examination of the situation reveals large zones of uncertainty. Officially, 99 per cent of Italians are Roman Catholic by birth. But how many of them live a religious life? How many believe earnestly the teachings and rites of their church? How many attend Mass regularly and how many of those who do partake personally of the divine service?

Italy is a land rich in sanctuaries. Multitudes of people flock to them, just as they flock excitedly to places where new “miracles” are said to have happened, or to the football grounds on Sunday afternoons. Religious processions draw big crowds. But does an inner, spiritual meaning elicit the interest of the people, or is it rather a spectacular manifestation?

The situation of the Roman Catholic church, in Italy at least, is not an unperilous one. An indication of the state of affairs may be exampled by the lack of candidates there are for priesthood. The younger generations feel no attraction whatsoever to the religious mission of the priest. Let us look at the situation in Rome, the center of Catholicism. Priests devoted to parochial life have been diminishing year after year. A century ago there were 58 parishes to care for 200,000 inhabitants, whereas, today the number is only 155 against two million inhabitants.

Secondly, the cultured Roman Catholics are aware that a vital lymph no more circulates within the mastodontic body of their church. To them the church seems to be an abstract symbol, different from the real and bureaucratic organization which governs by decrees and speaks through Encyclical Letters.

Thirdly, the Archbishop of Milan, Monsignor Montini, a candidate to Papacy, in launching recently a religious campaign in the metropolis of North Italy, said that in his diocese “God was being outraged, disregarded, rejected, silenced, unloved, ill-served and ill-prayed” and that his flock was living in “moral and spiritual apathy, laziness of corrupted habits, hate and strife among themselves.” To complete the picture, L’ltalia, a leading newspaper in the North, said on November 14, 1957: “A large portion of the people lies in spiritual torpidity.” And what was said for the North can be repeated for the Center and South.

Losses To Communism

Moreover, the Roman church, bound for centuries to earthly power, timid and hesitating before movements that seek the suppression of their privilege, seems to have linked her destiny to a conservative and backward cause.

The result is that at least a good third of Italians have lost religious faith, and have given their support to the materialistic doctrine of Communism. [The most recent figure places Communist Party membership in Italy at 1,700,000.—ED.] About another third, though not quite indifferent to religion, is at least anticlerical. Only the remaining third is composed of good Roman Catholics, and then only half of these attend Mass regularly.

The Protestant Witness

In this objective situation, the presence in Italy of a strong Protestant witness could acquire special value. Unfortunately, Roman Catholicism, being the State religion, and jealous of its monopoly, uses all its influential power and means in trying to hinder any progress of evangelicalism. And in this struggle she is associating the Protestants with Communists.

The fact remains, however, that Italy, officially a nation 99 per cent Roman Catholic, nurtures the strongest Communist Party in the West. The Communist Party polls over a third of the votes of the whole Italian constituency. We dare say that had it not been for the help of the United States, a country with a Protestant majority, Catholic Italy would have fallen under a communist regime after the Second World War, just as she fell into a Fascist dictatorship in 1922.

But, what could be expected from a people reared in the religious compromising teaching of the Jesuit school? Having displaced the original evangelical inspiration by a sterile and legalistic tradition, the Roman church today looks for political power much more than spiritual awakening. She seems unable to find her way into the soul and mind of the people because, in pursuing her dream of earthly power, she has neglected their needs.

What of the future? The Catholic church seems by now heavily anchored to her dogmas, founded upon a long heritage of philosophical thought, gorgeous rites and human traditions, and governed by an uncontrolled Holy See.

The historical hour that we are now going through, however, needs the overcoming impulse of a new life which only the Christ of the Gospels can provide. Perhaps we are at a turning point and the progress of evangelical churches in Italy may compel Rome to come to herself.

Deterioration Of Rome

Outwardly the Roman church seems today at her peak in power and political influence in Italy. But, as we have seen, there are dramatic signs of internal decomposition. Mediterranean history teaches us that all religions which fossilize into legal schemes and shut themselves inside the turris eburnea of their self-sufficiency, clog the liberty of the Spirit and are condemned to unavoidable decline. This is all the more true for Christianity.

Can we expect therefore a dissolving process inside the Roman church? This would be suggested by the predominance of her casuistry methods, the worldly behavior of her bureaucracy, the constant concern for merely external diplomatic success, which has largely been inspired by the Jesuits. Jesuitism as the backbone of Romanism has aimed at subduing the world not with God’s armor, but by its own worldly weapons, and has thus rendered the church dull and deaf to the superior requirements of the Kingdom of Heaven. Christian principles, therefore, have lost capacity to repel the invasion of paganism. It is hopeful, however, that the process of decomposition may contain in itself the germs of a future new birth.

Renato Tulli is a native of Italy. Long active in Italian government work, he is chief translator for the Chamber of Ministers. An evangelical Protestant, he has watched religious trends in that land with special interest in religious liberty.