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Theology

Form in Religion

Clyde S. Kilby

Selden Rodman’s The Eye of Man, which Time magazine calls one of the most provocative books in its field in recent years, is pivotal because of its pronouncements on art in our day, but it has, I think, some interesting implications for Christianity as well. On the art side this book boldly raises the question whether the artist is obliged to weigh human values and communicate spiritual truth. Conversely, it asks whether the artist’s refusal to acknowledge such responsibilities denies to him on the one hand the driving force which has motivated the great arts of the past and on the other hand the audience without which the artist is doomed to exclusive communication with himself alone. Many people will rejoice to know that Rodman, whose critical acumen and insight are well known, gives no uncertain answer to these questions. The artist, says he, is a man among men and cannot abdicate his position as a responsible member of the human race. He has not the right to retire into a world of esoteric inner experience and thus separate himself from his fellow men. Rodman examines the history of Western painting and attempts to show that in times of cynicism or retreat from positive values in life, art has tended to move away from subject and toward form, but, says he, only in our day has this movement away from content suffered a total eclipse.

Rodman’s book is devoted to a minute description of the relation of subject and form. Form he defines as “the appropriate shape an artist discovers in the process of saying what he has to say.” To make form an end in itself is to fall back upon the old and sterile doctrine of art for art’s sake. If form in art simply calls attention to itself, it thereby falls into a trap as clearly obvious as is the trap of didacticism. He goes so far as to declare that form is mere decoration unless it is integrally connected with subject. These doctrines enunciated by Rodman are entirely at odds with both the theory and the practice of many prominent artists of our time—beliefs which reach their extreme expression in Mallarme’s statement, “A beautiful line without meaning is more beautiful than a less beautiful one with meaning,” and Flaubert’s notion of writing a book without any subject at all. Rodman feels that it is only when artists have lost every social and spiritual conviction that the frivolous notion prevails that art’s function is “to define forms and arrange them in space.” There are signs, thinks this critic, of a return to content, to responsibility, and to communication.

It is important, however, to point out that Rodman feels many artists have been forced into the nonobjective world because of the public’s insensitivity to genuine works of art. He is fully opposed to an aesthetic norm which loves sterile copying of natural objects, such as manifested at its worst in so-called calendar art, and opposed also to easy Hollywoodish symbolism that plays up to this same unworthy aesthetic norm and produces people devoid of all true humanity. He describes the Hollywood “star” as having “a face untroubled by thought which smiles blandly at the citizen in a thousand disguises from birth to death.” Thus there are two distinct sides to Rodman’s position: At one extreme he opposes the nonobjectivity and noncommunication of much modern art; at the other he is equally opposed to the unthinking cliches of popular art and the level of public taste in general. His entire book is rather well summed up in his remark that “content without supreme conviction never achieves convincing form.”

It may be profitable to discuss some ideas not explicitly put forth in Rodman’s excellent book but applicable to Christianity by implication.

The Form And The Spirit

One is that form does not mean simply the method of doing something. It is much more deep-seated than that and more nearly related to being than doing. Rodman believes that in a genuine work of art, form and content are indistinguishable from one another and that form by itself is nothing but decoration. The implication for Christianity is that form is the shape discovered and manifested in the living of a Spirit-filled life. It is not simply the outward actions of a life but the essential shape of a life at its roots whence all its motives take their beginning and their genuine nature. Form is never obvious and sterile but always dynamic and potent. Form is the eternal shape of truth making its impact upon the Christian. It is the thrusting power which molds his reborn “content” into convincing reality. Of course form will finally manifest itself in outward actions, but if it is genuine it will first of all be effectually and uniquely inner. Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. meekness, temperance—all these have infinite possibilities of manifestation in the Christian. An easy and outward definition of such Christian virtues may eventuate in a static, limited, and sometimes even unbiblical, notion of them. There are no “ten easy steps” to any of these virtues, and their manifestation in the Christian will be most telling when their “appropriate shape” has been hammered out in the unique depth of individual experience with God.

The literal translation of Ephesians 2:10 is “… we are his poems.” A poem, like any other work of art, is, above everything else, unique. There is only one of its kind in existence. God is a God of variety, whether it be in the making of snowflakes, the leaves of trees, or men. An identical twin recently said to me, “My sister and I don’t think we are alike at all.” God is a God of variety also in the re-creation of men into Christians. Phillips translated 1 Peter 4:10 as “the magnificently varied grace of God.” Form is the dynamic by which that varied grace is shaped into the unique “poem” which God wants to make out of each of his children.

Divine Poetry In Our Flesh

It is most unusual when a minister alludes to the self in us other than to denounce it. I think we might be nearer the truth if we distinguished two kinds of self. There is the self whose manifestation is selfish—the self which is everywhere condemned in the Bible. But there is also the self which God uniquely created and which he uniquely re-creates in the Christian. Nowhere in Scripture are we taught to be a zero for its own sake but only to withdraw from the selfish self so that God can mold the inner man after his own fashion; “… he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” George Macdonald says that God’s wrath will consume what men call themselves so that the selves God made shall appear. It seems to me that this distinction is almost totally neglected in pulpits. The implication of much preaching on the theme of denial of self is that God is seeking to produce not poems but robots. The totally yielded Christian is a man much more “himself” than is the natural man, and his new freedom is as unique and varied as heaven itself. He is genuinely God’s handiwork, God’s craftsmanship, God’s poem. D. E. Harding has well said that of necessity God’s love “individuates its objects.” Form is the eternal shape of the truth which God is manifesting in his twice-unique creatures.

Cliches Move No Mountains

Since the Reformation orthodox Christianity has very properly laid great emphasis on the fundamental doctrines of the faith. It has made the repetition of the Apostolic Creed a part of its worship and has written innumerable platforms and declarations with the intent that the faith once delivered should not be allowed to deteriorate. Orthodoxy will continue to be vitally concerned to promulgate the purity of the faith. At the same time it must avoid implying that language itself is sufficient to corral Deity. The genuine danger that men may think there are many ways to Christ must not lead to another extreme in which the recitation of a cliche becomes the only language which is thought to be good theological specie. We have concluded too often that accepting Christ and “accepting Christ” are identical, where the latter phrase means going to the front during an evangelistic campaign, getting on one’s knees, saying certain words, standing up and shaking hands, and afterward giving one’s testimony. Too often we are not willing to leave the work of the Holy Spirit to the Holy Spirit himself. God’s purpose to form the new man in Christ is fully as vital as what Rodman would call the subject matter, i.e., the doctrines of Christianity. Without denying the Bible as our rule of faith and practice and as the perspective for every part of life, we may say also that the Bible was never intended as a yardstick by which the orthodox should pharisaically measure their fellows and then attempt to whip them into line. God will not form a new man any different from the standard indicated in Scripture, but he may form that man different from our own redaction of Scripture into case-hardened language.

The calling of a Christian is to lead “naturally” a supernatural life. His conduct is expected to proceed from the deepest Spirit-stirred motives. He is expected to be, paradoxically, himself in the completest fashion and at the same time nothing at all. If the right sort of result is to prevail, God must be allowed to shape his materials after a unique pattern. The Christian will be involved in never-ending growth based on experience with the master artist. Instead of this we often place the accent on outward manifestation alone. The loudness or even jazziness of our singing is assumed to be the measure of its spiritual vitality. We listen to sermons and seldom come to any deep movement of soul. Bodily presence is substituted for communication and communion with God. In such ways superficial outward form replaces that genuine sort of form which Rodman claims for art. Every such act tends to seal over or sear the point of our spiritual sensitivity until, as C. S. Lewis has so aptly declared, “The more often [man] feels without acting, the less he will ever be able to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel”; or, as Rodman says, the religious images become “cold, intellectually self-contained, erudite and completely out of contact” with reality. The orthodox thus may be no better off in actuality than those who, again to cite Rodman, see religion so completely as history that it becomes remote and static and picturesque, “something to be endured passively Sundays as … a Tournament of Roses on New Year’s Day.” It is possible for a Christian to denounce every implication of the word form while at the same time manifesting a formalism of his own that leads to almost complete spiritual sterility. He becomes a practicing “materialist” who can never understand that God is more than the sum of his attributes.

The Gospel’s Strange Power

We must not teach the Christian, directly or indirectly, that he is to fear and denounce his own personality. Rather he is to yield it to God for the creation of a product—an artistic product if you will—after God’s own ends, in which none of the man’s God-given uniqueness is lost. Such a man is one who is at once completely himself and completely God’s, a man in whom Christian experience is daily being shaped into a product worthy of a high and holy Omnipotence. We need to feel the terrible reality of Christianity. Too often we manage to tame it. In our intensity of desire to preserve it uncontaminated, we turn it into a groove, or perhaps we should say a rut. Christianity is really a dangerous enterprise.

William Still is a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, who turned from a career as musician and teacher of music to the ministry. Formerly assistant minister to Dr. W. Fitch at Springburnhill Church in Glasgow, he has served since 1945 as minister of Gilconston South Church, Aberdeen.

Cover Story

Labor Needs a Conscience

George Stob

Labor has become a burly figure on the American scene. No one can fail to be impressed by this striding giant. But the impression left by the behavior of unions and their leaders at this point is that the labor movement in America has grown big and strong without “growing up.”

There are two things one notices particularly in connection with labor’s bigness. One is the huge appetite of the big, strong body. The other is the vast power with which the body stands its own ground or pushes others around at will.

Throughout its struggling years the labor movement endeavored to obtain for the workingman a larger share of the world’s goods. The endeavor, often very costly, has succeeded in improving greatly the workingman’s material circumstances. Shorter hours, better working conditions, more leisure, larger pay and other benefits have brought the laboring man into possession of a large share of the good things of life. These gains, however, have not resulted in a larger measure of contentment, nor in a happy and satisfying sense of significant achievement. They have merely whetted the appetite for more. Labor’s success at getting has sharpened a technique and shaped a spirit concerned almost always and predominantly with getting and getting more.

The overwhelming concern for getting has not been accompanied, meanwhile, by adequate concern for being and doing. The worker has been taught to think not in terms of the glory of work, the meaning of service to society, or dignity of the worker as creative and productive individual. Instead, the worker has been taught to think in terms of what he can wrest from the man who needs his skill.

This, when it is an almost exclusive way of looking at one’s job and predominant in the spirit of one’s approach to it, can do very little else than promote the spirit of thoroughgoing cupidity. The quality or measure of one’s work and sense of responsibility to one’s employer or to the society in which he lives are matters of little consequence. It is the getting that counts, and because of the preoccupation with getting, work itself loses meaning, dignity and interest.

This kind of thing lies at the bottom of the moral corruption that has become manifest in so much of labor union activities today. Dave Beck has been exercising labor’s fierce passion for getting, the more successfully because of his more favored position. Most of us are too angered at what we have learned to pity him, but it is a fact that Dave Beck is a sort of victim of the kind of cupidity the whole labor movement has been cultivating. He is in a sense the reflection of the mores of our times and our materialistic culture, and none of us can escape a measure of responsibility with him and for him.

This is part of labor’s great temptation. The very thing for which it was forced to fight, a share in the goods it produces, can, if this becomes an all-consuming objective, make of this giant a monstrosity—a big body with all appetite and no soul.

Labor’S Use Of Power

Labor has grown not only big, but strong. It had to be strong in order to maintain itself and to counterbalance the great pressures from management to which workingmen were subject. Labor has spent itself in courageous effort and has survived some tremendous battles. This struggle had in it something of the law of the jungle which permits survival of only the fittest. The labor movement has come out fit and strong and stands today as one of the major social and political forces in American society.

The possession of such vast power places the labor movement in a position of grave peril or of great opportunity. Power is peril if abused and misdirected. It is opportunity if put to the service of the community in a responsible way. Power is peril if there is no soul to govern, no conscience to set limits to it and give direction. Power has become peril to the whole movement of American labor because, grown strong, it has exercised its tremendous power selfishly and irresponsibly.

The power that labor holds over American industry and all of American life is sometimes awesome. In an industry-wide strike in crucial materials and services, labor unions may hold the health and life of masses of people in their hands. They have a strategic hold on the whole of our economy. The greater the power, the more urgent the need for a responsible conscience in the use of it. It is a pity that labor unions have often shown a total unconcern for the health of society and have been quite ready to destroy not only monetary but human values in order to achieve their ends. The right to strike has often been exercised with sheer arbitrariness and without reference to equally urgent rights existing within the life of the community.

Power thus used for achievement of the ends of a specific group is nothing other than fomenting of class struggle. Labor’s earlier complaints against class-conscious capitalists are hollow-sounding now, because labor shows itself ready, with ruthlessness that matches earlier power interests, to disregard the common good for the sake of its own class-interest.

The Need Of A Conscience

All of this increases the suspicion that while the labor movement in America has grown big and strong it has not grown up. What American labor needs is something other than a huge and devouring appetite, more than the hulking strength of a new giant. American labor needs a conscience that will place limits upon its concern for getting, and set its wants in the context of larger and abiding social values—a conscience that will make possible a responsible use and direction of the great power it wields.

Without attempting to offer a blueprint for labor’s refromation, it would appear that at least three things are basic to the moral character of so significant a social entitiy as the labor movement.

First of all, there is needed a sense of dignity of the worker and a sense of calling that is involved in the work he performs. A labor union professes to be concerned with a definition of the genius of the workingman as member of our common society. It is part of the fearful perversion of the whole labor movement that the genius of the American worker has been interpreted in sheer materialistic terms. The worker has been represented as an individual who works in order to get certain material gains, and he has been assured that for all his efforts he has a right to get as much as he can out of his labor.

Emptiness Of Perpetual Discontent

This is a horrible basis from which to start and a most unprofitable principle for understanding the meaning and value of work. One who is taught that work has meaning only for what he gets is being schooled in the spirit of perpetual discontent, and is left with a feeling of emptiness with reference to something that stands close to the center of his living. The first thing needed for the laborer’s conscience is sound conviction that man is essentially worker, that the fulfilment of life’s function and purpose is to be found in work, and that work itself is the crucial area for the most significant kind of achievement and service.

When he is taught that it is good to trim the measure and quality of his work in order to secure a set of by-ends in leisure, shorter hours and higher pay for the whole laboring fraternity, he is being taught to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage. An honest job ought not to be sacrificed for the sake of the dollar, nor pride of workmanship for weeks of leisure, nor responsible duty to his employer for loyalty to the gang.

Second, a requirement for any responsible labor movement is high sense of social responsibility. This needs no explication but it needs constant emphasis. Lip service to the interests of society is no substitute for real service rendered at cost of willing sacrifice. It is easy enough to return to the law of the jungle, because it is in the character of human nature to live for self with complete disregard of the interests of others. When men of such mind join together the tendency to selfishness is accentuated. And selfishness can achieve both demonic character and demonic proportions in group organization. A labor movement that becomes the agency for group interests and that rides roughshod over interests and needs of other members of society in the attempt to achieve its own ends, is corruptive of the meaning of labor itself and a curse to the society it is called upon to serve.

Third, involved in a responsible labor movement must be recognition of accountability to a law higher than the individual, higher than the group of which one is a member, and higher than the society in which one is placed. This means recognition of accountability to God, the Sovereign Lord of all, and to his law of love for his world and all his creatures. This is ultimately the basis for all morality in individual and social life and the only effective sanction for securing decency, justice and respectability in human relations. The American labor movement will come to responsible character, and be in position to serve its own members and all of society, if there is remembrance of the God whom all men must fear and to whose law and judgment all men are subject.

It is precisely on the score of these basic requirements that American labor unions have been in serious default. On this account they have corrupted American workingmen while endeavoring to secure for them materialistic bonanzas, and they have increased and intensified the problems of our society.

The Christian’S Responsibility

All of this raises the question concerning the Christian’s responsibility as a member of the laboring class. Corruptions have come into existing labor unions because the members have only too readily surrendered their sovereignty to the “labor leaders,” abdicating their rights and duties of active participation in union affairs. This is a confession that must be made not only of the mass of workers, but of the Christians in our labor unions. If Jesus made his followers the salt of the earth, where is the salting power? It seems profoundly weak in American labor unions. Perhaps there are two reasons for this weakness. One is the prodigious failure of the Christian churches in conditioning their members for vigorous exercise of a living Christian witness in common areas of daily life and work. The second is the related factor of a quietism that puts a profound apathy upon the social conscience of even Christian men, and which looks upon social evils as something from which to withdraw rather than to confront.

One doesn’t meet the labor problem by withdrawal. He merely bypasses it. And when it is the Christian who does this, no ground for complaint against the evils of the labor unions is left to him. He is, rather, coresponsible for them. There is tremendous opportunity for good and righteous men, including Christians of every kind, to perform real service for decency and respectability in labor unions. But the task is tremendous, too. Nor is there promise of easy achievement. The progress of goodness against evil in this evil world is never conveniently traceable. Men must live for goodness by faith. And the Christian’s role here, as in so many aspects of contemporary life, will be the struggle to keep his soul and to carry on the fight as the situation allows and demands against what is more than flesh and blood.

Separate Organization?

There is another possible way for exercise of the Christian’s social responsibility. That is the way of separate Christian organization. This kind of effort is, indeed, embodied in a small way in an already existing movement—that of the Christian Labor Association, with headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Christian Labor Association had its origin some 25 years ago among a group of consecrated members of the Christian Reformed Church. These Christian laymen recognized the need of organization for achievement of social justice but considered existing labor unions unsatisfactory agencies for attainment of these ends. The movement is based upon Christian principles enunciated in the Scriptures and committed to the belief that the recognition of Christ the King and his Sovereign Word is necessary for resolution of problems of our sinful society. The movement has grown with painful slowness. It is concentrated largely in Western Michigan, and locals have been established also in other places where members of the Christian Reformed Church are concentrated—Chicago, Minnesota, California, among others.

Though it has won some notable victories over existing unions in courts of the land, the general effect of the CLA on existing major unions has been that of a nuisance value in certain areas. For the rest, the significance of this small labor movement is that it stands as a protest against the moral and spiritual failures of existing labor unions, and is an attempt to give witness by embodiment to the Christian social ideal.

The Christian Labor Association is bound to arouse the admiration of all who have taken notice of this movement led by men of strong commitment and great integrity. The movement has its limitations, however. It has been too closely associated with a specific church group and has sought undue support from ecclesiastical legislation concerning conditions of church membership. It has tended to the character of a religious society, committed to certain carefully defined theological tenets. And it has been governed in too large degree by the psychology of shelter from and against our present evil world.

The possibilities in the Christian Labor Association are significant, however. It could become a very large hope for Christians in America if its character were not only that of protest and witness against the secularization and corruption of existing unions, but that of a competitive labor movement seeking to embody for a large mass of American workers the concerns and ideals of a responsible laboring group within our society.

The germ of a competitive labor movement exists in this Christian Labor Association. It addresses itself to the basic labor situation, is concerned with social justice based on fundamental Christian principles, and is recognized by the National Labor Relations Board as a bona fide bargaining agency. Could this association, with a broader base, a wider appeal, less concern for confessional commitments and a less separatistic definition of the social task, be the hope for America to purge labor of some of its besetting perversions?

Renwick Harper Martin has served as Instructor in Political Science and then as President of Geneva College and now is Editor emeritus of The Christian Statesman. He has been Moderator of the Reformed Presbyterian Church and is author of Our Public Schools: Christian or Secular?

Preacher In The Red

“The movements of the Home Mission director are not without humorous touches. I was scheduled to appear in a small Alberta Church located about twelve miles from the nearest town on the main line.

Arrangements had been made whereby a car would meet me at the bus when I reached this town. However, upon getting off the bus I discovered that no one seemed to be the least interested in my arrival.

As the situation remained unchanged for at least fifteen minutes, I decided to take the initiative. Seeing a small panel delivery across the street and deducing that the young man behind the wheel was probably too shy to seek me out, I approached with the query, “Say, are you looking for a preacher?”

Upon coming a little closer I noticed that the interior of the cab had taken on quite a brilliant hue and I realized then that the transformation was accounted for by the presence of a young lady by his side.

Apparently my approach had been interpreted as the blustering attempt of a travelling ecclesiastic to drum up a little curb service business.

I made an apologetic and hasty retreat, to discover, gratefully, that my driver had arrived. The REV. GERALD M. WARD, First Baptist Church, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Theology

God Is Not Deformed

L. Nelson Bell

Can man hope to have an adequate concept of God? Certainly we can never hope to understand comprehensively all of his perfections and attributes for we are finite. Nevertheless God has not left himself without a witness. It is both our privilege and duty to learn that which he has been pleased to reveal about himself.

We know only that which God has been pleased to reveal, and for sinful man this is overwhelmingly adequate.

To contemplate the attributes of God staggers the imagination, yet he has revealed himself for the very purpose that we might, although limited by the flesh, know him and glorify his name and distinguish between that which is true and false.

God has made it possible for us to know him through his general revelation in nature. Romans 1:20 says, “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” He reveals himself also in history and conscience.

He has revealed himself in his Son of whom we read in Colossians 2:8, 9: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”

God reveals himself in his written Word. The apostle Paul writing to Timothy says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto good works.”

In these various ways God’s marvelous attributes are revealed, being exercised by him in his works of creation, providence and redemption.

Why then the necessity of affirming, in a spirit of deepest reverence, that God is not deformed? Because in each generation, and particularly in our own, God is often presented in only one aspect of his personality or by only one attribute to the exclusion or depreciation of others. This narrow presentation causes God to be seen as though he were deformed; his glorious person is disclosed out of focus.

There are those who are so overwhelmed by the love of God and all of its implications that they overlook other attributes which are equally true and impelling. The depth and height and breadth of the love of God can never be exhausted, for he is the epitome of love and all that it implies.

He is also the God of holiness and justice. The Bible which tells us that God is love also affirms that he is a consuming fire. Therefore, to stress the love of God to the exclusion of his perfections in holiness and justice is to give a distorted picture.

The Cross of Jesus Christ reveals the love of God. But it reveals far more. The depths of sin, the magnitude of its offense against a holy God and the price necessary to free man from its guilt and penalty, all are revealed by the Cross. We see combined in one sublime act the love, truth, holiness, righteousness, mercy, faithfulness, justice, and knowledge of God, and having said this, all of its implications have not been exhausted. Let us never forget that in this glorious act of redemption and propitiation we see combined many aspects of the God with whom we have to do.

God is the God of infinite and absolute perfection. Being infinite he is free from all possible limitation. Being absolute he is an eternal self-existent person who is the voluntary cause of all that is, has been or ever will exist. He is “the same yesterday, today and forever” and he is “without variableness or shadow of turning.”

One may hear the seemingly wise statement: “God is too good to damn anyone,” and from this premise the deduction that therefore all men will some day be saved regardless of what they do about Christ, God’s provision for their need. Paul, in Romans, writes: “Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off.” The crux of the matter is that sin must be judged and God in his infinite love and justice has done something about it, sending his Son through whom man may be freed from the guilt and penalty of sin and restored to fellowship with Him now and forever.

If we would know God and the attributes whereby he is known we have but to turn to Holy Scripture. In both Old and New Testaments we find the same God. Some would distinguish between the “God of the Old Testament” and the “God of the New,” but they are the same. To discard the one for the other is to be guilty of a selective prejudice that leads to grave error.

For instance, in Isaiah we read: “Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.” But the same God, speaking in the same book also says: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

We find the Lord Jesus Christ uttering this scathing denunciation: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!… Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” This same Christ also says: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

The apostle Paul denounces sin and the unrepentant sinner but offers pardon and peace to all who will turn to Christ in full repentance. The writer of the Epistle to Hebrews affirms God’s revelation through the prophets and the Son and presents a picture of escape and eternal salvation to those who believe.

Peter tells of the patience and longsuffering of a holy God unwilling that any souls be lost, but also of the day of impending judgment from which none who have rejected Christ shall escape.

No, God is not deformed. He is revealed to us in the perfections of his glorious attributes. It is his will that we should see him and believe in him for who he is and what he is.

We who are capable of love, feeling, knowing, righteous indignation, kindness, mercy and a sense of right and justice, should realize that in him all of these things are found in absolute perfection. He who knows no limitations of time, space or circumstance deals with mankind in perfect love and also perfect justice. He who is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and who cannot look on iniquity, has nonetheless made perfect provision for sin and the sinner. In all of this the perfection and absoluteness of his attributes are revealed to man.

No, God is not deformed. He is perfection, a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, truth and love.

Ideas

Christ and the Atom Bomb

The Editors

To preserve the universe from capitulating to pagan views of origin and existence, each generation must delineate and declare the relationship between Christ and the atom. Development of the atomic bomb, and of its even more monstrous successors, imposes on our own generation particularly an unprecedented urgency to meet this task. In fact, for us the challenge may already involve retrieving as well as withholding the atom from Satan and his destructive purposes.

During the past decade, atomic energy’s military significance received man’s concentration far more than its peacetime potential. But relegated to even less consideration than the link between the atom and peace has been the link between the atom and God. The long overexposure (and double exposure) to evolution and naturalism has obliterated, at least skewed, the present generation’s recognition of the Christian doctrine of origins and being. Unfamiliarity with Christian thought patterns is prevalent. The comfortable assumption of Christianity as a permanent, all-inclusive Western tradition has inured modern man to a purposeful personal investigation of religion. Within his remnant of theological categories, the average man, therefore, can only associate the atom bomb with the Devil, rather than the atom with God.

Communism drives relentlessly toward world revolution. The political absolutism of “might makes right” perils millions with barbarian mass destruction. Atomic fall-out and radiation mean yet unplumbed hazards. Must not the Christian conscience speak to the world’s conscience about the atom and its uses? Not to do so is a shirking of responsibility. Indeed this silence of a Christian community grants to alien philosophies permission to interpret the atom and its serviceability in wholly secular and arbitrary terms.

But silence is not the only charge to be leveled at the Christian community. What is spoken in the name of the Church, often by its cursory nature, and sometimes by its narrow and even misguided phrasing, is hurtful to Christianity and helpful to paganism.

Monstrous as it is, the atomic bomb is but a part of a much vaster, more important concern, that of the atom itself. To confine the problem to the atomic bomb is unfortunate both for the proclaiming Church and for the listening world. Largely inundated by naturalistic ways of thought, twentieth-century culture needs from the Christian churches a more comprehensive approach to the atom than merely pronouncements on the bomb.

Basic to Christianity’s philosophy of life as it relates to war is the Christian doctrine of origin and existence. While a generation may perpetuate its survival by restraining the atom bomb, that survival may be within a pagan concept of life that brings its own and worse final doom. At every moment the Christian movement must primarily engage in a total battle for the souls of men and not simply in lesser endeavors that spare life unchanged for the pagan world. The contemporary Church needs to proclaim the comprehensive message of the God of the atom when it issues its subordinate proclamations on the atom bomb.

In this connection, some of the recent programing of the Voice of America has reflected a deeper sensitivity to spiritual realities than have the massive church organizations. The U.S. Information Agency’s approval of Moody Institute of Science films such as The God of the Atom for international educational purposes is commendable, since such material lifts the question of the use of the atom beyond the elemental issue of the peaceful or destructive employments of nuclear energy to the higher principle of the spiritual purposes of the universe. If the primary basis of the Communist philosophy is evolutionary naturalism, as indeed it is, then no decisive blow has been dealt to the Communist program for the use of the atom while this basic philosophy is unassailed. The neglect of the Christian doctrine of creation within the churches is due largely to the infiltration of evolutionary naturalism into the religious as well as the secular centers of Western thought and life. This deficiency is a current factor that nullifies the churches’ own efforts to champion the peaceful over the destructive use of nuclear energy. To borrow a warning from the recently published symposium on Contemporary Evangelical Thought (Channel Press, 1957), the unchallenged revolt against the God of creation provides modern man with leverage for his revolt against the God of redemption.

If the subject of Christ and the atom is urgently vital, the subject of Christ and the atom bomb is an appropriate and crucial problem as well. If the Church is properly concerned with why Christ made and preserves the atom, it is also properly concerned with why man splits it.

Christianity is not a religion of war; it is on the side of peace among men. Today when so much of the initiative for world peace is carried by secular agencies, when the warring chapters in the history of Christianity are exploited by anti-Church movements, it is especially necessary for Christianity to entrench in man’s conscience the fact that the tidings of the incarnation are those of “peace on earth” and that Christ’s beatitudes include a special designation of his disciples as peacemakers. Above all the symbols of warfare and strife in the world today, the Church of Christ should tower as a symbol of peace.

Alien conceptions of peace, so often today defined as mere cessation of outward hostility, can easily mislead Christian leaders, however. A striking feature of the New Testament is that despite its emphasis upon the peace of God in human life, the early Church was not drawn into political dispute with the Roman empire, the mighty military power of that day. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans of the mighty dunamis of God, and of Christians being “more than conquerors,” but whatever may have been the perils of mankind and of the scattered Christian communities, the early Christians felt no constraint to chart a military program for the Roman Empire. The early Christian concern for peace on earth was linked exclusively with the necessity for spiritual and moral regeneration of individuals, not primarily with programs of action whereby unregenerate men might assure mankind’s survival. The followers of Jesus Christ never understood their task to be the promotion of survival programs for unregenerate men who sought physical security while persisting in rejection of the Redeemer; rather, they ministered to the sick and to the dying by way of spontaneous commentary on their living faith, and they preached Christ the Saviour and Lord before whom even the Roman emperor must be counted a doomed sinner needing salvation (cf. Rom. 3:20, 23). Although it insisted upon the universal validity of the biblical revelation, the early Church did not foster resolutions to reform unregenerate humanity.

Leaders in the World Council of Churches have frequently pleaded for suspension of all current tests of nuclear weapons. Such a demand was voiced to the American government at the WCC New Haven meetings in August. An adopted report of its Commission of the Churches on International Affairs urged that “governments conducting tests should forego them at least for a trial period, either together or individually, in the hope that the others will do the same, a new confidence be born, and foundations be laid for reliable agreements.”

Entrance of churchmen into the political order in the name of the Church frequently has the effect of ascribing to multitudes of parishioners opinions which they as individuals do not in fact entertain, and for the propagandizing of which they have no mandate. Organized Christianity thus may become enmeshed in questions that go beyond the scope of the Church’s legitimate function. In demanding that the United States unilaterally suspend all current tests the WCC’s recent action on nuclear weapons actually supported present Soviet Russian policy. This shocking situation coming from the most representative gathering of Christendom apart from the Papal See supplies a tremendous asset to the Russians in their present jockeying for world sympathy and international support. Although motivated by quite other considerations, the WCC action nonetheless climaxes a Communist drive begun in the Stockholm Peace Conference, namely, by mobilizing and utilizing pacifist sentiment in the non-Communist world to deter the development of new atomic devices in the West thus to alter the balance of power between the Communist and non-Communist worlds. One of the program’s most zealous proponents has been Professor J. L. Hromadka from Communist-dominated Czechoslovakia.

While some dissent was evident at the New Haven conference, the recommendations of the executive committee were never effectively challenged. Professor Florovsky, Russian Orthodox Church official, publicly abstained from support of the atomic tests statement because he considered it a political issue. Dr. P. O. Bersell, Augustana Lutheran leader from Minneapolis, publicly declined to support the re-election of Dr. Hromadka to the executive committee but finally yielded with the explanation: “If the executives are satisfied, knowing the nature of this election, I am satisfied.” Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher of the Church of England was criticized when he suggested that the World Council should not take sides in international disputes, but confine its pronouncements to “fundamental spiritual principles.” Mayor Charles P. Taft of Cincinnati, a leader in the Protestant Episcopal Church, cautioned against pronouncements without the aid of experts, indicating that this is a common failing in church groups. But executives of the central committee received overwhelming endorsement in virtually everything they proposed. The result of the New Haven sessions may well be that, in the months and years to come, the political program of the WCC will receive more scrutiny than ever before. The great tragedy of the twentieth century would be if, in the effort to conserve the creative power of the atom for Jesus Christ, the atom bomb should unwittingly have been given in to the destructive service of Karl Marx.

The Christian churches have adequate reason to warn the nations of the world of their moral accountability to the Living God, to condemn the evil of aggressive warfare, to protest the one-sided enlistment of scientific genius to what Pius XII has called a “race toward death,” and to show concern for the well-being of the race in view of the perils of radiation. The Christian community has good reason also to disown a fatalistic view of the inevitability of war, and to emphasize the crucial role of spiritual decision upon the flow of history.

But what mandate do the Christian churches have for instructing any nation that it ought in the name of political righteousness to desist from testing its military defenses? If God wills the state as a political order to promote justice and to restrain injustice in a sinful society, is not a state precondemned to suicide if it is deprived of the right to test its weapons of defense in a century in which one world power, operating on the thesis of state absolutism, makes no pretense of its goal of world revolution?

The usual reply, that a halt must be called in the bomb race because of the vast destructive capacity of nuclear energy, is not decisive. No clear case has been made out for a qualitative difference between nuclear bombs and other weapons of warfare; the difference, however great, remains quantitative. Eliminate the bombs, and terrible though more conventional weapons of war remain. Does the Church bless these? Does it condemn their use under all circumstances also? Is experiment with tactical atomic bombs (limited to battlefields and used against cities only along the front lines of land fighting) approved as moral? Can this qualitative line really be drawn in warfare?

Is not an organization that intrudes into such questions in the name of the Church confused about the weapons of the Church’s warfare? Are we not driven to ask whether behind the WCC action there still lurks the optimistic hope of the now discredited social Gospel of Protestant liberalism, that by the reorganization of unregenerate mankind on ostensibly Christian prinicples a warless world will be inaugurated?

No Christian—indeed, no human being—can fully escape agony of soul over the death-dealing prospect of modern warfare. The Christian churches are rightly driven to assure themselves that they are making their fullest contribution to world peace. But what scriptural license has a resolution to end the testing of the bombs, even for a trial period, as a strategic Christian contribution to world peace? As a venture of political idealism it may perhaps be justified, even perhaps as a military maneuver, but that is a decision which statesmen charged with the destinies of the political order need to make. When Christian churches speak, are they not obliged to stress that man’s only guarantee of survival is his devotion to the commandments by which God judges the race; to stress the connection between the social evils of the world and the master passions of individual life (cf. James 4:1, “From whence come wars … Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?”); and to stress the contribution to peace made by the regenerating power of the Gospel? Doubtless it is superficial to hold that, in a sinful order, the preaching of the Gospel is the only contribution that Christianity can make to promote world peace. But, if anything, it is superficiality compounded to seek a Christian solution while neglecting the Gospel, and venturing simply to reorganize an unregenerate world order on the basis of romantic idealism.

Progress in disarmament hinges upon a sense of mutual trust among nations. Even unchurched leaders today ask what basis exists for trusting a Communist leadership that acknowledges no objective moral principles, let alone the reality of the Living God and the validity of his commandments. Is not the Gospel the best weapon the Church knows for restoring these dulled spiritual and moral sensitivities?

The Christian community is profoundly right in its warning to the world that nuclear war will provide no solution to world problems, but will bankrupt modern history. But if Christian forces hope to show the way to peace, they had best not concentrate their efforts on dubious vulnerable techniques for avoiding war. Worldly organizations may busy themselves with delaying actions for postponing doom, but the Church’s primary role is to call a new race of men into fellowship with Christ as Lord. The cessation of nuclear bomb tests is no more the world’s real hope for peace in this decade than the organization of the United Nations was in the last. That great hope is Jesus Christ. And it is time professing followers of Christ clarify this hope in a world of peril. The modern man’s one great prospect of peaceful existence in these dark decades lies in the recognition of the lordship of Christ, in the reaffirmation of the Judeo-Christian view of life, and in the dedication of the atom and the atom bomb to the service of righteousness and love.

A Prepared Messenger And His Message

Dr. Robert Munger, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California, recently said in a workshop for ministers in New York: “A prepared messenger is more important than a prepared message.”

By this Dr. Munger did not mean to minimize the importance of thorough preparation of a sermon from a topical, scriptural and homiletical standpoint. But he did mean that God uses cleansed and filled vessels for his own glory and that a minister who has prepared himself by a complete yielding to Christ in every area of his own personal life and approaches his message from his knees is the one whom God can honor and use.

In these days when so many administrative duties accrue to the minister, when he finds himself under constant pressure to meet pastoral responsibilities, grave danger exists of too little time being left for the most vital part of his life, the spiritual, without which even the most eloquent sermon can become so many empty words.

While it remains the responsibility of the minister to guard and nurture this most important part of his own life, the congregation has a duty to see that he is spared many seemingly important but nonetheless secondary duties. To make this possible the minister will have to say “No” to many requests and to make his position tenable the congregation will have to accept such refusals graciously.

What person would employ a lawyer on a vitally important matter and then expect him to spend his time in social and other activities that mitigate against proper preparation of his case?

Who would ask a surgeon to operate for a serious physical ailment and then expect the surgeon to fritter away his time on secondary matters?

And yet, too many members of the average congregation ask their minister to provide time and services they have no right to expect. Or how often a minister may himself take time and energy for things that deaden or lessen spiritual awareness and power.

The Christian ministry is a desperately serious matter for it has to do with matters of eternal import. The preacher of the Gospel stands as a link between the living and the dead, between men who are in darkness and despair and a Way which brings light and joy. “Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord” is an admonition found in Isaiah. This envisions a minister of the Lord cleansed for his task. “Be filled with the Spirit” Paul exhorts us, an indication of the source of spiritual power.

Prepare your message? By all means, but never forget that for the message there must also be a prepared messenger.

END

Eutychus and His Kin: September 2, 1957

Christianity Today September 2, 1957

SPECTATORS

Americans are all screened these days—by the TV set. The screen separates a few hyper-tense performers on a ball diamond or in the studio from spectators relaxing in the bars, living-rooms and dens of the forty-eight states. Never have so many lost so much to so few.

Fortunately some have escaped the contour chair of spectator sports. Even the country club has members who will occasionally desert the TV lounge for an afternoon on the links. As the coach has often reminded us, the school football program still demands self-discipline for the glory of Alma Mater and several thousand paid spectators. Progressive education has not affected squad scrimmages!

Off the athletic field, discipline is rare. This fall school teachers face again the relaxed teens in loafers with the loose look and desperately resume the struggle in a strategic position much deteriorated from the long summer truce.

A preacher can sympathize. The stifled yawns of relaxed worshipers are symptoms of spectator Christianity, slumped smugly in the sanctuary. The most evangelical parson might be tempted to prescribe for his flock the rigor of the canonical hours that summon monks to prayer.

Discipline should begin with the preacher. If he prays more in public than in private and makes fewer calls than any doctor, insurance salesman or Fuller Brush man, he needs self-examination. A popular style of preaching is the stream-of-consciousness method, a flexible, freeform discourse in which the preacher passionately or pompously says whatever comes into his head. The cure is the discipline of the study. Scientific exegesis of the Scriptures and a return to the bracing richness of the creeds can bring new meaning to preaching.

Lazy Christianity that avoids hard thinking and hard work will never reach America’s spectators with the gospel.

EUTYCHUS

NIEBUHR AND GRAHAM

A subtle movement is on to discredit Billy Graham and his message before the world and the Christian church. Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr has become the spokesman for Protestant enemies of the Graham crusades: In Life magazine (July 1, 1957) Dr. Niebuhr accuses Graham of “simplifying the issues of life” in his crusade sermons. From his theological citadel of New York’s Union Theological Seminary he denounces Dr. Graham’s evangelism declaring that (1) he “exemplifies a typically frontier American evangelism”; that he (2) has “neglected to explore the social dimensions of the Gospel,” and that (3) “this new evangelism is much blander than the old.”

Dr. Niebuhr attacks “frontier American evangelism” because of its condemnation of the “old self” and its emphasis on the need of “decision for Christ.” But this is precisely the method which brought the Christian church into existence, preserved her and made her spread out to the ends of the earth. The apostolic message and method was the same Graham is carrying to the world today.

It was not the liturgical priesthood nor the theological Pharisees or Saducees which promoted Christianity, but those “frontier” men of Galilee who were personally regenerated and therefore able to carry the message of new life across national, racial, cultural and social frontiers of their day. This same frontier evangelism saved Christianity in the Middle Ages from the liturgy and formalism of dead Romanism. It saved Protestant Europe in the eighteenth century, through Wesley, Whitefield and others, from national, social and religious corruption. It is not present-day liturgical Rome nor Niebuhr’s modernized theology which can save America from corruption and destruction, but new life in Christ Jesus brought to us through the channel of what the Bible says. There is no other way to change men’s lives, morally, socially and culturally, than grafting of Christ’s new life into the “old self” life.

Can Dr. Niebuhr prove his assertion that “Such evangelism, with its continual emphasis on the individual saving his own soul, neglects to explore the social dimensions of the Gospel”? Individual regeneration is the only effective way to reform society. Only in the heart of individuals who are open to the Gospel seed can a better ethical and moral standard be planted.

Communism is progressing on the very same principle, that reform is built on small cells of individuals having accepted unconditionally the tenets of communistic ideology. While Niebuhr is working with abstract formulas for reform of New York’s teeming millions, hundreds of them are individually “converted” each week to Communism through surrender of “self” in “decision for” Karl Marx.

We wonder if Dr. Niebuhr has ever taken the time to hear a whole sermon by Dr. Graham. If he had, how could he say “This new evangelism promises a new life, not through painful religious experience but werely by signing a decision card.” After having heard Graham a dozen times in soul-searching messages demanding complete change of moral and ethical life toward men, in repentence toward God, my impression is that not since Savonarola have men heard an evangelist who has thundered so much against spiritual as well as social sins.

Can we wonder at Dr. Niebuhr’s assertion that “relatively few New Yorkers attend the Garden meetings” when we consider that nearly two thirds of New York’s population are of the Jewish race or Roman Catholics? Dr. Niebuhr, who wants to be spokesman for its 8 per cent Protestant population, warns both Jews and Gentiles against Graham. Roman Catholic leaders are glad to mingle their voices with his. The greater part of New York’s religious life is encased in formalism, a shell which Dr. Niebuhr’s theology has not been able to crack.

God is in the process of breaking open this shell of estrangement from him. Through united prayers of Christians around the world God is tearing down the temple walls which New Yorkers have erected for their mammon and bacchus worship. A few days ago I went to call on a new convert whose name and address had been mailed to me from the Garden Crusade office. I found him in one of Brooklyn’s swank apartments. This prominent Latin American businessman said to me, “My wife is a strong Catholic, but I have frequently attended Billy Graham’s meetings. I have given my heart to Christ.”

If Dr. Niebuhr would dedicate more of his time to the “narrow” channel of “frontier evangelism” and less time to filling the “chasm between Christian pietism and modern scientific culture,” he would find with Graham that the approach to life’s problems is not “too simple and narrow,” for both the man in the street as well as the erudite scholar may find solution to all life’s problems in the presence of Christ the Saviour and through what the Bible says. Director of Evangelism OLAV EIKLAND Latin Evangelical Free Church Brooklyn, N. Y.

ROMAN CATHOLIC GAINS

“Roman Catholics are increasing by leaps and bounds in America” seems to be a belief of many Protestants.

It simply is not true, and it is surprising that so few Protestants are familiar with the statistics which are to be found, incidentally, at periodic intervals in “Information Service” of the National Council of Churches.

Here are a few figures: In 1906, Roman Catholics were 37% of all church members in the USA. In 1956 they were 34%. In 1906, Catholics were 16.5% of the whole American population; in 1956 they were 20%, an increase of 3.5%. During that time much of the immigration was Roman Catholic. During the same fifty years, non-Catholics increased from 24.3% in 1906 to 40% in 1956, for a gain of over 15%. In other words, from 1906 to 1956, Protestants and Jews increased at a ratio of 4 times as rapidly as Roman Catholics.

Two other items are significant: 1. of the 531 members of Congress, 94 or 17.5% are Roman Catholics. 2. of the 48 governors, 5 or 9.6% are Roman Catholic.

Interpretations of these statistics may vary but at least there are the figures.

WILLARD JOHNSON

Barrington, Ill.

• The present population of the United States is 171,000,000. The Roman Catholic population of the United States is between 32,000,000 and 33,000,000 at the present time. The United States has 223 archbishops and bishops.

In 1906, according to the Catholic Directory on file at Catholic University Library, the Catholic population of the United States was 12,651,000. At that time the total population of the United States was close to 80,000,000. (It was 75,900,000 in the 1900 census.) At that time there were 104 bishops and archbishops.

In 1857 the Catholic population of the United States was 2,064,000. At that time there were 29 bishops and archbishops. The U.S. population, as a whole, was about 25,000,000 (23,190,000 in census of 1850).

In the last 50 years the Catholic population has increased about 275% while the whole U.S. population was increasing about 212%. Therefore, a contention that the non-Catholic population of the United States is increasing more rapidly than the Catholic is not borne out by the facts. However, Roman Catholic statistics include everyone ever baptized in a Roman Catholic church and there are a certain percentage who have lapsed from the church.

The Catholic membership in Congress is now 96 out of 531, the highest it has ever been, except for a brief time this session when it was 97 (prior to Sen. McCarthy’s death)—ED.

REVIVALISM’S RESIDUE

I hesitate to ask you to print a rejoinder to R. J. Rushdoony’s review of my book, Revivalism and Social Reform, (June 24 issue) lest I appear ungrateful for the many kind things he did say. But the more critical portion of his essay identifies me, personally, with the doctrines of the men whom the book describes. I fear the result will be that many of your readers, whose fellowship I cherish, may think that I am now outside the pale of evangelical fellowship. So please accept this brief apology and confession of faith.

I certainly do not rejoice in the triumph of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism. I regard the seizure by radical liberals of the proprietorship of the parable of the Good Samaritan as one if the great ironies—and falsehoods—of our time. Similarly, the doctrine of America’s “manifest destiny” is odious to me. For most of my short life I have held to the a-millennial “variant of the beliefs which [William] Miller’s demise discredited,” without regard to who “spawned” it. Far from being blindly prejudiced against Calvinism, I have taken heart at every movement in recent scholarship or piety which has opened up an avenue to the reconciliation of Wesleyan and “Calvinist” evangelicals. Our division is the least defensible of any which affiict modern Christendom.

But the facts are that in the mid-nineteenth century revivalist churchmen did identify the Kingdom of God with the American dream. They were largely postmillennialists. They did blaze the trail which Social Christianity later followed. They nourished the ecumenical spirit. Christian perfection made remarkable headway among them. And they nearly all believed that old school Calvinism was a superannuated theology, closely identified with the reaction against political and social democracy. All this was as true of Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Baptist revivalists as of their Lutheran, Low Church Episcopal and Methodist brethren.

I thought these things important and tried to tell the story which lay back of them with accuracy and enthusiasm. That the writings of old school Calvinists, so long quoted by secular historians as typical of “Christian” opinion, were in fact a minor current quite outside the mainstream of American religious life in the period, seemed important to point out. This applies to Warfield’s later studies of perfectionism, too, though the reviewer could not but have noticed that the stricture which he deplores was also applied in the same sentence to the work of a recent Wesleyan scholar and referred only to their inadequate treatment of “the social dynamics of the movement” (p. 238).

Mr. Rushdoony’s statement that the chapters on the rise of Christian perfection contain a genealogy which omits reference to the black sheep of the family will, I think, seem strange to those who read the book. Please note the uncomplimentary facts recorded concerning Asa Mahan (p. 111), T. C. Upham (p. 144), the Free Methodists (pp. 129–132), W. E. Boardman (p. 234) and Bishops Janes and Hamline, architects of the Methodist bishops’ policy of silence on slavery (pp. 211–212). All these were clearly in the “second blessing” camp. I doubt if the reviewer seriously believes that “sexual communism” is an inevitable concomitant of Arminian or Wesleyan revivalism. But just to make sure all the evidence was in, I referred to John Humphrey Noyes (who was neither an Arminian nor a Wesleyan) and the Oneida community five times (see index).

One final note. The “something”, as the reviewer put it, to which I referred as being potentially “as dry as Johnathan Edwards’ bones and just as sterile of saving compassion” was (p. 92) Arminian Orthodoxy. But I hasten to acknowledge that such a reference even to that dear Calvinist’s bones was unfortunate, especially if it leads any to suspect that I have not read Perry Miller on Edwards!

TIMOTHY L. SMITH

First Church of the Nazarene

Boulder, Colo.

THE RISING TIDE

At 80, after 57 years in public Christian work, I can truthfully say your magazine met a long felt need in our library.… Being now retired, a good, sound paper is a good companion.…

JOHN O. FERRIS

Crystal Bay Presbyterian Church

Wayzata, Minn.

This Happened in New York

WORLD NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

The May 13, 1957 issue ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY, published two days before the opening of Billy Graham’s crusade in Madison Square Garden, carried an article of predictions entitled “This Can Happen in New York.” It was written by George Burnham, news editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYand author of two books on world tours of the evangelist. Burnham, after covering the New York campaign for 800 newspapers and magazines, now describes what happened during the crusade which ended Sept. 1 after three and one-half months.

The first article about New York began with the admonition, “If you care enough to pray, a number of incredible things will happen.…”

Millions did care enough to pray—in big city cathedrals, small rural churches and mud huts of jungle outposts. People in faraway Assam, most of whom have never seen a two-story building, prayed for God’s blessings on the concrete jungle of New York.

The original predictions and subsequent results are as follows:

1. Billy Graham will tell more people about Jesus Christ during the next six weeks than he has during all of his phenomenal ministry.

Capacity crowds of 18,500 at Madison Square Garden and audiences of 10 million-plus for Saturday telecasts made this come true before the end of six weeks. The Crusade, however, was just getting started. It was extended to July 20, then to August 10 and finally to Sept. 1. Madison Square Garden was not available beyond that date. A conservative figure for all telecasts would be 100 million viewers.

An estimated 2 million heard Mr. Graham in person at the Garden, Yankee Stadium, Central Park, Wall Street and Brooklyn. The total for 12 weeks in London was 2,047,333, but this figure included hundreds of services carried to relay points by special wire. The largest single crowd in New York was 100,000 at Yankee Stadium, with 20,000 turned away.

Other thousands heard the message on daily radio and television programs that covered the metropolitan area.

Television results surpassed all expectations. Over 10,000 letters a day, with hundreds telling of decisions for Christ, swamped the office daily. Mr. Graham expects to use this medium more than ever in future campaigns.

A Norfolk, Va., family was watching a telecast as the evangelist preached on the broad and narrow roads. When the message was over the six-year-old girl looked up and asked, “Mother, which road are you taking?” The parents drove to New York and made decisions for Christ. Wrote a person in Chicago: “Your sermon convinced me that now is the time of decision. I shall profess my faith in Jesus Christ tonight at our church.”

2. The number of inquiriers who respond to the invitation at the close of each message, by grace of God, will surpass any campaign to date.

Over 55,000 decisions were recorded. London’s 38,447 was closest to this, but this total also included relay figures. An intensive follow-up program is now under way to aid the Christian growth of those making decisions.

A young lady gripped the back of a seat so hard one night to keep from going forward that she cut her hands. Several nights later she responded. New York’s warring teen-agers declared the Garden “neutral ground” and hundreds of them made decisions for Christ during a special Youth Emphasis Week.

Not all of those making decisions will last. Not all lasted when Christ was doing the preaching.

3. Ministers and church members will be revived. Unity and love will spread as they place Christ first and denomination second, endeavor to help instead of hinder, offer comfort instead of criticism.

“This is like all the Christmases I have ever known rolled up into one,” commented a minister as he watched the hundreds marching toward the platform. Another clergyman took in 50 new members at a Sunday service. Scores of other churches were strengthened in the flow from the Garden. Many ministers began preaching evangelistic sermons and giving invitations for the first time.

A number of clergymen made decisions, explaining later that they had entered the ministry as a profession without surrendering their wills to Christ.

A tall, gaunt man with the rugged, weatherbeaten look of an Abraham Lincoln stepped from the crowd one night to make a decision. He jolted a young team aid in the counseling room by saying he had been a missionary for 25 years, and then added: “My work was fruitful for many years on the mission field, but I have felt the power leaving my ministry in the last few years. As I sat in the Garden tonight and listened to Billy, I became aware of why I was accomplishing little. I had to admit, down in my heart, that I began to seek the praise of men for my work rather than the blessing of God. When the invitation was given, I felt a strong urge to confess my sin and lay it at the foot of the Cross—the only place where sin can be forgiven and problems solved.”

As the man was leaving the counseling room, a ministerial advisor told the team aide: “The man you were talking with has been a giant of our denomination for many years. If he needed to make such a decision, how much greater is my need to do the same.”

4. The name of Jesus Christ will be for many the biggest topic of conversation on the streets, in factories and offices and on the dimly-lit night circuit of such spots as the Stork Club and Toots Shor’s.

Leaders of the New York Protestant Council agreed, during the campaign, that it had never been so easy to witness for Christ, with his name coming up during conversations in the most unexpected places. Christians covered entire apartment projects in their desire to make Him known.

The name, often used as an oath previously, took on new meaning as it spread through the young gangs, supper clubs and slums. A few of the celebrities who attended meetings included Jack Dempsey, Edward G. Robinson, Gene Tierney, Tex and Jinx Falkenburg, Carl Erskine, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, Dale Evans Rogers and many others. Ethel Waters missed only one service as a member of the choir. Church leaders from throughout the world visited the Crusade.

5. The effect of the campaign will be felt in many parts of the world, as the press and radio spread the news from Madison Square Garden to all nations.

The major wire services, such as Associated Press and United Press, gave the campaign unprecedented attention, with daily coverage for the most part. In the past, a weekly or monthly roundup after the opening events was the usual method.

While talking with workers at the Crusade office, the religious editor of a wire service decided to make his decision for Christ. He made the decision public at the Garden in hopes that it would influence the writer for a rival agency. Only another newspaperman could understand such an unusual action.

Not all writers were impressed, but the majority were, according to the following comments: “There was a good, clean solid look to those in the seats and those who came forward to repent”—Bob Considine; “At Madison Square where the air is as fresh and happy as a day in Spring—because these ‘newborn Christians’ wear their conversion radiantly, as love.…”—Phyllis Battelle, New Jork Journal American.

6. Communists in New York will face the rising threat to their godless way of life by smearing Mr. Graham in any way possible.

There was little or no smearing by communists.

7. Opposition will continue to come from small extreme groups within the church.

Such criticism was evident throughout. Some liberals complained that Mr. Graham was too fundamental and that his messages did not accomplish the social impact desired. Some fundamentalists complained that the evangelist was too liberal in that he associated with ministers of varied beliefs.

Mr. Graham, who went to New York with no strings attached, preached “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” He taught that the Gospel was vertical—“Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, mind and soul.” But he also taught that the Gospel was horizontal—“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

8. Jesus Christ will be glorified.

Pastors and the press were struck by the genuine humility of Mr. Graham and members of his team. In every instance they played down self and played up Christ. Ever before them were the words, “It is not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord,” and “My Glory I will not share with another.”

The evangelist and his team spent themselves unselfishly in order that others might know the “good news that Jesus Christ came to save sinners.”

Each night a theme song rang through the Garden—“How Great Thou Art.”

The New York Crusade was the biggest evangelistic undertaking in history. And incredible things happened—because you cared enough to pray.

Break Rejected

After an eight-hour debate, the Evangelical Joint Lutheran Synod of Wisconsin and Other States rejected a report from its floor committee proposing a suspension of fellowship relations with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

The vote was 77–61, with eight delegates abstaining.

People: Words And Events

Alaska-Mission—Dr. Louis H. Evans, Minister-at-large of the Board of National Missions, Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., is conducting a five-week preaching mission in Alaska. He will speak to servicemen at three Air Force bases, address a conference of Presbyterian workers, and make radio and TV appearances. Dr. Evans travels more than 60,000 miles a year in his ministry.

First Girl President—For the first time in its 62-year-history, the Luther League of America has a girl president. She is Judy Ford of Cherryville, N. C. The league is the official youth auxiliary of the United Lutheran Church in America. Miss Ford was elected at the league’s convention in Lawrence, Kans.

Historic Chapel—The chapel in which Charles Haddon Spurgeon found Christ has been closed. A move is under way to buy the chapel so that it will not be offered for sale for commercial purposes. Located in Clochester, Essex, England, the chapel and adjoining manse are falling into disrepair. The two buildings can be bought, perhaps, for as little as 7,000 pounds.

Graham Papers—Dr. Billy Graham will give his personal letters, papers and sermons to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky. The papers include Dr. Graham’s correspondence with the heads of many nations. Dr. Duke K. McCall, seminary president, said the papers will “afford generations of future young ministers the opportunity to study the great Graham revivals of this era.” He said the files will be kept in a Billy Graham Room in the James P. Boyce Library, to be built soon.

Airport Ministry—In Puerto Rico, an unusual office has been set up at International Airport to help families departing for the United States. From behind a glass booth, Osvaldo Carlo explains U. S. currency and gives the departing Puerto Ricans a folder telling them what churches in many U. S. cities are ready to welcome them. Carlo is employed by the Evangelical Council of Churches of Puerto Rico.

Latin Campaign—Plans for a widespread evangelistic campaign in Latin America during the summer of 1959 have been mapped by the executive committee of the World Presbyterian Alliance. The campaign will be launced before the meeting of the Alliance’s 18th General Council in Campinas, Brazil, July 27-August 6, 1959, and will continue after its close.

Mass Evangelism—Herbert E. Eberhardt, superintendent of a Washington, D. C., gospel mission, was “filled with righteous indignation” when he read the following words of Dr. Harold E. Fey, editor of Christian Century: “The effects of the Billy Sunday meetings have long ago disappeared. It seems likely that the Billy Graham revival may have a similar transiency.” Said Eberhardt: “ ‘Ma’ Sunday, who passed away within the year, had a list of 400 ministers who were converted in those campaigns. All over this country there are clubs and organizations still active which grew out of the Sunday meetings, including one here in Washington. Indeed, the ever-expanding and influential Christian Businessmen’s Committee, International, is largely an outgrowth of the Billy Sunday campaigns.”

Missions Magazine—Larry Ward, former managing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, is editor of a new publication, World Vision Magazine, published by World Vision, Inc., in the interest of encouraging faithful prayer for world missions.

Less Chaplains—The Air Force says it will dimish its ranks of Protestant chaplains by as many as 117 before the end of the year, in keeping with the Defense Department order to reduce military personnel. Protestant chaplains will be reduced in number because their group is the only one currently over strength, the Air Force said. Those released will be permitted to take reserve training in order to keep their commissions in force, and those with more than five years of active duty will get readjustment pay.

New Administrator—The Rev. Charles H. Boyles of Jackson, Miss., has been elected administrator of the National Conference of Methodist Youth. For the last two years he has been national chairman of the United Christian Youth Movement, youth arm of the National Council of Churches.

50 Million Lutherans

Gerald B. Smith, religion editor of the St. Paul Dispatch, provided the following special coverage forCHRISTIANITY TODAYon the Lutheran World Federation Assembly:

August 15 to 25 were important days for Lutherans of the world, and thousands of lay men and women from Lutheran churches of America visited Minneapolis during that time to see for themselves what is involved in the international assembly of the Lutheran World Federation.

Newsmen covering the assembly were impressed by the serious nature of the visiting thousands—they were not just on a vacation lark to be impressed by the color and pagentry of the Federation’s third convocation.

These visitors crowded out many of the sessions in the Minneapolis Auditorium, which seats 10,000—and these sessions were sobering affairs, with deep, unhesitant probing of what Lutherans, and other Christians, ought to be doing in the present-day world.

Pursuing the theme, “Christ Frees and Unites,” the delegates and official visitors, representing 50 million Lutherans around the world, found the word “freedom” and “unity” much in use during the 10 days.

Included in some of the delegations were churchmen who have long been in conflict with such ideologies as Nazism and materialistic Communism, and as a result there was an eagerness on the part of American delegates to learn what happens to the Christian church when it is marooned behind the Iron Curtain.

Most vivid symbol of the Church in Communist-controlled areas was Bishop Lajos Ordass of Hungary, gaunt, somber prelate who was only restored in late 1956 to his ecclesiastical jurisdiction after 20 months in jail and six years of house arrest by the communist government.

On the day before the Lutheran assembly began, Dr. Carl McIntire of the American Council of Christian Churches, staged a “protest” meeting in a Minneapolis theater, charging that Bishop Ordass is a tool of the communists and actually heads a “slave church” in Hungary. Lutheran students in Minneapolis for the assembly heckled Dr. McIntire, disputed his interpretations of Lutheranism and contended he had not documented his charges against the Hungarian prelate. Police had to be called to restore order.

Chosen as the keynote speaker to give the opening sermon, Bishop Ordass told the delegates from many nations that the fruits of Christ’s death are personal freedom, freedom for service and the gift of Christian unity.

“Although we may be living under entirely different earthly circumstances, we are nevertheless friends and brothers of one body—the universal church of Christ,” he said.

In a press conference, Bishop Ordass faced reporters and church editors and said: “I am not afraid to go back—on my own words I will stand.” He said that since the 1956 revolution, attendance in churches has been increased, offerings are much better and pastors are not restricted in teaching church doctrine.

Another of the colorful European churchmen was Bishop F. Otto Dibelius, 77, of Berlin. His diocese of Berlin-Brandenburg straddles the Iron Curtain, and because of his insistence on a positive Christian education program in his churches he has been forbidden since March by East German officials to carry on his ecclesiastical duties in the eastern Communist-controlled zone.

Bishop Dibelius sounded one of the most urgent notes of the assembly when he said that superficial Christianity is no match for militant Communism.

Because of the international nature of the meeting, it was not strange that there was a pre-occupation with the future of the Christian church in areas already overshadowed by Communism.

Bishop Rajah B. Manikam of India, first and only Lutheran bishop in India and head of the Tamil Lutheran church, said openly that India may shift over to Communism in the next five years unless technical and financial assistance from America can stem the tide. The Indian churchman said the current “revolution in Asia” dwarfs the previous revolutions in France and Russia.

Bishop Bo H. Giertz of the diocese of Gothenburg, Church of Sweden, sounded one of the many emphatic doctrinal notes when he insisted that the Christian church must have the freedom to reform its functioning, but the Christian Gospel itself can never be reformed or changed.

“No authority in the church has the power to alter the smallest letter in this Gospel,” he warned. “Here there can be no willingness to compromise.”

On the same score, Dr. Vilmos Vajta, a native of Hungary now head of the Lutheran World Federation department of theology at Geneva, told the Lutherans to make sure of their theological moorings.

“If we lose theologically, we lose everything,” he summarized.

A college professor, Dr. Edgar M. Carlson, president of Gustavus Adolphus college, St. Peter, Minn., stood before the delegates and confessed the American sin of racial discrimination, and then urged that the Christian churches take the lead in forming a solid front against such practices.

Most discussion early in the assembly was brought about by approval of a project to study Roman Catholic theology, aimed at bringing the Lutheran and Roman churches closer together. Bishop Hanns Lilje of Germany, president of the Lutheran World Federation, said the study should be “an objective Christian inquiry in the spirit of understanding.”

“The Catholic church stays out of our ecumenical relations,” he said, “but we want them in. The Roman Catholic church, like ours, is moving with the times.” He added that he believes each generation of Lutherans has to “rethink the decision of the sixteenth century.”

Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, president of the United Lutheran Church in America, became the new president of the Lutheran World Federation in the elections prior to the conclusion of the world assembly.

Nature Of Unity

Nearly 300 delegates representing 40 denominations in the United States and Canada gather Sept. 3–10 in Oberlin, Ohio, for the World Council of Churches’ North American Study Conference on “The Nature of the Unity We Seek.”

Eight other denominations are sending observers and, in addition, 85 consultants have been invited, 10 from foreign lands.

The opening keynote address will be delivered Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 3, by the Rt. Rev. Angus Dun, chairman of the committee on arrangements. Daytime sessions from Sept. 4–7 will be devoted mainly to simultaneous sessions of 12 sections.

Most important of these, for evangelical Protestantism, is the section on “Doctrinal Consensus and Conflict.” This is the largest section, with some 40 participants. Its chairman is Dr. Edgar M. Carlson of Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church, and its secretary, Dr. Walter N. Roberts of Evangelical United Brethren Church.

Consultants to attend the session on doctrinal concerns are Dr. V. E. Devadutt, Baptist Federation of India; Dr. Robert L. Calhoun, Congregational Christian Churches; Dr. Roy G. Ross, Disciples of Christ; Dr. John W. V. Smith, Church of God; the Rev. William D. Powell, Congregational Christion Churches; Dr. Otto W. Heick, United Lutheran Church, and Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Dr. Paul M. Bretscher will attend as an observer for the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod).

‘Blood Of Lamb’

A Protestant church leader accused Rep. Flood (D.-Pa.) of using “sophisticated oratorical blasphemy” during House debate on the foreign aid bill.

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, public affairs secretary of the National Association of Evangelicals, expressed “amazement” at Mr. Flood’s choice of terms while arguing unsuccessfully for an increase in economic aid funds.

Referring to Republicans who sided with his proposal, Mr. Flood said he welcomed them “to the fold after their many years of dereliction.”

“I say ‘hallelujah,’ ” he continued. “They have been washed in the blood of the lamb, a condition that I have enjoyed on this bill since 1945.”

Dr. Taylor singled out use of the term “washed in the blood of the Lamb” as being particularly offensive and said in a letter, “Surely you must be aware that to understanding Christian believers this concept is at the very heart of biblical religion. It is vital to a relationship between God and man.”

Mr. Flood replied, “My deep sense of religious conviction prevents me from giving offense intentionally to anyone of any faith. If offense has been taken to any words of mine by honest and sincere people, understandably or not to others, then that I sincerely regret.”

World Affairs

Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant church leaders from 21 nations turned their attention to the role of the Church in international affairs at the tenth annual meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches at Yale Divinity School recently.

Underlying all the deliberations was a basic question: How can the Church speak to the world in a way that is specifically Christian? How far should it go in offering solutions in tense international events. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Geoffrey F. Fisher, introduced the subject when he suggested that pointing out basic Christian principles is better than offering concrete advice.

Another question of importance to the world mission of the Church was the proposed integration of the World Council of Churches with its older sister organization, the International Missionary Council.

Dr. Josef L. Hromadka, Czech theologian, was reelected as a member of the executive committee, but more than half of the delegates abstained from voting. His fitness to serve was challenged by the Dr. Petrus Olaf Bersell. Dr. Hromadka is a professed non-communist, but has urged cooperation with his communist government.

Reports noted with favor the Prapat meeting of the East Asia Conference of Christian Churches last March in Indonesia. Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary, said, “The Asian churches, which knew very little about each other, have discovered their sister churches. They find that they have much in common and also much to learn from each other, and are therefore eager to enter into much closer relationships.”

The Asian churches, he added, have asked the Australian and New Zealand churches to associate themselves with the new Asian body.

A Tragedy In The Making

Marlon Brando is said to be planning a film about a handsome young evangelist who takes the nation by storm.

In Brando’s picture the evangelist holds big rallies in giant arenas and collects a fortune. He keeps all the loot and invests it in rackets. The role has been offered to Errol Flynn, who reportedly seems fascinated by it.

It is conceivable that Brando might be planning a take-off on Billy Graham, since he is the only current evangelist who has taken the nation by storm.

To keep the plot from going to pot, and to add the authentic touch of Hollywood realism, Brando might have his research department get in touch with George Champion, President of the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. He handles all of the collections and disbursements of Graham’s New York Crusade.

To date, after three months of exhaustive preaching, the evangelist has received exactly nothing. When the campaign ends on Sept. 1, the total will have climbed to five cents short of a nickel.

Such research, however, might ruin the picture. The Hollywood motto, in many cases, is “Forget the facts and tell the story.”

It has been reported, printed and checked scores of times that Graham receives a salary from his own organization of $15,000 a year. He is such a soft touch that he usually has to borrow money to pay his income tax. A worthy cause will always find him digging and he runs into more of them accidentally than most folks do on purpose. Admire his tie and he will give it to you. He has a hard time playing golf because he keeps giving his clubs to friends who need them more. If money was his goal, Hollywood has repeatedly offered him a blank check for film rights to his life story.

The casting of Errol Flynn to play the part is nothing short of genius. Such a muchly married and harried playboy should bring a great amount of truth to the part. Quite a contrast with Billy and Ruth Graham, however. They have been married for over 15 years and still love each other. The courtship will never end. If she enters the room 15 times a day, he stands up 15 times a day.

Recently Graham was acclaimed as “Father of the year.” Flynn, with x-wives scattered in all directions, might be even more fascinated by this role.

The tragedy of such a picture is that some of the public will believe it, even when the lie is told in Cinemascope.

Brando and Flynn should be warned, however, not to try filming it during a thunderstorm.

Worth Quoting

A Christian who resided in China for 25 years had the following to say when asked for comment about the exploited junket of young Americans from Moscow to Peking:

“Forty-one misguided youths, led by a clergyman long identified with left-wing movements, are touring Red China in defiance of U. S. State Department instructions. That they will be used for propaganda purposes in Russia and may themselves become propagandists for a system they did not actually see and do not actually understand is a matter of secondary importance.

“The basic problem is one of deliberate flouting of our government, of setting up group defiance of established authority. It is inherent in the spirit of our times and reflected in the numerous expressions of approval of their action to be heard on every hand.

“The policy of the State Department with reference to travel in Red China can be debated without violation of democratic principles and right. Arbitrary flouting of this policy is an act of insubordination and should be treated as such.”

Europe News: September 2, 1957

Youth For Christ

Evangelistic meetings in various parts of Europe were conducted by Youth for Christ teams after the ninth World Youth Congress on Evangelism at Copenhagen. The purpose was to “present Christ to teen-agers.”

Dr. Ted Engstrom, YFC International president, said the congress was conducted “to stir Christian youth leaders from all parts of the world to the responsibility of reaching young people, and to show them the media of doing the job.”

Thirty-three delegates from behind the Iron Curtain were at the meeting.

National leaders reported Youth for Christ progress in all parts of the world. Gene Boyer, YFC director in France, said Christians there are showing a new readiness to support evangelism. Victor Monogarom, YFC leader in India, reported strong Bible club work in Delhi among nurses and high school girls. He said officials of the Church of South India had pledged their support. Juan Gili of Barcelona and Leandro Roldan of Madrid announced plans to cover Spain with youth Gospel meetings.

Madras, India, was chosen as the site for the 1958 World Youth Congress on Evangelism.

Churches Closed

All churches in the area of Koenigsberg, capital of the former East German province of East Prussia, have been closed by communist authorities and converted into “cultural centers,” or depots and storehouses.

The report appeared in Sonntagsblatt, widely-read Protestant weekly, which said the same situation is true for the whole of the Soviet-occupied part of the province.

Koenigsberg is located in the northern part of East Prussia, which was annexed by the Soviet Union after World War II. The southern part was taken over by Poland.

Nigeria News: September 2, 1957

W. Harold Fuller

College For Nigeria

Baptists are planning to found a degree-awarding theological college in Nigeria, Dr. G. W. Sadler, secretary for Africa, Europe and the Near East of the Foreign Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, said recently.

The announcement was made at a dinner given in Dr. Sadler’s honor by the Nigerian Baptist Convention in Lagos, Nigeria, on the eve of his retirement.

“We feel that such a higher center of learning will help in the progress of Christianity in this land,” said Dr. Sadler, who served as a missionary in Nigeria for 18 years. He was responsible for building up the Baptist Seminary at Ogbomosho, the Baptists’ highest education institute in Nigeria.

W.H.F.

Little Fanfare

Self-government came quietly to the Eastern and Western regions of Nigeria last month. There was no public holiday, no mass celebration.

In Enugu, capital of the Eastern Region, Prime Minister Nnamdi Azikiwe, who had been loudest in demanding self-government, attended a simple service of thanksgiving at St. Bartholomew’s (Anglican) Church.

The reason for the lack of flag-waving was that the official recognition of regional self-government will mean little change for the country. Because the backward Moslem Northern Region has refused to accept self-government until 1959, the nation must wait until 1960 for full federal self-government.

In watching neighbor Ghana, which obtained independence last March, Nigerians realize the heavy responsibilities and cost of independence. They are more than ever appreciative of the work of missions, which are still responsible for 70 per cent of the nation’s education and much of its medical care. One region recently announced financial aid to bring mission hospital nurses and attendants to government wage standards.

Far East News: September 2, 1957

Properties Transfer

More than 200 churches, schools, colleges, hospitals and residences valued at $2,000,000 will be transferred by the United Church of Canada to the United Church of Northern India this year.

Dr. D. H. Gallagher, secretary of the board of overseas missions, said the transfers will mark the culmination of a long-range policy to integrate mission work and assets into the indigenous church.

The United Church of Northern India is one of seven denominational bodies planning an organic merger in 1961. Other groups comprise Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists and Disciples of Christ. The new body will be called the Church of North India.

“It has been our constant policy to train local church leaders with the hope that some day they would take over the mission work,” Dr. Gallagher said. “Gradually they have been taking over the work. Now the time has come when they should assume full charge of our program of church life and work, medical services, educational institutions and technical services.”

The United Church of Canada has 42 missionaries serving in India under the board of overseas missions and another 33 serving under the Women’s Missionary Society.

Dr. Gallagher said the help of Canadian missionaries will still be needed to further the training of local leaders and to assist them as “partners and colleagues.”

Work In India

After a period of ministry among refugees in Berlin and West Germany, Dr. and Mrs. Harold B. Kuhn have begun duties as guest professors at Union Biblical Seminary in Yeotmal, India.

The seminary, founded by the Free Methodist Church, is now the approved training institution of the Evangelical Fellowship of India and is a cooperative enterprise in which 16 evangelical bodies participate.

Dr. Kuhn has been granted a term’s leave-of-absence from Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Ky., where he is professor of Philosophy of Religion.

Thailand Integration

The American Presbyterian Mission in Thailand ended its 130-year history when it was integrated into the Church of Christ in Thailand at ceremonies in Bangkok.

Leaders of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. turned over the mission’s assets to two officials of the national church—the Rev. Puang Akkapin, moderator, and the Rev. Leck Taiyong, general secretary.

The Church of Christ is a union of Presbyterian, Baptist and Disciples bodies in Thailand, with Presbyterians representing about 90 per cent of its estimated 10,000 members.

American Presbyterian missionaries will become “fraternal workers” under the administration of the Church of Christ, with the Presbyterian body providing their full material support.

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: The Johannine Epistles

Alexander Ross

Careful examination of the Johannine Epistles leads to the conclusion that all three of them come from the same pen. The second and third epistles, which have been called “twin sisters,” manifestly have the same author, who describes himself as “the Elder.” Comparisons indicate that the author of these epistles is also the author of First John (cf. 1 John 2:7 with 2 John 5; 1 John 2:18, 4:1–5 with 2 John 7; 1 John 2:23 with 2 John 2, 9; 1 John 3:6, 9 with 2 John 11). Of the 13 verses of the second epistle no fewer than 8 can be matched with verses of I John.

The internal evidence seems to point to identity of authorship. Who was the author? Was there at Ephesus at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second a “John the Elder,” as distinct from the Apostle John? That depends on how we interpret the famous words of Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor in the period 100–140, as quoted by Eusebius. Papias writes about the importance he attached to the declarations of the elders: “If anywhere one came my way who had been a follower of the elders, I would inquire about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or what Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples; and I would inquire about the things which Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, say.” We are inclined to agree with Dr. Smith when he says, “the Elder John must mean the Apostle John, since the apostles have just been called ‘the elders,’ and it is impossible that the term should have different meanings within the compass of a single sentence” (Exp. Greek Test.).

The existence of a Presbyter John (as distinct from the Apostle John) in Ephesus at the close of the apostolic age is regarded as extremely problematical by Zahn, Plummer, Farrar, Salmon and many others. Plummer finally came to the conclusion that this problematical figure is a “superfluous conjecture” (Cambridge Greek Test.). Many other scholars conclude that criticism has no other John to operate with but John the Apostle. This vexed question I have discussed with a fair degree of thoroughness in my Commentary on the Epistles of James and John (New International Commentary).

The external evidence also has to be considered. Has the voice of early Church tradition anything definite to say here? The Muratorian Canon, or the Muratorian Fragment, as it is sometimes called, contains a list of the books of the New Testament recognized by the Roman church about the year 180. It records a tradition with regard to the composition of the fourth gospel, which is ascribed to the Apostle John and goes on to say: “What wonder is it then that John brings forward each detail with so much emphasis even in his epistles, saying of himself, what we have seen with our eyes and heard with our ears and our hands have handled, these things have we written to you? For so he professes that he was not only an eyewitness but also a hearer, and moreover a historian of all the wonderful works of the Lord in order.”

A Clear Echo

Who can fail to hear in these words a clear echo of the opening words of First John? Bishop Lightfoot made skilful use of the fact that First John is thus associated with the fourth gospel as an argument in confirmation of the theory that the epistle was originally sent out along with the gospel as a kind of commendatory postscript. For that theory much can be said, and it has been advocated by such commentators as Haupt and Ebrard and others.

When we travel back along the stream of church tradition, we find testimony to First John which is dated much earlier than the Muratorian Canon. We find traces of the epistle in Polycarp, who suffered martyrdom in the year 155, and in Papias, who is described by Irenaeus as “a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp.” Irenaeus himself (140–202), who was familiar with the views of the church at Rome and the church in Gaul, in his treatise Against Heretics quotes the epistle twice, ascribing it to John. Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp of whom he has given a vivid account in his Epistle to Florinus, a portion of which has been preserved by Eusebius in his Church History. If Polycarp was John’s spiritual son, it may be said that Irenaeus was his spiritual grandson. The tradition of apostolic authorship thus goes back here through Irenaeus and Polycarp to John himself. The evidence here seems tremendously strong and it has not been shaken by the attempts of many critics to discount it.

Few allusions to Third John appear in early Christian literature. That is not surprising in view of its brevity, the nature of its contents and that it is addressed to an unknown person. To Second John, despite its brevity and that it also is addressed to an unknown person, we find a number of allusions, and such testimony to the second epistle may be regarded as testimony to the third.

Testimony Of Irenaeus

The testimony of Irenaeus is interesting. In his treatise Against Heretics he says of these heretics that “John, the disciple of the Lord, intensified their condemnation by desiring that not even a ‘God-speed’ should be bid to them by us; for, says, he, he that biddeth him God-speed partaketh in his evil works.” This is an allusion to 2 John 10, 11. Again, Irenaeus quotes 1 John 2:18 and goes on to say: “These are they against whom the Lord warned us beforehand; and His disciple, in his epistle already mentioned, commands us to avoid them, when he says: ‘Many deceivers are gone forth into this world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the Antichrist. Look to them, that ye lose not that which ye have wrought.’ ” This is an allusion to 2 John: 7, 8, with some slight variations that indicate Irenaeus had a different text from ours. In that second quotation he cites words of the second epistle as though they belonged to the first, but that is just a small slip on his part; it is evident that he regards the two epistles as coming from the same man.

With regard to the designation “elder” we ought to note that Peter, one of the disciples of the Lord, so designates himself (1 Pet. 5:1). If he could do that, so also could John. It may be that he uses that title as the last survivor of the apostolic company, about the end of the first century.

A Polemical Purpose

John had a polemical purpose in writing his first epistle. He is definitely on the warpath against certain dangerous heresies that were threatening to invade the churches of Asia Minor. The heresies in view, likely, are chiefly those associated with Cerinthus, who was a native of Egypt and taught in Asia Minor at the same time as John. We owe our information about him to Irenaeus and to other early writers. Irenaeus tells us that Cerinthus taught that “Jesus had not been begotten of a virgin, but had been born of Joseph and Mary as a son in like manner to all the rest of men, and became more righteous and prudent and wise. And after the Baptist the Christ descended into him from the Sovereignty which is over the Universe, in the form of a dove; and then He proclaimed the unknown Father and accomplished mighty works, but at the end the Christ withdrew from the Jesus, and the Jesus had suffered and been raised, but the Christ had continued throughout impassible, being spiritual.”

These deadly heresies aroused strong indignation in the soul of John. A knowledge of the facts about the teaching of Cerinthus enables us to understand John’s meaning when he writes (5:6) that Jesus Christ, in indissoluble union, came through, or by means of water and blood; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. His baptism in the Jordan and his death on Calvary were both essential parts of his self-manifestation, and it is the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, which cleanses from all sin (1:7).

To Establish In Truth

While John apparently never loses sight altogether of the heresies of Cerinthus in any part of this epistle, he has also a more positive purpose in his mind of writing. He wants his “children” to be firmly established in the truth and especially, to understand clearly all that is involved in Christian love, love to God and love to men. Three times he states his purpose in writing (1:4, 2:1, 5:13). The best way to become immune against infection by dangerous heresy is to know the truth (Jn. 8:32) and to be so firmly established in it that any teaching that is alien to the truth as it is in Jesus (Eph. 4:21) will at once be detected by us in its true character. John is here in agreement with Peter, who tells us that the way in which men of unstable mind can attain to spiritual stedfastness is to be in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and, in that blessed sphere, as in our abiding spiritual home, to grow (2 Pet. 3:17, 18).

Dr. James Moffat has said we would not have suffered much loss if the second and third epistles of John had been excluded from the New Testament canon. On the contrary, we would have suffered very serious spiritual loss if we had never read the subtle rebuke of “advanced” thinkers in 2 John 9. The true reading there is not the reading which lies behind the AV rendering, “whosoever transgresseth,” but the reading which lies behind the RV rendering, “whosoever goes onward” and the RSV, “any one who goes ahead.” Real advance in Christian truth comes only as we abide in the teaching of Christ and are led by the Spirit of truth step by step into the fullness of its meaning (John 16:13). Any teaching that claims to be an advance beyond the teaching of Christ, as the Cerinthian heresy no doubt claimed to be, is teaching that is dominated by the “spirit of error” (1 John 4:6) and will lead to barren regions of futile and often dangerous speculation.

Would we not have been spiritually poorer if we had lacked the scathing portrait of Diotrephes in the third epistle? Dr. A. T. Robertson once wrote an article on Diotrephes for a church magazine in which he developed the idea that Diotrephes was a typical “church boss,” and the result was that some twenty deacons wrote to the editor cancelling their subscriptions because of the personal attack on them!

Tools For Exposition

Some commentaries which may be recommended are those by Alford, Huther (in Meyer), Haupt (1st Ep.), Westcott, Plummer in Cambridge Greek Testament, Smith in Expositor’s Greek Testament, Farrar in Early Days of Christianity, and G. G. Findlay, Fellowship in the Life Eternal. Dr. Samuel Cox’s little book Private Letters of St. Paul and St. John deals in a deeply interesting and very suggestive way with Second and Third John.

ALEXANDER ROSS

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