Bible Text of the Month: Matthew 5:8

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8).

Moses’ blessing encircles the tribes of Israel; this encompasses disciples of every nation.—R. GOVETT.

There is nothing in which mankind more generally imagines happiness to consist than in the uncontrolled indulgence of their passions. It is probable that among those who looked for the establishment of the Messiah’s kingdom, many pleased themselves with the idea, that his victories would open to them a way for multiplying captives to any extent, and consequently for the unlimited gratification of their corrupt appetites. To counteract such absurd notions, and to evidence the spiritual nature of his kingdom, our blessed Lord declared, that happiness was to be found, not “in assimilating” ourselves to the brute creation, but in purity of heart and life.—CHARLES SIMEON.

Pure In Heart

Pure in heart denotes the moral blamelessness of the inner life, the center of which is the heart, in conformity with the view that “Every sin puts a foul mark on the soul.”—H. A. W. MEYER.

This was opposed to the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees. They made clean the outside of the cup and platter, while their inward part was full of ravening and wickedness (Luke 11:39). But Christ demanded purity of heart, for when the heart is impure, the whole man is defiled.—JOHN J. OWEN.

Pure in heart. May be taken either specifically, as denoting freedom from particular impurities, or more generically, as denoting freedom from the polluting influence of sin. On the former, which is the more usual supposition, the particular impurity denied is commonly assumed to be what the Scriptures call uncleanness, comprehending all violations of the seventh commandment, in heart, speech, or behavior. Some, however, who admit the specific import of the phrase, apply it to hypocrisy, deceit, and falsehood, and by pure in heart understand sincere and guileless; while a third interpretation gives it the generic sense of sinless, holy.—J. A. ALEXANDER.

The idea of a pure heart was for the hearers no new idea. The Psalmist had required that he who would approach the sanctuary should have a pure heart (Ps. 24:4). This pure heart distinguished the true Israelite from the false (Ps. 73:1). And David had prayed for a pure heart (Ps. 51:10). The question arises, as to whether the Savior understood the expression in the Old Testament acceptation. Now, in Psalm 73 it is evident that the purity of heart spoken of is in opposition to that impurity which manifests itself in appearances inconsistent with the truth of things. Then in Psalm 24 after purity deceit is expressly spoken of; and in Psalm 51 purity is identical with sincerity.—A. THOLUCK.

How little has this purity of heart been regarded, by the false teachers of all ages! They have taught men barely, to abstain from all such outward impurities, as God hath forbidden by name. But they did not strike at the heart; and by not guarding against, they in effect countenanced inward corruptions.—JOHN WESLEY.

The sensual appetites, when unlawfully indulged, have this bad pre-eminence among sins, that they stain the purity of the heart and put out its spiritual eyes faster and more surely than any other forbidden thing.… All unregulated passion has a disturbing and discomposing action. Peevishness, hot temper, envy, malign displeasure, excessive pursuit of gain, the puffed-up vanity of possession, and ambition, are all so many evil breaths blown into the heart, to dim the tender purity of its motives, divide the singleness of its aim, and obscure its vision of divine and heavenly things. The heart cannot be pure if, in its loyalty to the will of God, there mix some interested purpose of its own, or some secret homage to another Lord, or some restless wish to have the will of God other than it is. It is fatal to the simplicity, and therefore to the purity, of the soul to be seriously divided betwixt two desires, one righteous and one wrong.—J. OSWALD DYKES.

Beholding God

To see the face of one, or to be in his presence, were, among the Jews, terms expressive of great favor. It was regarded as a high honor to be in the presence of kings and princes, and to be permitted to see them. (Prov. 22:29; 2 Kings 25:19). Those who saw the face of the king were his favorites and friends.—ALBERT BARNES.

The fact that the pure in heart shall see God shows that not physical but moral vision is meant. Just as a person with a mean character will never be able to understand a person with a beautiful character, so the impure man will never be able to see God, the Pure One.—W. HENDRIKSEN.

He who has his heart crammed with furious desires, with earthly ambitions, with carnal pride and with all the lusts which convulse this ant-heap of the earth, can never see God face to face, will never know the sweetness of His magnificent felicity.—GIOVANNI PAPINI.

Foul hearts make dim eyes God-ward. To clear the eye we must cleanse the heart. Only purity has any idea of God, or any true vision of him. It is a great reward to be able to see God; and, on the other hand, it is of great help towards being pure in heart to have a true sight of the thrice-holy One. There are no pure hearts on earth unless the Lord has made them so, and none shall see God in heaven who have not been purified by grace while here below.—SPURGEON.

They shall see him in his ordinances, while others are altogether unconscious of his presence. They shall see him in their secret chamber, where he will draw nigh unto them. They shall see him in all the works of creation, and in all the dispensations of his providence. They shall see him in every comfort and in every cross. His wisdom, his goodness, his love, his mercy, his faithfulness, are ever before their eyes.—CHARLES SIMEON.

To ‘see God’ now must forever mean nothing else than this: to see His ‘truth and grace’ mirrored in the face of that Man, who alone of all men on earth ‘is of God, and hath seen the Father.’ This deepest and sweetest of Christ’s beatitudes seized the souls of his two noblest scholars.

Paul and John alike found in it their ultimate expression for the enraptured communion of the perfected state. To see ‘face to face’ (1 Cor. 13:12) is the expression of the one; to ‘see him as he is’ of the other (1 John 3:2). In all its stages, whether as begun now or as hereafter consummated, this vision of God is a moral act, made possible by the moral condition of the man.

It is the act of the soul. So long as we are ourselves proud lovers of evil, with a conceit in ourselves greater than in any other, or possessed by dark, selfish, or vicious passions, we cannot see God’s goodness to be good. We may speak of it, indeed, with praise; but we lack the indispensable moral condition for feeling its beauty and divineness.—J. OSWALD DYKES.

- More from Oswald Dykes

Cynic, Sophisticate or Seeker?

The Editors

A Dean in one of our great Western state universities recently pointed out that students need a cause, something in which they can believe and to which they can commit themselves. Disillusioned with social panaceas and scientific messianism, and faced with the realities of an incipiently self-destructive world, the modern student finds himself in a vacuum. “The next few years,” said the educator, “will determine what will fill that vacuum.”

The student world today is much like the Roman world of the first century when the gods of the Pantheon were dead, and hearts were ready for the living Christ.

Students are impatient with anything which they feel is not relevant to their individual lives and to the world they face; this makes them seem cynical. They build their defenses against being “taken” by anything that promises much but produces little; this makes them seem sophisticated. In reality, they are seekers—for security in an insecure world and for personal meaning in a vast universe.

What an ideal climate for the confrontation of the seeking student with the searching Savior!

University Confrontation

The experience of Billy Graham in universities has indicated that where the confrontation takes place, the results are miraculous.

Two years ago Dr. Graham was aboard the S. S. United States crossing the Atlantic, his destination the area of the greatest concentration of intellectual pride in the British Empire: Cambridge University. In daily prayer meetings Dr. Graham and the assistant missioned faced the problem: How to reach a student mind and heart characterized by the cynical phrase, “I couldn’t care less?” To attempt to make an intellectual appeal would put the message on the ground of the unbeliever, and one slip would rule out the whole presentation. Still, the appeal could not be anti-intellectual or merely emotional. Dr. Graham decided to benefit from what the Apostle Paul had learned the hard way at Athens: he too would go to his Corinth determined to know nothing among them save Jesus Christ.

Consequently, for the eight nights in the liturgical Anglican setting of historic Great St. Mary’s Church of Cambridge, Dr. Graham made the simple confrontation: the fact of sin and of judgment; the need for repentance and faith; the reality of the new life of Christ.

The crowds at Harringay and Glasgow and Wembley had responded. What would be the reaction of the student world? Each night Dr. Graham, at the close of his regular message, invited those who wished to respond to the claims of Jesus Christ to remain in the center section. Shortly he would return and explain the steps of salvation. Hundreds stayed for the after-meetings, and over 400 recorded in writing their clear cut decisions and were carefully counseled by the assistant missioners. One student expressed his evaluation of the mission in these words, ‘Whatever critics may say of Billy Graham’s visit to Cambridge, all agree that when he left, Cambridge was a different place. The challenge of the living Christ through Billy’s life and ministry deepened the faith of Christians and disarmed the scepticism of unbelievers.”

Underneath the seeming cynicism of Cambridge there was a sincere seeking—and a genuine finding of the living Lord.

The Mission At Yale

This year, February 10 through 15, Dr. Graham was invited by gracious University Chaplain Sidney Lovett to Yale University, probably one of the greatest centers of collegiate sophistication in America. As Thomas F. Ruhm described the situation (in Ivy Magazine, written and published by undergraduates of the Ivy League): “In spite of the week of preparation it is doubtful that Mr. Graham realized the full magnitude of the problems that confronted him on the Yale campus. His experience with the more vibrant intellectual curiosity of Oxford and Cambridge students and the consequently large crowds that he drew at the English universities did not prepare him for Yale’s cultivated, general indifference towards religion.”

“Official indifference was reflected by the scheduling of an important oratorical contest in competition with Graham’s third meeting. Reasonably typical was the action of the fraternity heads, who while graciously inviting Mr. Graham to visit some of the houses, also set up a compulsory meeting for all spring rushees at the time of one of his talks. Undoubtedly these were unwitting mistakes, but they revealed a lack of thought that could only have been caused by a basic unconcern with religion.”

The tension was heightened by an uncertainty on the part of assistant missioners, graduates of Yale and now pastors of churches, who frankly questioned the success of anything but an objective discussion approach to the Yale mind.

A Week Of Decision

Let another Yale student describe the week.

“On Monday evening a suspicious yet sensitive crowd of undergraduates poured into Woolsey Hall for the first of four addresses to be given by Billy, this one entitled, ‘The Christian Answer to the World Dilemma.’ Many of the students, from what I could gather from their remarks beforehand, expected to hear some hysterical ‘hell-fire and damnation’, and it was obvious that many came to the meeting in order to be amused and entertained, yet Billy calmly and eloquently spelled-out in uncompromising but simple terms the Christian answer and hope for our sick world in a manner which clearly affected every person in the hall. Many of the more sceptical students left the meeting with a genuinely changed view of Billy Graham and the Gospel he represents and were noticeably impressed with the man’s humility, personal charm and courage. The Yale Daily News carried the following lead headline on Tuesday: ‘Graham Calls Individual Sin Root of World’s Political, Social Crises’ and also made the following editorial comment: ‘One was almost struck by the intensity of his statement, the almost embarrassing honesty and energy he seemed to be putting into his message.’ Following the meeting, sixty to seventy-five students remained in the front of the hall to hear Billy speak about what is involved in a Christian decision. Many requested further counselling, and within the next twenty-four hours about forty students made decisions or re-committed themselves to our Lord.”

“On each evening following the address, an informal gathering was held in one of the nine fraternities on the campus. At my own fraternity on Wednesday night, our large living room was jammed with students and their friends who wanted to meet Billy and to question him further about The Faith. He eloquently spoke to a barrage of questions which covered everything from eternal damnation to Kierkegaard, and never once did Billy avoid the intellectual prying which would have shaken many of Yale’s most learned professors. When Billy spoke of God’s love and the cross, I saw a close friend of mine, a self-styled agnostic, come to tears and to a new understanding of the love of Jesus Christ. There were many at the meetings and ‘bull-sessions’ who wept, and I would have to take issue with some of my sophisticated friends who see all of this as ‘dangerous’ or ‘unnecessary’. I think that these tears were prompted by the love of God and not by Billy Graham and consequently represented a wholesome and natural kind of release. No one ever objects when people cry at the movies or at a family reunion. Why do people look sceptically upon a young man who is reunited with God through Jesus Christ!”

“All over the campus during the week there was a steady hum of conversation about the mission and about the Christian faith. Everyone faced up to basic questions, for the content of the previous night’s message was practically all anyone talked about. Billy, the assistant missioners, the college pastors and the denominational chaplains were swamped with requests for interviews from Tuesday through Friday. I saw Sam Shoemaker’s appointment schedule for Wednesday, and it was enough to scare a man half his age right out of the ministry. In addition to leading discussion groups after the evening meetings and handling the pastoral interviews, Sam and the others spent more hours ‘talking things over’ with the undergraduates at meals and over endless cups of coffee and tea. The discussion group meetings were wonderfully ‘open’ and relaxed, with plenty of sharing, witnessing and honest searching.”

“Generally these meetings were attended by students seriously considering the claims of Christ and looking for a personal faith and dedication. One had the feeling throughout the mission that these men were hungry for faith, hungry for something to believe in rather than for something to observe and study intellectually. Billy had emphasized time and time again in his addresses that faith cannot be secured intellectually but can only be given by God after repentance—and then partially understood by the mind. Many observers of the mission had been critical of Billy for his alleged ‘anti-intellectualism’, but were impressed with his statement that being a good Christian also means being a good student. Naturally, many of the points made in the main addresses had to be re-interpreted and clarified by the discussion leaders, but a very healthy balance was maintained between the mind and the will—both essential ingredients of faith.”

“The most significant feature of the mission, though, I believe were the meetings held in Woolsey Hall after the address. Each evening Billy asked those seriously considering giving their lives to Christ to come forward to the front of the hall after the others had left the meeting for further instruction and prayer. The first night about eighty remained behind, the second night perhaps two hundred, on Wednesday evening about six hundred stayed for further instruction, and on the last night when the building was bursting at the seams, about fifteen hundred remained. Following a short, instructive talk, those who wanted to make decisions were asked to stand for a moment and then be seated again. On Tuesday night roughly one hundred stood for prayer; on Wednesday two hundred and twenty-five rose; and on the final night, over four hundred stood to declare their faith in Jesus Christ. The students who left early on Thursday evening were struck dumb when they were told about what had happened, along with many of the faculty members, who never question a student’s right to search for truth but wiggle in uneasiness when he dedicates his life to it. Most of those who stood made an initial commitment; some stood in order to re-dedicate their lives to their Lord; a few found this an appropriate time to amuse their friends. However, on the following Sunday at a Service of Dedication held in Battell Chapel, most of those who stood joined their fellow Christians in offering praise and thanksgiving to God for his gift of Jesus Christ. I have seen many of these new Christians reading their Bibles, joining in worship with their respective churches and putting into good order their relationships with their girls, families and fellow students.”

Another great result was in the spirit of unity and rededication that came about among the assistant missioners, some of whom said their ministry would never be the same after the mission at Yale. “Uncle Sid”, genial chaplain at the University, summed up the results, “As an aftermath, we have contacts with some three hundred youngsters who stayed for the after meeting following each public address and in some cases stood up and actually committed or recommitted themselves to a life of Christian inquiry and service. Many of them are now holding weekly meetings in their respective colleges, devoted to Bible study and prayer. Those of us on the permanent staff here feel that we have got quite a bit of useful work cut out for us in the weeks ahead. In short, I would say that the Mission exceeded my expectations, and any apprehensions I may have had beforehand were completely allayed.”

Underneath the seeming sophistication of Yale was a sincere seeking—and a genuine finding of the living Lord.

All of this has caused Billy Graham to feel that the two weeks at Cambridge and Yale were the greatest of his ministry in the significant reaching of the leadership of tomorrow for Jesus Christ. He feels the challenge of giving more of his time to that ministry, in order that the vacuum in the lives of our future statesmen, educators and business and professional leaders may be filled with Jesus Christ.

Dr. L. David Cowie is minister of University Presbyterian Church, Seattle, which carries on a vigorous church-centered student program at the edge of the Univeristy of Washington campus. He is a member of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., and has completed two preaching missions around the world during the past five years. He was one of the pastors invited by Dr. Graham to share in the mission to Cambridge, Oxford and Yale, where he gave long hours of the day and night to effective spiritual counseling of students.

Preacher In The Red

AROMA

At a farewell reception in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a city noted for its fish processing, when the time came for me to make my remarks I spoke of our ministry in that city and church, how much we had enjoyed our work with the people, etc. In my enthusiasm I said I did not even mind the characteristic fish smells. Then, since my wife’s sense of smell had been somewhat impaired, I said, “Of course these don’t bother Mrs. Mazzeo at all. She doesn’t smell so good!”

After a split-second silence the audience snickered a little and then burst into hilarious laughter. That was my stopping place. I was done!—REV. FRANCIS J. MAZZEO, Robinson Memorial Methodist Church, Malden, Mass.

WORLD NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Billy Graham, taking time out from the biggest and busiest undertaking of his life in the New York Crusade, was addressing a private luncheon of business and spiritual leaders of the city. The meeting was sponsored by World Vision, Inc., a social organization with a heart that reaches around the world to touch the lives of orphans, lepers and others in need of help.

Dr. Graham serves as chairman of the board of World Vision, and the work is close to his heart, but he had some other things to say before describing some of the needs.

He said:

“Gentlemen, there have been three major crises in America since our forefathers came here to find freedom of religion—not freedom from religion as some today would have us think. World Wars I and II were not among the major crises. America was never seriously threatened in those great conflicts.

“The first crisis in the future of America came in the Revolutionary War. Our nation could have died before it was born. General Washington had 22,000 cold and starving men at Valley Forge. Three thousand of these died and 11,000 deserted.

“I walked around Valley Forge one day with President Eisenhower, and he remarked, ‘This is where they got it for us.’ We saw the spot where Washington knelt in the snow as he prayed to Almighty God. His strength was in God, not men and resources. The Continental Congress passed an appropriation of $300,000 for the purchase of Bibles. Can you imagine that? The Constitutional Convention was being torn apart by dissenting factions when Benjamin Franklin went on his knees in prayer. Our nation was born from a prayer meeting and faith in the Word of God.

“The second great crisis was the Civil War. Again the nation was torn, with brother fighting brother. Things could have happened from which America would never have recovered.

“Someone asked the great southern general, Robert E. Lee, if he didn’t pray to God for victory. And Lee replied, “No, I don’t pray for victory. I pray that God’s will be done.” Lincoln said he was not so concerned as to whether God was on his side as he was with the hope that he was on God’s side.

“On both sides the leaders prayed. God heard the prayers and healed the wounds of America.

“The third great crisis is the one in which we are now living. We are threatened with destruction as a nation. Communists have more fervor than Christians. And they have nuclear weapons capable of destroying civilization as we know it today.

“No American will be able to live with the assurance of peace in our lifetime.

“Certainly, we must be able to defend ourselves, but the answer to our problem isn’t the power of armaments. The answer is whether we will turn to God, as our leaders did in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

“I wouldn’t give the snap of my finger for any of your businesses unless a genuine spiritual awakening takes place in the next few years. Some people have the mistaken idea that Americans are God’s pets. Don’t you be fooled. God will punish America unless we truly repent and seek to do his will, no matter what the cost.”

Television is expected to play an increasing part in all of Billy Graham’s Crusades.

The incredible response to the series of nationwide sermons from Madison Square Garden in New York City has been far greater than expected. A growing audience of some 7,000,000 to 10,000,000 persons has been watching each Saturday night. Madison Square Garden would have had to be packed each night for a year to equal the total for one week reached by television.

An avalanche of letters and testimonies indicate that the message loses little of its impact as it is carried into homes throughout the nation.

Wrote a college graduate:

“During this past week I was graduated from college. The culmination of my education, plus the prospects of a successful future in my chosen profession, should have been a high-water mark in my life. Instead, however, I was depressed because of the pointless clamor of society and the immorality which is to be found at every turn. Tonight I saw and heard your message on TV. I have come to realize that joy is to be found only in God. I have received Christ and will earnestly strive in my small way to forward his cause.”

Wrote another:

“Thank you for helping me to renew my faith in Christ through your television broadcast on Saturday evening. I was a believer but not a receiver. Thank you, and thank God, for helping me to realize that this was my moment for truly receiving Christ.”

More television plans are being made for the San Francisco Crusade next spring and for the meetings beginning at Charlotte later that year. If nationwide telecasts aren’t possible, the meetings will cover a radius of at least 100 miles from the cities once a week. Viewers will be asked to call designated counsellors in cities over the area for spiritual help. The counsellors will be assembled at central locations, where batteries of telephones will be available.

Those who respond will be encouraged to become affiliated with churches. Helpful literature will be mailed.

Much valuable experience in the television-telephone ministry has been developed in New York. Five nights a week a 15-minute telecast entitled “Impact” is beamed over a powerful station. It features the singing of George Beverly Shea, a short newscast about the meeting and a personal testimony by someone who found Christ. At the close of the program, the announcer invites viewers to call a certain telephone number if they have problems and wish to talk with a counsellor.

Within seconds, the phones start ringing and continue past 2 a.m. Many callers have made decisions for Christ.

Billy Graham is taking advantage of every opportunity to tell people what the Bible has to say claiming God’s promise that his Word will not return void.

Testimony from ministers:

Clearwater, Fla.—“When our pastor, Dr. O. E. Burton, made his report of the New York Crusade to our congregation, it seemed that the same spirit which is operative in the crusade there was present in our midst and when he gave the invitation at the close of the service 14 came forward to receive Christ.”—John Welch.

Portland, Indiana—“I announced in the local paper that on Sunday night I would give my report of the New York Crusade which I recently visited. Our sanctuary was crowded to capacity, which is unusual in itself. While I told the story of God’s workings in New York, a spirit of conviction fell upon the audience and nearly a score responded to the invitation to accept Christ. I was amazed at the response and can only credit it to the direct work of the Holy Spirit. Could it be that the crusade there is creating an atmosphere conducive to a general awakening in our land?”—Rev. C. A. Fisher.

Renewed Devotion

Rep. Brooks Hays (D-Ark.), new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has pledged himself to renewed devotion of time-honored Baptist principles—emphasis on the Bible, religious liberty and evangelism.

Before the Convention’s Executive Committee at Nashville, Tenn., Rep. Hays said:

“I’m going to study my Bible more than I ever have before because the Bible is our chart.” The time has come, he said, to measure Southern Baptists’ progress not only in numbers and church extension but also “in the depth of life of the people.”

He asserted that this “depth of life” must include Bible reading, prayer life and daily Christian living.

A member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, Rep. Hays said he would strive to aid the cause of religious liberty in countries abroad. In an interview after the talk, he mentioned Spain and Colombia.

On another matter of interest, Rep. Hays said he “hopes Congress (this session) will pass a law to ban serving of beverage alcohol on flights.”

Memorial For Trotman

A memorial service was held for Dawson E. Trotman on June 18 during the Navigators East Coast Conference at Schroon Lake, New York.

The Word of Life Camp, host to the conference, has dedicated its new auditorium to the memory of the founder of the Navigators who drowned there on June 18 last year while saving the life of a girl who could not swin. Participating in the service were Lorne C. Sanny, Navigators’ president, Jack Wyrtzen, director of Word of Life Camp and Mrs. Dawson Trotman.

Mrs. Trotman, who has joined the Billy Graham team at the New York Crusade as women’s speaker and special counsellor, traveled to Schroon Lake for the memorial service. It was at this same conference last year on the night of her husband’s death that she spoke to the conferees, telling them that “although God has taken my dearest possession, He makes no mistakes.”

Lorne Sanny, along with Robert D. Foster, vice-president of The Navigators, spoke during the week-long conference.

A special memorial service with the Navigators staff will be held at Glen Eyrie, the international headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on the opening night of their Staff Conference, July 23.

People: Words And Events

Teen-Age Beliefs—Purdue University’s opinion panel, in a nationwide poll, has found out that more than 50 per cent of American high school students are “suspicious of democratic processes, contemptuous of politics, distrustful of the people’s ability to govern themselves and hostile toward the civil liberties for which our forefathers fought.” Fifty-six per cent of teen-agers agree that large estates should be whacked up as farm lands and handed over to the poor.

Little Brown Church—One hundred years ago, Dr. William S. Pitts sat down and dashed off the song for which the little country church near Nashua, Iowa, is celebrated, “The Little Brown Church in the Vale.” The centennial observance was held Sunday, June 16, with the Rev. Douglas Fox of Sydney, Australia, delivering the sermon.

Word From Science—Atomic scientist Arthur H. Compton told the 100th anniversary graduating class of Lake Forest College that “to win real peace the hearts of men must themselves be changed.” He called for a “great venture of faith” to break the deadlock of selfishness and lack of cooperation in the world.

Public Brainwashing—The Methodist Board of Temperance charged in Washington, D. C., that liquor advertisers are spending more than $400,000,000 a year to “brainwash the American public” into believing that liquor is beneficial and acceptable. “Think what it would mean in rehabilitation of the nation’s 4,500,000 alcoholics, what untold slaughter could be avoided by a multi-million dollar campaign against drinking-and-driving.” said Dr. Caradine R. Hooton, general secretary of the board.

Religion and Education—No one who ignores religion and the possibility of coming under its “life-giving influence” can claim to be educated, Dr. Nathan M. Pusey, president of Harvard University, said in a baccalaureate address. “The fruits of intellect unsupported by faith are not necessarily richer life but more often superciliousness, fastidiousness, or even lacklustre and despair,” Dr. Pusey said.

Wonderful Thing—Dr. E. Stanley Jones, 73-year-old American missionary and evangelist, on speaking tour of the Far East, said, “It’s the most wonderful thing in the world to be an evangelist, but if evangelism stops with the evangelist, that’s all wrong.… Evangelism must be the work of every Christian.”

Whopper Loans—A plan under which the Presbyterian Church in Canada would form eight corporations to borrow $60,000,000 over the next 10 years to finance new churches has been approved by its 83rd General Assembly. Each of the church’s eight synods was authorized to establish a corporation to float large loans from banks, trust companies and insurance firms.

Ten Commandments—New York Assemblyman William C. Brennan Jr. says he will introduce a bill in the next session of the legislature requiring every school in the state to post the Ten Commandments in its classrooms. Brennan announced he was “furious” at State Education Commissioner James E. Allen Jr. for his ruling which barred a Long Island school district from posting an “interdenominational” version of the Commandments in classrooms. “It may stir up dissension and bitterness among atheists and agnostics,” the legislator said, “but certainly it doesn’t stir up dissension or bitterness among any religious group.”

Clergy Refund—Many clergymen may be able to claim refunds for taxes paid on housing allowances in the years 1954–56 as the result of new regulations issued by the Internal Revenue Service. The regulations give a liberal interpretation to legislation passed by Congress in 1954 permitting ministers to deduct for income tax purposes an allowance given them in lieu of a parsonage or other housing as part of their compensation.

Obscenity Bill—Sen. Everett Dirksen (R.-Ill.) introduced a bill in the Senate which will make it a crime to “knowingly” take from, or deposit in, the U. S. mails any obscene material. It provides for a fine of $5,000 and a prison term of up to five years. Present law makes it an offense only to deposit such material in the mails.

Union Approval

The following special report was written by Dr. Cary N. Weisiger III, pastor of Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church and a contributing editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The 99th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, held recently on the campus of Muskingum College, New Concord, Ohio, took actions affecting its work across half the world.

Climaxing a year of debate, the Assembly voted to unite in 1958 with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. The vote was 162 to 124 in favor of union. This confirmed the voting that had gone on in the presbyteries during the preceding 12 months. Percentage-wise, the Assembly ballot was almost identical with the 57 per cent majority which prevailed over the 43 per cent minority in the presbyteries.

There was no debate over another far-reaching action of the United Presbyterian commissioners. Without arousing opposition, the standing committee on Foreign Missions carried its recommendation to establish the Synod of the Nile as an independent church in Egypt. The new body will be called The Coptic Evangelical Church of Egypt. After a century of missionary effort, it has a membership of 26,600 and is the largest Protestant church in the land of the pyramids.

The Assembly opened with a spirited contest for the moderatorship. On the first ballot, however, Dr. Robert N. Montgomery, president of Muskingum for 25 years and dean of college presidents in Ohio, carried the day. Rival nominees were Dr. C. T. R. Yeates, pastor of the 3,500-member Westminster Church in Des Moines, Iowa and Dr. John E. Simpson, stewardship leader and pastor in Skokil, Ill. Dr. Yeates was elected vice-moderator.

Some observers at the United Presbyterian conclave saw the merger vote as a victory for two currents of feeling in the denomination—one current being the pull for Presbyterian unity which has flowed for decades in the church but which was blocked in a test in the mid-1930’s and again in 1955 in a three-way test which failed because the Presbyterians in the South defeated it. The other current of feeling is the urge for ecumenical expression of the oneness of all Christians.

Opponents of union have claimed that while the Plan of Union, incorporating the same scriptural and confessional standards that the two denominations have always had, presupposes a oneness of conviction, yet in practice and policy the United Presbyterian Church has been and is more consistently orthodox.

Debate at the Assembly lasted only about one hour and was unmarred by heated outbursts. Dr. R. W. Gibson, retiring moderator and president of Monmouth College, Illinois, leader in union negotiations, spoke in favor of the merger. He was supported by Dr. Samuel C. Weir of the Littlefield Boulevard U. P. Church, Detroit and Dr. Richard W. Graves of the New Wilmington, Pa., U. P. Church.

Speaking against the merger were Dr. Henry O. Lietman of the Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, U. P. Church, Dr. John H. Eastwood of the First U. P. Church, Hammond, Ind., Elder George Royal of the Tabernacle U. P. Church, Youngstown, Ohio and the Rev. F. D. Henderson, retired missionary of Wooster, Ohio.

After the vote was announced by the stated clerk, Dr. Samuel W. Shane, opponents of the union made a conciliatory move by offering a resolution that all enter the new church “with faith, hope and love, and the prayerful purpose of making the union a happy and effective means of advancing the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.” It passed unanimously, and Moderator Montgomery called upon the Assembly to sing the Twenty-third Psalm. He then introduced Dr. Harold R. Martin, moderator of the 169th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., who said, “I rejoice more than I can express.”

The Plan of Union calls for consummation of the merger next May in Pittsburgh. Both denominations will meet separately in the General Assemblies the first day and after that will convene as one body. Membership of the new body, to be called the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., will be about 3,000,000.

On the final day of the Assembly, several leaders of the pro-union party made speeches praising the spirit of the losers in the merger battle and calling upon the whole church not to violate the spirit shown at the Assembly. A motion prevailed requesting Moderator Montgomery to write a letter to all pastors in the denomination urging unity and good will.

The action to make the U. P. Synod in Egypt independent came as the result of anti-western pressures in the Near East. It was felt that the Evangelical Church in Egypt would be relieved of embarrassing ties and that by taking the ancient designation “Coptic” would become identified as truly indigenous to Egypt.

Religious Affiliations

Thirteen of the nation’s 48 governors are Methodists, according to a survey of their religious affiliations.

Baptists are next, with eight governors, followed by seven Episcopalians, six Presbyterians, five Roman Catholics, four Lutherans and two Congregationalists. One governor is Jewish, one a Mormon and one lists no affiliation.

A similar check of members of Congress earlier this year showed that Methodists lead with 105 (18 Senators and 87 Representatives), followed by 94 Roman Catholics, 68 Baptists, 68 Presbyterians and 60 Episcopalians among the top five groups.

Spreading The Word

There are about 80 languages in which short passages or collections of passages have been published, but they are not customarily counted in the total.

Three complete Bibles were published for the first time last year in Bemba (spoken in North Rhodesia); Nimbi Ijo (Nigeria) and Marovo (Solomon Islands).

An estimated 1,000 languages and dialects have no written form.

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Ideas

Dung and Scum

The Editors

Some of our present day politicians have accustomed us to the unedifying practice of unmeasured and unrestrained public abuse. Such elegant and descriptive terms as “stinking skunk,” “lousy rat,” “yelping hyena” and “fascist beast” are choice and characteristic examples. The result, of course, is the degradation of our public life. “It must distress all who are concerned with the preservation of ordinary decencies and customary civilities,” writes the Dean of Melbourne, Dr. S. Barton Babbage, “that the language of Parliament should so often be the language of the gutter, and that vituperation and abuse should so often be regarded as a substitute for reasoned argument and debate.” The observation is relevant far beyond its British concern.

Today refutation is no part of controversy and discussion. It is no longer necessary to prove how a man is wrong: it is sufficient to explain why he is wrong. This is a game which Freudians and Marxians delight to play. For example, the Freudian will tell you that your thoughts are “psychologically tainted.” The Marxist will tell you that your thoughts are “ideologically tainted,” and that you only think freedom a good thing because you are one of the bourgeoisie (C. S. Lewis, “Bulverism” in the Socratic Digest, June 1944, p. 16). In this game you assume that your opponent is wrong—without further discussion—and then you distract his attention by explaining why he is wrong. You do not examine your opponent’s matter; you examine his motives; you substitute abuse for argument.

There is an amusing description of this process in an article by C. S. Lewis.

In the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it Bulverism. Some day I am going to write the biography of the imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third—‘Oh you say that because you are a man.’ ‘At that moment,’ E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong, or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.’ That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century (ibid., p. 17).

It is the Russians who have carried this practice of defamation to the greatest lengths. In the new Soviet Textbook of Law the victims of purges are no longer called “Social Defaulters”: they are described by such emotion-laden words as “mad dogs, rats, vermin, hyenas, dung and scum” (Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar and Other Essays, London, 1945, p. 173). The consequences are at once apparent: if you regard your enemies as wild animals, then you will have no compunction about destroying them; for we shoot mad dogs. It is not surprising that, in Russia, with such a philosophy, the practice of “liquidation” has become a science.

Arthur Koestler has written a vivid autobiographical novel entitled, Scum of the Earth. It describes the inhuman brutalities which he experienced as the unhappy inmate of a French concentration camp. He says that those who today survive “wear the old school tie in the shape of some scar on the body, or an ulcer in the stomach, or at least a solid anxiety neurosis” (ibid., p. 85). The victims, who were drawn from many nationalities, were treated as “the scum of the earth”—in the strangely contemporary phrase of the Apostle, as “the filth of the world and the offscourings of all things” (1 Cor. 4:13). Koestler describes the daily indignities and the sadistic brutalities. Many were beaten and battered to death, so that there was a mounting daily toll of suffering and suicide. The camp cemetery, Koestler says, probably contains “the most cosmopolitan collection of skulls since the mass graves of the Crusades” (ibid., p. 93).

Peter the Great subscribed to the view that men are “dung and scum.” He was reproached for the prodigal waste of human life in the construction of St. Petersburg. He made the laconic reply: “We must break eggs to make an omelette” (Quoted, A. T. Pierson, Godly Self-Control, Barkingside, N. D., p. 37). The question is whether men are simply eggs to be broken, irrespective of whether or not a man is a “bad egg” or a “decent egg.” For Peter the Great men were “expendable material”; manure to fertilize the ground for the future.

Today we are beginning to see that everything depends upon our conception of man. Is he simply a tool, a thing, a cog in a machine? Or is he a creature made in the image of God? Is he simply an object or is he an active subject? J. S. Whale, in a series of memorable lectures before the undergraduates of the University of Cambridge, once said:

What is the truth about the nature and the end of man? This is the ultimate question behind the vast debate, the desperate struggle, of our time. Ideologies—to use the ugly modern jargon—are realy anthropologies; they are answers to that question which man has not ceased to ask every since he began asking questions at all; namely, what is Man? (Christian Doctrine, Cambridge, 1941, p. 35).

And J. A. Mackay, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, has said the same thing: “The titanic struggle now raging in the world may be regarded as at bottom a conflict between opposing views of man and his status in the universe” (Heritage and Destiny, London, 1945, p. 38).

The Christian conception of man is based on two simple and fundamental propositions: that man is created by God and redeemed by Christ.

In the first place, Christians believe that each man bears upon him the impress of God’s handiwork. After the conversion of the Emperor Constantine legislation was passed abolishing the branding of criminals and debtors on the face, since it is the image of divine beauty. Each man, so Christians affirm, is to be reverenced and respected as the creation of God.

It was this fact which moved the early Christians to utter their impassioned protest against the universal practice of infanticide—the heartless exposure of unwanted children on the mountainsides to be mauled and devoured by wild beasts. It was Adolf Deissmann who discovered on a piece of papyrus a letter by an Egyptian laborer addressed to his wife. She was expecting a baby, and this is what he wrote: “If it is a boy, let it live; if it is a girl, cast it out” (Light from the Ancient East, London, 1927, p. 168). Within three hundred years the Christians had swept this evil from the world—and orphanages and hospitals showed a more excellent way.

In the second place the Christian faith affirms that, for the world’s redemption, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16a). Our attitude to each man is necessarily conditioned by the costly and sacrificial nature of God’s love for us. “If God so loved us,” the Apostle says, “we ought also to love one another” (1 John 4:11).

In the year 1554 the scholar Muretas lay desperately ill. The surgeons proposed to operate. They were not primarily concerned with the success of the operation, but rather with the nature of the operation, which, in any case, was more like an experiment in vivisection. They were interested in the nature of his symptoms prior to death. Not knowing that he was a scholar, nor that he spoke Latin, the one said to the other: “Fiat experimentum in corpore vili” (“Let the experiment be tried on this vile body”). “Vilem animan appellas,” came a voice from the bed, “pro qua Christus non dedignatus est mori?” (“Dost thou call that soul vile for which Christ was content to die?”) (T. R. Glover, Jesus in the Experience of Man, New York, 1921, p. 222). The rebuke was timely and it was just.

The question is: what is our attitude to those we dislike, or with whom we disagree? Do we say, with a contemptuous lift of the head, a sneer of the lips, “dung and scum”; or, do we say, in the immortal words of John Bradford, when he saw criminals being led to execution: “There, but for the grace of God, go I” (D. N. B., in loc.)?

It is easy to admire those richly endowed with natural gifts; it is not so easy to like, let alone to love, the physically handicapped, the socially maladjusted, the mentally retarded. The Christian, at any rate, is bound to see the life of man in the light of God, and to say, with the Apostle Paul, “the love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Cor. 5:14). He dare not say, “dung and scum”; he must say, “a brother for whose sake Christ died” (1 Cor. 8:11).

A realization of man’s true nature and high destiny will save us from cynicism, and nerve us for service.

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Cover Story

Dare We Renew the Controversy?

Carl F. H. Henry

Part 3: The Contemporary Restoration

Fundamentalism, despite its problems of temperament, is a theology reflective of biblical supernaturalism in the conflict against the unbelief of modernism. Therefore we particularly need to understand fundamentalism in its theological formulations. In so doing, we may clarify our personal responsibility, to divorce biblical supernaturalism from its stigma of temperament, and to know it for what it reflects in truth: the unchanging realities of special divine revelation.

Most recent literature dismisses fundamentalism in terms of temperament and ignorance. Little significance is given to the movement as biblical supernaturalism in continuing conflict with theological unbelief. A few exceptions sensed that the role of Christian doctrine was the basic issue at stake, and seem almost monumental on this account. Theodore G. Soares, for example, in Three Typical Beliefs (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1937), states the issue unabashed: “Fundamentalism is as old as the Reformation, though the name is of recent origin. The differences that have separated the Protestant sects have been peripheral; the great doctrines of the orthodoxy have been central, held by all. About half a century ago the inroads of liberalism caused the conservative elements in all the denominations to draw together.… Asserting that there could be no compromise on the unchanging fundamentals of the Christian faith, they adopted as a rallying cry the name of ‘fundamentalist.’ They claimed that they were reaffirming the faith as Luther held it, and Calvin, and Knox … and Wesley, and the great missionaries and evangelists, and most of the theologians until very recent times. And in that claim they were undoubtedly correct. The great Protestant creeds enunciated the doctrines which are now called ‘fundamentalist’ ” (pp. 37 f.).

It is hardly accurate, therefore, to depict the modernist fundamentalist controversy as rising from an attempt to freeze church doctrine “in terms which the fundamentalists chose” (Fosdick, The Living of These Years, p. 157).

This fact of doctrinal soundness in the struggle with modernism compelled men who were not fundamentalist in temperament or in affiliation to defend the movement, and to associate themselves with its championing of biblical defenses. For over against modernism’s abandonment of the miracles of Christmas and Good Friday and Easter, and of a sacred view of history and of the Bible, fundamentalism stood firmly on the side of scriptural theology and the historic Christian faith.

The Return To Doctrine

One of the remarkable turns in the theology of the recent past is that theologians who once shared the liberal viewpoint, now confess that this perspective was forged from a standpoint of secular unbelief.

Today’s increasing stress on doctrines essential to biblical Christianity coincides in many respects with the doctrinal emphases of the fundamentalist controversy. No fact of recent Protestant theology is more conspicuous than its emphasis that apart from the clear recognition of the supernaturalness, nay the deity, of Christ, only the shadows of Christianity remain.

Since 1927 Barth has championed the virgin birth of Jesus against almost a century of speculative doubt and denial by the liberal tradition, and likewise against such contemporaries as Brunner within his own neo-orthodox tradition. Barth’s comments on Brunner’s position on the virgin birth are even somewhat reminiscent of the older criticisms directed by fundamentalists against modernist denials of a generation ago: “Brunner’s denial of the Virgin birth is a bad business.… It throws an ambiguous light over the whole of his Christology.” Indeed, he echoes sympathetically the complaint of Berdyaev: “When I reached the passage in which Brunner confesses that he does not believe in Jesus Christ’s birth of the Virgin, or at least confronts it with indifference … it seemed to me as though everything had now been cancelled, as though everything else was now pointless” (The Doctrine of the Word of God, Vol. I, Part 2, p. 184).

Barth even writes: “It is no accident that … the Virgin birth is paralleled by … the miracle of the empty tomb. These two miracles belong together.… The Virgin birth at the opening and the empty tomb at the close of Jesus’ life bear witness that this life is a fact marked off from the rest of human life” (p. 182).

While Barth assuredly does not affirm all that an evangelical doctrine of atonement requires, he does speak of the sinless Christ who suffers in our stead (p. 152), bearing the wrath of God which must fall on sinful man (p. 157). Barth writes that God “takes upon Himself the sin and guilt and death of man, that laden with it all He stands surety for man” (p. 378). He writes of “the humanity of Jesus Christ … characterized by the bearing of our sins” and “abandoned to punishment, suffering and death” (p. 428). Barth acknowledges that “with the doctrine of the atonement, we come to the real centre … of dogmatics and Church proclamation” (p. 882).

The doctrine of Christ’s second coming likewise belongs to essential Christianity. In his earlier writings Barth’s eschatological teaching was leavened by an excessive contrast of historical time and eschatological time. This contrast has been modified somewhat, if not yet satisfactorily, by way of reaction to Bultmann’s consignment of the Christological events to myth and symbol. Barth now stresses that the Church exists on earth in the interval between the ascension and the second coming (pp. 692 f.).

Even with respect to Scripture as the norm of Christian doctrine, Barth has given us many statements which, as far as they go, have an evangelical ring. The Church, he tells us, is created and maintained by the Word of God, and is governed by that Word: “by the Word of God in the form of the testimony to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ set down in Scripture. To say that Jesus Christ rules the Church is to say that Holy Scripture rules the Church” (p. 693). Barth not only asserts the priority of the Scriptures over sources of divine knowledge affected by the Fall, but he says bluntly that “if the Church dared simply to abandon the sign of the Bible dominating its worship and instruction, it would be the end of Protestantism” (p. 460). Indeed, he even acknowledges that “the right doctrine of Holy Scripture” “must always be sought and found in exegesis and therefor in Holy Scripture itself” (p. 462).

Dramatic Change

The dramatic element in this theological reversal is simply this: in the first third of our century theological initiative lay with those who labeled the defenders of of these doctrines as obscurantists; today, in contrast, the prominent theological thrust defines the discard and neglect of these doctrines as violence to Christianity. A basic fundamentalist thesis has been vindicated: the intrinsic genius of Christianity demands proclamation of doctrines that fundamentalism upheld in the controversy with liberalism.

It would be overstatement to imply that in the recovery of these doctrinal emphases Barth and the neo-orthodox theologians return in all essentials to an historic evangelical exposition. That is not the case.

Perhaps G. C. Berkouwer has given the most constructive critical evangelical appraisal of Barthian theology in The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (1956). Without in the least depreciating Barth’s refutation of the older modernism, Berkouwer addresses most pertinent questions to Barth’s “theology of the Word of God,” lest we uncritically assume that the Barthian plea for a Christological-Christocentric theology presents a thoroughly evangelical and biblical exposition of revealed sovereign divine grace in Christ. Philosophical categories in the Barthian exposition of creation, election, reconciliation and eschatology leave Berkouwer quite convinced that the triumphant grace motif in this neo-orthodox form compromises biblical theology and blunts the purity of the Gospel.

Neo-Orthodoxy And The Bible

Important motivational differences distinguish the neo-orthodox from the fundamentalist interest in doctrine. Neo-orthodoxy has no intention of reinstating a fixed and final theology. Indeed, it refuses even to concede that biblical theology is revealed. Doctrines, even prophetic and apostolic doctrines, are treated as devout theological reflection, not as revealed theology.

Beneath this halting return to the Bible lurks a dialectical prejudice that imparts an anti-intellectual turn to the neo-orthodox view of divine self-disclosure and hence to its definitions of revelation and inspiration. God’s revealing activity is sketched in terms of personal encounter beyond the grasp of human concepts, therefore sealing off any divine transmission of truths and words. Nowhere is the Barth-Brunner theology more disappointing than in thus exalting Schleiermacher’s objectionable definition of revelation. Indubitably neo-orthodoxy has supplemented and modified Schleiermacher’s view in numerous details. Its essential point, however, is retained, that God discloses no truths or doctrines involving himself and his purposes. Nowhere does neo-orthodoxy’s loud claim to honor the witness of Scripture fall upon stonier ground than its attempt to justify this anti-intellectual prejudice against the Bible. The evangelical exposition of inspiration has been nearer the heartbeat of the Bible when, in debating the relative merits and defects of the dictation, verbal, and concept theories, it at least held the line against anti-intellectual speculations about divine revelation and inspiration.

Contrary to conservative reliance on an authoritative Bible, the neo-orthodox doctrinal interest retains the liberal methodology. Barth still maintains the requirement, already stated in his early writings, that the Bible as such be distinguished from divine revelation (p. 463). Deference to biblical criticism compromises the religious finality of Scripture in the historic evangelical sense. To more than one interpreter Barthian dogmatics seems indeed marked for frustration in endeavoring to preserve the Bible as the witness of revelation, while at the same time restricting it as a witness to revelation. For this controlling postulate cannot survive the test of Scripture’s implications and assertions about itself. Here evangelical theology, insisting that the Divine Logos and Speech is addressed in human conceptions and words—how else could it be revelation?—is assuredly on the side of the biblical witness.

Barth indeed speaks of the “inspiringness” of the Bible, of its character as a frame wherein one is confronted by the encountering Christ. He fails, however, to acknowledge that inspiration or “inspiredness” which the New Testament ascribes to Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16), and on which evangelical theology therefore insists. The many passages in which the Old Testament prophets claim to convey the very words of God gain from Brunner the grudging admission of “a low order of revelation.” Yet nowhere does he reconcile this concession to verbal revelation with his basic theory of revelation as uncommunicable in concepts and words.

Barth, to be sure, tells us in a refreshing passage that “the biblical texts must be investigated for their own sake to the extent that the revelation which they attest does not stand or occur, and is not to be sought, behind or above them but in them.… If it is asked whether Christianity is really a book-religion, the answer is that strangely enough Christianity has always been and only been a living religion when it was not ashamed to be actually and seriously a book-religion” (pp. 494 ff.). Often his writings disclose a concern for textual and exegetical considerations that renegade liberalism had snubbed, and that even yet is lacking in some neo-orthodox theologians. Yet when Barth erpounds what Scripture teaches about its own inspiration, he reflects the prejudices of the dialectical theology. The dialectical evasion of the rational and verbal coherence of the Bible circumvents a doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture that corresponds to the witness of Scripture itself.

Barth wrongly invokes the witness of the Spirit to offset the need for stabilizing the words of Scripture as the Word of God. Nowhere does Barth really prove his case that the traditional view interposes the Bible as a “paper Pope” between Christ and the Church. Actually the modernist compromise of the authority of the Bible enabled critics to usurp the Lordship of Christ in the theological realm.

Christ And The Scriptures

There is a further consequence of deserting the high view of inspiration. Scripture itself loses the right to delineate the essential elements of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Although neo-orthodoxy calls for a revival of biblical theology, its formulation of Christian doctrine stresses whatever allegedly agrees with the revelation of the person of Christ. And evangelical theology must show enthusiasm for the Christocentric phrasing of revealed theology. But in neo-orthodoxy this principle operates critically and selectively in evaluating the data of Scripture. Scripture thereby no longer serves to refract what coheres with Christ’s person. Consequently, subjective factors constantly threaten the construction of Christian doctrine. This is seen in Brunner’s indifference to the doctrine of the virgin birth, despite Barth’s assertion that “the narratives of the Virgin birth were admitted to share in the gospel witness because of a certain inward, essential rightness and importance in their connection with the person of Jesus Christ” (p. 176). It is seen also in Brunner’s indifference to the empty tomb in relation to faith in Christ’s resurrection, whereas Barth notes that “its most illuminating moment” according to Mark’s Gospel “consists in the inconceivable fact of an empty sepulchre” (p. 114 f.), and that this outward sign guards against reducing resurrection from an event to a speculative idea (p. 179).

Barth’s speculative premises about divine self-revelation not only shape his departure from the historic view of Scripture, but determine also his general attenuation of evangelical doctrines, including his bias against the exposition of propitiation in the doctrine of atonement. Whenever convenient, neo-orthodoxy does not hesitate to shift its appeal from the nature of Christ to the witness of Scripture. But because the evangelical principle of the organic unity of the Bible is compromised, the dialectical approach accomplishes only a limited return to biblical theology and provides only a relative opposition to liberal theology. A crucial illustration is the hesitancy of dialectical theologians to maintain the full identity of Jesus of Nazareth with the Christ; the historical Jesus is for them a witness to the Christ. Here the detachment of the Christological from the scriptural principle actually threatens the central faith of the New Testament, namely, that Jesus of Nazareth is the zenith of divine self-revelation.

Immanence And Transcendence

Nonetheless, the new theology properly rejects the liberal doctrine of extreme immanence, to which the central Christian concepts had been conformed or had been deleted. The neo-orthodox statement of divine transcendence, however, appears reactionary. Whereas this new formulation of transcendence readmits some traditional and biblical fundamentals (e.g., the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection), it excludes others (e.g., propitiatory atonement) through its stress on God in his self-revelation as being always “subject, never object.” An exaggerated doctrine of divine transcendence is as harmful to the fortunes of biblical theology as an excessive doctrine of divine immanence. Twentieth-century theology incorporates this vulnerable approach to Scripture with speculative preconceptions of either divine transcendence or immanence. By imposing this procedure on biblical data, some elements of scriptural theology are accepted, others rejected. Actually, the limits of transcendence and immanence are fixed by all, not merely by some, Bible events and doctrines. It is this totality which guards against speculative distortions. Genuinely biblical theology views the divinely inspired Scriptures as the font from which, and from which alone, a trustworthy and adequate statement can be derived of those important and essential elements whose inward connection with the person of Christ must be maintained. Only the preservation of the total scriptural revelation justifies a theology’s claim to be biblical.

Divine-Human Encounter

Neo-orthodox theology has enlivened present theological discussion with a new, and rather wholesome, sensitivity to divine confrontation. The Christianity of the twentieth century had quite obscured the God who continually encounters and confronts man. Modernism had exchanged the divine initiative in special revelation for the human quest for God. Fundamentalism had stressed Christian experience in terms of doctrinal assent and outward social restraints, appended of course to an initial experience of rebirth whose vitality was to be renewed in periodic crises of spiritual surrender. Ritualistic churches dulled the edge of divine-human encounter through their recital of good news in a form which often struck modern men as monotonous and impotent. Twentieth-century man was face to face with death at every moment; if Christianity was to retain its relevance for him, it must somehow preserve him each moment face to face with life, with the ultimate, with God. The contemporary approximation of the New Testament emphasis on spiritual immediacy as preserved by the religion of the Mediator is therefore a gain. We who minister to this tensed generation dare not neglect the continual unveiling of God in Christ encountering every lost soul in creation, preservation, conscience, judgment, and the call to repentance and faith. Nor dare we neglect the sway of the confronting Christ over our own souls, framed by creation and refashioned by redemption primarily for a life of personal fellowship in his service. The disregard of this dimension of Christianity has doubtless done more to provoke the rise of modern religious cults than any other factor.

Sign Of Weakness

At the same time, the incessant neo-orthodox laboring of the theme of confrontation and encounter betrays a weakness. This neo-orthodox travail follows from the failure to adequately correlate the dynamics of present Christian experience with New Testament revelation. The fundamentalist confidence in a specially inspired communication of the knowledge of God and his purposes is sound. Scripture is not reducible to exalted religious insight; it is a literature of theological conviction uniquely shaped within an orbit of special divine revelation and inspiration. Nay, it is more; it is the normative and authoritative statement by which Christian faith and doctrine must be tested.

Task Of Christian Philosophy

A fresh exploration of the interrelations of revelation and reason (in view of man’s possession of the image of God created and sullied, and renewed in redemption) is one of the present imperatives. The historic Augustinian-Calvinistic conception of the relation of revelation and reason holds magnificent relevance for a generation reaching for a transcendent God, while yet concerned for the rational integration of all life’s experiences. Modernism’s surrender to the secularization of science, of education, and of cultural pursuits generally resulted directly from separating these spheres from the claims of revelation.

The way theology defines the relation of revelation and reason will color its comprehension of Christianity and culture, Christianity and science, Christianity and philosophy, no less than the exposition of Christian doctrine and apologetics. If divine revelation stands in essential contrast to human reason, or if it impinges only dialectically upon the human mind, so that divine revelation cannot be grasped in concepts and words, then a Christian philosophy is a vain hope. It is part of the glory of evangelical theology that it rises above the modern contrast between God-truth and world-truth which divides human reason and precludes the intellectual integration of experience.

The recovery of interest in special divine revelation is one of the gracious providences of our century. It comes significantly at a time when the world must contend with the tactical initiatives of Communism and of irreligion. Protestant modernism deflected Western Christianity’s theological interest from biblical revelation to natural theology.

This retrograde idealistic philosophy only briefly resisted a further decline to humanism. Evangelicals once reveled in the divine oracles; the modernists now asked whether God exists. Modernism’s surrender of biblical revelation finally enmeshed American Christianity in the loss of the self-revealed God; in the noncommunist world, as well as the communist, naturalism surged to ascendancy. Now that special revelation is Once again recognized as integral to Hebrew-Christian redemptive religion, it becomes a duty of evangelical theology to conserve this gain, and to shield it from speculative misunderstanding.

The message of divine creation and redemption comprehends both the individual life in its private growth and the redeemed man in all his social and cultural life. The awareness of biblical revelation as relevant to the whole of life grants contemporary civilization the living prospect of a rationally satisfying explanation of human aspirations and problems.

TO BE CONTINUED

This is the third of four abridgments of lectures on “Evangelical Responsibility in Contemporary Theology” delivered by Editor Carl F. H. Henry during the centennial observance of the Christian Reformed Church in America. The series will be concluded in the next issue.

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Cover Story

What Young People Need

Henry Rische

The label delinquent implies a lack of something—a “falling short.” In the instance of a taxpayer it is money. What is it in the case of a juvenile?

It isn’t money. True, “the love of money is the root of all evil,” and the lack of it figures in many outbreaks of juvenile delinquency. In the case histories of delinquents, however, one also finds young people from well-to-do families. Indeed, some of the worst offenders have parents who pamper them with extravagant allowances.

Nor is it lack of home comforts. That a slum environment fosters behavior problems is a social welfare axiom. However, blighted neighborhoods have no monopoly on delinquency. In some suburban communities of high real estate values and well-kept homes authorities have more problems with refractory young people than in run-down tenement areas, as theater managers and highway patrols will testify.

It isn’t lack of physical strength. The popular notion that the delinquent is a weakling, an “underprivileged runt,” is not borne out by statistics, according to a survey of “bad boys” and “good boys” by Dr. Sheldon Glueck, Harvard criminologist. On the whole, the bad boy is likely to be physically stronger than the good boy.

It isn’t low mentality. A certain lack of intelligence obviously lies behind all criminal conduct. The frequency of delinquency, however, is not determined by a high or a low IQ. In fact, the delinquent characteristically boasts of “being smart.”

Adult Dereliction

Delinquent, teen-ager, rebel—the words have been used so freely that they have become class labels. The cases and the causes have been pinpointed with clinical exhaustiveness. They present a disturbing and complex picture in which many fingers have a hand. With the delinquency of minors go the four D’s of adult contribution: Dereliction of duty, Divorce, Drunkenness, and Debauchery.

The remedies resorted to are largely restrictive and penal measures, dictated by the immediate emergency. Long-range prevention is recognized as more effective, but it takes so long and for present purposes it’s too late. Besides there’s some uncertainty whether to start with the young chick or the mother hen. Which comes first?

And yet, while the police increase their vigilance, judges stiffen their fines, principals tighten their rules, and parents question their miscreant children, the conviction persists that something more than halters and gendarmes and regimented pastime is needed to keep young people from straying.

Role Of Religion

The search for the answer to this need exposes a remarkable obduracy in human reasoning. In all the volumes of scientific books and the stacks of candid magazine explorations in juvenile delinquency, there is little reference to the possible importance of religion as the answer to the problem of youthful delinquency. As an example of this footnote status of religion in the study of the youth problem we have the thick, fine-print report of the congressional investigation of juvenile delinquency, which covered the nation but in 250 pages contains only two slight references to religion. One is a suggestion that the church provide more recreation for young people; the other is a negative note bearing out the statistic that for every dollar given for the work of the church ten dollars are spent on crime.

This faint regard for religion as a factor in social welfare does not necessarily imply spiritual disrespect. What it does seem to indicate is that “the notion is still very prevalent that religion is a beautiful lyrical element which hallows our Sundays and haunts our memories but does not come to life and effectuality in our everyday problems” (“American Youth in Trouble”).

“A resultful contemplation of juvenile delinquency is hard to come by without the consideration of religion as of major importance. For what is lacking in the delinquent? Not always mental competence, not always knowledge of right and wrong, not always spending money, not always opportunity for a good time, not always all the comforts of home. There are young people who have all this and yet delinquent. What is lacking?”

An old book, which from time to time reveals itself as a word of authority and an up-to-date manual on human nature, makes this statement corroborated by history: “The thoughts and imaginations of a man’s heart are evil from his youth.”

The Word of God is a pioneer in character analysis when it observes: “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts.” Its case histories are so pertinent that a Los Angeles prosecutor in a trial of youthful rebels cited Scripture to describe the modern delinquents: “Lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection … incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.”

It echoes the question of every thinking youth and all those concerned with the welfare of young people: “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?”

The answer is: “By taking heed thereto according to thy Word.” This Book of Books provides youth with the stability of character to withstand the enticements of evil men who say, “Come with us,” who walk in darkness and “whose ways are crooked.” It instills in youth the discretion to resist the call of the strange woman, “Come let us take our fill of love,” whose end is “bitter wormwood” and whose house is “the way to hell.”

A Greater Lack

When a California youth authority, Jim Rayburn, was asked for the underlying reasons for juvenile delinquency, he pointed to neglect in training of children and laxness in discipline at home and in school as two major factors. But beyond it all he saw a greater lack. “The basic cause of the whole situation,” Rayburn said, “is that our young people have no knowledge of God.”

That, says this attorney at law, is the main reason for delinquency, which, in his opinion, is a serious situation, an enduring trend with prospects of getting worse, unless “something very drastic” is done about it. That something, which Rayburn considers the one answer to the problem, is this: “The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only solution.”

The inculcation of general moral precepts is not enough. Young people must have the empowering motivation of faith in and dedication to the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

The wayward one in Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology found that the revulsion rising in his heart against the wiles of a black-eyed coquette was prompted by the thought of a woman of good influence, the remembrance of Emily Sparks, “in the days when she taught him in Spoon River.” And what was this teacher’s main message: “Do you remember the letter I wrote you of the beautiful love of Christ?”

Dr. Walter A. Maier, one of America’s great voices of the air, had this to say in a message on the American home: “I submit this as a very definite principle, that the first and foremost requirement in the attainment of home happiness is the sincere conviction, firmly accepted by every member of the household, that Jesus Christ is their personal Savior.

“Why is it that our nation is being inundated by a flood of juvenile crime? Why is it that there is such a rude disregard of the requirements of purity and chastity in American social circles?”

“Is all this not finally to be traced to the ugly fact that many homes, calloused and stolidly indifferent because of cold commercialism and endless pleasure seeking have found no room for the old fireplace motto, God Bless Our Home, and have crowded out the truth, Christ is the Head of This House?”

What youth needs is the spirit-guided conscience to say, “How can I do this great evil and sin against God?” and the Christian conviction to follow the principle, “Keep thyself pure.”

END

Henry Rische was for 17 years a West Coast pastor in the Lutheran church (Concordia Synod), and is presently editor of the family magazine This Day. He is a former staff correspondent for the Sacramento Bee, and is author of the book American Youth in Trouble.

- More from Henry Rische

Cover Story

God in the Constitutional Convention

Delber H. Elliott

The sessions of the Constitutional Convention began May 25, and adjourned September 17, 1787, covering a period of one hundred and sixteen days. Fifty-five delegates were present at the opening of the Convention. The presiding officer was George Washington and the secretary was William Jackson. The impression that harmony prevailed is a figment of the imagination. Thirteen members left early, not to return—some because of conflicting opinions. Tempers at times flared hotly. At one stage the convention recessed to allow heated passions to cool. The final document was not adopted unanimously. Randolf, Mason and Gerry refused to sign.

The delegates to the Convention were not supermen. They came from the common walks of life. No more than twenty of the original fifty-five were credited with making any constructive contribution. If the working force could be reduced to any one man, that man would be James Madison, later called “The Father of the Constitution.”

A Disturbing Contrast

There were certain marked differences between the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. One of them was the place given to prayer. Prayer was prominent in the Continental Congress. Two chaplains were appointed to open the sessions each day with prayer. In the Constitutional Convention prayer was officially absent. When the going became hard, Benjamin Franklin presented his famed resolution asking that prayer for divine guidance be offered each morning. His supporting remarks are a classic in congressional literature. He said in part:

the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings that “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”

Many writers assume that prayers were offered and that all went well thereafter. The plain fact is that this was not so. Elliott’s Debates (Vol. 5, p. 255) and a footnote to Franklin’s speech tell us that prayers were not thought necessary and the motion was lost by adjournment.

A second contrast between these two historic assemblies concerns the recognition given to the Divine Being. The Continental Congress, in its official documents, mentioned “God,” “Almighty God,” “Governor of the Universe” and the “Omnipotent” One. If we go back to the early compacts, colonial charters, the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence, we find not only frequent mention of God but repeated reference to Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Ruler of nations.

But in its official proceedings the Constitutional Convention was noticeably silent on such acknowledgments of Deity. In the Constitution as finally adopted there is no reference to God, Christ or to the law of God.

The Finished Product

The excellencies of the American Constitution are many. The final product is a masterpiece of the English language. Its preamble is one of the world’s finest sentences. The threefold task of the Convention was well done; to establish a central form of government; to preserve the individual rights of the people; and to define the powers of the states and the nation in their relation to each other.

With all of its excellencies, however, the Constitution came short of perfection. This is understandable to the degree that trust was placed in the wisdom of men rather than in the guidance of God. The fact that the Constitution has been amended twenty-one times should bear this out.

Following the adoption of the Constitution there arose two widespread objections. The first was that it made no provision for a bill of rights. This defect was remedied by the passage of the first ten amendments.

The second objection was that there was no acknowledgment of a Supreme Being. This obvious defect has never been corrected. At least forty-two of the forty-eight states have made some reference to God in their constitutions but the Federal Constitution remains silent. It is encouraging that in 1908 “In God We Trust” was made mandatory on some of our coins. These words appear also on some of our postage stamps and have now become, by act of Congress, the official motto of the United States. Without serious opposition, the words “Under God” have been added to our salute to the flag. But these gestures are only side issues as long as no recognition is made in our fundamental law by which all other laws are judged.

The late Dr. Peter Marshall, while chaplain of the United States Senate, said: “It is strange and I believe tragic that the Constitution makes no reference to God.” A fascinating article appeared in the Congressional Record of Feb. 19, 1844, about the offering of a resolution by John Quincy Adams to amend the Constitution by a recognition of “the God of this nation”; “Submission to the Lord Jesus Christ, Prince of the kings of the Earth”; and “unreserved reception of His revealed will, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.” Space does not permit recording here his remarks supporting the resolution. The outcome was that his motion was laid on the table, though many voted in its favor.

On February 3, 1863, a three-day convention of Christian citizens met at Xenia, Ohio, for prayer and conference concerning the state of the nation. Eleven denominations were represented. The convention adopted a declaration which reads in part:

“We regard the neglect of God and His law, by omitting all acknowledgments of them in our Constitution, as the crowning sin of the nation, and slavery as one of its outgrowths. Therefore the most important step remains to amend the Constitution so as to acknowledge God and the authority of His law …” The sentiment thus expressed grew and became organized into the National Reform Association, which continues as a vigorous force, with the Christian Amendment as one of its projects. The Christian Statesman is its official organ.

A more recent organization, with a national field secretary and a central office located in Pittsburgh, is also pressing this issue. Its official organ is The Christian Patriot. The measure has been repeatedly introduced into Congress, including the present session, by various members of the House and Senate. The first section of this bill reads: “This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Savior and Ruler of Nations, through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God.” Section 2 safeguards against any union of church and state, and the third section is designed to protect the rights and consciences of those whose religious scruples may be affected.

No one would be so naive as to assume that the mere writing of a name into the Constitution would make the nation Christian. It is not just a pin on the lapel of Uncle Sam’s coat. An amendment to the Constitution requires for passage a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures. When such support as this is achieved, may we not safely conclude that Uncle Sam has become a Christian at heart?

Such recognition in our basic law would honor the God who gave our nation its being; bring our Constitution into harmony with the history and aims of the founding fathers; bring our government into line with the moral law of God; declare before the world that the United States is a Christian nation; give our ambassadors and statesmen a firm basis on which to rest their decisions; and silence the arguments of atheists and others that chaplains, Thanksgiving proclamations, inscriptions on our coins and reading of the Bible in our schools are unconstitutional.

Admittedly, the proponents of this constitutional correction are now in the minority. But it has been said of certain earnest dissenters, “They signed many minority reports which became majority actions.”

END

When CHRISTIANTY TODAY carried an article on “God and the Continental Congress” in its issue of Feb. 4 (Vol. I, No. 9), Dr. Delber H. Elliott, long interested in the Christian Amendment Movement, proposed this further article on “God and the Constitutional Convention.” A graduate of Geneva College and of Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, where he held the chair of Homiletics for seven years, he received the D.D. degree from Geneva in 1922, and has been a member of its Board of Trustees for 30 years.

- More from Delber H. Elliott

Cover Story

RSV Appraisal: New Testament

George Eldon Ladd

The Revised Standard Version has now been with us long enough so that most people, both laymen and scholars, have formed their basic judgment of the work. Therefore the purpose of the present brief article is not so much to shed new light upon a question already exhaustively studied as to attempt to clarify some basic issues by suggesting several principles fundamental to a philosophy of translation and by offering a brief evaluation of the RSV in the light of these principles.

The Need For A Clean Bible

First, the Bible must be a revealing book. In evangelical Christianity, the Bible plays an indispensable role, for it is the divinely appointed instrument to bring men into a knowledge of truth and an experience of God. Since the English Bible is above all else a book of the layman, it must be rendered in an up-to-date, completely intelligible idiom. This principle is reinforced by the historical fact, realized only in this century, that the Greek idiom of the New Testament is the koine, the vernacular, the living language of common people.

However, a paradoxical situation has prevailed in large areas of the English-speaking church. The King James, or Authorized, Version, which has been the Bible of the people, is written in an archaic Elizabethan idiom. Such verses as “we which are alive … shall not prevent them which are asleep” (1 Thess. 4:15), “take nothing for their journey … no scrip” (Mk. 6:8), “and from thence we fetched a compass” (Acts 28:13), “we do you to wit” (2 Cor. 8:1), “I would have you … simple concerning evil” (Rom. 16:19), “his wife also being privy to it” (Acts 5:2) demand explanation to be understood in the twentieth century.

Furthermore, the form of the Bible, as well as its language, should convey to the reader a maximum degree of meaning. Few modern books would sell if every third line or so were indented as is KJV. A literary form that indicates units of thought by the use of paragraphs, sets off quotations by quotation marks, arranges poetical materials in poetic form and uses a modern system of punctuation is mandatory.

Punctuation and paragraph indention indeed involve interpretation, and the decisions of any translator or translators can be challenged at many points because of the ambiguity of the data. For instance, it is debatable whether our Lord’s discourse in John 3 ends at verse 15 or at verse 21. Nor can it be decided with finality whether the last sentence of Revelation 19:10 was spoken by the angel or is an author’s comment.

We must conclude, however, that the RSV, as far as language and form are concerned, will introduce the reader to the truth of the Word far more effectively than either of the earlier versions.

Accuracy In Translation

A second quality necessary in a translation of the Bible is accuracy. The meaning of the original language must be carefully reproduced. We cannot emphasize too strongly that a literal translation, if by literal we mean a word-for-word equivalent, is impossible. Anyone who has had any experience with a foreign language knows that every language has its idiom, which is meaningless when rendered with wooden literalness. We cite only one illustration. Many a preacher has been unhappy with the English word “bowels” of KJV (see 2 Cor. 6:12, Phil. 2:1, etc.) to express affection or compassion. KJV really embodies a mistranslation, for the Greek word physiologically denotes the organs above, not below, the diaphragm. To render this word “literally” is literally nonsense in English. The Semites may speak of the liver as a center of grief (Lam. 2:11), and the Greeks of the higher organs as a center of deep feeling; English demands a different idiom.

This problem of idiom appears in such theologically significant passages as Hebrews 1:2 “God … hath … spoken unto us by his Son” (KJV). The divergent rendering, “God … has spoken to us by a Son” (RSV), should be understood against the background of syntax rather than that of theology. The Greek literally reads, “God … has spoken to us in Son,” having neither the possessive pronoun nor the article. The translator here must deal with the problem of reproducing the anarthrous use of the article for which there is no English equivalent. If RSV undertranslates it, KJV overtranslates the idiom. Strict literalness is impossible.

The translator therefore must interpret. He must know the meaning of the original and seek its equivalent value in a different language. He must be a scholar possessing first-rate historical and philological equipment. No amount of devotion or piety can be a substitute for knowledge and technical skill, for we are dealing with historical facts which sometimes become very complex. However, when the interpretative element has been recognized, we must insist that a translation ought to be as literal as possible.

To what extent has RSV attained accuracy of translation? Numerous renditions of the new version are more literal than KJV. Any one of these, by itself, is of little importance; but taken together, they reflect the effort of the translators to produce an accurate version. “When they wanted wine” (John 2:3) is corrected to “when the wine failed.” RSV rightly reads “for the sake of your tradition” at Matthew 15:3 rather than “by your tradition.” KJV renders a single word in two ways in Matthew 23:16 and 18: “he is a debtor,” “he is guilty,” while RSV consistently translates the same word in the same way, “he is bound by his oath.” RSV literally renders Luke 10:11 “know this” instead of the paraphrastic “be ye sure of this.” “The common people” in Mark 12:37 (KJV, ASV) injects an unnecessary element of interpretation for the Greek, “the great throng,” which is faithfully reproduced in the RSV.

Furthermore, we may cite almost innumerable passages where the new version has achieved a better translation because it is more meaningful and perspicuous. This is probably its most notable feature, for many passages will suddenly come to life to the ordinary reader which have lain unnoticed before. Other passages will be seen in an entirely new light. The rudimentary credal statement in 1 Corinthians 15:3 ff. is “of first importance” (RSV), not merely of chronological priority (“first of all” KJV). Romans 7:6 is not making a contrast, as KJV suggests, between a literal and a spiritual approach to the Scriptures, but between two dispensations, a fact which the RSV makes clear. The confusing expression of KJV in Galatians 2:20 that the believer is crucified and yet lives is corrected in RSV to “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live …” The almost meaningless wording of KJV of Colossians 2:23, “not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh” is clarified by the rendition, “they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh”; and a footnote indicates that the passage is subject to a variant translation.

Theological Accuracy

An important question for evangelicals is the theological accuracy of the RSV. The charges have repeatedly been made that RSV reflects a liberal theological tendency and that the translators have misrepresented the original text in favor of lower theological positions. A critical study of RSV does not bear this out. There are verses which at first sight may seem to involve theological presuppositions of a nonevangelical character; but a thorough study will reveal that in practically every case there are objective factors which enter into the language or context of the problem so that the evidence does not look in a single direction. That a theologically inferior rendition is not due necessarily to a liberal tendency of the translator is proved by the rather surprising “maiden” in Matthew 1:23 in the early edition [1937] of the Williams’ translation published by the Moody Press.

There are in fact many passages where RSV has a higher theology than KJV. RSV rendering “on a level place” instead of the KJV’s “in the plain” (Luke 6:17) helps to solve the problem of the apparent conflict between Matthew and Luke as to the scene of the Sermon on the Mount. In the important saying of Matthew 11:27, the new wording “chooses to reveal him” sets off to better advantage than KJV’s “will reveal him” the mediatorial, revelatory work of the Son. The sense of the miraculous in our Lord’s healing ministry is heightened by such a rendering as “instantly” (Matt. 15:28) instead of the more literal “from that very hour.” A new rendering of our Lord’s prayer, “glorify thou me in thy own presence” (John 17:5) affirms more definitely than KJV that Jesus is returning to the Father.

A very commendable feature of the RSV is the tendency to capitalize “spirit.” Many passages are thus attributed to the Holy Spirit which were not clearly designated in the earlier versions (see Matt. 22:43, Rom. 7:6, 2 Cor. 3:8, Rev. 4:2). The dissatisfaction created by the equivocal rendering of ASV in 2 Timothy 3:16 has been removed by a translation which closely resembles KJV and clearly affirms the inspiration of the Scriptures.

Other renditions are disappointing. RSV, in contrast to its predecessors, punctuates Romans 9:5 so as to apply the beatitude to God the Father rather than to Christ as God. The context hardly calls for the benediction that results in the RSV. At the same time, we must be hesitant of attributing this rendition to theological presuppositions, for it is a fact that while Paul assigns to Christ the prerogatives of deity, it is not his custom to attribute to him the word “God.” In our judgment, the old rendering is preferable, but it remains possible that RSV has it correctly translated.

Profound theological implications are involved in the decision of the revisers to render hilasterion by “expiation” rather than “propitiation” in Romans 3:25. This is not to attribute the decision merely to theological preference; only those who shared the immediate labors of the committee are in a position to know to what extent this may be true. We must, however, point out that in contemporary theological literature, the word “expiation” involves a far lower view of atonement than does “propitiation.” Indeed, our very concept of God is involved. Expiation looks manward and involves the blotting out of sins and the annulment of guilt. Propitiation looks Godward and includes more than expiation—the satisfaction of God’s holiness and of his wrath against sin.

Far more is involved, however, than an arbitrary and subjective decision between two views of the atonement. Extensive technical and philological study lies behind the translation of hilasterion, particularly in the researches of C. H. Dodd. The conclusions of technical scholarship are not answered by the charge of theological liberalism, but only by scholarly research of equal competence. This we now fortunately possess in the work of Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, [see the review by the writer in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Vol. I, No. 1, (Oct. 29, 1956), p. 37] who shows that “expiation” is less than the Scriptures teach and is therefore unsatisfactory.

Perhaps the most radical departure of the new version involving theological considerations is the abandonment of the archaic “thee” and “thou” in favor of the idiom of today. Many readers have felt that the Bible has become somehow less holy and distinctive because of this change. What they fail to realize is that “thee” and “thou” was the ordinary language of everyday life when KJV was made and not a distinctive religious idiom. The decision to employ the modern idiom, we are informed in the introductory brochure, was reached only after two years of debate and experiment when it was decided that the formal mode of address should be retained only when deity was being addressed.

Are we to conclude, then, that when our Lord is not addressed in this formal terminology, it is because the translators do not look upon him as divine? This conclusion does not follow. The question which must be decided in each instance is whether men were consciously addressing Jesus as deity. We must recognize in the complexity of the messianic self-disclosure that only after the resurrection and ascension did the disciples come to a full recognition of our Lord’s deity. To put into their mouths a uniform terminology which recognizes deity from the start is to ignore the historical facts of the self-revelation of Christ and the education of the disciples. With the basic principle decided upon by the revisers, we may agree; and we note that the deity of the promised Messiah is recognized in Matthew 22:44, Hebrews 1:5–13, 5:5, 6, 7:17, 21, and that of the exalted Christ in Revelation 5:9.

The effort of the translators to carry out this principle may be illustrated in Acts 9 where Saul, who was apparently as yet unsure of the identity of the heavenly being appearing to him, says, “Who are you, Lord?” (Acts 9:5), while Ananias, who was fully aware of the Lord’s identity, says, “thy saints at Jerusalem” (Acts 9:13). The handling of these two situations reflects a nicety of judgment. When this has been said, we must record dissatisfaction with the rendering of such high Christological passages at Matthew 16:16, John 6:69. Furthermore, in the light of Thomas’s confession in John 20:28, a higher form of address might be expected in John 21, although it is of course possible that only Thomas had as yet grasped the significance of his confession. However, criticism, if any, must be directed to the revisers’ judgment, not to their theological presuppositions.

Consistency In Translation

A third important principle is derived from the fact that the vast majority of people are shut up to an English version for their knowledge of the Word of God. Therefore, a good version must provide an adequate tool for serious Bible study, and must endeavor to achieve as large a measure as possible of consistency in rendering of both important and unimportant theological words. Literary excellence may demand variety; but serious study demands consistency and accuracy.

It is evident that the translators of the new version have aimed at such consistency, at least in the New Testament. The single Greek expression, aionios zoe, which occurs some forty-four times in the New Testament, is rendered in KJV by the two phrases, “eternal life” and “everlasting life,” at a ratio of two to one (cf. John 3:15, 16; Acts 13:46, 48; Rom. 6:22–23). The RSV is consistent in employing a single English phrase. A similar meaningless variation between “everlasting” and “eternal” is found in KJV for the adjective aionios. Does one word convey a qualitative significance and the other only a quantitative meaning? To ask the question is to answer it.

Another even more important illustration is to be found in the RSV’s happy rendition of the word aion which refers to the entire period of human history in contrast with “the age to come” when the fullness of God’s kingdom will be realized (see Mark 10:30, Matt. 13:39–43). The KJV obscures this basic biblical structure by the rendering “world.” This confuses the student of the English Bible, for there is another word for world, kosmos, which embodies a closely related concept but suggests a different emphasis. RSV in twenty places correctly translates aion by “age.” In two other places, a footnote indicates the Greek word (Luke 16:8, Rom. 12:2). In other passages, such as Matthew 13:22, Mark 4:19, 2 Corinthians 4:4, 1 Timothy 6:17, 2 Timothy 4:10 and Titus 2:12, RSV retains “world,” apparently because the translators concluded that such was the meaning in these passages. Undeniably, sometimes aion and kosmos appear to be quite interchangeable; but in our opinion, nothing is lost, and the Bible student would be assisted by the retention of “age.”

The Greek words, hades and gehenna, involve distinct concepts which are obscured by the indiscriminate rendering “hell” in KJV (except in 1 Cor. 15:55, where hades is rendered “grave”). RSV differentiates the terms by the use of “hades” and “hell” except in Matthew 16:18 where a footnote indicates the Greek word.

In its translation of diatheke, KJV alternates between “covenant” (20 times) and “testament” (13 times). The new version consistently translates the word “covenant” except in Hebrews 9:16 where the covenant in question is a will. Here a footnote indicates the Greek word.

Many students of the English Bible will miss the word “to impute” in Romans 4:6, 8, 11, 22–24. However, this probably reflects no theological tendency but merely another instance of consistency of rendering. The same Greek word is rendered in KJV “to count” in Romans 4:3, 5 and “to reckon” in Romans 4:4, 9, 10. Since the meaning “to reckon” is closest to the Greek word, RSV consistently renders it in all of these references. The same rendering should appear in 2 Corinthians 5:19, where the RSV has “to count.”

These few illustrations, which have been deliberately chosen more or less at random to give fair samplings, adequately illustrate the measure of consistency sought and attained by the new version. Some of the illustrations cited are important for doctrinal study while others bear little doctrinal significance. The latter are all the more important in serving to demonstrate that a real effort has been made to introduce a large measure of consistency in translation. This feature will be of immeasurable aid to the student who is limited to the English Bible. There is still room for improvement, and it is to be hoped that future editions of RSV will seek an even greater measure of uniformity wherever the context permits.

Preserving The Familiar

A fourth principle introduces an element that limits the application of those already set forth. The Bible belongs to the Church and has created a tradition in English literature and in Western civilization which cannot be ignored. The King James Version is an English classic of great beauty. Furthermore, it has been the Bible of the people, and our minds are stocked with its verses and phrases. Therefore, for the sake both of beauty and practical usage, a new translation should be conservative, retaining as much of the familiar idiom as possible. Never should changes be made for the sake of change. Accuracy and clarity are mandatory, but these principles must be combined with that of the conservation of the accepted standard. Our need is not for a new version but for an adequate revision of the old that will conserve its beauty but correct its defects.

Not infrequently the translators of RSV seem to have failed to recognize this principle. A few illustrations must suffice. The first verses of John 14 are deeply ingrained in the minds of multitudes of Christians, and something seems to have been sacrificed in the new rendering. We may admit that “mansions” needs a modern equivalent, and that there are textual grounds for the structure of the second verse even though the resultant translation creates the difficulty of supposing that Jesus had previously told the disciples that He was going to prepare a place for them. Nevertheless the changes from the indicative to the imperative, from “and if I go” to “and when I go,” from “receive you unto myself” to “take you to myself” are neither required by the text nor by the meaning of the passage. “If I give away all I have” (1 Cor. 13:3, RSV) is hardly an improvement over “though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor.” The change in the order of phrases in John 3:17 is quite uncalled for. “Satisfied” in the fourth Beatitude (Matt. 5:6, RSV) does not add enough to merit the change from “filled.” Illustrations could be added endlessly.

Furthermore, desire for modernity in language ought not to be carried to the point where fundamental theological terminology is sacrificed. The avoidance of such terms as “sanctification” in favor of “consecration,” [later editions of RSV have restored “sanctification” in some places] or “predestination” in favor of “destined” (Eph. 1:5, 12) renders a disservice to the Church. Christian people should become familiar with basic theological terminology by reading the Bible itself. Therefore, so far as possible, theological terms should be consistently rendered by equivalent theological terms in English. Here the RSV is defective.

RSV frequently makes interpretative changes in the traditional language where clarity demands no change. “Those who are entering” (Matt. 23:13) does not need the addition of the word “would.” It is quite unnecessary to change Matthew 24:48, “If that evil servant shall say in his heart” to “says to himself,” especially since this idiom is elsewhere preserved (Mark 2:6, Luke 2:19, 3:15, 5:22). John 3:12, “How shall ye believe,” does not need the alteration to “How can you believe.” The change in John 15:2 from “every branch in me” to “every branch of mine” is distinct loss. “In that day you will ask me nothing” (John 16:23) is quite as significant as “you will ask me no questions.” In 1 Corinthians 2:10, the literal “deep things of God” is superior to “the depths of God,” which suggests something in the being of God rather than the depths of God’s revealed truth.

These illustrations suffice to demonstrate that RSV has an unhappy tendency to seek novelty for its own sake. The work would have been far more useful had the translators endeavored to retain as much of the language of the familiar version as possible. Nevertheless, it is this writer’s judgment that while the New Testament of the RSV is liable to serious criticism, and has not yet provided us with a completely adequate version, it is the most useful translation we possess.

END

A Canadian by birth, George Eldon Ladd holds the Th.B. degree from Gordon College, B.D. from Gordon Divinity School, and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Since 1950 he has served on the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary. He is author of Crucial Questions About the Kingdom of God (1952) and The Blessed Hope (1956).

- More from George Eldon Ladd

Cover Story

RSV Appraisal: Old Testament

Oswald T. Allis

Months before its publication in 1952 the Revised Standard Version (RSV) was widely advertised as “the greatest Bible news in 341 years.” This decidedly ambitious claim has yet to find general acceptance. Whether the RSV will attain permanent and widespread success still remains to be seen. For good reasons many are not ready to accept it as the rightful heir of the historic Authorized Version of 1611 (AV). Although the RSV professes to be a revision of the AV, it is in reality a modern speech version.

Literary Style

The literary style of the AV has been frequently and even extravagantly praised. Men like Ruskin and William Lyon Phelps have commended it most highly. According to A. T. Robertson, the great charm and the chief merit of the AV lies in the fact that “it reproduces to a remarkable extent the spirit and language of the Bible.” That it contains expressions which are now obsolete or have changed their meaning as well as readings which are now regarded as incorrect or inferior is obvious. Many of these were removed in the American Revised Version of 1901 (ARV) and should be changed in the text or margin of copies of the AV which are published today. One of the rules adopted in 1870 to govern the revision which resulted in the ARV was “That in such necessary changes the style of the language employed in the existing version be closely followed.” This rule was not adopted for the RSV. But the hope is expressed in the Preface to the RSV that the translators have not taken undue advantage of their freedom from it.

Some changes are a matter of taste. For example, “to” instead of “unto,” “on” for “upon,” “you” for “ye” are purely a matter of English. But when the translators presume to decide just how frequently “and” may be used in a chapter or paragraph, the situation is quite different, and subjective considerations enter into the decision. The first “and” is omitted in verse 10 of Genesis 1 and retained in verse 8, where the construction is exactly the same. Its omission at Leviticus 1:1 and Numbers 1:1 destroys the connection between these books. The familiar phrase “and it came to pass” is omitted in Genesis 6:1 and frequently elsewhere. “Answered and said” is reduced to “answered” (Gen. 24:50). In Genesis 36:15–18 the word “duke” (RSV “chief”) occurs 18 times. RSV reduces it to 6 (cf. 1 Chron. 1:51–54). Such changes may make for easy reading, but they do not reproduce the biblical language and style accurately.

The Use Of “Thou”

The most important question under the head of biblical language is the use of “thou.” Both Hebrew and Greek distinguish between the singular (thou) and plural (you). The 1611 version carefully observed the distinction, not because it was Jacobean, but because it was biblical. The ARV retained it for the same reason. “Thou” is little less common in our vernacular today than it was fifty years ago. Yet probably all “modern speech” versions either eliminate the singular form entirely or compromise by using it only “in language addressed to God” or “in exalted poetic apostrophe.” This compromise in RSV encounters the most serious difficulties. In the New Testament it means that in every case where Jesus is addressed the decision must be made whether the speaker recognized his deity. Thus in Matthew 16:16, where Peter makes his great confession, RSV renders “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” That is, it declares that Peter addresses Jesus as a man, even when affirming him to be the Son of God.

In the Old Testament the same problem arises in connection with Messianic prophecy. The prophecy of Psalm 110:4 reads, “You are a priest for ever,” but it becomes in Hebrew 5:6 “Thou art a priest for ever,” which suggests that a prophecy which was not Messianic in the Old Testament becomes Messianic in the New Testament (NT). Or, if the principle of “exalted poetic apostrophe” is applied in the New Testament passage why not also in the Old Testament? We are told that the usage adopted in RSV followed “two years of debate and experiment.” The result is conclusive proof that such a compromise is both impracticable and dangerous. The only alternatives are either to follow the biblical usage or to eliminate the “thou” completely. We believe that the “thou” is too deeply embedded in the language of piety and religious devotion to be rudely displaced by the “you” of the modern colloquial. The fact that the diction of the AV differs from that of the daily newspaper is not necessarily a liability. Many regard it as a distinct asset. They enjoy the quaint and old-fashioned language of the Bible and want it changed as little as possible.

Paraphrase Not Translation

The aim of a translation is to render accurately the language of the text. A paraphrase may aim to give the meaning under a different form, but it tends to become an interpretation. “For he thought, ‘Why not, if there be peace and security in my days’ ” (2 Kings 20:19) is a loose paraphrase of “And he said, Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days.” Does “For he thought,” etc., mean that Isaiah is not telling us what Hezekiah said but simply reading his mind for our benefit? “But he said, ‘Oh, my Lord, send, I pray, some other person’ ” (Ex. 4:13) tells us what Moses clearly wanted to say, but not what he actually said, which was, “O, my Lord, send I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send.” It may help some readers to read “Moses’ feet” (Ex. 4:25), “Eli fell over backward” (1 Sam. 4:18), “took his stand by Amasa” (2 Sam. 20:11), “now Ahijah had clad himself” (1 Kings 11:29b)—passages where the simple pronoun of the text is somewhat ambiguous. All such explanations, if really needed, should be placed in the margin, not inserted in the text.

The AV and ARV use italics to indicate words which are inserted to clarify the meaning. RSV never uses italics. Yet it makes many interpretive additions. “After his mother’s death” (Gen. 24:67), “better than a thousand elsewhere” (Ps. 84:10), “seventy weeks of years” and “a most holy place” (Dan. 9:24), “three days’ journey in breadth” (Jonah 3:3). In these passages, “death,” “elsewhere,” “of years,” “place,” “in breadth” are all interpretive additions. But this is not indicated in any way.

Both the AV and the ARV recognized the value of the ancient versions, especially the Septuagint (LXX), for the Bible translator. But they recognized also that an important distinction is to be drawn between the divinely inspired original text and uninspired translations; and also that it is difficult to be sure of the text of these ancient versions. We are told in the Preface to the ARV: “The authorities referred to in the Old Testament are translations from the Hebrew; and though the date of these translations is more ancient than any extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, yet there is no means of verifying with certainty the text of these translations; and one can never get beyond plausible conjecture in attempting to correct the Hebrew text by means of them. It is one thing to admit that the Hebrew text is probably corrupt here and there; quite another, to be sure how to rectify it.” Consequently the ARV revisers reduced to a minimum the corrections favored by the versions; and their policy was to place those they adopted or favored in the margin, not in the text.

The attitude of the RSV to the use of the versions is radically different from that of the ARV. Not only has it corrected the Hebrew text some 600 times on the basis of one or more versions, but it puts these corrections in the text with a marginal note. This note varies considerably in form. “Assyria” (Amos 3:9) has margin “Gk.:Heb. Ashdod,” although the Targum, Syriac, and Vulgate support the Hebrew. “House of Israel” (Hos. 10:15) has margin “Gk.:Heb. O Bethel,” although the Hebrew makes good sense and is supported by Syriac and Vulgate (cf. Targum). “His neighbor’s flesh” (Isa. 9:20) has margin “Tg. Compare Gk.:Heb. the flesh of his arm,” although the St. Mark Scroll, Codex B of the Septuagint, Vulgate and Syriac support the Hebrew Massoretic text.

In a number of instances the margin contains the words, “Heb. lacks.” For example, “Jehoram his brother became king in his stead” (2 Kings 1:17) has margin: “Gk. Syr.: Heb. lacks his brother.” It is quite likely that the Greek translators, preparing a version for Greek-speaking Jews and proselytes, added the words “his brother” to make it clear just who this Jehoram was; and the Syriac probably followed the Greek. But the words “Heb. lacks” assume that the Greek is right and that the Hebrew text omits something which properly belongs there. Many examples of these alleged “lacks” of the Hebrew might be cited. Such readings as “Let us go out to the field” (Gen. 4:8), and “Why have you stolen my silver cup?” (Gen. 44:4 were undoubtedly known to the ARV revisers and probably also to those of 1611. But they ignored them. RSV places them in the text and states in the margin that the Hebrew “lacks” them.

How uncertain many of these changes are is illustrated by such a rendering as “swoon away” instead of “rejoice” (Jer. 51:39), which is adopted by RSV following Moffatt and the American Translation. If we take “exult” in the sense of “become hilarious,” the state which often precedes a drunken stupor, the Hebrew text makes perfectly good sense. It is quite probable that the Greek translators simply misunderstood the meaning. The RSV margin “Heb. rejoice” suggests that the Hebrew must be wrong. “And spreading itself like a green tree in its native soil” (Ps. 37:35 ARV) is literally “like a luxuriant native (tree).” RSV following the Greek changes it to “like a cedar of Lebanon” and adds a footnote, “Gk.:Heb. obscure,” which is a strange statement for Hebrew scholars to make.

Conjectural Readings

There are more than 300 readings in the text of RSV which are described in the margin as “cn,” which is explained in the Preface as standing for “correction.” But since these changes are without support in manuscripts or versions, they are really conjectures (properly abbreviated as “cj”) and should be described as such.

Psalm 2:11 f. is a “cn” which has been frequently cited. By omitting the words “with trembling” and rearranging the consonants of the words “and rejoice” and “son,” a rendering “kiss his feet” (so American Translation) is secured. Yet if it is admitted that the Aramaic form of the word “son” (bar) is used here instead of the Hebrew form (ben), the difficulty is entirely removed (in vs. 9 the word “break” is also an Aramaic loan word). By a similar juggling of letters a rendering “kiss the hero” has also been reached. One is quite as conjectural as the other. “Rebelled against the Most High at the Red Sea” (Ps. 106:7) instead of “provoked him at the Sea, even at the Red Sea,” is not justified by simply referring to Psalm 78:17,56. “Crown” (Ps. 89:19) instead of “help” involves consonantal change and is no improvement. “Nor upsurgings of the deep” (2 Sam. 1:21) is no improvement on “nor fields of offerings,” i.e., fertile fields where first fruits might be gathered. It involves changes in the consonants of both Hebrew words and gives the words a mythological meaning. Dr. Moffatt justified the many conjectural changes that he made in his version on the ground that the Hebrew text is “often desperately corrupt.” It is only on the basis of such an assumption that many or most of the “cns” adopted in RSV can be justified; and obviously every “cn” adopted serves to strengthen the claim that the Hebrew text is corrupt.

Changes Without Marginal Note

Changes without marginal note are of two kinds. The revisers state that where the readings they have adopted make no change in the Consonantal text but simply involve the vocalization and punctuation of the Massoretic text (MT), no marginal note is given. The Massoretic pronunciation represents a reading which is both ancient and important. To ignore it completely is arbitrary, to say the least; and it is confusing to the reader who does not have all the facts before him. In Isaiah 49:17, RSV follows the St. Mark Isaiah Scroll in reading “your builders” (BoNaYiK) instead of “thy sons (BaNaYiK). In such cases a marginal note such as “MT: sons” would certainly be in order. It would indicate both the change and also to this extent the reason for it. “For they have no pangs; their bodies are sound and sleek” (Ps. 73:4) does not change the consonants, but it involves cutting the word “death” in two (making “they” and “sound”). This is favored by many critics but finds no support in the versions.

Unfortunately there are, despite the claim of the Preface, a good many passages where changes involving the Consonantal Text are made without any marginal note. A glaring example of this is, “And Moses did as the Lord commanded him” (Lev. 16:34b). The only possible rendering of the Hebrew is “And he did as the Lord commanded Moses” (AV, ARV). Since the entire ritual of the Day of Atonement was to be performed by the high priest (Aaron is mentioned six times in the chapter), the statement as it stands in the AV is perfectly clear. “The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar” (Gen. 10:10), instead of “and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar” (AV) has no margin. The rendering “all of them” (for Calneh) does not require a change in the consonants. But it does involve the rejection of the “and” which precedes; and it is at least questionable whether such a phrase as “all of them” would be necessary or appropriate after the mention of only three cities. It is arbitrary, to say the least, to introduce this new rendering without even a marginal note, simply because discoveries in Ugaritic indicate that such a rendering is possible. “In the land of Amaw” (Num. 22:5) replaces “of the land of the children of his people.” “His people” (ammo) could be read as Amaw. But this ignores the “sons of” which precedes. The Greek supports the AV. Some 13 manuscripts, the Samaritan Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Vulgate favor a reading “Ammon.” “Let my right hand wither” (Ps. 137:5) instead of “forget her cunning,” “cannot abide” (Ps. 49:20) for “understandeth not,” “The Lord is the strength of his people” (Ps. 28:8) instead of “The Lord is their strength,” “a pleasant vineyard” (Isa. 27:2) instead of “a vineyard of red wine,” “Summon thy might, O God” (Ps. 68:28) instead of “Thy God hath commanded thy strength,” “praised” (Eccles. 8:10) instead of “forgotten”—all involve consonantal changes. Such unindicated changes are disconcerting, to say the least.

Poetical Arrangement

In the AV the printing of each verse as a unit makes it somewhat difficult for the reader to distinguish readily between prose and poetry. The ARV made this possible by arranging prose passages in paragraphs and poetry in verses. It treated Psalms, Proverbs, Canticles, and most of Job as poetry, also the clearly poetical passages in Exodus 15, Numbers 23–24, Deuteronomy 32–33. That there is a poetic quality in many of the utterances of the prophets has long been recognized. Rhythmic parallelism is quite marked in some of their discourses. But this does not warrant the treatment of them as poetry. The RSV has “metricized” the greater part of the prophetical books. The result has been that splendidly rhythmic prose has often been changed into very poor and lame poetry. The first chapter of Isaiah, often called “the great arraignment,” is broken up in RSV and printed as a kind of blank verse. An extreme example of this appears in Matthew 4:1–11. Jesus in answering the devil quoted three Old Testament passages, two from Deuteronomy, the other from the Psalms. The two from Deuteronomy are quoted from a simple prose narrative. Yet they are treated as poetry in Matthew.

Quotation marks are a feature of most, if not all “modern speech” versions. They may sometimes be helpful, but there are two dangers connected with their use. One is that they may be unduly interpretive. In Psalms 60, verses 6 to 8 are placed in quotes as the word of the Lord. Many commentators regard them as the word of the Psalmist. In Isaiah 2:3 the quotation ends with “paths” instead of including the rest of the verse. The other reason is that quotation marks are complicated and confusing. Deuteronomy 5:1 (“Hear O Israel”) to 26:19 is all placed in quotes. Every paragraph—there are more than 100 of them—begins with a quote (“). Hence the Ten Commandments are each introduced by two quotes (“ ‘) here, while in Exodus 20:2–17 they are introduced by one “quote” (“). Deuteronomy 5:28 begins with a quote (“). In includes a quotation (‘) which begins with the words “I have heard” and extends through verse 31; and this in turn includes a quotation (“) consisting of the words “Return to your tents” (vs. 30). Such a lavish use of quotation marks tends to pile up. Cf. Jeremiah 22:9 and 29:28, which end with three quotes (” ’ ”). It is to be noted also that the revisers have been quite inconsistent. Compare Jeremiah 13:12–14 with Ezekiel 35:1–9 in RSV.

An irritating feature of the RSV is its inconsistencies. Eitheir the Old Testament and the New Testament Committees did not consult one another sufficiently or they failed to reach an agreement on matters that concerned both testaments. Thus Isaiah 40:3 reads “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.”°’ This verse is quoted in all four Gospels, and in all four the words “in the wilderness” are connected with what precedes, not with what follows. The word “Gentiles” disappears from the Old Testament in RSV but appears nearly as frequently in the New Testament as in the AV. For the reader who has no way of checking them such inconsistencies are confusing. For those who have, they are irritating as indicative of carelessness and haste.

Minimizing Attitude

The most serious defect of the RSV is what may be called its minimizing attitude toward the supernatural. This appears with especial clearness in its treatment of Isaiah 7:14. That the word alma can be used and is used of a virgin (Gen. 24:43, cf. vs. 16), that the Septuagint rendered it by parthenos and that parthenos means virgin, that Matthew 1:23 used the word parthenos in quoting Isaiah’s prophecy, that the context in Matthew speaks of a virgin birth—these are facts which cannot be denied. Yet RSV renders the Isaiah passage by “young woman” (margin: “Or virgin”). This implies that Matthew read into the prophecy a meaning which was not originally there. It is of course possible, perhaps probable that alma was used at times in the broader sense of “a young woman (of marriageable age).” But to adopt such a rendering here shows a readiness to find a minimum of truth in a passage instead of a desire to claim the most its language will properly admit.

The words “and he shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne” (Zech. 6:13, AV) predict the coming of the Priest-King, who is to be like unto Melchizedek (Ps. 110:4). The RSV rendering “and shall sit and rule upon his throne. And there shall be a priest by his throne” introduces a sharp distinction between the king and the priest which is not justified by the Hebrew. “Your divine throne” (Ps. 45:6) substitutes a divine throne for a divine Messiah and conflicts with the rendering of Hebrews 1:8, “Thy throne, O God.” “Whose origin is from of old, from ancient days” (Mic. 5:2) tones down the “from everlasting” of the AV. The rendering of Daniel 9:25, “Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again”—in fact the whole treatment of vss. 24–27—agrees with the critical theory that the Book of Daniel is Maccabean.

The writer is not one of those who regard the Authorized Version as sacrosanct. It is not infallible and where it is wrong it should be corrected. But such a revision, if it is to be entitled to the name, should be completely in the spirit of that time-honored version. It should aim to conserve its style and diction and make as few changes in it as are consistent with the accuracy and lucidity of the translation. We believe it to be imperative that conservative scholars prepare a revision of the AV that will carefully conserve all that is best in it while seeking to eliminate its occasional obscurities and errors. The AV has been for centuries a great unifying factor in the life of English-speaking Protestantism. Long may it remain so!

END

For a quarter of a century Oswald T. Allis taught Old Testament and related subjects. From 1910 to 1929 he taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, first as instructor and then as assistant professor of Semitic Philology; and from 1929 to 1936 at Westminster Theological Seminary, first as Professor of Old Testament History and Exegesis, and then as Professor of Old Testament. He is author of seven books and a member of the Version Committee of the American Bible Society.

- More from Oswald T. Allis

Cover Story

Is America Losing Her Cultural Distinctives?

S. Richey Kamm

“American civilization has not merely changed its inspiration and its character but its epoch as well.” Thus Andre Siegfried, one of the leading French humanists, describes the cultural revolution in the United States. For him “the epoch of the pioneer has been replaced by the epoch of the machine” (Andre Siegfried, Nations Have Souls, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1952, pp. 170–171). Siegfried has emphasized the obvious. He has brought into focus the everywhere-apparent emphasis upon material values—the trend toward “bigness”—the decline of the significance of the individual.

The Vision Of Life

Latent in his analysis is the thought that culture is not made up alone of what we see. It may also be found in what we dream. Culture, in the sense of life’s habits—one’s way of doing things from day to day—may vary greatly from land to land, from community to community, and even from family to family. But the real question to be fathomed is this, What is the vision of life that a people carry about in their heads? Do they think of themselves as playing a part in a dramatic conflict with forces unseen, or are they cogs, bars, endless belts in an ordered mechanized existence?

The distinctiveness of American culture lies in its “myth”—its vision of life. This picture of life is highly dramatic. It conceives of man as an individual, discreet, intelligent, purposive, active. He is part of the society yet separate from it. He possesses capacities that are comparable to his fellows but always manifests a singular uniqueness in their demonstration. He is limited by his companions, yet is not bound by them. He is buffeted by circumstances yet never defeated. He is the servant of nature and likewise its master. He is a “free” man and not a slave. He knows life in the sense of destiny and purpose.

Such a vision of life is unique. The source of its singularity is to be found in its inspiration. This is hardly in the presence of “free land” in America nor in the abundance of the natural resources of the region to which men came. Neither was it imbibed from the changing climate of this north temperate region. Rather, it is to be discovered in the religious symbolisms of the men and women who laid the cultural foundations of American society.

Puritan Influence

The early vision of life in America was strongly influenced by the Puritan. His “cultural myth” was biblically inspired. Living in a day when church and state placed great emphasis upon the principle of order and unity, the Puritan protested against the cultural dominance of these external forms. He raised his voice against this tendency to uniformity in life and boldly asserted that man was no longer to be cast in the time-honored mold of his culture. Man was to be a “free” personality who would rise dominant over his culture. The basis for such a vision? It was to be found in the biblical view of God’s redemptive work for man, and in the realization of the individual reality of this experience by an act of individual faith. Alan Simpson’s recent study, Puritanism in Old and New England (University of Chicago Press, 1955), has again brought to light the importance of this vision in the life of early Puritanism. From it came the dynamic which drove men to oppose the church, the crown, and every semblance of regimentation until men were made free.

The real basis of the Puritan protest has great meaning for our present predicament. What the Puritan saw was this, that man tends to project the cultural form of the present into the future by codifying it as natural law and by employing the organized forces of society to sustain it. This made man the creature of his culture, rather than the creator. It further tended to divorce him from the real source of cultural inspiration, namely, God, and to deprive every cultural form of its real meaning and intent. In opposition to this tendency the Puritan asserted again and again that God, alone, was lord of the conscience. This meant that man must be free to follow the dictates of his own conscience in matters of law and government as well as in religious practices and in ethics. It gave man a basis upon which to assert the value of the individual over against the values of the group. It is the source of the spirit of individualism in American culture. As such, it is most important to consider in approaching the cultural transition of our times.

A People Of Lip Service

America’s cultural problem today is the problem of a people who give lip service to a set of cultural distinctives—forms of expression, standards of life, visions of reality—which are cut off from their real essence. The transition has been slow and gradual. The concept of liberty, once grounded in the belief that man must he free for the worship of God in every phase of life, is now confused with a man’s right to express himself or some vague assumption that the public welfare will be advanced by a scarcity of legal limitation. The concept of equality, which founds its inspiration in the biblical view of man’s creation by an eternal God and man’s universal state of sin or rebellion against God, is now confounded with weights and measures of economic privilege or physical capacity. The concept of private property which was conceived as a gift or trust from God and, hence, subject to limited political control, is now viewed either as the sole bulwark against arbitrary political power (that is, a very poor substitute for God), or it is viewed as a mere matter of social convenience. The institution of the family, which was once looked upon as of divine ordination and, therefore, not subject to man’s tinkering, is now often accepted as a product of an evolving set of social relationships. The state, once conceived as an instrument of God’s justice is now decried as the instrument of man’s inhumanity to man.

How may we retain our cultural distinctiveness? The answer lies in our readiness to abandon our prophets of monism and our willingness to return to a view of culture which accepts the various orders of inspiration—the spiritual, the intellectual, the material—and place them in their proper relationship to one another in the reinterpretation of American life.

The Loss Of Balance

Cultural history in America exhibits an alarming tendency to lose that sense of balance in orders of values that is so essential to a healthful cultural life. Beginning with a vital cultural vision gleaned from the Bible and interpreted in the forms of the evangelical Christian tradition it soon began to lose its distinctiveness. Seventeenth century Puritanism with its wholesome balance of supernaturalism, rationalism, and observationalism, sat down to converse with its snake in the garden and lost its freedom to an incipient intellectualism. Roger Williams detected the transition in Massachusetts Bay and was driven into exile for his protests. It all came about in a manner quite common to men who desire to preserve a revolution through the deification of new forms of expression. In its effort to preserve the vision of the individual God-man relationship through a personal experience of saving faith, Puritanism created its own “golden chain of being”—the concept of “covenant”—to connect the transcendent with the imminent and thus to give order to this new vision of life. The concept of “covenant” viewed all of life on this earth as related to God through the Living Word, Jesus Christ, and through the inspired word, the Scriptures. These somewhat mystical forms had to be translated into concepts intellectually prehensible. Then followed the “federal theology,” the elaborate explanation of the meaning of the “covenant” concept. It brought to American culture a vision of life which has never been transcended. In it the individual was most important. All institutions were divinely ordained, but man had a coordinate responsibility for their projection and maintenance. He was given a sense of responsibility and a vision of destiny that linked him with the Eternal. But tragedy became imminent when the son of the Puritan began to worship this theological formulation which often smacked more of Plato in its manner of expression than of its biblical typology. The idea of “covenant” which was basically an idea of personal relationship and order, was reduced to a principle of uniformity, a law. The result was manifest in the eighteenth century preaching of New England which emphasized the rationality rather than the personal aspect of God’s dealing with men. To put it theologically, the “covenant of grace,” whereby God extended salvation to his elect, was by-passed for the “covenant of works—the rational explanation of God’s dealings with men as part of the whole order of nature. Man thereby lost his identity as a person, he became known only as part of a rationally conceived order of life. Man was no longer dominant over culture but had surrendered his spiritual and intellectual powers to its control. With the passing of the “covenant of grace” there was little justification for change.

Shift Of Sovereigns

It was against this transition in American culture that Jonathan Edwards thundered in the middle of the eighteenth century. Edwards was concerned that America should assert the supremacy of the will as over against the domination of the intellect. He was determined that the sovereignty of God should be restored to American culture in opposition to both the intellectualist and the romanticists. In spite of his valiant efforts eighteenth century rationalism in the form of Deism wrought significant alterations in the American cultural myth. God, the Creator, still remained as the author of all order and truth. But the “golden chain of being,” the mediator between God and man, was no longer Christ and the Scriptures. It was Nature, conceived in the ordered vision of Newton’s Principia. The scientific experiments of Franklin and the writings of Jefferson and his friends tended to reinforce, yes, even to deify this concept. There had been brought back into American culture the principle of uniformity under the guise of science.

It was in the light of such a vision that Jefferson stated the basic principles of the American creed. These great ideas of equality, rights, and happiness were traced to “Nature’s God,” not the God of nature. In so grounding them Jefferson laid the basis for our cultural confusion. The modern conflict with atheistic materialism has demonstrated that there can be no “scientific” justification for such concepts. Man cannot look upon them as intellectual abstractions alone; they must be accepted as divine imperatives that are essentially spiritual in nature and can be understood only in the light of a Divine Creator who is also a Divine Redeemer. This is what Jefferson left out. Since then we have been trying to shore up the foundations of our cultural forms with new types of scientifically drawn intellectual abstractions only to discover that they are insufficient.

Distinctives In Peril

From the vantage point of the mid-twentieth century it is now possible to see quite clearly what happened to American culture in the nineteenth. Transcendentalism sought to perpetuate a basis of uniformity in the cultural myth that was not dependent upon human experience. God, in Emerson’s concept of the “Over Soul,” would transcend finiteness and thus give stability to culture. But there was something lacking, the sense of tragedy, the presence of sin. The vision became optimistically rigid. There was no deviation from the path of progress in the pattern of change. This vision served to strengthen the American vision of destiny and to awaken the social conscience to the enormities of human slavery. But the dynamic of action for the reform movement which followed sprang from the vision of God and man which burst upon the American scene in the Finney revivals.

Simultaneously, another movement sought to restore the concept of grace, of needed change, in the American cultural myth. Having rejected the vision of revelational grace which moved the Puritan Jonathan Edwards, and Charles G. Finney to clamor for reform, the new prophet sought inspiration from the scientific doctrines of change which were then emerging. The evolutionary view of life—dialectical, survivalistic, or emergent—became the inspiration for the American dream. God became imminent in the very motion of matter. In fact, there was no need for any transcendent God or any absolute; all that was necessary was the ability to determine the trend of the motion. This would provide the oracle for man’s action, the vision for his dream.

It is quite obvious that this tendency to monize our cultural inspiration does violence to the basic constructs of knowledge itself. Long ago the Greeks laid it down that all knowledge deals with origins (being), behavior (becoming), and ends (telesis). Our latest cultural inspiration has been drawn from behavior, alone. We have tried to explain both origins and ends in terms of behavior. We have lost the sense of balance and completeness which comes when one recognizes that both origins and ends are to be interpreted in terms of revelational truth. This places our absolutes where they belong—in God. It saves us from the error of confusing our ideas about God with absolutes, that is, it places rational truth in its proper place—namely, as one form of understanding. Likewise, it helps us to recognize that the knowledge derived from experience is meaningful only as it demonstrates in a non-deductive manner the realities of the absolute.

The American cultural myth is a rich one because of its basic inspiration derived from the person of God. It is sound when rational truth is brought into conformity with this “heavenly vision.” It is real when it permits man to experiment and to learn more of life through the realm of experience. This balance of the spiritual, the intellectual, the experiential, is the genius of American culture. When we lose this balance and endeavor to project either the principle of order, rationality, or the principle of change, experience, as the basis of our culture, we lose the proper foundation for any sound cultural system. We then become slaves either to the “god” of our intellectual abstractions, or of our observational generalizations. We can know freedom in our culture only as a free God is posited as its base. Without this assumption America will continue to lose her cultural distinctives.

END

We Quote:

DANIEL A. POLING

Editor of “Christian Herald”

Why do we support Billy Graham and the New York Crusade? Because he speaks always for Jesus Christ, because always his message is Christ-centered, because always he preaches Jesus Christ as man’s only sufficient Savior, because always he is a proved open channel for the Holy Spirit, because always he honors the Bible as the inspired word of God, and because under his leadership the churches of our Protestant faith are united in a Crusade unequaled in the history of this vast city.… The negative critics of the Billy Graham Crusade and of mass evangelism ask the question: Did Billy Graham change London and Glasgow?… The records indicate that large numbers of the converts do stand fast. But if the final test be thus raised, what about the entire history of Christianity since St. Peter preached at Pentecost?… What about John Wesley and Dwight L. Moody and all those other humble but inspired men who went before or who have come since? Is not Christianity itself and all that is worthy in the ecumenical movement of our time, the direct result of evangelism, mass evangelism included?

S. Richey Kamm is Chairman of the Division of History and Social Science at Wheaton College in Illinois. He holds the A.B. degree from Greenville College, A.M. from University of Michigan, and Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania, and in 1952 was awarded the LL.D. degree by Seattle Pacific College.

- More from S. Richey Kamm

Review of Current Religious Thought: June 24, 1957

G. C. Berkouwer

When we reflect on the reality and the significance of the Church in the New Testament and on the place of the Church in the midst of the world, we quite naturally come into contact with the question of the relation between the Church and authority. This will be immediately evident if we reflect on the age-old controversy between the Reformation and Rome. It stands to reason, however, that this controversy also plays a role, albeit somewhat differently, when we take note of other discussions about the Church of Jesus Christ.

When the Reformation began, the reformers were sure that they did not intend to place over against the authority in the Church a church without authority. This is what the Roman Catholics affirmed more than once; they asserted that the Reformation refused to acknowledge the authority in the Church. The reformers, however, were convinced that they wanted not the way of less authority, but specifically of more authority, of genuine authority, of an authority which was really the authority of Christ himself.

A church without authority is a pitiable thing, because in that case it is forgotten that the Church is not something of us (our church), but that the important thing in the world is the Church of Jesus Christ, which he governs by his Word and Spirit. For this reason the controversy with Rome is also of significance in any reflection on the body of Christ.

Even those who reject the Roman Catholic view of the Church are thereby not at the end of the road but at the beginning. This becomes fully clear in the New Testament, that the essence of the Church becomes visible only in subjection of the entire Church in all of its aspects to her only Lord.

This existence of the Church is by no means a matter of course, but a permanent calling to which the Church has to subject itself day by day. However important the activity of the Church in the world may be, this activity is legitimate only if, in faith and love and obedience, she remains subject to the authority of her Head, Jesus Christ, as the New Testament says.

The Church may never appeal to the fact of her existence in the world. When Calvin fought the battle of the Church he recognized the significance of the councils, but he also reminded us that Christ would be in our midst only if we are gathered in his name.

The Church may never regard it as a matter of course that she is a church; she must be constantly in subjection to the sacred norm which determines her being. There is no authority of the Church of such a kind that there is no higher appeal, and Calvin reminds us of the danger that the Church may forget her origin and norm. The apostle Paul also warns about this when he says that the Antichrist will set up his throne in the temple of God (2 Thess. 2:4).

The above is no haughty criticism of the Church and it is not the language of the individualist; it is rather a compassionate concern for the Church of Jesus Christ, that she may continue to understand that her only wealth and fullness is that she is the body of Christ, that she may bow her head in submission to her Lord.

The Belgic Confession speaks of this in Article XXIX, when it states that the true Church rejects all things which are contrary to the Word of God and that she regards Jesus Christ as her only Head.

This was not first of all criticism of others, of other churches, but a reminder of the Church’s own ecclesiastical life. In the relation between the churches of the New Testament there is no reason for pharisaism; it is rather that criticism, also of others, is possible and worth-while only if the Church (every church) has first of all applied to herself this sacred norm. Then, in the way of real submission, the Church will be a witness of Christ in the world. Then her own ecclesiastical life will serve as a constant reminder as to what the Church really is and ought to be.

And that is also the meaning of the responsibility of the Church in the world. It will be dark in the Church if she regards her life as an organization, which simply happens to exist and which has gained a place for herself in the world. And if the voice of the only Shepherd is no longer heard in the Church, how will the world understand this voice?

The New Testament contains many different names for the Church of Jesus Christ: the Temple of God, the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ. And many songs of praise are heard about the Church: “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17–19).

But this wealth and universality of the one Christian Church throughout the world (with all the saints) will become a reality and a witness in the world every day anew, only if the Church understands what her calling is and how she can fulfill that calling. And she will be able to fulfill this task only if she remembers from day to day the word of the apostle Paul, which, although not using the word church, embraces the essence and activity of the Church, when he writes: “casting down imaginations, and every high thing, that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

Here is the touchstone of the Church of all ages and under all circumstances. Here is also the answer to the question whether the Church will really be a blessing in the world, which needs most of all to hear the voice of the only Shepherd.

- More from G. C. Berkouwer

The kingdom of God is near.

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Pure In Heart

Beholding God

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University Confrontation

The Mission At Yale

A Week Of Decision

Preacher In The Red

Renewed Devotion

Memorial For Trotman

People: Words And Events

Union Approval

Religious Affiliations

Spreading The Word

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The Return To Doctrine

Dramatic Change

Neo-Orthodoxy And The Bible

Christ And The Scriptures

Immanence And Transcendence

Divine-Human Encounter

Sign Of Weakness

Task Of Christian Philosophy

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Adult Dereliction

Role Of Religion

A Greater Lack

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A Disturbing Contrast

The Finished Product

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The Need For A Clean Bible

Accuracy In Translation

Theological Accuracy

Consistency In Translation

Preserving The Familiar

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Literary Style

The Use Of “Thou”

Paraphrase Not Translation

Conjectural Readings

Changes Without Marginal Note

Poetical Arrangement

Minimizing Attitude

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The Vision Of Life

Puritan Influence

A People Of Lip Service

The Loss Of Balance

Shift Of Sovereigns

Distinctives In Peril

We Quote:

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