‘Rediscovery’ of a Gutenberg Bible

It is part of the wonder surrounding my interest in the Bible that, on the 500th anniversary of the completion of the Gutenberg Bible, I should have rediscovered (pinpointed it for scholars is perhaps more exact) a copy which virtually nobody knew was missing.

The last of five twentieth-century censuses of this famed Bible listed 46 copies known to have survived—32 in Europe and 14 in the United States. Two copies, when exhibited outside their regular habitat in recent years, were insured for $500,000 each. So high is the value placed on the first Bible, and believed by many to be the first book, printed from movable type in the Western world.

A year ago, in writing on the Gutenberg Bible for a national magazine, I closed the piece with an unconscious prophecy: “Someday, somewhere in the world, there may be another discovery like the one in the peasant’s home in Olewig; or there may be another library like Sir George Shuckburgh’s. And in our land of free enterprise no one can stop us from dreaming that one of us may locate the next copy of the most expensive book in the world.” (The reference to Olewig and Shuckburgh is to the last two copies of the Gutenberg Bible rediscovered.)

Despite these words, when I started planning late in 1955 a pilgrimage to all the libraries in the world containing original Gutenberg Bibles, I never dreamed that my journey would be instrumental in pinpointing for scholars Copy Number Forty-seven of this almost priceless Bible.

Time For A Census

My plan was to examine and photograph each copy, gather bibliographical and human interest material about each, and publish a 500th Anniversary Illustrated Census of the Gutenberg Bible. Nothing like it had ever been done before (I did not propose to plow the ground so ably furrowed by scholars like Seymour de Ricci, Paul Schwenke, and others), and 1956 was the time for making this census. According to a handwritten note by Vicar Henry Cremer of the Collegiate Church of St. Stephen in Mainz, Germany, he completed rubricating Volume II of the Gutenberg Bible, now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, on August 15, 1456 (Volume I was finished nine days later).

It was important, it seemed to me, that someone should make a “hand count” of all the Gutenberg Bibles in the world. In no other way could their locations be exactly established. As a matter of record I found three changes, not previously listed. The Berlin copy is now in the library at the University of Tubingen, Germany. The Pelplin, Poland, copy is at the Museum of the Province in Quebec, Canada. And another of the three Leipzig, Germany, copies (one had been previously reported) is not in its former place. Most of these Bibles were removed at the time of World War II for safekeeping.

On August 15, 1956 (exactly 500 years after the earliest authenticated date connected with the Gutenberg Bible), I sat with Dr. Aloys Ruppel, director of the Gutenberg Museum and vice president of the Gutenberg Gesellschaft, in the library of his home in Mainz, Germany, the city where the famed Bible was printed.

Neglected Copy In Mons

I had already been in Europe 25 days at that time, and was able to bring him greetings from his many friends among the librarians. This genial Gutenberg scholar turned to me suddenly, in the course of our two-hour visit together, and asked if I knew of the Gutenberg Bible at Mons, Belgium. I told him I had heard of a Belgian copy from a friend in Geneva, but had thought it might be only the Leipzig copies on loan, until I had learned in Leipzig that this was not the case.

Then unfolded the story of how the librarian at Mons, Dr. M. A. Arnould, had stopped off at Mainz on a trip to Munich and had showed the Gutenberg Museum staff some photographs of the Mons copy, convincing as to its genuineness. Naturally excited, I told Dr. Ruppel that scheduled visits to German libraries would delay my seeing the Mons Bible a week, but I would eagerly work toward that day.

So at 11:30 on the morning of August 22 a member of Bourgmestre Fernand Demarbre’s cabinet guided me up the narrow cobblestone streets of Mons to the Bibliotheque Publique on Rue Marguerite Bervoets, where Dr. Arnould greeted me. We had time only to introduce the subject of my visit before lunch, which took place in one of the city’s few recently constructed buildings. The food was excellent, the atmosphere peaceful—unlike many a warlike scene Mons had witnessed in its 1300-year history. Here the British first met in World War I. The Germans occupied the city in World War II. Early, the bloody religious repression of the Duke of Alba, the wars of Louis XIV and Louis XV, had all left deep scars on the city of Mons. But after each she has made a valiant recovery, with the result that today Mons takes pride in having preserved a large part of her rich heritage from the past. As capital of the province of Hainaut, the city is known afar as a cultural center, to which its several outstanding museums bear eloquent testimony.

After lunch we crossed the cobblestone passage between Dr. Arnould’s office and the exhibit hall. He took a huge key and unlocked the great door to a room filled with treasures; the library is rich in rare tomes. The Gutenberg Bible, Volume I only, was in a glass-covered case. Dr. Arnould opened it and placed the Bible on a table before me.

On examination I saw that the Mons copy was quite incomplete. It contained, as he told me, only 220 of the 324 leaves in Volume I. It was bound in a brownish leather the library identifies as nineteenth-century. Excessive humidity had taken its toll of the Bible’s lower margins, some of them being almost completely eaten away near the spine. As I leafed through the volume, page by page, I found the first of big missing sections—twenty leaves between Genesis 16 (folio 10 verso) and Exodus 6 (folio 31 recto). The next was from the end of the Book of Ruth (folio 128 verso) to 2 Kings 5 (folio 149 recto). The third, from the last page of IV Esdras (folio 260 recto) to the end of the volume (folio 324 verso), comprised 64 leaves. These accounted for the 104 missing leaves.

First American Interest

Back in his office, Dr. Arnould gave me some clues as to the reason for this copy’s having escaped general notice so long. It had been willed to the city, along with his other valuables, by Canon Edmond Puissant at his death in 1934. Until recent years, it had remained in the Puissant Museum, with his other books and works of art. Dr. Arnould, after becoming librarian in 1950, wrote about the Bible in papers of local interest. It received wider publicity in November, 1955, when it was exhibited in Brussels by the Belgian Bible Society. Several newspapers wrote about it as “the only example of the Gutenberg Bible in Belgium,” but for some reason these accounts seem never to have crossed the Belgian frontier. In January, 1956, another article by the Mons librarian appeared in the German monthly, Deutches Pfarrerblatt. To my knowledge, however, only one German scholar wrote for further information. And Dr. Arnould said I was the first American with a scholarly interest in the Bible to view the Mons Gutenberg.

This was the highlight, of course, of a journey which carried me 16,500 miles through twenty-nine cities in twelve European countries this summer. Before the year is ended, another 9,000 miles will be added as I visit the American libraries.

Irony Of Our Times

It is part of the irony of the twentieth century that we should have to “rediscover” a Gutenberg Bible only five centuries after its appearance. It reflects the great change which has taken place in our outlook—from faith to secularism. Printing’s first great end-product was the Bible. No more would it be necessary tediously to make copies by hand. The common man would be able to possess his own copy of the Word. But a free press before long became preoccupied with other end-products—and, in many cases, the Bible was forgotten.

The Mons copy of the Gutenberg Bible remains a symbol of every neglected Bible with which bookshelves in the West are heavily populated.

Don Cleveland Norman, Th.B., is religion editor of The American People’s Encyclopedia, managing editor of The New Analytical Bible, and former executive secretary of the Chicago Bible Society.

- More from Don Cleveland Norman

Majestic Music of the King James

Paul K. Jewett

On the eve of the release of the Revised Standard Version, Lowell Thomas, eminent news commentator, read excerpts from the Prophet Isaiah in the King James version and added—prophetically—“Pretty hard to beat.” Time has confirmed his judgment. The older version, like “ol’ man river, he jus’ keeps rollin’ along.”

It is easy to answer that the masses are prejudiced in favor of the old and suspicious of the new. But the King James itself had to begin as a lowly new version, pelted with charges of “bad theology, bad scholarship, and bad English.” It appeared without trumpet blast or public proclamation; it waged a running battle with the Geneva Bible for half a century and in this time completely took the field on the strength of its superior merit alone. In contrast to this the American revisers combined the advantage of organized sponsorship in high ecclesiastical places with access to a more accurate critical text, better scholarly equipment to understand Greek and Hebrew, and the lesson of the American Standard Version, “strong in Greek, weak in English.” And yet for all this, the King James, Gulliver-like, with its Lilliputian burden of colons and commas, verse and chapter divisions, is walking off with the victory. Why is this so? One reason that overshadows all others, it would seem, is the vastly superior literary quality of the older version. The King James is a work of art, the Revised Standard a compendium of scholarship; the one is literature, the other reading material.

To many, the element of literary excellence may seem inconsequential. Was not the New Testament written in vernacular Greek? Is not the Bible the book of the masses, and what do common people care about poetry? Anyway, our concern should be with the content of revealed truth, not its literary form.

Unconvincing Plea

I think these arguments are specious. It is true that the Greek of the New Testament is common Greek and in many of the books destitute of literary embellishment. But why should we not rejoice in the fact that the Bible in our mother tongue excels the original as literature? If the New Testament was written in the silver age of Greek and the King James in the golden age of English, is it not all Providence? The apostolic Christians worshipped in crypts and sand pits. Should we then tear down our cathedrals and seal up our organs?

Although it is a most significant feature of our Protestant heritage that the Bible is the book of the common man, to suppose that he is so circumscribed by the mundane realm of factual existence that he never breathes the rare atmosphere of poetry is an error as egregious as it is common. As Louis Untermeyer once observed, in A Treasury of Great Poems, we cannot escape poetry. To call an orange Sunkist, to name a melon Honeydew, capitalizes the power of poetry for the man in the street.

True, accuracy of thought is of paramount importance, yet we should never forget that men feel as well as understand, and what they understand with feeling they understand best. Here the incomparable literary quality of the King James, the music mingled with the meaning, is without a rival in its evocative power. The multitudes who never give a serious moment to literary analysis hear the majestic music of the King James as surely as the scholar—more surely than some Hebrew and Greek scholars.

How out of touch some scholars can be with this dimension is shown in the way the revisers translated Paul’s hymn to love (1 Corinthians 13). Love is the most beautiful thing in all the world, and with unerring literary instinct the King James translators have convinced us of this by giving us a supremely beautiful translation of this passage. The revisers, on the other hand, have left it a literary shambles. The same may be said of the unbelievable freedom with which they have handled the Psalter. Recognized as the peak of sacred poetry, with language exquisitely rich and resonant, the Psalter has not only been altered but ruined. In the King James we have poetry printed, unfortunately, as prose; but in the R.S.V. we have prose printed as poetry. Says Dorothy Thompson (“The Old Bible and the New,” Ladies’ Home Journal, March, 1953):

I have tried to read the new Bible with an open mind, and without prejudice, indeed with humility and with respect for so great an effort … But I am compelled to say that I find the new text inferior on nearly every page to the one it seeks to supplant and for reasons that I think I can define. It is weaker, less vivid, defective in imagery, less beautiful and less inspired. And I, at least, do not find it easier to understand.

But someone may still persist that the King James, beautiful as it is, is absolutely wrong in many places. This is undoubtedly true. The finest gems have flaws and there may be sand in the marble of the Parthenon. But shall we tear down the whole edifice for the sake of a few stones? This procedure becomes highly impracticable when we consider that those who have the wit to raze the old lack the genius to remake it.

But someone else will say that, though the King James is not hopelessly corrupt, it is fast becoming archaic. Since language is constantly changing, it is only a matter of time till the venerable version of our fathers takes its place on the shelf with Chaucer. Now this may happen, but if it does no one but the devil can contemplate it with glee. Our King James Bible is not a dispensable luxury of our English Protestant heritage. It is rather a part of us; it has permeated our culture in warp and woof; it is fused with our literature, our liturgy, our hymnody. Our situation is quite different in this respect from that of our Roman Catholic neighbors. All that Rome had to do to replace the Douay New Testament in 1941 was to announce its successor, an unwitting testimony to the negligible place of the Bible in the piety of its devotees. As a commonwealth changes the color of its automobile plates, so they changed their Bible. But fortunately we as Protestants have not the machinery to expedite such a change, nor is the biblical orientation of our piety so superficial that it can easily sustain such a macromutation.

Role Of New Version

Why then labor to bring new versions to the birth? What do we gain but an overpopulation of inferior species? The private modern-speech translations of individual scholars are most stimulating and edifying (e.g., Phillips’ Letters to Young Churches), but we have nothing to gain and everything to lose by multiplying versions, which claim the official sanction of the church as a whole. The first effort of 1886 and 1901 split the British and American churches and, had it succeeded, would have given the English-speaking church two vastly inferior Bibles in the place of one good one. And now with the R.S.V. we have in the American church three Bibles, even as the medieval church had three pontiffs during the Great Schism. If we multiply our Bibles as we have multiplied our denominations, we will only confuse people the more and psychologically, if not theoretically, undermine their sense of the authority of Scripture. The common man always speaks in the singular of THE BIBLE, which is no mere phonetic accident, but an unerring instinct. Variety is not always the spice of life. We need several Bibles about as much as the Roman Church needs several popes. If we are serious about ecumenicity, we would do well to preserve the one thing we really have in common, i.e., our King James Bible. We therefore conclude that the King James ought not, even as it cannot, be replaced.

But the question still remains, what to do. Even if we grant that our age has not the creative powers to produce a worthy successor to the version inherited from our fathers; even if we say with all conviction, like the man who tasted old wine and refused the new, that we are standing by our King James Bible; will our King James stand by us? Will not time, whose art turns all things to dust, take it from us as surely as the weather will carry the mountains into the sea? Though as literature it will abide forever, from the perspective of the centuries can it endure as a vehicle of revelation for the common man?

We have come to a point where one must speak as an expert, or risk the role of a dilettante. But not to speak at all would end the discussion, as some modern plays end, leaving the frustrated spectator to supply his own denouement. Let us then address ourselves further to this question.

Theoretically it is true that no version can endure forever, but this is no reason for sitting on our hands. The fate of the King James a million years from now has no more bearing for us than the second law of thermodynamics for the current price of real estate. Had we expended half the scholarly energy in saving the King James that we have spent in efforts to supplant it, we should have come a long way on the path to a solution.

The first and most obvious thing that needs to be done is to modernize the physical form of our received Bible. It is common knowledge that the King James has undergone such revision in the past. In 1613, just two years after the original printing, a second edition appeared with more than four hundred variations. Other revisions occurred in 1629 and 1638 and in 1762. In 1769 the Oxford edition appeared with much modernization of spelling and punctuation. It is almost unbelievable, but true, that this is the current form of the text. In nearly two hundred years we have hardly converted a colon to a semicolon. Why is this? Do we believe that God wrote the King James with his finger on tables of stone? If we can give up inspired Hebrew vowel points and Holy Ghost Greek, must we canonize the commas of the King James? Why could not an ecumenical committee of experts, working jointly in England and America, solve this problem to the satisfaction of all? If a King James version, word for word as it now appears, were to be given a new form to this limited extent, it surely seems that the archaic punctuation would surrender its dominance to the new.

Having leaped this hurdle, the next step might be to cast the poetry as poetry and the prose as prose, giving the later the form of the modern paragraph rather than the present chapter and verse arrangement. Even the most rabid defenders of the King James admit that our chapter and verse divisions are not inspired.

Though long overdue, the changing of actual words should wait till these less controversial alterations have generally ingratiated themselves with the people as a whole. Perhaps marginal notes could be used to prepare readers gradually where usage is becoming archaic or the text is quite different from the best MSS evidence. In any event, when the changes are made, the task should be approached as one for experts in English primarily and only secondarily for Hebrew and Greek specialists. In other words, if in the mind of those best able to judge, a given usage has become archaic, then let the experts in English choose a new word or phrase, in consultation with those who know best what the Hebrew and Greek actually says. Under no circumstances should many such changes be made in a given generation, and rarely, if ever, should a change be made in those areas affecting received literary parlance or the common idiom of personal piety and public worship. Every literate person knows, for example, what the expression “God forbid” means. There is, therefore, no excuse for changing this to “let it not be” or “by no means.” The same goes for “plow with my heifer,” “skin of my teeth,” “whited sepulchre,” and the like. As for the idiom of personal and public piety, the decision of the American revisers of 1901 to substitute “Jehovah” for “Lord” was a blunder for which there can be no other word than crude. To delete from the Bible the most common name of deity in our language and insert “Jehovah” was enough, in itself, to doom their effort. The recent revisers had the good sense to go back to “Lord” in the Old Testament. One could wish that they had restored the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 to its common form. We are pleading, then, for principles of translation, that not even the architects of the R.S.V. have been able altogether to ignore. The advantages of a procedure along the lines outlined above are obvious. First, by pursuing such a course we would, first of all, preserve our King James version, the greatest version of the Bible ever achieved. In the second place, we would bequeath it to our children in a form that would enable them to hear the Word of God in language not only meaningful but magnificent.

Paul K. Jewett, Ph.D., is Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Emil Brunner’s Concept of Revelation.

- More from Paul K. Jewett

Cover Story

Pathos of Hungarian Protestantism

M. Eugene Osterhaven

The tragic developments in Hungary have involved a large and flourishing Protestant community there. Twenty-eight percent of the population is Protestant; of these, twenty percent are Reformed and six percent Lutheran. They have been suffering with their compatriots in the recent attempt to throw off Soviet domination and gain freedom.

Saga Of Suffering

Suffering is not a new experience for Hungarian Protestantism, however. Its history is a moving tale of glory and of woe. It is glorious because of the eagerness with which a large majority of the population at one time accepted the Reformation of the sixteenth century; because of the centers of learning which it founded and has maintained for centuries; because of its impact upon Magyar culture; and because of its loyalty to the faith through centuries of oppression and persecution. It is a tale of woe because of the almost incredible sufferings imposed upon its adherents by Turk and Romanist who expressed only contempt, in those centuries, for the Word of God and the re-forming people who sought to live by it.

The historian d’Aubigne writes that “it was by a kind of thunderclap that the Reformation began in Hungary.” Its spread was so rapid that within a few years, by 1525, the five royal, free cities in upper Hungary had already embraced the faith re-formed according to God’s Word. The following year, however, the first note was struck in a melancholy strain which threatened to develop into the funeral dirge of Hungarian Protestantism. For on the fateful twenty-ninth day of August, Suleiman the Magnificent, the Turkish Sultan who was to cause all Europe to tremble, killed the Hungarian King, the flower of the nobility, a long line of aristocrats, and annihilated the Hungarian army. The reverberations of the battle of Mohacs were heard in every hamlet and peasant home in the country and served as an ominous warning of difficulties ahead. For more than a century and a half the Turks dominated most of the country and the flower of Hungary’s youth and manhood sought to stem the Moslem advance and save Europe.

A more severe persecution, however, was experienced at the hands of Jesuit and Hapsburg representing respectively ecclesiastical and secular imperialism both of which were in the service of Rome. Whereas Turkish masters fought their battles for the glory of Allah, the other, more devastating, oppression was done in the name of Jesus and might well have destroyed the easternmost European rampart of Reformation Christianity had not the Prussian, English and Dutch governments intervened in its behalf. Cut off from the rest of Protestant Europe, with the help of God and occasional help from fellow Protestants, the Magyars maintained a virile evangelical witness.

Ravages Of War

A reading of the history of the Magyar Reformed Church enables one to understand how it could survive during the past two decades of our era. Raped and looted by the vast armies of two powerful countries, Germany and Russia, during World War II, Hungary’s condition became tragic. The lurid details can be read in such reliable reports as those of the Swiss Legation in Budapest which state, in part, that, when the Soviet armies occupied the country in the spring of 1945, rape was “so general—from the age of ten up to seventy years—that few women in Hungary escaped this fate.” Almost every home, every shop, was entered and looted several times with almost everything of value taken. In that agricultural country there was hardly a domestic animal, a wagon, or a piece of farm machinery to be found. Factories were stripped but a $300,000,000 reparations debt was demanded of the prostrate country, the debt, according to John F. Montgomery, United States Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Hungary, actually amounting to $1,100,000,000 because the currency exchange rate was specified as that of 1938 and a five percent a month penalty for delay in delivery was imposed. During the war two complete harvests had been lost and the Central European drought of 1947 ruined most of that one. The one bright spot in this picture was the witness of the Church in Hungary. Throughout the struggle there had been faithful preaching of the Word of God. The Reformed community heeded the advice of its presiding superintendent who exhorted it, ringed about with apparently insuperable difficulties, to look “inward and upward.” In May, 1947, the Synod of the Reformed Church solemnly declared that, in view of the circumstances through which its members had passed, all who desired to retain church membership should re-affirm their faith with the following declaration:

I give thanks to God, my heavenly Father, for receiving me into His Holy Church, into the communion of the believers of Jesus Christ, through the sacrament of baptism. I remember also my profession and vow made at confirmation through which I gained admittance into the communicant fellowship of the congregation. And now, in order to become a full-fledged member of the Church and as a renewal of my confirmation vow, I declare before God and this congregation, that I desire to be a loyal, obedient, and self-sacrificing member of the Reformed Church. For this reason I promise and pledge that I shall attend regularly the services of worship and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; that I shall submit to ecclesiastical discipline; that I shall rear my children of the Reformed faith in that faith; and that I shall participate in the material support of my Church and in her benevolences according to my ability. In all these resolves I pray for the effective help of God’s Holy Spirit.

This unprecedented action of the Synod was a potent factor in the strengthening of Hungary’s evangelical witness. Reporting on that witness, Dr. Stewart W. Herman, in an address to the Lutheran World Action conference, stated that Hungary was “experiencing the greatest religious revival to be found in all Europe.” The effort to put the Church back on its feet in the thick of the struggle, the speaker said, is “the hope of Europe.”

Protestant Valor

The tragedy of that struggle has deepened in these last days and Hungarian Protestantism lies in agony with the rest of the country. The complete story we do not yet know. But we do know that much of the leadership of the Small-landholders Party, overthrown in the revolution of 1948, hated by the victorious Communists, and active in the most recent revolt, came from the Protestant Church.

In 1848, an even century before the Communist coup, there was another great war for independence with a finale similar to that which we have just witnessed. Led by a Protestant, Louis Kossuth, Hungary’s greatest patriot, that effort to achieve freedom from foreign domination seemed assured of success until crushed by the might of Russia which, then as now, feared the popular demands for freedom by suppressed peoples. Again it has been Russia the Communist rulers of which, by their own admission, have liquidated millions of their own countrymen to consolidate their power which has steam-rollered the heroic, and pathetic, Hungarian quest for freedom.

In a moving address delivered a decade ago, Dr. Charles Vincze, leading Hungarian-American pastor now deceased, closed with these words:

The Magyars of the past stormy centuries, while defending their own way of life and that of the Western World, against the onrushing hordes of Mohammed, used the Savior’s name for a battle cry. ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!’ they shouted, while facing the onslaught and laying down their lives for a West that never really knew or appreciated them or even cared to do so. In spite of all the unfavorable experiences of the past, all the Magyars that are really Magyars turn once more toward the West and in the name of Jesus ask for the kind of life which they so self-sacrificingly helped to preserve for the West.

That request has become a cry. It is a cry from a Hungary which today is in the throes of death. The free world has heard it. May God give us the courage and strength to respond.

M. Eugene Osterhaven, Th.D., is Professor of Systematic Theology, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Mich.

We Quote:

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

President of the United States

… Our minds and hearts turn to Almighty God, in grateful acknowledgment of His mercies throughout the year.… It is also fitting at this season that we should consider God’s providence to us throughout our entire history.… Humbly aware that we are a people greatly blessed, both materially and spiritually, let us pray this year not only in the spirit of thanksgiving but also as suppliants for God’s guidance, to the end that we may follow the course of righteousness and be worthy of His favor.… Let all of us, of whatever creed, foregather in our respective places of worship to give thanks to God and prayerful contemplation to those eternal truths and universal principles of Holy Scripture which have inspired such treasures of true greatness as this Nation has achieved.—From President Eisenhower’s 1956 Thanksgiving proclamation.

Douglas Macarthur

Commander, Occupational Forces in Japan, 1945–51

I called upon America for Bibles. An offer of a hundred thousand was raised by me to ten million with an ultimate figure of three times that number.… Although I am of Caesar, I did try to render unto God that which was his. And I even dare to hope that through this resurgence of religion, Japan will in the struggle that lies ahead be indissolubly confirmed against any whose doctrines embrace the deadly poison of atheism. It might prove more potent than bullets or bayonets or bombs—or even bread.—In an address, Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, Jan. 26, 1955.

- More from M. Eugene Osterhaven

Cover Story

Three Questions to a Man in Trouble

Galbraith Hall Todd

Text: Job 38:4; 40:12b; 40:15; 41:1

In a world where most persons are filled with a strong passion for publicity and recognition, it is difficult to conceive of an author giving to the world what is unquestionably one of its greatest books and then scorning to blot it with a name.

We do not know the identity of the author of the Book of Job any more than we know who wrote the great Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, or the Latin hymn of the nativity, “Adeste Fideles.”

We do know that the writings of a Homer, a Dante, a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Goethe cannot approximate the Book of Job. We have long since reached the conclusion of James Anthony Froude, who said that the Book of Job towers up alone, far above all the poetry in the world. We agree quickly with Thomas Carlyle when, in his Heroes and Hero Worship, he describes the Book of Job as “a noble book, grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity, in its epic melody … and its sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation, the oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind—so soft and great, as the summer midnight, as the world with its stones and seas.” “There is nothing written,” Carlyle goes on to say, “in the Bible or out of it of equal literary merit.”

The scope of the Book of Job is sometimes lost to us in the loquacity of Job’s would-be comforters. Let us refresh our memories by going over the broad outline of the book.

Job was a God-fearing, clean-living, upright man. He was exceptionally prosperous and in his prosperity he did not forget his religion and his God. He was a man of prayer. He was a man of kindness. The law of kindness was on his lips. Like Barnabas, in the Acts of Apostles, he was a “son of consolation,” whose vigorous, tactful, well-chosen speech gave encouragement and stability to other lives. He was a family man and gave large thought to the spiritual welfare of his children. It was for them that he constantly interceded before God.

Upon this irreproachable man troubles descended in ever-increasing measure. Job was the victim of thugs. Bandits swooped down out of the hills, slaying all of his servants except one sole survivor who brought him the shocking news. Again, Job was the victim of the mercilessness of nature. Lightning struck his shepherds and his sheep in the field. Yet again, a second band of robbers out of Chaldea raided one of his farms and stole his cattle.

Tragedy was not done with him yet. He fell victim to nature’s cruelty once again. The younger generation of his household were holding a family party. The eldest son played host to them in his home. A cyclone struck the house and, when the night of terror and storm was over, the bodies of Job’s seven sons and three daughters were discovered in the debris. The plight of Job’s family reminds us of that tragedy in the spring of 1953 when an entire family reunion group was wiped out in a cyclonic storm in Nebraska.

The victim of criminals and of untamed forces of nature, Job fell the prey of a vile and disgusting disease. His sickness was as humiliating as it was excruciating. His own wife proved to be of no help to his faith. So Job retired to the city dump—a miserable, pathetic spectacle. He resembled a cat or a dog, crawling out to some spot away from public haunt and finding there a suitable shelter in which to expire. As George MacDonald wrote, “Must it not be a deep spiritual instinct that drives trouble into solitude? Away from the herd flies the wounded deer; away from the flock staggers the sickly sheep to the solitary hiding place to die.” Three friends of Job came to his refuge at the city dumping ground. At the outset they maintained a respectful silence. One of the strongest supports in a time of profound sorrow may be the presence of friends who have the grace and good sense to come and be silent. At length Job was moved to speak out against his desperate plight. His bitter questionings may be summed up in a single word: Why? Like many others, he asked, “Why should this affliction befall me?”

The modern world is filled with persons suffering multiplied distresses. During his radio preaching, the late S. Parkes Cadman received this melancholy communication: “I am a man seventy-four years of age and I find myself utterly unable to explain the following situations. In 1895 my wife, sick with melancholia, took her own life. In 1901 my eldest son died of a fever. In 1920 my eldest daughter committed suicide during a period of mental depression. In 1921 my only remaining son and his two children burned to death in their own home. My questions about life can be summed up in one word, Why?”

In the face of a situation like that, what word is there from the Lord?

When Job reached the end of his questionings, God spoke. He asked three questions of Job. These three questions are found in the latter chapters of the Book of Job. They are questions equally applicable to the man in trouble today.

The Question Of Nature

The first question God asked Job was, What do you really know about the mysteries of nature? What do you really understand about the mysteries of science? “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” Where were you in creation’s morning? What do you know about the mystery of life and nature, about its origin and preservation? Where were you “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

God directed Job to the wonders of creation, so little of which man can fathom. What do you know about the mystery of the sea? Long ago Lord Byron wrote, “Man marks the earth with ruin. His control starts with the shore.” In a very recent and popular book, The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson reaches the conclusion that, with all of our modern scientific instruments, the mysteries of the sea will never be solved.

What do you know about the mysteries of light? We would paraphrase the question, What do you know about the mystery of electricity? Thomas A. Edison, who explored the realms of light more than any other in our age, said, “No one knows one seven-billionth of one per cent about anything.”

What do you know about the mystery of rain? “Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?” What do you know about the mystery of snow?” “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail?” While under the shadow of a crushing bereavement, James Russell Lowell exquisitely interpreted Job’s question:

I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky
And the sudden flurries of snowbirds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently
As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, “Father, who makes it snow?”
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snowfall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o’er our first great sorrow,
When the mound was heaped so high.

And again to the child I whispered,
“The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall.”

[Reprinted by permission of Houghton-Mifflin Company.]

What do you know concerning the mystery of the stars? “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?”

What do you know about the strange instincts of the animal kingdom, the little wild things that share with us the mystery of life, the beasts of the field whose ways are still past our finding out?

The most distinguished scientists have had to stand awed and baffled before the opaque depths of life. They have to exclaim with Job, “We are but of yesterday, and know nothing.” Or with Paul, “Now we see in a mirror darkly, we know in fragments.” Or with Socrates, “One thing I know, that I know nothing.” Or with Emerson in his teasing epigram, “Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.” Or with Herbert Spencer, who declared that in its ultimate nature, life is incomprehensible. Or with Ernest Haeckel, who, though he was possessed of a certain arrogance in his claims which would cause one to suppose that for him the mysteries of science were a diminished domain, made the confession, “We grant at once that the innermost character of nature is just as little understood by us as it was by Anaximander and Empedocles twenty-four hundred years ago, by Spinoza and Newton two hundred years ago, by Kant and Goethe one hundred years ago. We must even grant that this essence and substance become more mysterious and enigmatic the deeper we penetrate into the knowledge of its attributes.” Honest science is brought back repeatedly to the confession that the world grows more mysterious the more we know about it.

In the mysterious realm of nature we have to trust to the wisdom and greatness, the goodness and integrity of God. Like the marsh hen in Lanier’s poem, secretly building her nest and ordering her uncertain flight on the greatness of God, we have to repose our confidence in the God to whom the darkness of nature is as light. If we trust him in the mysteries of nature, shall we not trust him as completely in his mysterious, providential dealings with us?

The Question Of Evil

The second question which God addressed to Job in his trouble, and which he addresses to us is, What do you really know about the mystery of evil? “Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him. Look on every one that is proud and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.” Can you “tread down the wicked in their place?” What do you really know about evil when it is treated as a theological problem? What do we know about its origin, its continuance in a world governed by God, the manner in which it is overruled and even used for his glory?

What do you know about evil as a social problem? Do you really comprehend the motives for the crime and violence now menacing the nation, “the black fringe around our society,” as the late Joseph Fort Newton once called it?

Not long since I visited the beautiful campus of Williams College at Williamstown, Massachusetts, with its venerable memories of Dr. Mark Hopkins, the physician turned preacher and philosopher, of President Garfield and John Bascom, and of William Cullen Bryant, who as a seventeen-year-old college student there wrote his immortal “Thanatopsis.” It was there, too, that the Haystack Prayer Meeting was held, which was the fountainhead of the American foreign missionary movement. That very summer day as I stood under the elms of Williamstown, the newspapers printed the story of two brothers from that historic and cultured community, aged twenty-three and eighteen, who that week had embarked on a series of criminal exploits that led them eventually into the mountains of Pennsylvania. In the presence of so much that is noble and exalting and good, how can young men launch out on careers of crime? More perplexing than the episode of those boys from the hills of western Massachusetts is the sinister course followed by some who have enjoyed the advantages of a devout and godly parentage in the formative years of life. One thinks of the renegade sons of the priest Eli, and of the sons of the prophet, Samuel, who brought disgrace upon their fathers. It is always baffling to see children, who have been born and bred in Christian homes and have been environed by the purest Christian influences, degenerating in lives grown sordid and stained and sodden.

We know little of evil as a psychological problem. Long ago the inspired Psalmist anticipated the modern depth psychologist who probes the recesses of the subconscious in order to explain human behavior. The Psalmist asked the question, “Who can understand his [own] errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.” Jeremiah expressed the same thought, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

We know but fragments concerning evil as a theological, social and psychological problem. God’s provision for the forgiveness of our sins is no less beyond our poor powers to understand. We are “lost in wonder, love, and praise” as we contemplate the plan of salvation from sin. Through his atoning sacrifice of himself, in his death on the cross, Christ satisfied the divine justice, procured our pardon before the holy God, and was made sin for us (although he knew no sin) that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

God’s power to change human life is as mysterious to us as his plan of salvation. His only begotten Son’s blood can make the foulest clean—as white as snow—releasing men and women from the thralldom of evil, lifting them out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, setting their feet upon a rock, transfiguring the worst of characters into the best.

We trust the mystery of evil, its existence and control, its redemption and conquest to God. Should we not also trust him in the quite inscrutable dispensations of his providence?

The Question Of Death

The third question which God addressed to Job in his perplexity and which he puts to us is, What do you know about the mystery of death? What do you know about that undiscovered country which lies beyond the last door of life?

God said to Job, “Behold now behemoth,” and again, “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?” Behemoth indicates the hippopotamus and leviathan the crocodile. In 1850 Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote in an essay, “I have seen the hippopotamus both asleep and awake and I can assure you that awake or asleep he is the ugliest of the creatures of God.” In the mythological imagery of Egypt and the ancient East, the hippopotamus and the crocodile always represented death and the realms of the dead. In the symbolism of the Coptic church of Egypt in the early centuries, Christ is depicted standing upon a crocodile. Our Lord is thus shown in the splendor and power of his resurrection triumph over sin and the grave.

We know little of that soft, fascinating sleep men call death. We know little of that strange country of the beyond. It is sufficient for us to know that Christ demonstrated by his resurrection that he has the keys of death and the realm of the dead. It is sufficiently reassuring for us to know that as Richard Baxter, the Puritan divine, has said, “Christ leads us through no darker rooms than he has been before.” It is adequate comfort for us to possess the confidence that when we lie down to sleep for the last time, or when we watch our loved ones put out to sea, Christ stands at the gateway of immortality as our Savior and friend.

My knowledge of that life is small
The eye of faith is dim,
But it’s enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with him.

We trust our heavenly Father in the mystery of nature, in the mystery of evil and in the mystery of death. Should we not trust him through all the changing scenes of life?

At length Job in his experience passed beyond a mere intellectual concept of God to a knowledge of him as Father and* friend. “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.” Job had found the God of his life, to whom he could say, Thou art mv God! Thou art the God who loves and cares for me and all whom I love here and beyond the bounds of vision.

We who know God in Christ trust him as the creator of the ends of the earth, the one in whom all things cohere, the redeemer who by his cross and precious blood answers the problem, sounds the doom and interprets the uses of evil. He is the Lord of life and death who “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

In a time when the faith of many was shaken and beclouded, Washington Gladden wrote these serene lines which voice the ultimate faith of Job and of all those whose hope and trust is stayed on the Lord Christ, and on the Father who sent him into the world and is with us as he was with him:

In the bitter waves of woe,
Beaten and tossed about
By the sullen winds that blow
From the desolate shores of doubt,
When the anchors that faith had cast
Are dragging in the gale,
I am quietly holding fast
To the things that cannot fail.

In the darkest night of the year
When the stars have all gone out,
I know that courage is better than fear,
That faith is better than doubt.
And that somewhere beyond the stars
Is a love that is better than fate,
When the night unlocks her bars
I shall see him and I will wait.

Galbraith Hall Todd, D.D., is minister at Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.

- More from Galbraith Hall Todd

Cover Story

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Edward J. Young

It was in 1947 that the first discoveries of the remarkable manuscripts, now commonly known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, were made. Already the amount of literature concerned with these scrolls has grown tremendously. Several popular books have been published, to say nothing of numerous articles, both popular and technical; even some books of a technical nature have appeared. It is of course impossible to keep up with this large output, and even a specialist in the Old Testament can do little more than read the more important publications. Sufficient time has elapsed, however, so that it is now possible to speak with some positiveness as to the relationship these scrolls bear to the origins of Christianity. This is particularly needful inasmuch as the idea is widespread that the scrolls were the work of Essenes, and that John the Baptist was once a member of the Essenes, who introduced some of their ideas into Christianity.

The Principal Documents

In this present article we shall seek to present a survey of the principal documents discovered so far and to indicate briefly their relationship to Christianity. In a following article we hope to deal in more detail with the importance of the Isaiah manuscript for biblical studies generally.

The scroll of Isaiah is perhaps the most important of all the manuscript finds, and is certainly the most sensational. It is written on seventeen sheets of leather sewed end to end, in fifty-four columns of writing, and in its entirety is more than twenty-four feet in length.

The manuscript has been dated as belonging to the second half of the second century B.C. If this dating is correct, it is the oldest extant copy of any biblical book. This fact is of the utmost importance, for previous to the discovery of the scroll the earliest copies of portions of the Hebrew Bible were only as old as the tenth century A.D. Here, then, in this new discovery, is a copy of an Old Testament book, antedating by about one thousand years any previously known copies in the Hebrew language. On the whole the text shows a remarkable faithfulness to the Hebrew text already in our possession. There are, however, some minor divergences, principally in the matter of spelling. The importance of such an early witness to the text of the book of Isaiah can scarcely be over-estimated.

The first to identify the scroll, it seems, was a great Catholic biblical scholar, J. P. M. van der Ploeg of Nijmegan, Netherlands. He was granted the privilege of seeing the scrolls, which were at a small monastery in Jerusalem, supposedly built on the site of the house of Mark’s mother, and belonging to the Syrian Orthodox Church. Upon being shown the manuscript of Isaiah, he at once identified it. Later, when it was brought to the American Schools of Oriental Research, an American scholar, Dr. Trever, copied out a passage from the manuscript, which turned out to be the first verse of Isaiah 65.

The Habakkuk Commentary

Another manuscript that has proved of unusual interest is one that scholars have designated the Habakkuk Commentary. It is far shorter than the long Isaiah scroll, and consists of only two pieces, sewed together. It is about five feet in length, and contains the first two chapters of the book with a commentary. It has been suggested that this may indicate that the third chapter had not been added to the book of Habakkuk at that time. Such a conclusion, however, does not necessarily follow, for it is more likely that the commentator found only the first two chapters suitable for his purpose. The third chapter of Habakkuk is actually a psalm and of different style from the first two chapters; for that reason the commentator may not have wished to discuss it.

The work is not a commentary in the modern sense of that term. When the author wishes to comment, he inserts after the verse in question the word pishro, i.e., its interpretation is. Then follow the comments he wishes to make. These comments, however, are not a serious attempt to bring out the meaning of the biblical text. They are simply references to conditions existing in the sect to which the writer belonged. It is for this reason that the work is sometimes described as pesher (a word meaning interpretation.It is a form of this word, pishro, with which the comments are introduced.). Thus, to take an example, the comment on Habakkuk 1:4 may be translated, “its interpretation is, the wicked one, he is the Wicked Priest, and the righteous one, he is the Teacher of Righteousness.” The first part of the comment is lost, although doubtless it began with words that could be translated as we have just done. The Teacher of Righteousness who is introduced in this comment was evidently a member, possibly the leader, of the group to which the writer belonged.

Similarities Are Formal

Without a doubt the Habakkuk Commentary is one of the more important of the Dead Sea finds. Already much study has been devoted to it. At least one large technical volume has been written about it. And it is this “commentary” which, according to many, is supposed to furnish much of the evidence for the view that the teachings of Christianity are to be derived from the group that produced it.

Does the Habakkuk Commentary, however, really support the view that the ideas of Christianity are in some measure to be derived from the group that lived at Qumran near the Dead Sea? The answer to this question can of course be determined only by a careful study both of the New Testament and of the Habakkuk Commentary. Such a study shows that whatever similarities there are between the two are of a merely formal nature. To take but one example, the Habakkuk Commentary in its remarks upon Habakkuk 2:4 speaks of “all who do the law in the house of Judah whom God will deliver from the house of judgment [the court?] on account of their toil and their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness.” At first blush this seems to be very close to the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone. In all probability, however, the commentator simply used the word “faith” because it was found in the text of Habakkuk.

Misunderstanding Of Faith

That the commentator did not have a proper understanding of the meaning of the word “faith” is shown by the fact that he links it with the word “toil.” According to the New Testament (in fact, according to the Old Testament also), a man is saved by faith without the works of the law. If salvation is of faith, it cannot be by works, for faith excludes works. Likewise, if salvation is by works, faith is excluded. It can be one or the other, but not both. The Bible makes it clear that salvation is by faith alone. Very different, however, is this Habakkuk Commentary. The commentator teaches that deliverance from the house of judgment will come on account of both works and faith. This is the very opposite of what the Bible teaches.

The Manual Of Discipline

This work consists of five sheets of parchment, forming a scroll of a little over six feet in length, sewn together and comprising eleven columns. It appears to be a manual of instruction for those who wish to be members of the community. According to this document there was to be a kind of communal life. “They shall eat together, bless together and take counsel together” (v. 3). In early Christianity, however, this practice was not compulsory but voluntary (cf. Acts 4:32 ff.). The members of the community were to devote themselves to the study of the Law. They are described as those who “turn away from all evil and hold fast to all that He [i.e., God] has commanded in accord with His good pleasure;—to become a group in the Torah [Law] …” (v. 1, 2).

Did the practices of this group bear any relationship to those of Christianity? What, for example, shall we say about baptism? It is true that the sect whose customs are reflected in the Manual of Discipline engaged in certain lustrations and bathing, which seems to have been for a purificatory purpose. What its nature was, however, is difficult to determine, nor is the manner in which these washings were performed known as clearly as one could wish. It seems perfectly safe to say that they were not similar in purpose to baptism as taught in the New Testament.

The same is true of the communal meal of which the community partook. It must, of course, be noted that the practice of such a communal meal is also to be found elsewhere in the Jewish world, and was not restricted to the group that lived near the Dead Sea. The Lord’s Supper, however, was instituted by the Lord himself for the purpose of showing forth His death till He come (1 Cor. 10:20). Insofar as we may speak of historical roots of the Lord’s supper, they go back to the Old Testament, not to the customs or practices of Qumran.

At this point it is well to note that the community that lived at Qumran was a Jewish one. Whether it is to be identified with the Essenes is an open question. Such identity can neither be proved nor disproved. Inasmuch as the group was Jewish, in the nature of the case it is to be expected that its practices would largely reflect the teachings of the Old Testament, and this is just what we find. The roots of many of the practices of the group go back to the Old Testament, and for this reason we find a superficial resemblance between them and certain teachings of the New Testament. It would be a grave error, however, to assume that the practices of the group actually constituted the source from which the New Testament teachings were derived.

Other Manuscripts

In a short article of this kind it is impossible to do justice to all the manuscript finds. We may simply note one manuscript that is now generally designated “The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.” It contains nineteen columns of writing, and describes a holy war between the descendants of Levi, Judah, and Benjamin (the Children of Light) and the men of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Philistia, and the Kittim of Asshur (the Children of Darkness). There has been much discussion as to the historical references and the background of the document and its contents. Probably it describes the struggles of the Jews with their adversaries down to the Roman period.

Of unusual interest is the scroll containing what are designated the “Thanksgiving Hymns.” These are praises to God, much in the style of the biblical Psalms. They reflect a period later than that of the Old Testament and evidently represent the community at worship. They are largely filled with biblical phrases and thoughts. A comparison with the divinely revealed Psalms of the Bible, however, very decidedly shows them to be far superior to the Thanksgiving Hvmns.

Mention must also be made of three small fragments of Daniel which come from two different scrolls. Two fragments contain parts of the third chapter of Daniel, while the other has the section in chapter two where the language of Daniel changes from Hebrew to Aramaic. On the basis of paleological grounds (i.e., the nature of the script) these fragments have been dated in the late second century B.C., less than a century after the date “critics” give for the origin of the book itself. (Those who do not accept the witness of the Bible to itself usually date the final edition of Daniel at about 165 B.C.). This is most striking, for it apparently shows that two copies of the book were in circulation very shortly after the alleged time of its composition. It begins to look as though this consideration will make more difficult the maintaining of a late date for the authorship of the prophecy of Daniel.

A word must be said about the two copper scrolls discovered in one of the caves. They have finally been examined, and a first report claims that they contain directions for the location of buried treasure. To the best of the present writer’s knowledge, no technical report upon them has yet been made available, so that it is too early to say anything about their significance.

A word may be said by way of summary. Over four hundred fragments of biblical manuscripts have now been found. In fact, there are parts of every book of the Old Testament, with the possible exception of the book of Esther. Not all of this material has yet been made available for study, and it will doubtless be some time before it is ready. Great credit, however, is certainly due those scholars who have made manuscripts available. Is it too early to say anything definite about the effect which these discoveries will have upon biblical scholarship? For our part, we think not. Even now it is becoming apparent that many of the positions that have been held by those who do not accept the infallibility of Scripture must be abandoned. On the other hand, as a result of these discoveries, not one position that the conservatives have held has had to be abandoned or even modified. Not one teaching of the Scriptures has had to go by the board. This is indeed heartening, but it is what we might expect, for the Scriptures were not given by the wisdom of man but are the revealed oracles of the one living and true God.

END

Preacher In The Red

LONG TIME BETWEEN CALLS

A few months ago I paid a hospital call on a young woman of our church who had given birth to a child.

Recognizing that the patient’s room was in the same end of the hospital, and in about the same location, as one recently occupied by another of our parishioners, I ventured to say, “You know, I think this is the very same room that Mrs. A was in after her operation.”

Graciously refraining from laughter, the patient was quick to respond, “Well, if Mrs. A was ever in this room, it was long ago.” Immediately I realized that I was in the maternity ward, and that Mrs. A had borne her last child twenty-five years before.—WILLIS C. ROEBUCK, JR., Pastor, Braes Baptist Chapel, Houston, Texas.

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

- More from Edward J. Young

Cover Story

Evangelist-Theologian: Appreciation of James Denney

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

“If evangelists were our theologians or theologians our evangelists, we should at least be nearer the ideal church.” So wrote James Denney (1856–1917) in the foreword to his famous work on The Death of Christ (London, 1902, p. viii), a book which displays in a remarkable manner the truth that the evangelical theme of atonement is central in its significance for Christian theology. Equipped with one of the most brilliant intellects of his day, the whole life of this humble and single-minded man was an illustration of the way in which a theologian could be at the same time an evangelist, not only in his preaching but also in his thinking and writing.

Centennial Of Denney’s Birth

Denney was born in Paisley on the 5th of February, 1856; but he grew up in Greenock where he rejoiced in the friendship of that man of genius, J. P. Struthers.

At the age of eighteen his illustrious career as a student in the University of Glasgow commenced. Prizes and gold medals came his way almost as part of the natural order of things, and so outstanding were his abilities that already many visualized him as the future occupant of a professorial chair in the Arts faculty—just which chair might depend on his own choice. His choice, however, fell not on one of the Arts subjects, but on Theology, which he proceeded to study in the Free Church College in Glasgow.

After his graduation in divinity, he accepted a call to be minister of East Free Church, Broughty Ferry. There he spent eleven happy years. His preaching, disciplined, incisive and directed to the consciences of his hearers, was essentially evangelical, and, indeed, was influenced by his reading of the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. It demonstrated that his belief that “preaching and theology should never be divorced” was not merely a theoretical conviction of the study, but one which he did not fail to put into practice. He was convinced that “the simplest truth of the gospel and the profoundest truth of theology must be put in the same words—He bore our sins” (ibid., p. 282), and he effectively summed up the urgency of the preacher’s task when he wrote: “The proclamation of the finished work of Christ is not good advice, it is good news”; accordingly, “the man who has this to preach has a gospel about which he ought to be in dead earnest” (ibid., pp. 312, 326).

From Pulpit To Professorship

From Broughty Ferry, Denney returned to Glasgow as Professor of Systematic Theology in the Free Church College. Then, in 1900, he exchanged this Chair for that of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology, as successor to Professor A. B. Bruce. By 1915, when he was appointed Principal of the College, his influence and reputation as theologian and leader in the Church of Scotland were second to none. His death took place in June, 1917, when he was at the height of his powers; and his dying, like his living, was marked by unfaltering confidence in the perfect atoning work of Christ.

Centrality Of Christ’s Death

But James Denney still speaks to us today through his writings, and it is to his theology that I now wish to turn.

The significance of Christ’s atoning death for mankind was his preoccupation; it was a theme which ceaselessly gripped him, and the simple reason for this was his conviction that “the death of Christ is the central thing in the New Testament” and that “where there is no Atonement there is no gospel” (ibid., pp. 283 f.). It is therefore not surprising that three of his most important books should bear the titles: The Death of Christ, The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation (London, 1917), and The Atonement and the Modern Mind (third edition, London, 1919).

His exposition of this noble theme is full, fearless and always gracious and crystal clear. With certain theologians who regarded the Incarnation as an end in itself he found it impossible to agree: “The New Testament,” he wrote, “knows nothing of an incarnation which can be defined apart from its relation to atonement … Not Bethlehem, but Calvary, is the focus of revelation, and any construction of Christianity which ignores or denies this distorts Christianity by putting it out of focus” (The Death of Christ, p. 325).

Objective Aspect Of Atonement

Denney recognized the Atonement as in the first place an objective act of God, and, as such, an act which is consistent with God’s whole character. He thus speaks of the “divine necessity—not to forgive, but to forgive in a way which shows that God is irreconcilable to evil, and can never treat it as other or less than it is” (The Atonement and the Modern Mind, p. 82). So Christ went to the Cross, for “God could not do justice to Himself, in relation to man and sin, in any way less awful than this” (ibid., p. 91).

In this vital respect, as Denney perceived, the modern mind is not different from the ancient; for both “the attraction and the repulsion of Christianity are concentrated at the same point; the cross of Christ is man’s only glory, or it is his final stumbling block” (ibid., p. 3).

The Atonement is, in fact, a revelation both of the love of God and of his justice. “Justice,” declared Denney, “is in no sense at war with mercy. The opposite of justice is not mercy, but injustice, and God is never either unmerciful or unjust.… In the divine nature justice and mercy do not need to be composed, they have never fallen out” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, pp. 104, 233). The meeting of mercy with justice is seen in the fact of the divine necessity “that sin, in the very process in which it is forgiven, should also, in all its reality, be borne.” No element of the tremendous reality of sin is ignored or evaded by Christ. “On the contrary,” says Denney, “sin is exhausted in His appearance on the cross; the cup is not tasted, but drained.” The ultimate truth about forgiveness was, for Denney, simply this, “that sin is only forgiven as it is borne. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree: that is the propitiation. It is the satisfaction of divine necessities, and it has value not only for us, but for God” (ibid., pp. 161 f.).

Calvary Makes A Difference To God

It was maintained by Denney that “if we say that the death of Christ was an atoning sacrifice, then the atonement must be an objective atonement. It is to God it is offered, and it is to God it makes a difference.” In the ancient Church the death of Christ was universally regarded as “an atoning sacrifice through which sin was annulled and God and man reconciled” (ibid., p. 30); and equally primitive is the conception of Christ’s death as a ransom, the cost of man’s emancipation. These ideas of sacrifice and ransom both “imply that Christ did with God for men something which they could not do for themselves, and which made them infinitely His debtors” (ibid., p. 33). Denney insisted that “we cannot dispense with a work of reconciliation which is as objective as Christ Himself, and has its independent objective value to God.… The world with Christ and His passion in it is a different place from the world without Christ and His passion in it. It is a different place to God, and God’s attitude to it is different” (ibid., p. 236)—and the explanation of this is that it is God’s complete and final act on behalf of sinners: “the one thing needful for the salvation of sinners was once for all done and endured at the cross” (ibid., p. 284).

Subjective Side Emphasized Also

Yet it must not be thought that Denney failed to appreciate that the subjective aspect of the Atonement is also of importance. One who emphasized, as he did, experience as a theological criterion was not likely to make this mistake. “The work of reconciliation,” he affirmed, “must have justice done to its subjective as well as its objective reference; the doctrine must recognise its ultimate effect in man as well as its value for God” (ibid., p. 109).

It is true that he spoke of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo as “the truest and greatest book on the Atonement that has ever been written” (The Atonement and the Modern Mind, p. 84), but this did not prevent Denney from criticizing the book’s serious inadequacies, nor from appreciating what is of value in Abelard’s view of the Atonement as a demonstration of divine love. Denney urged, however, that “the death of Christ can only be regarded as a demonstration of love to sinners, if it can be defined or interpreted as having some necessary relation to their sins” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 79).

Significance Of Christ’s Life

Nor should it be imagined that Denney underestimated the significance of Christ’s life as integrally connected with his redeeming function. His study of the New Testament led him to see that Christ’s life “attains its true interpretation only as we find in it everywhere the power and purpose of His death.” So assured was Denney of this truth that he felt able to define Christ’s life as “part of His death: a deliberate and conscious descent, ever deeper and deeper, into the dark valley where at the last hour the last reality of sin was to be met and borne” (The Atonement and the Modern Mind, pp. 108 ff.). But, thanks be to God, Christ’s death is not the end of the story, for it is followed by His resurrection from the dead. “The New Testament,” says Denney, “preaches a Christ who was dead and is alive, not a Christ who was alive and is dead.… To preach the Atonement means not only to preach One who bore our sins in death, but One who by rising again from the dead demonstrated the final defeat of sin, and One who comes in the power of His risen life … to make all who commit themselves to Him in faith partakers in His victory” (ibid., p. 112).

The Atonement And Our Century

This brings us to the question of the reality of the Atonement for man in this twentieth century. What, to use the modern terminology, is its existential significance, if any? This was a question of which Denney was keenly aware.

But he was first of all convinced of the historical foundations of Christianity. “The whole power of Christianity is in its historical character,” he asserted, “and to replace its sublime and tragic facts by a system of ideas, however true and imposing, is to destroy it altogether” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 131).

But it is precisely in relation to this soteriological history that the existential import of Christianity must be perceived. “There is certainly no reconciliation but through the historical Christ: there is no other Christ of whom we know anything whatever. But,” he adds, “the historical Christ does not belong to the past. The living Spirit of God makes Him present and eternal; it is not from Palestine, or from the first century of the Christian era, but here and now that His reconciling power is felt” (ibid., p. 9). In this sense the Christian believer today is no more remote from Christ and His power than was, for example, the Apostle Paul nineteen hundred years ago. Paul was not philosophizing in the abstract or indulging in academic theological speculation when he wrote his epistles. On the contrary, he was writing of what he had himself experienced. He knew the power of the risen Christ as a reality in his own life; and the same has been true of every believer in every age. With this in mind, Denney was even willing to state that “the basis of all theological doctrine is experience” (ibid., p. 199; cf. Jesus and the Gospel, third edition, London, 1909, p. 36). Thus, while maintaining the full historical character of the Christian religion, he stressed that its saving truth is not limited to the past, but is “here, in the living Christ and in the experience of Christians” (ibid., p. 376).

God Demands A Response Of Faith

The response which God demands from man to the finished work of Christ is that of faith. “He must trust himself to such love instantly, unreservedly, for ever,” says Denney. “He cannot negotiate with God about it.… The only right thing to do is to trust it, to let go, to abandon ourselves to it, keeping nothing back” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 163). Faith, he explains, is man’s “absolute committal of himself for ever to the sin-bearing love of God for salvation.” Faith, indeed, is “just as truly the whole of Christianity subjectively as Christ is the whole of it objectively” (ibid., p. 291). And when he describes the life of faith as “passionate identification” of the sinner with Christ in trust and love, and as “self-abandonment” to God’s redeeming love in Christ, his words have a genuinely existential ring about them (ibid., p. 324).

Impatience With Creeds

Linked with his emphasis on the criterion of experience was Denney’s dislike of creedal formulations. He felt that there was an ever-present danger lest through their imposition, faith in a person should be displaced, all unconsciously, in favor of faith in articles, and lest any “preliminary demand for orthodoxy” should act as a barrier “between the soul and the reconciling love of God in Christ” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, p. 109). It was his opinion that the process of intellectualization of the faith was responsible for the transformation, or deformation, of the primitive Church into “the historic Catholic Church.” The metamorphosis of the Church he summed up in three stages: “first a holy society, then a society of true doctrine, and finally a clerical polity” (Studies in Theology, eighth edition, London, 1904, pp. 193 ff.), or hierarchical institution. This, no doubt, is an over-simplification of history, but that does not mean that there is no truth in it. Here, however, we feel bound to urge, against Denney, that the New Testament shows that the preservation of “true doctrine” was very much an apostolic concern—a concern, that is, of the original Church.

What Denney was contending for was the view of Christianity, “not as a theological system, but as a religious life” (Jesus and the Gospel, p. 381), and he was insistent that no Christian was “bound to any Christology, or to any doctrine of the work of Christ” (ibid., p. 382), but to Christ alone. Not, of course, that Denney disparaged the need for Christians to achieve an appreciation of the intellectual implications of their faith, otherwise he would never have devoted his energies to the task of theology; but he demanded for every believer “entire intellectual freedom” (ibid., p. 384), to think things out for himself. The requirement of subscription to “elaborate creeds” he regarded as divisive in the Church, and he advocated the introduction of a brief and simple affirmation of faith which, by contrast, would stand as a “symbol of the Church’s unity.” The formula he proposed was: “I believe in God through Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord and Saviour” (ibid., p. 398).

Weakness In Doctrinal Position

Once again, it may be objected, Denney has produced an over-simplification. An affirmation of this sort, simple though it is, presupposes not only a doctrine of the person and work of Christ, but also, if it is to be meaningful, a right doctrine. It cannot be divorced from Christology and soteriology—a fact to which, somewhat ironically, Denney’s own careful and extensive writings bear testimony. To contemplate with complacency, as he did, the unity, under cover of this formula, of Arians and Athanasians (ibid., pp. 402 f.), is to fail to perceive that Arianism strikes at the very foundation of redemption in Christ. We do not dispute that many holding Arian views may at the same time have exercised a vital saving faith in Christ, but that does not justify Arianism any more than the presence of hypocrites among the orthodox disqualifies orthodoxy. Nicene Christology cannot be dismissed (as Denney wished to dismiss it) as “explaining nothing,” nor should an otherwise laudable zeal for unity in the Church be permitted to blind us to the necessity for right doctrine.

It is also necessary to suggest that Denney did less than justice to the scriptural evidence when he opposed the classic doctrine of the Trinity, rejecting in particular the personality of the Holy Spirit, whom he defined impersonally as “an experience which comes to people through faith,” the “experience of power, life, and joy” (The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, pp. 308 f.).

When his work is viewed as a whole, however, such blemishes as have been pointed out are seen to be incidental; but they are blemishes, nonetheless, and candor demands that they should be pointed out, for they indicate a weak point at the basis of his thinking. That weak point, in our estimation, may be described as an undue bias, in an otherwise finely balanced mind, towards a type of pragmatic subjectivism. But having said that, we remember that James Denney, like the rest of us, was not immune to human frailty and inconsistency.

Unity Of New Testament

The radical and frequently destructive criticism of the New Testament which was at its height in Denney’s day, particularly in Germany, caused him to give himself to a searching and systematic study of the New Testament writings, so that he might assess the validity of this criticism. His verdict was that the New Testament is essentially a unity. In his judgment, the contrasts found within it are not oppositions and there is no justification for speaking, as many were then doing, of “antagonism between the gospel of Jesus and that of Paul, or Peter, or John” (ibid., p. 129). Nor did he approve of the view that the thought-forms of St. Paul are antiquated, incomprehensible, and therefore unacceptable to modern man. To speak like this he denounced as “flying in the face of history and experience.” Denney’s answer here, his appeal to history and experience, seems to me to be irrefutable. The Church today, and not least the theologians, should give careful heed to these words which rose from the wisdom and warmth of his evangelical heart: “There have always been people who found Paul intelligible and accepted the gospel as he preached it,” he said. “There are such people still, if not in theological class rooms, then in mission halls, at street corners, in lonely rooms. It is not historical scholarship that is wanted for the understanding of him, and neither is it the insight of genius: it is despair. Paul did not preach for scholars, nor even for philosophers; he preached for sinners.”

These words show us the essential Denney, the man whose great passion was the Gospel of Jesus Christ as God’s remedy for sinful mankind. They show us, in short, one who was truly an evangelist-theologian.

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, B.D., M.A., is former secretary, Church Society (Church of England); former vice-president, Tyndale Hall.

- More from Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

Review of Current Religious Thought: November 12, 1956

John H. Gerstner

In some fifty current periodicals, one theme paces the field: neo-orthodoxy. Qumram takes second place; church union, third; and the ordination of women, “also ran.” We restrict our observations to this topic.

Theology Today has devoted virtually its whole issue (October 1956) to an American literary celebration of Karl Barth’s seventieth birthday. Princeton Seminary’s president, Dr. John A. Mackay, honors the Basler as his deliverer from the traditional view of biblical inspiration. “How liberating it has been for Christian faith—mine and that of a multitude of others—that a high view of Holy Scripture and the reality of biblical authority is not bound up with the genetic or historical problem of the composition of the books!”

Dr. Norman F. Langford (Secretary of the Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.) finds Barth still more liberating. “He has shown me that theology can never come to repose in a fixed orthodoxy—not even a neo-orthodoxy!—but must ever be moving on with no knowledge of where the journey will lead.”

¶ Some able articles on Barth, as well as additional testimonies to him, are found in this issue. Of special value for the sheer understanding of Barth is Arthur C. Cochrane’s summarization of Kirchliche Dogmatik, Vol. IV, Part 2, entitled “The Doctrine of Sanctification.” One general emphasis found here and elsewhere is that Barth’s theological shift in recent years has been from transcendence to incarnation (or transcendence viewed in relation to man).

This “shift” has led some to think Barth is becoming more evangelical, and that thinking in turn led Dr. Cornelius Van Til to write an article, “Has Karl Barth Become Orthodox?” (Westminster Theological Journal, May, 1954). This he not only answers with a documented negative but concludes with these words which Van Til’s friends say he believes today more than ever. “No heresy that appeared at any of these times [referring to times of Nicea, Dort and Westminster] was so deeply and ultimately destructive of the gospel as is the theology of Barth. Never in the history of the church has the triune God been so completely and inextricably intertwined with His own creature as He has been in modern dialectical thought.”

While Interpretation (July, 1956) was in no sense dedicated to Karl Barth, at least two important articles show the master’s stamp. Joseph Haroutunian, of McCormick Seminary, in “The Doctrine of the Ascension” writes that Christ “did not rise bodily, so as to be confined to the space of the creatures. He did not rise in spirit, so as to be the ghost of the man who lived among us. He himself arose, in his humanity as well as his divinity, and he ascended to heaven as Jesus Christ, and he is the Head of the Body … This is … the same revelation and hiddenness in the Ascension as it is in the Incarnation.” Edinburgh’s T. F. Torrance in “The Israel of God” gives a view of Israel’s rejection (which involves election.) (For a clear statement of Barth’s view, the final issue, February 1956, of The Calvin Forum, to which we say a regretful farewell, may be consulted). But getting back to Dr. Torrance, we hear him saying: “… within the Church of Christ, the Israel of God, there will be a special place for Israel as a people, and that even in its present blindness or rejection, Israel has a unique mission in the world, for by his election of Israel God has once and for all bound the salvation of mankind with Israel.” He cites Paul’s analogy of a root with its branches lopped off (Israel) and the new branches grafted in (Gentiles) as showing that even rejected Israel is tied up with the elected people!

¶ America’s most famous neo-orthodox theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, also continues to be in the theological and popular limelight. While The Union Seminary Quarterly (May 1956) was holding a quiet symposium on his thought and influence, he was soon to ring a bell-rope all his own by telling the world in general and New York City specifically that Billy Graham was not the answer to their ills. Liberal Van Dusen had previously chided Niebuhr for this type of thing. This time neo-orthodox Homrighausen and conservative Carnell did so. Carnell tried to point out that Graham was doing the best he could, and that Niebuhr too was morally peccable (Christian Century, Oct. 17, 1956). But Homrighausen hit where it must have hurt most, and Eternity magazine in its September issue was pleased to quote these words which would test neo-orthodoxy by its ministerial fruits: “Where are the new orthodoxy evangelists? I have frankly been disappointed in [neo-orthodoxy’s] inability to lead the way in the revival or rebirth of a relevant Protestantism in the local church.”

¶ As proof of the adage that whales do not get harpooned except when they spout off, Niebuhr had to take a sharp rebuke from John Paul Roth (The Lutheran Quarterly, August 1956). This was for his censure of the Lutheran Church for its censure of the heresy of the Rev. Mr. Crist. Niebuhr had said in that connection that doctrines needed to be taken seriously but not literally. Roth asks if the incarnation should not be taken literally? Showing a degree of exasperation with the symbolism of Niebuhr, Roth observes that “When Thomas bowed at the feet of the risen Jesus he did not confess ‘You are the event which clarifies the mystery of the divine and gives meaning to the human situation!’ He confesses that Jesus was Lord and God.”

¶ “Two Conflicting Trends in Protestant Theological Thinking” by Deane W. Ferm (Religion in Life, Autumn, 1956) refers to the old liberalism and the new orthodoxy. As a person who will take his orthodoxy straight, the writer stands on the sidelines, but by no means uninterested, in watching the pot calling the kettle black. Ferm laments that “The Neo-orthodox theologians are in the majority—or rather, in the positions of influence and power—as have been the orthodox down through the centuries. The reconstructionists (liberals) are evident throughout the Church and are particularly strong among the laity. Neo-orthodoxy is the general temper of almost all the leading theological seminaries today. One indication of this is that the course in Philosophy of Religion is rapidly disappearing from the theological curriculums. The substitute course is Philosophical Theology, the philosophizing about Christian Theology; the faith seeking an understanding. Present-day reconstructionists such as Bixler, Ross, Germ, Enslin, and Moehlman are almost unknown to seminary students.”

- More from John H. Gerstner

Book Briefs: November 12, 1956

Meredith G. Kline

No Happy Ending

The Old Testament Since the Reformation by Emil Kraeling, Harper, New York, 1955. $5.00.

“Should the Old Testament have any authority in the Christian Church, and if so how is that authority to be defined?” So Kraeling formulates what he calls “the master problem of theology” (pp. 7, 8)—not too difficult a problem if one bows the knee before Christ the Lord. He regarded the Law and the Prophets as His Father’s infallible word—for man to hear gladly and by it to live.

Our author, a Lutheran clergyman, endorses the majority opinion of his fellow specialists in Old Testament and Oriental studies, that the Old Testament teems with heathen myth and legend, falsified history and fraudulent claims of authorship, and sub-Christian theology and ethics. He thinks there are “terrible and shocking things contained in that book” and “the most monstrous contradictions” (p. 162). To modern theology informed by this negative criticism the Old Testament is understandably an annoying relic in the Church’s heritage. Inextricably entwined in Christian beginnings and deeply ingrown in Christian traditions, it cannot be dispatched forthwith and outright. And though it be crucified and buried quietly—for fear of the people who in their simplicity take it for the Word of God—it rises again to confront its executioners anew whenever they open their New Testaments. Hence the Modernists’ quandary, “What to do with this Old Testament?” Actually, the implication that this is a distinctively Old Testament problem for Modernism is misleading, for Modernism regards the entire Canon of the two Testaments as error-ridden.

Kraeling claims this question “runs through the whole of Christian history like a scarlet thread” (p·7). It certainly has been a live issue in the modern ecclesiastical scene, but hardly “through the whole of Christian history.” Such anachronism springs from anxiety to secure for Modernism’s defamation of the Bible (which has created this authority dilemma) the prestige of ancient and legitimate ecclesiastical lineage. Of such it is devoid. Within the confessing Church it is a bastard of recent intrusion. To be sure the Church has always struggled with the difficult task of determining normative demand from mere historical description in the Old Testament and beyond that, of distinguishing within the normative demand between the temporary and the permanent. Such investigation, however, does not call in question the fact or degree of the Old Testament’s authority. It rather originates in the full recognition of the divine authority of the Old Testament and is motivated by hearty commitment to the divine Author’s will.

In surveying critical thought on the Old Testament since the Reformation, Kraeling shows himself as accomplished in philosophical profundities as he is in antiquarian technicalities. His compendium of scholarly viewpoints provides a useful introduction and convenient reference to the essential ideas of a long array of the famous and the less known in the modern theological parade. Especially helpful is his unfolding of the still developing existential approach.

Unfortunately, the historic Christian doctrine of Scripture is largely ignored and appears only as the butt of inuendoes concerning the enlightenment or integrity of its defenders. In the case of Luther the common attempt is repeated to make him a forerunner of Modernism by quoting the worst of his less circumspect remarks. Even Paul does not escape Modernism’s genealogy mania. “The radical line” in his thinking is identified with Hirsch’s interpretation of the Old Testament as the very antithesis of Christianity (p. 239)! With Orthodoxy thus all but unrepresented in Kraeling’s survey, modern man’s reaction to the Old Testament appears there as a wearisome circling about an unsolvable problem—a phantom created by his own unbelief. “To this development,” Kraeling frankly confesses, “there is no happy ending” (p. 284).

MEREDITH G. KLINE

Heresies

The Rise of the Cults, Walter R. Martin, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1955.

The Christian Science Myth, Walter R. Martin and Norman H. Klann, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1955.

Jehovah of the Watchtower, Walter R. Martin and Norman H. Klann, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1956, revised edition.

Here are three books which deal with various cults. The first one discusses a number of cults such as Mormonism, Christian Science, Theosophy, Unity, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Father Divine. The latter two are devoted to two specific cults, Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Rise of the Cults is an elementary book which is designed primarily for the layman. The author himself reveals this in the introduction, and in the light of his objectives he has produced an interesting and informative volume. The material is limited in content and a minimum of facts are presented. This serves to create an impression of sketchiness, but it does not hurt the interest. The movement and description are rapid and dynamic. The intrusion of the author into the book does not lend to its stature, but it creates a note of personal experience. One can rightly question the two dollar price of a book which runs less than 30,000 words and which has in it fewer than 115 pages. One awaits with interest the larger and more authoritative volume on cults which is yet to appear and on which the author states he will have spent ten years of labor. At the moment there is no really first class treatment of the cults in detailed form within the evangelical framework.

The Christian Science Myth is a larger volume and reflects good use of primary and secondary sources. The authors do a thorough job of unmasking the errors of this extraordinary cult, and the analysis is penetrating and solid. Adherents of the cult will find it difficult to answer some of the compelling objections raised here and in numerous other exposes of the movement. The picture of Mary Baker Paterson Glover Eddy reflects the general consensus of opinion by those who have studied her life. It is an unhappy picture.

Of all the cults this is the most illogical and difficult to appreciate from any normal standard. Psychologically, Christian Science baffles the normal mind when it tries to grasp Mary Baker Eddy’s ungraspable, for she reverses all of the processes of reason, logic, and common sense. How otherwise normal people can embrace this cult is a deep mystery. It is unfortunate that the book is marred by two noticeable defects. One is the less than irenic and objective fashion with which the material is handled, lending the impression that the authors are biased beyond scholarly limits, and the other is poor proof reading as evidenced, e.g., by gross error on page 22.

Jehovah of the Watchtower presents a first rate indictment against this cult which admits no logical answer. The authors did justice in delineating the leading figures of the cult and indeed, could have added additional information of a more damaging nature. The analysis of the leading deficiencies of the cult over against the historic Christian faith is excellent, and the examination of key passages of the Bible which are distorted beyond recognition by Jehovah’s Witnesses strikes a telling blow.

One of the most difficult jobs—and it has not yet been done—is that of discovering the true reasons why people embrace this or other cults. The authors do offer suggestions which are helpful, but an outstanding contribution could be made to the field of study by a Christian psychiatrist who has the biblical background and the scientific training.

The authors are to be commended for undertaking a difficult job and for creating what is the beginning of a substantial apologetic against these heresies. We can look hopefully for further additions to the literature about the cults in the days ahead.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Realized Eschatology

Many Things in Parables, by Ronald S. Wallace, Harper, New York, $3.00.

This is a book of stimulating sermons on the parables of Christ. If the reader can manage to make due allowances for the author’s eschatological viewpoint, he will find page after page of fresh, arresting and pertinent observations.

The language is strongly evangelical and delightfully Christ-centered. But as most of the parables of our Lord abound in eschatological references, the reader of this book cannot help but notice that the author’s application is all too often without any other-worldly frame of reference.

Mr. Wallace, who is a minister of the Church of Scotland, clearly belongs to the school of C. H. Dodd and others, which is “realized eschatology.” However, according to Mr. Wallace, his is a “modified” form of realized eschatology. He acknowledges the prophetic element in the parables, interpreting it futuristically in the sense that it is taken to apply to “the present extension of the eschatological tension.” In other words, Wallace sees in the parables not only a contemporary application for the Lord’s day, but a continuing one for our own day.

But this variation upon the theme of realized eschatology in no wise frees Mr. Wallace from a view of history and eschatology which is essentially the religious equivalent of existentialism. To the extent that Wallace modifies C. H. Dodd, it is only in that “the whole sphere of the world today is being disturbed by Jesus Christ,” as was His own day—and this is the fulfillment of the prophetic element in the parables.

Thus in connection with the parable of the Pounds, we read that Christ has “gone to be in heaven” and now “sits at the right hand of God, controlling all things and awaiting the good pleasure of the Father till He shall return.” But, at the same time, the day of reckoning takes place whenever “Jesus comes to face men and reckon with them about their lives.” Then it is that “the truth about men’s attitude to the Lord comes out,” and “men begin to read their own hearts aright in the presence of Christ.”

Again, one reads appreciatively of the “living” Christ to our day until one suddenly discovers what Mr. Wallace means by “living.” He means that Christ must become as real to each of us as though we were among those who actually knew Him when He was living. In other words, for us to “take the living Christ into our lives” means that we must project ourselves backwards 2,000 years and walk with Him there. This, to me, is a new one.

This book vividly illustrates the danger facing historic Christianity today in the form of those modern theologies which blandly appropriate all of the thought-forms and phrases of Scripture but with an interpretation which makes eschatology into an ideal, history into poetry, and the other-worldly frame of reference only an attitude of the mind and heart. The untrained seeker after truth falls flat on his face before he realizes the ground has dropped from under him.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Luke Paraphrased

St. Luke’s Life of Jesus, by G. Aiken Taylor, Macmillan, New York, $2.75.

A translation has to do with the transfer of the exact thought expressed in one language into another. A paraphrase is a restatement of a text giving the meaning in another form, usually for clearer and fuller exposition. It is more a free rendering than a translation. The volume under review must be categorized as a paraphrase rather than a new translation. Dr. Taylor has gone to the original Greek to express Luke’s meaning in each verse, but has exercised considerable latitude in order to be more intelligible to the reader. His purpose has been to retell the gospel narrative in the language of our day. The author writes, “I offer this story I think Luke told. Taken from his writings only, it is a modern version of what I believe he wanted to convey through his story of Jesus Christ.” Again he states, “Mine is not primarily the story of what Jesus said and did, but what Luke intended to say about what Jesus said and did.”

The first section is called, “The Prelude.” The paraphrase reads as follows:

Thus, Theophilus, the Lord came; no stranger, not secretly, but with His credentials openly in His hand and unmistakable from the very beginning. As a matter of fact, they knew He would be someone special before the beginning as men count time. Wherever God’s invasion of Time through the miracle of the Incarnation touched the human sphere, those who stood at the points of contact knew they had been touched. We say this because among us today live those who felt it. Make no mistake: no mere man walked Galilee’s rolling hills and died on Judea’s barren Place of the Skull. He who did so bore in Himself that radiance the pale reflection of which shines from each human heart lately brought to Life by a Power greater than itself.

It is safe to say that for years to come this volume will be helpful to all who desire to appropriate more fully the Gospel as recorded by Luke. This lucid and penetrating presentation of the person, life, ministry and words of Christ is needed today and into the end of time. It should prove suggestive to ministers, Bible students and laymen. No thoughtful reader will leave this book without a deep and rich Christian experience.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Without Footnotes

Ecclesiastical History, by Eusebius, Baker, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1956.

This is a reprint of a great classic. No one familiar with the field need be told anything about the significance of this early church history which has come down to us.

Anyone interested in the history of the early church must sooner or later have recourse to Eusebius. It is an extraordinary document and contains much important information about the progress of the Christian faith. Persecutions, heresies, leading ecclesiastical figures all find their way into the pages of the volume. Contained therein is a mine of useful information about the life and times of Constantine.

The most serious defect of this popular edition is not what it does but what it fails to do. It lacks the notes which one can find in the Second Series of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers which appeared under the editorial supervision of Schaff and Wace. The profusion of notes is precisely what makes this other edition so valuable. These notes are lacking in the popular edition which is limited to the Eusebian text. And the text without the footnotes is far less valuable.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Salient Mission Facts

A Survey of World Missions, by John Caldwell Thiessen, Inter-Varsity Press, Chicago 10. $5.95.

It is one thing to lament the existing gaps in various fields of evangelical literature; it is quite another to do something about it, and not many choose this latter alternative. The author of this work, the Professor of Missions at the Detroit Bible Institute, was deeply concerned about the lack of an up-to-date text book on the growth of the missionary enterprise, and he set himself to remedy the situation.

The result of his labors, and they must have been prodigious ones, is seen in A Survey of World Missions. Prefacing his consideration of present-day conditions by a brief treatment of the missionary movement through the ages, Mr. Thiessen goes on to consider the salient facts concerning the present-day situation in all the nations to which the Gospel has been taken.

He accomplishes his purpose by dividing the world into major areas, then considering each country within a given area as to the land, the people, and the religious situation. This is followed by a treatment of the political history and the missionary history of each nation. In each major section a chart is given, offering a comparative presentation of the more significant facts concerning the countries within the area.

In his description of the missionary history of the various lands, the author has endeavored to be scrupulously fair and inclusive in his treatment of the various missionary organizations that have labored in them.

It all adds up to a tremendous piece of work, which makes a real and much-needed contribution to the field of evangelical literature. Nowhere else is this material available in such accessible form, and it would seem incontrovertible that this book would be much desired, and much used by any missionary-minded pastor; or by any layman who is concerned for the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

Because of the scope of the work, and the obvious necessity of making use of secondary sources, it is inevitable that there should be deficiencies in such a book. There are minor errors of fact, which will probably be remedied in a later edition. By choosing to make his survey nation by nation, the author is unable in any one place to treat major factors which influence the current situation in large areas of the earth. It is possible, for example, to read the whole section on Latin America without getting anything like an adequate picture of the effects of the amazing population expansion and the rise of nationalism on the missionary enterprise there. The proportion of space given to some organizations over against others is debatable, to say the least, and the occasional mention of the missionary work of the various sects is not adequate to convey their tremendous influence on some mission fields. The subject of evangelical literature does not seem to get the prominence it merits.

While these criticisms are significant enough to mention, they should not be allowed to obscure the great value of Mr. Thiessen’s work. He has remedied a serious situation in the realm of missionary literature. There will be many who find not only helpful information and a stimulus to intercession, but cause for thanksgiving in the pages of this book. It represents a difficult task well done.

H. L. FENTON, JR.

Distaff Side

How to be a Preacher’s Wife and Like it, by Lora Lee Parrot, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, $2.00

Here is a volume which can be read with profit. Mrs. Parrot has prepared a thorough and well-organized manual for the minister’s wife, based upon broad experience as daughter and then wife of a minister.

She gives practical hints on efficient and economical home management which would be helpful to anyone on a limited budget. But even more valuable are her discussions concerning problems peculiar to ministers’ wives. She analyzes reasons for criticism and ways to deal with it. Procedures to overcome nervous exhaustion are suggested. She is excellent on the subject of the parsonage, including the parsonage telephone and church-owned furniture! She discusses appropriate dress for the minister and his wife.

While some of the material is admittedly based upon Mrs. Parrot’s personal preferences or prejudices, the great bulk is based upon sound principles of psychology and domestic science and all in accord with scriptural attitudes.

NORMA R. ELLIS

- More from Meredith G. Kline

News Report: Conflict of the Gospel with Paganism, November 12, 1956

Mechanized March By Children Of Israel

A history of conflict, dating back to the time of Moses when the Israelites were enslaved by the Pharoahs, erupted again in recent days when the mechanized children of Israel used only a few hours to cover much of the same territory over which their ancestors wandered for 40 years.

The push into Egypt by Israelis was made through the Sinai Peninsula—a barren waste of land inhabited mostly by nomads. But for centuries it has been an important corridor linking Egypt with Asia. The distance from Israel’s border to the Suez Canal is 130 miles.

A variety of reasons have been given as the cause of the conflict. The Israeli foreign office said Egypt had remained in a state of war despite provisions of the Egyptian-Israel armistice, had sent murder gangs into Israel and had encompassed the land with a ring of steel. The Syrian-Jordan-Egyptian military command had been set up under the Egyptian military chief, with Russian arms for support.

The issue, according to Israel, was stark and simple—plain survival. She was a tiny nation of 1,600,000 set in a sea of 50,000,000 Arabs.

As the Arab nations looked at it, Israel was an aggressive intruder who had seized lands controlled by Arabs for more than a thousand years. The Arabs feared that Israel, with western support and technical superiority, would dominate Araby economically and destroy its ancient way of life.

Many in Christendom, although sympathetic with the plight of Israel, were grieved over the aggression. Whether this was a spontaneous action or one instigated by outside sources probably will be clarified before this appears in print. Christian leaders of western nations appealed to Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion against the use of force. The appeals were rejected by Ben-Gurion, who has been described by Time as “testy … volatile … visionary.”

Some evangelical Christians look at the conflict from the standpoint of prophecy, as well as politics. Many feel that Israel will be converted to Christianity and will possess Palestine. Others feel the conversion of the Jews does not involve the possession of the land. All feel that blessings will descend upon the Jews only when they recognize that Jesus is the Messiah revealed to the prophets.

Undoubtedly, there are prophetic enthusiasts who will see in this new crisis specific fulfillment of prophecy. Such may be the case, but many observers feel that Christians will be wise to refrain from hasty judgment while centering their energies more on praying for all concerned … that God’s restraining hand may be in evidence and that even in this conflict the wrath of man may please Him.

Christian Vision

The ordinary people of two southern cities, Richmond, Virginia, and Louisville, Kentucky, are sending $49,000 to New York so the teeming millions of the famed city can hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ as proclaimed by Billy Graham.

Richmond is giving $28,000 and Louisville $21,000 toward expenses of the biggest crusade ever planned by the evangelist. None of the money will go to Graham. Rental of Madison Square Garden will cost $7,500 each night for the period of eight weeks, beginning next May 15.

Roger Hull, noted New York business leader and chairman of the New York crusade committee, said the generosity of Christians in Richmond and Louisville was a great factor in encouraging New York leaders to face the almost insurmountable problems.

Hull visited Louisville during the final week of the recent successful campaign there to express his appreciation to the people.

Louisville, in many respects, was among the greatest campaigns ever held in the United States by Graham. The exact attendance was 493,850, an average just under 19,000 for the 26 meetings at the Fairgrounds Coliseum and Stadium. A total of 8,189 made decisions for Christ.

Only two four-week Graham campaigns in American cities topped the one in Louisville. At Nashville in 1944 there was an attendance of 660,000 and 8,860 decisions. In 1953 at Dallas 513,00 attended and 5,869 made decisions.

A crowd of 38,600 overflowed the stadium for the final service in Louisville. When the invitation was given, 1,167 streamed from the stands for Christian commitments.

The impressive attendance and decision totals, however, were not the most outstanding results of the crusade to some observers. Ora Spaid, religion editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, said the greatest accomplishment, in his opinion, was the spirit of unity it brought among the ministers of different denominations.

“The ministers have worked together in spite of their theological differences,” he said.

In commenting on this phase of the crusade, Graham said:

“We have sort of forgotten that we are Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians, and we have been followers of Christ. It does us good to forget our denominational differences and just be Christians.”

Hate In Hungary

The rebellious people of Hungary, fighting to rid themselves of communist domination, took their cue from the inscription on the war memorial in Budapest University:

“Endure everything: sorrow, pain, suffering and death; but do not tolerate one thing—the dishonor of the Hungarian people.”

One victory for insurgents in the fighting, which brought death to hundreds on both sides, was the election of Imre Nagy as head of the new government. At press time, however, there was no way to determine the permanence of this victory.

The rebels demanded full religious freedom from the new leader.

Nagy was ousted as premier in April, 1955, after an 18-month rule during which Hungary was said to have enjoyed more religious freedom than under any previous Communist leader.

The premier, 60, was born of a peasant family of strict Calvinist faith. Although a convinced communist who had fought in Russia at the outbreak of the Revolution, he apparently raised no objections when his daughter married a Protestant minister.

During his previous term as premier, he followed the Malenkov economic line, stressing greater output of consumer goods, and inaugurated a series of concessions to public opinion.

A Hungarian broadcaster in Moscow during World War II, Nagy came back to his homeland with the Soviet Army in 1944. Before becoming premier, he held various government posts.

Jerusalem + Judea + Samaria

Answers From Israel

The “dollar diplomacy” of missions to the Jews will never take the place of genuine and active Christian love for the Jew next door.

This was the summary of Donn C. Odell, correspondent for CHRISTIANITY TODAY in Israel, after a revealing interview with a leading Israeli Zionist, who preferred to remain anonymous. (The interview was inherited after Professor Joseph Klausner, one of Judaism’s noted figures, had to break an appointment with the Zionist attorney).

Odell found that distrust of Christian missions often runs as deep as distrust of Arab politics.

The frank questions and answers are as follows:

Q—Do you feel that the establishment of Israel is a fulfillment of prophecy?

A—Yes. This is part of the Zionist vision.

Q—Should Israel be an all-Jewish State?

A—Yes. However, minorities have a right to live in Israel. But the leadership should always be Jewish.

Q—Do you look for a personal Messiah or a symbolic Messiah such as the Jewish State?

A—We do not know who or what the Messiah will be. We do know, however, that he will not be a Christian Messiah.

Q—Do you think it is possible for a Jew to believe that Jesus is the Messiah and still remain a Jew and loyal Israeli?

A—No. This is a contradiction of terms. Jesus represents a foreign, non-Jewish religion. To believe in Jesus means a renunciation of Judaism.

Q—What is your definition of Judaism?

A—All the spiritual values created by Jews that have come to an expression in Jewish life.

Q—On the basis of your definition of Judaism, would you say that communists and other atheists born of Jewish parents are Jews?

A—No. Judaism is an incorporation of spiritual values. To disbelieve in these values is to cease being a Jew.

Q—Does the average Jew believe in a self-conscious life after death?

A—No. There is no doctrine of immortality in the Jewish faith. Besides, every generation of Jews has been forced to give its full attention to just staying alive and has not had time to reflect on the hereafter.

Q—Why does the average observant Jew keep the law? Is it connected with a better relationship with God?

A—We keep the law because to do so is part of being a Jew. Judaism is not a theology. Therefore, we cannot give systematic answers to theological questions.

Q—Would you say that the unhappy historical relations between Jews and Christians are the bases for the Jewish fear of Christianity?

A—Not only this. There is a vast difference in philosophies and moral standards.

Q—Do you mean by this that Christianity is less moral than Judaism?

A—I mean that Jews have undergone terrible suffering at the hands of Christians. They talk about love but they have beaten us with the cross in their efforts to convert us.

Q—I understand that there is a fear of a possible encroachment of Gentile political influence in Israel through their foreign missions. However, there are a number of Jews in Israel who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but who have no connection with any of the missions and who are loyal Israelis. Do you believe that they should be granted freedom of open worship and employment even though they are Jewish-Christians?

A—Yes. No one should lose his job because of what he believes.

Q—Do you recognize a basic difference between world organized Christianity and the simple message of the New Testament?

A—No. Christianity could not have expanded the way it did without its organization. Even though you say that the ministry and life of Jesus have been contradicted in history by acts of the Church, every Jew can find in Judaism the love and security he wishes.

100 Years Of Trying

Evangelical churches in Iran celebrated the 100th anniversary of their founding this month at festivities in Rezaieh, formerly known as Urumieh.

Plans were made at the celebration to carry the message of Christ to 18,000,000 Moslems in Iran.

The first missionaries of the American Board of Foreign Missions arrived in Persia in 1834. In 1835 they began to work among the Nestorians (now usually called Assyrians), who lived near the borders of Turkey and Russia. Purpose of the missionaries was not to form a Protestant denomination, but rather to revive the dying Syriac-speaking Nestorian Church and enable it “through the grace of God to exert a commanding influence in the spiritual regeneration of Asia.”

The Bible was translated into modern Syriac. Books were printed and schools opened. There were schools for the clergy as well as for boys and girls. Christians and Moslems received medical attention. Earnest prayers for revival were offered.

After years of waiting and working, the revival came. Hundreds of Assyrians were converted and became witnesses for Christ.

The evangelical Christians gradually united for fellowship and, in 1854, began to take communion together. Ministers were former Nestorian priests who had accepted the evangelical teachings.

Prior to World War I, the Evangelical Church in Urumieh numbered more than 3,000. After the war the Assyrians scattered, leaving about 1,000 members there. They are now part of the Evangelical Church of Iran, established in all the larger cities.

Less than 100 Protestant foreign missionaries are active in Iran.

W.M.M.

Opportunity Unfolds

Bud Schaeffer, two-time Little All-American basketball player at Wheaton College and now serving in the Far East with Orient Crusades, is scoring with athletic evangelism as coach of the Nationalist China Olympic basketball team.

The team has been training for two months in Taipeh, Formosa, for the Olympic Games at Melbourne, Australia, in December.

Since practice began, Captain Tang and little Mr. Chu, a jet-pilot with 20 missions over Red China, have received Christ.

The opportunity unfolded like this:

In 1954 the Chinese Olympic committee needed a basketball coach for the Asian Games. The officials, on a visit to Manila, found one—Chuck Holsinger, Orient Crusades missionary. Holsinger led the team to runner-up honors.

This year, with the international games approaching, the committee again turned to Orient Crusades for assistance and found a man, Schaeffer. The Wheaton grad had attracted wide attention in the Far East as a player with the “Venture for Victory” basketball team—young Christian men who played hard and then gave testimonies at half-time. Thousands were reached at the games and school coaching clinics.

Schaeffer has requested the prayers of Christians around the world for the Olympic opportunity.

Concerning the decisions already made, he said:

“Holsinger planted, Schaeffer watered, but God gave the increase!”

Too Much Of Good Thing

“Perhaps we have had almost too much of a good thing” is an opinion being voiced in fast-growing New Zealand about “the great spate” of evangelistic activity by visiting Americans and Englishmen.

Remarked the Rt. Rev. A. K. Warren, Bishop of Christ Church:

“In the past year there have been several evangelical missions which have arrived in the country, unheralded and uninvited.

“It is not surprising that those who are anxious to get hold of people who have strayed, or who have never committed themselves to the Christian way of life, should frequently turn to these missions as a way of solving their problems. But I am convinced that we err greatly if we look upon mass evangelism as the one and only solution to our problem. Indeed, there is a great risk in doing so … mass evangelism requires long, careful and prayerful preparation.”

Condition Of Welcome

Political leaders in West Africa are keeping their eyes on the way churches and missionary societies adapt themselves to national progress.

“As long as you show that you are in sympathy with our aspirations, we shall welcome you missionaries in our country,” a Nigerian official told Dr. A. D. Helser of the African Challenge, leading religious publication. “When you cease to show that, we shall cease to welcome you.”

The British Colonial Office announced last month that the Gold Coast will receive full independence on March 6, 1957.

—W. H. F.

Country’s Fame

The South African rugby team was beaten badly in New Zealand recently because of its “failure to observe Sunday properly,” according to a Netherlands Reformed Church clergyman.

The Rev. J. H. Lange recalled that the team devoted the Sunday before leaving on the trip to having passport photos taken, being inoculated and making other arrangements.

“Would it not have been much better,” he said, “if these men, as envoys of a Christian land, had quietly visited some church on that Sunday?

“If our churchmen, statesmen and sportsmen continue to desecrate God’s day on the pretext of advancing our country’s fame, the day will come when we will have no fame left.”

Digest …

Dr. Ralph E. Dodge, 49, formerly of Ridgewood, N.J., elected Bishop of the Methodist Church for Central and Southern Africa.

Dr. Robert G. Cochrane, London, technical advisor of American Leprosy Missions, cited by the government of India for outstanding service in the field of leprosy treatment and control.

Prime Minister Jussein S. Suhrawardy of Pakistan refutes report by Peiping Radio that he said there was religious freedom in China.

Eight-member delegation of top Australian Anglican churchmen visiting China as guests of Chinese Episcopal Church. First representative group of religious leaders to visit China since communists took over in 1949.

Reorganization of National Christian Council of India, aimed at disassociating group from foreign influence, approved at meeting in Allahabad. Foreign missionary societies, not integrated with Indian churches, will be limited to associate memberships. Dependence on foreign funds to be reduced gradually, according to vote of delegates at triennial conference of the Council.

Prime Needs Of Christianity Cited

Four Protestant clergymen of as many denominations sat down in Oklahoma City to summarize the needs and faults of preachers.

The findings came out like this:

“More forceful presentation of hard-and-fast biblical rules with a ‘thus sayeth the Lord’ emphasis, instead of man’s opinion, is needed to meet modern world needs. People have heard the word of man. Now they want the Word of God, because they’ve tried everything else and it hasn’t worked.”

Among the faults pinpointed were:

Vague rambling in sermons with no clear-cut point—often done to please congregations instead of enlightening them.

Pretentious and highly-colored delivery, either with little or no feeling, or an ostentatious amount of it.

Increased cutting of sermon length to “make it easy on the congregation.”

“Toning down” of the spiritual message to “please people” or make the Word of God “flexible.”

Timidity in stressing the harder demands of religion in action.

Members of the congregations didn’t get off entirely free. “Greater consecration” was urged by the ministers.

Signers of the statement included a Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Disciple.

Britain And The Continent

World’s Fair Plans

Wide-awake Protestants in Belgium, numbering only 75,000 in a population of 8,500,000, are making determined plans for God to have a choice spot in 1958 at the Brussels World Exhibition, which is expected to attract 25,000,000 visitors from 50 countries.

The small minority has commissioned construction of an aluminum brass church and hall in the center of the Exhibition. A series of 12 exhibits, showing various aspects of the life and work of the Protestant Church around the world, will be displayed. Total cost is expected to be about $100,000.

Exhibition officials have approved the church and hall plans. One official described them as “the best of all projects submitted until now.”

The church will be constructed so that it can be moved to a new location for continued use after the fair.

(The United States Congress has authorized $4,000,000 for an American exhibit).

A Man’s First Words

What is the message of a minister when he returns to a pulpit for the first time after being imprisoned in Hungary on a false charge of black market currency dealings?

An estimated 1,200 showed up at the 400-capacity church in Budapest recently to hear the words of freed Lutheran Bishop Lajos Ordass, a man who seemingly had lost everything.

This was the message:

“When everybody deserted me and I shook with fear, my Savior called me and took me in His strong arms. He led me through a burning flame and showed me the beginning of a new life.

“I knew then that if nothing is constant in this world, God is unchanged; and to Him, that which was sin yesterday remains sin today, and that which was holy yesterday remains holy today.”

Stott Visits America

The Rev. John R. W. Stott, evangelical rector of All Souls Church, London, and one of the contributing editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, will arrive this month for a four-month visit to the United States and Canada.

He will conduct a series of evangelistic missions for students at Yale, Harvard, Illinois and Michigan universities in the U.S. Students at Toronto and Montreal in Canada will hear him also.

The young Church of England clergyman is a Cambridge graduate with an outstanding academic record. To an exceptional degree, he combines gifts of Bible exposition, evangelistic preaching and church administration. His church in central London is packed to capacity twice each Sunday.

Money Plan Hit

The British Government’s new plan for premium bonds has come under fire from churches on grounds that it is a lottery.

Under the plan, people are invited to purchase bonds which will pay no normal or regular interest. A “draw” will be held from time to time and holders of the lucky-number bonds will receive a special bonus. No gamble is taken on the capital sum invested.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, in his diocesan letter for November, describes the plan as “a cold, solitary, mechanical, uncompanionable, inhuman activity,” with “nothing to redeem” the element of chance.

Dr. Fisher said Christians deplore the ever-increasing pressure of irresponsible money-making. “I believe,” he said, “that the best course is to leave the whole thing alone—if you like, severely alone.”

Evangelical opinion, generally, backs Dr. Fisher.

The Christian remarked:

“Christians should have nothing to do with gambling in any form, not even when it is presented in the guise of patriotism.”

F.C.

Historic Church Rebuilt

The new Pilgrim Fathers Memorial Church in London, said to be the oldest Congregational Church in Britain, was dedicated recently by U.S. Ambassador Winthrop W. Aldrich.

Queen Elizabeth II sent a message saying the work performed by the church members “cannot fail to strengthen the bonds between Great Britain and America.”

The Pilgrim Fathers prayed in the church before sailing for America in 1620. It has been rebuilt three times since the original structure was built in 1616 by martyrs from the adjoining Clink Prison.

Minister Of State

Zoltan Tildy, Hungary’s new Minister of State, is a clergyman of the Reformed Church who was the country’s first postwar President.

Tildy was appointed by Premier Imre Nagy after the anti-Soviet armed revolution.

The new cabinet minister attended a Protestant school at Pappa and later went to Ireland, where he studied at Belfast Presbyterian College.

Elected President after World War II, he was under constant pressure from the communists.

Digest …

Dr. George Fielden MacLeod, founder of Ionia Community (laboratory of Christian living) and chaplain to the Queen in Scotland since 1954, elected moderator of General Assembly of Church of Scotland for 1957.

Among last words of Lasclo Rajk, former Hungarian communist leader executed during purge, were prayers to God for forgiveness, Radio Budapest reports.

Religious groups in Soviet Zone protest to East German authorities against intensive atheistic propaganda campaign said promoted among members of newly-formed East German Army.

Lutheran Church of Sweden appoints two new bishops—the Rev. Gert Borgenstierna, Bishop of Karlstad, and the Rev. Ivar Hylander, Bishop of Lulea.

Training intensified in Geneva for colporteurs (traveling evangelists of Bible societies) at John Knox House.

Church publications in West Germany total 492, with circulation of 16,906,402. Largest circulation in pre-Nazi Germany—10,300,000 … Alcoholism alarming in Sweden. Church says “one no longer dares to hope this is only a passing phenomenon.”

Moscow Radio complains that lack of cultural opportunities throughout Soviet Union making young people “turn to Church for consolation.”

A sect of Islam has initiated missions venture in Sweden aimed at winning converts … In Copenhagen, Roman Catholic has, for first time, been appointed principal of Danish primary school, in which religious instruction, by law, “must be in accordance with teachings of Evangelical Lutheran Church.”

Josef Cardinal Mindzenty set free by Hungarian insurgents after eight years as prisoner of communists.

CHRISTIANITY TODAYis a subscriber to Religious News Service and Evangelical Press Service.

Christian Labor Union

The Christian Labor Association, an independent union which includes prayer and Bible reading in all meetings, has won a foothold in western Minnesota against the giant AFL-CIO.

CLA’s highway-construction Local 78 defeated AFL-CIO engineers Local 49 in National Labor Relations Board elections among some 120 employees of two highway contractors.

AFL-CIO leaders were disturbed before the elections.

“We know how to whip a dual union,” one commented, “but how can you do it if they claim God is on their side?”

More Than An Anthem

Men for Missions, not content to sing an anthem for the five young missionaries who were killed by savages in Ecuador, will establish a base from which trained nationals can evangelize the unreached tribes.

In announcing the project, the laymen’s voice of the Oriental Missionary Society said the headquarters building will be located in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Keeps On Keeping On

Dr. John S. Wilder, in his 50 years as pastor of Calvary Baptist Temple in Savannah, Georgia, has preached 6,128 sermons, made 141,138 sick calls, raised $1,110,759 for church purposes, performed 6,505 marriages and conducted 6,271 funerals.

In addition, he has led 5,908 meetings, written 5,403 published articles and served as president of the Georgia Baptist Association. He is continuing.

Fair Enough

The First Baptist Church of Little Rock, Arkansas, has offered to refund the money of any member who isn’t satisfied after tithing for three months.

Klansmen In Church

Ku Klux Klansmen, known mostly for angry cross burnings, have been making peaceful church visits lately around Mobile, Alabama.

About 50 of the Klansmen, hooded and robed but with faces unmasked, attended services at two Baptist churches. As they entered, the organists played “Onward Christian Soldiers.” After one service, they filed up the church aisle and left contributions.

Mobile Baptist Pastors Conference promptly adopted a resolution decrying “the presence or financial contributions” at worship services of any group “whose purpose in coming may be to glorify itself.”

Postcard Tracts

A new U.S. international postcard, which will carry a message first class to any part of the world for four cents, will feature the national motto, “In God We Trust.”

An eight-cent postage-paid reply card, carrying the same motto, can be returned free from anywhere.

They will be placed on sale November 16 in New York City.

Worth Quoting …

“It is heartening to see so many Americans supporting the faith which lies at the bedrock of our society.”—President Eisenhower.

“I believe the most patriotic thing a man can do is to give his life to God.”—Dr. Billy Graham.

“Deeper life conventions are a dime a dozen these days, but yet we do nothing bout crucified living.”—Dr. A. W. Tozer, Christian Missionary Alliance pastor in Chicago.

Digest …

“The highest fee ever expended for the outright seduction of youth” was $50,000 paid Elvis Presley for appearing on Ed Sullivan TV show, charged the Rev. William J. Shannon, Syracuse diocesan director

Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, to attend Jamestown (Virginia) Festival next April, celebrating 350th anniversary of first successful English colony in America.

Rep. Thomas J. Dodd (D.-Conn.) member of House Foreign Affairs Committee, urges President Eisenhower to insist on “positive guarantee” from Marshal Tito that full religious freedom be restored to Yugoslavia before further military and economic aid.

Country churches, because of population shifts, closing at rate of about 1,000 a year … Lutheran home for elderly people to be built in Sioux City, Iowa, at cost of $3,000,000 … Plans made for $20,000,000 project to re-create biblical Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth near San Diego, Calif. Announced by American Foundation for Preservation of Christian Heritage.

Liquor establishments outnumber churches better than four to three. FBI says 60 per cent of 2,945,216 arrests during first six months of ’56 related to alcohol.

Gideon Bibles soon to be available in waiting rooms of many Connecticut industrial plants. Said to be first Bible-in-industry movement in America.

Shipment of 52 heifers and three bulls, investment in peace, sent from Houston, Texas, to Russia by Heifer Project of New Windsor, Md.

Are Evangelicals Literalists?

J. Marcellus Kik

Literalist and evangelical are considered in some circles to be synonymous terms. Deep concern has been expressed that the growing strength of the evangelical movement may initiate a “return to literalism.” Reinhold Niebuhr, for instance, has warned of the tendency toward literalistic orthodoxy encouraged by Barth and of the danger of simplifying the Gospel in either literalistic or individualistic terms as typified by Billy Graham. A recent book baldly states, “Protestantism’s ugliest feature has been its frequent relapse into literalism, usually caused by making a fetish of biblical authority.”

The Use of Terms

Are evangelicals literalists? The question cannot be answered with a categorical yes or no because of the different ways in which the two terms are understood by their users. To some, “evangelical” conjures up the picture of an unlettered extremist who takes every word of the Bible literally. Without deprecating such an individual—for a naive faith is not the greatest of evils—the historical definition of “evangelical” brings to view a different conception. The term “literalist” is often applied to those who interpret all the words of the Bible literally. But those who hold steadfastly to the doctrines of the Scriptures are on that account often called literalists.

Historically, the term “evangelical” designates one who holds to the absolute supremacy of the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice, and to justification by free grace through faith. Webster’s New International Dictionary defines “evangelical” as “designating that party among the Protestants which holds that the essence of the Gospel consists mainly in its doctrines of man’s sinful condition and the need of salvation, the revelation of God’s grace in Christ, the necessity of spiritual renovation and participation in the experience of redemption through faith.” In accord with this definition the evangelical follows in the succession of Augustine, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, Whitefield, Spurgeon, Hodge, Moody, Kuyper, Warfield, Machen and men of like caliber. Not the aberrant but the normal evangelical should supply the meaning of the term.

If literalist designates one who follows the literal sense of construction evidently meant to be figurative, the evangelical emphatically denies the applicability of this term to him. However, if literalist designates one who retains the literal sense of Scriptural teaching concerning the virgin birth, the deity of our Lord, the bodily resurrection, and who holds to such doctrines as the vicarious atonement, justification by faith and plenary inspiration, then the evangelical acknowledges the appropriateness of the term, even if it is employed beyond its dictionary sense.

Principles of Interpretation

No serious student of the Word maintains that all Scripture is literal or that all is figurative. The evangelical is cognizant of the fact that the Bible employs metaphor, metonomy, simile, synecdoche, personification, hyperbole, irony and other figures of speech. Anthropomorphic descriptions of God are not understood literally. What evangelical is unaware that God is spirit?

The evangelical is not so naive as to interpret every passage of the Bible in a literal sense. His exegesis is guided by hermeneutical principles. He has sufficient literary sense not to confuse James, Cephas and John with literal pillars when they are styled pillars of the Church. Nor does he look for a literal door or lamb when Christ is so titled. A literal beast with seven heads, a literal lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, and a literal scarlet woman are not envisaged as he reads the Book of Revelation. Only a naive critic would believe otherwise of the evangelical.

The conservative scholar avails himself of the grammatico-historical method of exegesis. The knowledge of grammar and of the facts of history helps determine his exposition. In this he is not awed by the external authority of the Church, nor moved by his own feelings, nor enslaved by any prevailing philosophical system, nor subject to contemporary higher critical presuppositions. Higher criticism is applied without the subjectivity that has brought it into such ill repute. The evangelical restrains his imagination in dealing with the problems of age, authorship and sources. By the use of painstaking scholarship he seeks to obtain from Scriptures and history the exact meaning the writers intended to convey.

Spirit Against Exegesis?

Some modern scholars, on the other hand, find no satisfaction in this simple exegesis. The evident meaning of a verse often seems distasteful to a twentieth-century mind. He, therefore, takes the “spirit” of the verse or interprets it with the “mind of Christ.” This methodology can change white to black and “infer” meanings the very opposite of those intended by the writer. The modern scholar’s “omniscience” enables him to determine that the writers of Scripture would do a volte-face if they lived in this enlightened generation.

How often “the spirit” has been invoked to kill the “letter.” For instance, it is claimed that the scriptural teaching of the bodily resurrection of Jesus must not be taken literally. The letter killeth, we are told. The spiritual resurrection of Jesus must have been intended. But the vocabulary of New Testament writers included the word “spirit,” and they would have employed it if that had been their intent. The letter on occasion may kill, but in the twentieth century the critical spirit more often is the murderer.

The envisioned “spirit and mind of Christ” are frequently summoned by the modern scholars to harmonize the Bible with twentieth-century denials of supernatural intervention. The wider context supplied by the growth of human knowledge must be considered, they insist, rather than the context furnished by the Scriptures. For instance, to express the uniqueness of the Son of God, Matthew and Luke related the story of the virgin birth. Modern theory does not recognize the possibility of supernatural conception. Only a literalist, it is claimed, takes the account of the virgin birth seriously.

The historicity of Adam furnishes another illustration. Jesus in the Gospels and Paul in the Epistles regard Adam as a literal man living in history. So does the evangelical. Those who claim the modern mind of Christ, however, state rather dogmatically that Adam belongs to fable and folklore. The Interpreters Bible asserts:

Obviously the book begins in that misty region of tradition and transmitted myth in which imagination precedes knowledge. Few will suppose that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden belong to factual history. Cain and Abel and Lamech and Nimrod and Methuselah and Noah—these also come down to us as legends rather than as persons identifiable in the literal history of a particular time” [Vol. 1, p. 460],

This view is in direct opposition to that taken by writers of the Gospel and the Epistles. Thus the twentieth century contradicts the first century.

Bultmann’s Demythologizing

A recent example of compressing the New Testament into the modern mold is Bultmann’s program of “demythologizing.” Contemporary culture and science form the solid existential mold into which biblical revelation must be poured. The miracles become extraneous as does all that is judged mythical. The inflexible mold excludes among other teachings the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, the vicarious atonement and justification by faith. The final product of the mold is a pitiful human figure poorly adorned with existential wisdom and bearing the inscription: created by Bultmann.

Literal and Figurative

We do not seek to exculpate individuals who take every word of the Bible literally; yet we would take issue with those who affirm that Protestantism’s ugliest feature has been its frequent relapse into literalism. To say the least, the literalism that has ignored the figurative has not robbed Christ of His deity nor the Church of her vital redemptive message.

What is forgotten is that one cannot wave away truth because it is expressed in figurative language. Figures of speech often express truth and reality more vividly than prosaic language. Truth stands out more boldly, for it is the nature of pictorial language to proclaim strong, clear impressions of the reality defined. Figurative coloring aids in the appreciation and understanding of truth.

Christ utilized the metaphor to express truths of his kingdom. The radical change of nature demanded of those who would enter into the kingdom was expressed by the metaphor of the new birth. If the evangelical is called literalist because he holds fast to the necessity of being born again, then lie bears that yoke gladly, for it is light and easy. The metaphor of the strait gate was used by Jesus. If the evangelical is termed literalist because he insists that the wide “liberal” gate will not gain entrance into the kingdom, he accepts that designation as part of the price of walking the narrow path. Jesus employed the vivid metaphor of plucking out the eye to escape perdition. If the evangelical by urging separation from lustful enticements is called a literalist, he bears that title with patience and long-suffering.

Truth in Metaphor

One of the beautiful metaphors describing Christ is that of the Lamb. The evangelical accepts the biblical content of the term. Through knowledge of Old Testament revelation he learns the significance of John the Baptist’s cry, “Behold the lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” The apostle Peter sharpens the content of the metaphor in writing that we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of the lamb without blemish and without spot. The evangelical recognizes both the figure of speech and the truth expressed by it. He does not take the lamb literally, but he does take literally the truth portrayed by it.

The rewards and punishments of the other world are described by the sacred writers in vivid terms and phrases usually employed to signify what physically affects us in this present life. The rewards mentioned in the second and third chapters of Revelation are these: fruit of the tree of life, crown of life, white stone, white garment, pillar in the temple. These are figures of speech signifying spiritual realities. Punishments are portrayed by such vivid terms as Gehenna of fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth, fire unquenchable, chains of darkness, lake of fire burning with brimstone. Figures of speech? Yes, but portraying fearful and awful punishment. Acknowledging them to be figurative does not do away with the reality. If these are but the figures, how terrible is the reality!

Spirit and Scripture

The evangelical considers the Bible to be authoritative in faith and practice. He continues the formal principle of the Reformation. This position has been clearly and adequately stated in the creeds of historic churches. With the Reformers he accepts the authority of the Scriptures. He does not invoke an authority of the Spirit that contradicts the Scriptures. The Westminster Confession of Faith well states of the Bible that “our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts” (Chap. 1, Sec. 5).

Because the Scriptures are authoritative the evangelical labors to obtain the precise meaning that the sacred writers intend to convey. He acknowledges his dependence upon the Holy Spirit but not in the sense of certain Pietists who disregarded rules of grammar and the common meaning and usage of words because of inner light claimed to be received of the Holy Spirit. The same principles, the same grammatical process, and the exercise of common sense and reason are applied to the Scriptures that are applied to the interpretation of other books.

Are evangelicals literalists? If the historical and dictionary sense of literalist is meant, the answer must be an emphatic no. If the loose sense is accepted that a literalist is one who accepts the teachings of the Bible as authoritative, then the answer is an emphatic yes.

J. Marcellus Kik is associate editor of Christianity Today.

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