Europe News, March 4, 1957

Mission In Berlin

A lot of violent history has unfolded around the City Mission in Berlin, scheduled to celebrate its 80th anniversary this month with evangelistic services led by outstanding speakers.

The Mission was founded by Hofprediger Pastor D. Adolf Stoecker in 1877.

Pastor Wilhelm Brauer is now director of the Mission.

‘Without Parallel’

A lot of spiritual indifference has passed under the bridge in Norway, but a visitor can’t tell it these days.

Congregational visitation campaigns, patterned after American methods and described as “without parallel in Norwegian Church history,” are bringing new life to churches.

In Oslo, during one week, 1,200 church members visited 20,000 homes. In the district of Rogaland, about 40,000 homes were visited.

The motto—“Bring Christ to the people and the people to Christ.”

French Version

A guitar-strumming priest has become France’s version of Elvis Presley.

The Rev. Aime Duval’s latest album of records is a best seller and he will headline a show at the Gaumont Palace Cinema in Paris this month.

The priest sings gay hymns to catchy rhythm tunes used as dance music.

Deaths

The Rev. Dr. Clarence E. Macartney, 77, pastor emeritus of Pittsburgh’s First Presbyterian Church, noted author and contributing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY; February 20.

Mrs. William “Ma” Sunday, 88, widow of famed evangelist “Billy” Sunday, in Phoenix, Arizona, also on February 20.

Dr. John Elward Brown Sr., 77, founder of John Brown University at Siloam Springs, Ark.

Dr. Everett Carleton Herrick, 80, president emeritus of Andover Newton Theological School, Andover, Mass.

Books

Book Briefs: March 4, 1957

Useful Collection

The Ministry in Historical Perspectives, edited by H. Richard Niebuhr and Daniel D. Williams. Harper, New York, 1956. $5.00.

Making surveys is one of the most popular scholarly occupations of our day. It is a relatively painless way of educating not only the surveyed but the surveyor. Sometimes it is pointed at one, sometimes at the other, but usually both benefit if there is any organization at all in the undertaking.

The theological seminaries of the United States and Canada have recently been undergoing such a survey. It has been under the direction of the two editors of this present book and of James M. Gustafson. Some preliminary results appeared in a series of mimeographed bulletins and the final statements are now appearing in three books. The volume under review is the second of the three to appear. It has less to do directly with the survey than either of the other two but may prove, in the long run, to be the most useful of all. Judgment on that point must be reserved until the third appears and time has passed to note the effects. In any case, this volume is a real bonanza for anyone interested in the ministry and how it has reached its present state.

The editors of the volume are not among the contributors, most of whom are professors of church history in American theological schools. They include, in order, John Knox who deals with the ministry in the primitive church, George H. Williams who covers the ante-nicene and patristic periods, Roland H. Bainton for the middle ages and Wilhelm Pauck for the Reformation. Edward R. Hardy deals with modern priestly ministries, Winthrop S. Hudson with the Puritans and Sidney E. Mead and Robert Michaelsen with the American scene.

The post-apostolic age always leads to speculation on the actual course of events, since our sources of information are very limited and do not provide all the desired answers. Knox is a little bolder and more radical in this speculation than is necessary or, in fact, than is likely, in the light of what we do know, to represent the real state of affairs. For example, by considering the Pastoral epistles as non-Pauline and by holding the book of Acts to be “considerably later than Paul” (p. 20), he is able to discuss the offices of bishop, deacon and others at considerable length without introducing the subject of the presbyter or elder. The treatment of the latter follows in a separate section. This results in what seems to me to be a distortion of the picture. There are, however, great excellencies in the clarity of presentation and the use that is made of many of the sources.

The other periods are better provided with source material and the authors, therefore, are able to walk on surer ground. The attractiveness and vivid character of the style varies from contribution to contribution but taken as a whole they are a brilliant and most useful coliection. There is nothing else just like this and nothing as good as this at present available. Williams handles his material in masterly fashion. Bainton is not as technical but is marvellously evocative of the medieval situation. Pauck supplies much information not otherwise generally available concerning conditions at the time of the Reformation. Hardy is concerned to present the ideal as well as the actual. I am not sure that Hudson is quite up to his usual level though he gives a competent review of the Puritan period in England, but Mead has a splendid analysis of the distinctive American scene. It does not push the evidence too far, as Mead has sometimes done. Michaelsen’s characterization of the fundamentalist minister, unfortunately, is on the cheap side (pp. 258 f.).

Almost every institution and office can only be understood if its history is known. The contemporary ministry is no exception to this rule. This book could make some ministers twice as effective.

PAUL WOOLLEY

Facing Decay

The American Sex Revolution, by Pitirim A. Sorokin. Porter Sargent, Boston. $3.50.

Dr. Pitirim A. Sorokin is Chairman of the Department of Sociology of Harvard University and former President of the International Institute of Sociology. He is the author of some thirty books on sociology and is a recognized authority in his field. Thus speaks one who knows.

The thesis of The American Sex Revolution is so challenging and startling that it is well to know it is advanced by a capable authority and not by a religious reformer. Dr. Sorokin claims that the conclusions which he reaches in his American Sex Revolution are reinforced by his many works in sociology, to various ones of which he refers for the evidence to support different declarations. The deterioration of sex attitudes and mores in American life is another proof we are in the sensate state of culture, in a downward process that must be arrested by the sane leadership of this nation or our culture will go the way of that of ancient Egypt, of Greece and of Rome. The student who is familiar with Sorokin’s The Crisis of Our Age will follow the application of Sorokin’s cyclical view of history to morals in the American cultural pattern.

Birth, marriage and death are declared to be the most important events of an individual life and, as viewed by society, of more importance than other events because of the way they are hedged in by laws, mores and traditions. Of these three, marriage is by far the most important because it is the transition from the child to the wife-mother or to the husband-father. The family becomes the most important school for the child, it fulfills the creative urge in humanity, it secures immortality for the individual and the race and it satisfies the demand for fellowship. No illicit sexual relationship can do what the family relationship can do. Sex viewed in the responsible relationship of the family is a healthy and helpful experience, ennobled and beautified in the language of Sociologist Sorokin; but sex in extra-marital relationships or pre-marital relationships or without discipline and control is viewed as a crime, a sin and a symptom of degeneration. Recognizing this, Sorokin declares that a revolution is taking place in the American way of life pertaining to sex. He gives the evidence in the preponderant practice of pre-marital sex relationships and the increasing number of extra-marital sex relations that are resulting in divorce, desertion, orphanaging of millions of children, illegitimate children, abortions, the skyrocketing of the sale of contraceptives and the resultant physical and mental diseases. The statistics presented by Professor Sorokin are impressive. It is his belief that sex promiscuity leads to sex addiction, that such addiction is encouraged by sex reaching its saturation point in pulp magazines, in realistic novels, in the entertainment field of the legitimate stage, the movies and television, in newspapers, in bathing beauty contests, in advertising of every article of life, in present legal practices and enactments and even in science. This, joined with the weakening of taboos on promiscuity in sex by religious, legal and social authorities, has resulted in the present revolution.

Professor Sorokin boldly proclaims that this revolution is having its effect upon the deterioration of physical health of our nation, the increase of mental tensions and derangements, the reduction of creativity, the interference with longevity, the breakup of integrity and the destruction of happiness. He shows that mental illnesses increase proportionately with the sex freedoms. This sex freedom produces tension in the life of the individual in his relationship to his spouse, or to the relatives of the person with whom he has had relations, and with society. These tensions tend to increase and have a disintegrating effect upon society itself.

Out of his vast knowledge of and familiarity with the history of past civilizations, Professor Sorokin demonstrates that the same process took place in the old kingdom and middle kingdom of Egypt, in the change from a strict and puritanical family life to one of freedom, to one of license. He believes that the rigorous restraints upon sex in the family life of the puritanical period result in a creative burst of life. Simultaneous with the creative burst of life the restraints are released, then within two generations they become license, and the culture begins to deteriorate. Proof is also adduced from the history of Greece, of Rome, of Italy and of modern Europe. Sorokin believes that America has passed through this cycle of continence, of creativity, of freedom, of looseness and is now facing decay. He believes that inevitable doom awaits this nation without a moral regeneration in the form of sex continence. To assist the transition from sex anarchy to sex order, he advocates the practice of total love, in pre-marital relations, in courtship and in marriage. Sex-love is only a small part of the total love of human beings. Sorokin challenges present leadership to change society by changing persons, changing practices of our culture and changing institutions.

Here is a magnificent negative preparation for the Christian Gospel standard of morals, teaching on sex and transformation by the power of God. Professor Sorokin has done America a great service to analyze the trend of our present society, to raise warning signals and to summon the nation back to standards of purity. Christians will rejoice in the thesis of the book and will agree, at least 95%, with the book which is not particularly written from a Christian standpoint.

HAROLD JOHN OCKENGA

Social Implications

All Ye That Labor, by Lester De Koster. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids. $1.50.

This book, which bears the subtitle, “An Essay on Christianity, Communism and the Problem of Evil,” contrasts the approach of Christianity with that of communism, as religions, to the problem of social evil. It compares in a delightfully effective way the explanations these two systems offer to the existence of an imperfect world, effectively criticizing the explanation of Communism.

All Ye That Labor is the first of a series of monographs, called Pathway Books, which Eerdmans intends to issue on important subjects within the general province of the Christian faith. From Authority to Archaeology, the Pathway series will offer the best available evangelical thought on questions of current religious interest. If the others compare favorably with this first volume, the series will be a valuable one.

The author takes his departure from the assumption that Western man has surrendered his dreams of utopia and is once again engaged in a quest for an explanation of the malignancy he recognizes in society. Point by point he contrasts Communism’s affirmation that man will inevitably save himself with Christianity’s supreme affirmation that God can save man. He finds that Marx’s insights (for instance, that society is sick, a conclusion reached during a period of universal optimism) do not necessarily validate the conclusions drawn therefrom. He establishes, in telling fashion, that man, nature and God are not what Marx thought them to be and that evil is not simply the result of ignorance and of ancestry, inevitably destined to disappear in a classless society.

The author defends but does not worship Capitalism. He acknowledges that Capitalism produces social evil, but he insists that the source of the evil is not in the system but in human sin. This is a profound insight frequently missed by critics who assume that the problem may always he found in the system itself and who look for the evils of Capitalism in its premises rather than in man. On the other hand, argues the author. Communism is wrong as a system, and in the hands of sinful man the evil is compounded. Capitalism is based upon premises that are essentially good and benevolent. It produces evil only as human greed and selfishness add their corrupting influence to a philosophy which otherwise would offer freedom and defend the individual without destroying natural differences.

This book, despite its economic theme, is a masterful apology for the Christian view of man, sin and salvation. It also constitutes a strong argument for the fact that Christianity has social implications. The author’s insights are frequently profound. They are generally phrased in simple and delightful language.

Untreated, however, are at least two important considerations. The first, how human greed and selfishness form the dynamic of Communism instead of an impersonal dialectical materialism. The author declares that Communism’s dynamic is demonic, but he doesn’t point out how this dynamic is, in action, man’s selfish search to improve himself at the expense of those who allegedly exploit him. Secondly, the book says nothing of the relation (if any) of Democracy to either of the systems discussed. Most Americans, at any rate, assume that some form of Democracy inevitably complements Capitalism. At least a statement affirming or denying this assumption would have been helpful.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Strong Meat

Red Dragon Over China, by Harold H. Martinson. Augsburg, Minneapolis, 1956. $3.50.

This is a book which should not be read by those who would like to ignore or forget the political ineptness or worse, that permitted China to fall into the Communist Camp. Nor should it be read by those who contend that the unrepentance of sins and atrocities of communism should be overlooked. This book is strong meat. It revolts because it is true. It depresses because it gives the downward course of a great and once friendly nation and tells of the agonies of her people after their “liberation.”

The author was born in China and after receiving his education in America returned to the land of his birth as a Christian missionary. He is not a fanatic but an honest reporter of facts. He does not write of his opinions but of tragic happenings. He writes with care and documents his statements with a generous bibliography.

Mr. Martensen states in his preface: “This book is presented to the public more from a sense of duty than from a sense of choice. Having witnessed at close hand the workings of communism, I feel constrained as a Christian to inform, to warn, to arouse as many as possible against this terrifying blight.”

“In all my research I have not come across a single satisfactory survey of the rise of communism in China.”

With a thoroughness and a clarity that satisfies even though the details are so utterly depressing, the author proceeds to give a running account of communism’s take-over of China. After the establishing of the red regime he proceeds to give case histories in a chronological order of repressions, brain washings and wholesale murder.

One pathetic illustration is an actual photograph of a great throng of people kneeling just prior to their execution. Their one crime was that they had owned a little land.

Here in the peace and quiet of America there is danger of being lulled into a feeling of security, or of feeling that the evil days and ways of the communists have passed. That we have been spared the horrors of war and wholesale atrocities is soon forgotten.

Red Dragon Over China brings one back with a jerk. We see communism for what it was when China was lost to the free world. We see it as it is today. This book should be read by politicians, by church leaders and by any misguided Americans who feel that one can do business with either the system or the adherents of communism.

L. NELSON BELL

Enough Of Barth

Christ and the Conscience, by N. H. G. Robinson, D.Litt., Professor of Systematic Theology, University of St. Andrews, Nisbet & Co. London.

The purpose of this book is difficult to define. The author has quite clear views of his own, and it would have been most welcome to his readers if he had expounded these positively and constructively. Instead of this valuable exposition the reader is supplied with yet another book on Barth. Interesting and stimulating though Barth is, have we not enough of him? The present reviewer would much rather be reading Dr. Robinson in Dr. Robinson’s book. Barth, Brunner and Niebuhr are all weighed in the balances by our author and found wanting! Dr. P. T. Forsyth is shown on this occasion, as on many others, to have been a fore-runner of Barth’s spiritual emphasis but at the same time to have been far more scriptural and certainly far less paradoxical.

The author’s main concern is to draw attention to the absence of the truly ethical element in Barthianism. He contends that theology must take within its sphere not only the setting forth of the truth about the Divine communication of revelation, but also those truths which belong to man’s reception of that revelation. “Theology cannot escape the responsibility of considering the response to revelation as well as the revelation itself.”

Dr. Robinson does not like Barth’s contention that “the response of faith is utterly given” as a kind of creatio ex nihilo. Dr. Robinson argues rightly that Barthianism is evangelically deficient in that it either pays no heed to the realm of man’s moral action or even violates its sanctity. He writes, “Underlying the movement way from Barth by those closest to him there is at bottom … a desire and a search for a more ethical evangelical theology, and theological presentation of the Gospel which does not violate, not indeed the moral realm to which the Gospel is sent, but the larger moral realm to which it belongs, the realm of God’s grace summoning man to salvation.”

Dr. Robinson’s work is valuable in its avowed “preliminary but indispensable task” of defining and defending the standpoint of ethico-evangelical theology. May it be hoped that, the preliminaries being completed, the author will proceed with the development of his own contribution.

ERNEST F. KEVAN

The Good Life

Christian Personal Ethics, by Carl F. H. Henry. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1957. $6.95.

This book is an important contribution to the literature of moral philosophy, and especially to formulations from the point of view of religious faith as it is affirmed in the Bible. It includes an extensive and thorough exposition of systems of speculative moral philosophies together with a penetrating evaluation of their merits and their inadequacies. It argues that “the impotence and sterility of speculative ethics derive largely from a self-enforced segregation from the ethics of revelation.”

The fairness with which the author states philosophies is one of the praiseworthy features of this fine book. Another such feature is the clarity of its style and the consistency of its thesis that “ethical ideas underlie the whole” of the Bible and “are capable of systematic presentation.” The author of this book has indeed achieved such a systematization in an admirable and convincing manner.

This book is a scholarly, yet easily understood argument in support of the conviction that “Christian ethics is the ethics of … redemptive religion.” It should be included in the small but indispensable library of ministers, theological students and college students who are interested in studies of religion and in philosophies of religion. This book is strongly recommended for courses in Christian ethics.

BEN KIMPEL

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: March 04, 1957

G. C. Berkouwer

In the year 1956 at the 70th anniversary of the famous Swiss theologian Karl Barth, many theologians published articles on the significance of the theology of Barth. That was to be expected, since Barth since 1920 has dominated the field of dogmatic theology in several countries.

Barth started the dialectical theology as the theology of the Word of God together with Thurneyson, Brunner and Bultmann. In 1933 came a deep split in the dialectical movement. Since that time we see divergences between Barth and Brunner, Barth and Bultmann, and so on. Only Thurneyson and Barth have remained theological friends from the beginning.

Barth’s largest work is his Kirchliche Dogmatik, now published in ten big volumes. The work is not yet finished. We still expect, if he will have the opportunity to finish it, two parts of volume IV (reconciliation) and the last volume on the eschatological theme.

In 1956 was published a book of 960 pages, wholly devoted to articles on the person or the work of Barth. The authors were theologians and philosophers from many countries and continents. Several important articles dealt with the doctrine of the image of God in Barth’s theology, his doctrine of preaching, Barth and the Heidelberg Catechism, the laughing Barth, Barth and the Roman Catholic Church and the relation between Gospel and Law. This latter theme does not surprise us in this work, because in recent years this relation has become more and more the central theme in Barth’s own theology. There was criticism exactly on this point from the Lutherans, because Barth talked of the law as the form of the Gospel and was attacked on this point that he had no real and important place for the specific significance of the law. Important also is the article of his friend Thurneyson, who wrote together with him the famous commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Romans in the beginning of the dialectical theology in 1918. Thurneyson writes on the contacts and correspondance between him and Barth in that first time. This was an important article as far as orientation is concerned on the origins of this movement.

It will be interesting for American readers to hear that in this book there is also an article from the pen of Emilio E. Castra on the theological situation in South America and on the theology of Barth. He mentions especially the controversy with Rome and the contradiction between fundamentalism and modernism. It might be interesting to write afterwards more broadly on this article, since not everybody will have the opportunity to read this book of nearly 1000 pages!

The last article I mention is from Gempo Hoshino on the relation of Buddhistic thinking and the theology of Barth. Many readers will be surprised by it. Is there any relation between Christianity and Buddhism? The writer tells us of a large influence of Barth’s ideas in the scientific circles of the largest Buddhistic sect in Japan and he tries to analyze the problem of the point of contract. I don’t know if Barth will be happy with this article; the comparison is, as far as I can see, rather superficial.

Besides this big book several other articles also appeared in connection with Barth’s anniversary. In England was published a book, Studies in Christology. It is not a book on Barth’s theology. But when they gave it to Barth on his visit to England last year, he said that it was the theme he judged the most important. Everybody who reads Barth’s book knows how strong the Christological impact has become on Barth’s theological thinking.

In Switzerland the Theologische Zeitschrift (Basel) devoted two numbers in honor of Barth. Some of the articles handle a special theme of Barth’s theology, the sovereignty of God. Especially important, although it does not concern Barth immediately is the article of Oscar Cullmann, Professor in New Testament in Basel and a colleague of Barth on a very important subject: the of the soul and the resurr dead in the witness of the New Testament. This is a theme discussed in the Western European theology of the last 30 years, especially in connection with the question whether the immortality of the soul is a product of Greek thinking or belongs to the New Testament witness. I have the impression that after a long period of criticism of the doctrine of the intermediate state we are now on the way to rethinking this problem. And the remarkable thing is that this is not originating from an egotistical motive (our human importance) but from the message of the New Testament according to the blessed hope, of which the New Testament is speaking. It will be extremely interesting to follow the discussions when Barth, in his fifth volume, will handle the problems of eschatology. That does not mean that we do not know anything about Barth’s views on eschatology. In my book, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, I tried to analyze the eschatological triumph in Barth’s thinking. I know—not only from his books but also from personal encounter—how important he estimates the problems of his last volume to be. They are not only important for theologians but for the whole church of Christ. If there is any point where the discussions of theology touch the church in her faith, it is surely the expectation of the Church, the character of the Christian hope.

The discussions of theology are not to dominate the church. Surely theologians do not have a special privilege for entrance into the kingdom. They also have to listen to the word of the Lord: “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes,” (Matthew 11:25). But they are not excluded either if they want to serve the Church of Jesus Christ. In that service, everything becomes important, even difficult problems coming up not out of the depth of our autonomous thinking but out of the unfathomable depth of the word of the Lord.

This review of live spiritual and moral issues debated in the secular and religious press of the day is prepared successively for CHRISTIANITY TODAY by four evangelical scholars: the Rev. Phillip Hughes of England, Prof. William Mueller of the United States, Prof. G. C. Berkouwer of the Netherlands, and Prof. John H. Gerstner of the United States.—ED.

- More from G. C. Berkouwer

Cover Story

Liberalism as a Mirror of a Secular Invasion

Andrew K. Rule

When Adolph Harnack based his interpretation of Christian history upon the principle that the Gospel, in any time and place, must have a “contemporary integument,” his principle was sound though his application of it was faulty. Without taking on the thought forms and the language forms and some other forms, from the contemporary culture, the Gospel could not be apprehended by the preacher or by his hearers. The difficulty and danger are that these forms were created for, and normally express, a culture that did not have Christianity as a formative influence within it and, as it stands at the time, may be quite antithetical to Christianity. For example, in the first century the Gospel had to be expressed in popular Greek—a language which somewhat perpetuated the pagan culture of classical Greece and which at that time embodied the pagan culture of the Mediterranean basin. But it had to be made to express Christian meanings. The results show that the New Testament writers achieved amazing success. Not so, however, the Alexandrian theologians. And Nygren’s study, Agape and Eros, shows clearly that the problem persisted. Taking on the contemporary integument means, in practice, that either the Gospel will be accommodated to the contemporary culture and lose its distinctive significance or the culture will be baptized into the spirit of the Gospel or there will be a mutual accommodation. Whenever a Christian seeks to proclaim his faith, he and his hearers are faced with this problem and exposed to these hazards; for both he and his hearers must put the same Christian meaning into the borrowed forms or no real communication will result.

The thesis of this paper is that nineteenth-century liberalism was, on the whole, an earnest attempt to express the Gospel in terms of one strand in the European and American culture of that era; that the culture of that strand was a naturalistic humanism; and that in spite of the sincerity and the ability of the creators of that form of liberalism, the authentic Gospel was finally submerged by the naturalism.

It is sometimes stated quite sweepingly that the culture of the nineteenth century was secularistic, and that it was this culture which invaded Christian theology. In view of the character of the missionary movement for which this century should always be famous; in view of the revival of the Roman Catholic Church and of its increasingly conservative spirit; in view of the continuing evangelical revival within Protestantism; and in view of the highly cultured and scholarly resistance to liberalism among the Protestants; in view further of the faith of rank and file Christians, confused but not captured by liberal propaganda—in view of such facts as these it is not true to say that nineteenth-century culture was secularistic. But nineteenth-century liberalism was an attempt to appeal to the culture of certain highly vocal people, the “intelligentsia”; and their culture was secularistic. We are not condemning that attempt. What Christian dare say that none of them may be included among the elect, and that we need make no serious attempt to win them for him? However, they must be won for him. Their culture must not be dressed, essentially unchanged in vague, Christian-sounding terms and the result be offered to the world as “progressive Christianity.” The latter, unfortunately, is what happened. Read, in this connection, Nathaniel Micklem’s article, in an early issue Christendom (Vol. I, No. 5, Autumn, 1936) on “The Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion.”

Decline Of True Liberalism

We have been using the qualifying term “nineteenth century” as a not very precise way of indicating that it is not liberalism as such that we have in mind. Since “His service is perfect freedom,” we would contend that authentic Christianity is true liberalism, and we are heartily in favor of it. Indeed, our objection to “nineteenth-century liberalism” is that it is not really liberalism all but abject and soul-endangering slavery to an alien philosophy.

But it is one thing to say that it was not really liberalism; it is a very different thing to say precisely what it was. For example, one of the spokesmen for the movement, (D. S. Robinson, in his The God of the Liberal Christian) begins by assuring us, as many another did, that liberalism or progressive Christianity is not a body of doctrine but a method and a spirit; but then he proceeds to give a fairly definite statement, doctrine after doctrine, of central-trend liberalism in its distinction from the liberalism of the social theologians. That would seem to suggest that liberalism was more than a method and a spirit; it was also a coherent body of doctrine. But, if so, what can be made of the following facts? Schweitzer, at least in his The Quest of the Historical Jesus, apparently reserved the term “liberal” for the doctrines of Harnack. Others would characterize Schweitzer’s own views as liberal. In their conceptions of the historical Jesus, at least, these gentlemen flatly contradict one another. And that is fairly typical.

What, then, was liberalism? Was it a body of doctrine to which “all competent scholars agree”? Or was it a method and a spirit without any necessary agreement as to doctrine? Or was there some minimum of doctrine essential to it? If so, what? In answer, perhaps one could do no better than follow the late Dean Willard Sperry. In his little book, Yes, But—the Bankruptcy of Apologetics, addressing his fellow liberals, he maintained that authentic liberalism, wherever you find it, sacred or secular, has a brief creed, the first article of which is “I believe in man.” By calling it the first article, he means that it is the controlling article. Any other article in the creed is either derived from it or held only in harmony with it. But that certainly means that liberalism is always humanistic, and that the humanism, even if it goes on to include a belief in God, is first and basically naturalistic. There you have our thesis in a nutshell.

Humanism At The Crossroads

A thoughtful Christian surely will not object to a certain kind of humanism, in the right place. The fact is that the Reformation did for man exactly what the humanists wanted done. For it discovered or rediscovered the value and dignity of the individual; and it presented man in nobler colors, based more firmly, than humanism ever was able to do. But it did so indirectly, not directly. It did not vaunt man’s inherent qualities and his superiority to the natural creation, though it did not ignore or minimize them either. The humanists did, and that way lies soul-destroying pride. The Reformation saw the glory of man in the gracious purpose of God—a much greater glory, which nevertheless cultivates the virtues of gratitude and humility. Thus, what Dr. Sperry tells us that liberalism essentially does is precisely what authentic Christianity refuses to do. Indeed, that is, for it, the essence of sin.

According to authentic Christianity, God made man, because he is love, to live and grow in filial dependence upon God; and he equipped man with those qualities in which the liberals found man’s greatness to consist in order that man might be capable of such a relation to God. Man’s whole life was to be “begun, continued and ended” in God. Sin is man’s prideful effort to realize his potentialities in his own way, in dependence upon himself alone. If God is permitted to enter the picture at all, it will be only upon man’s terms, to do what man thinks his right but not within his power. In short, “I believe in man” is the first article of the operative creed of the sinner. But, according to Dr. Sperry, “I believe in man” was the first article of the liberal creed. To such an extent had the spirit of a sinful, secular culture invaded the thinking of men who regarded themselves as Christian.

Theological Road To Pride

But, let it be clearly noted that we are here characterizing a theological expression. We are not bringing any charge of immorality and sin against the persons who adopted and advocated this theological expression. As far as any human being is capable of judging in such matters, we would gladly insist that these men were no more immoral or sinful than the rest of us. We earlier recorded our judgment that they were sincere and highly capable. How then, it may be asked, did such men come sincerely to adopt a theological expression that constitutes sin and that logically generates pride? In answer, we would draw attention to two things—the peculiar character of nineteenth-century life and thought and the way in which naturalism crept up on the theologians gradually and unsuspected.

The life and thought of the nineteenth century were like the life of a tropical jungle, teeming but chaotic. Before men had a chance to orient their thinking and conduct to one new idea or invention, a dozen others came leaping upon them. The constant and increasing overstimulation might have caused resignation or frustration, and it probably did in many cases; but in many others awakened an unbridled enthusiasm for the new and sensational. One thing it did not foster. It did not encourage men to take time to make a calm and balanced evaluation of their attainment and direction. We have seen how liberals could flatly contradict one another. In that burgeoning century, individuals could flatly contradict themselves, and apparently be blissfully unaware of the fact. It would be ungenerous and presumptuous to deny the genuine Christian status of all of these liberals, yet their thinking certainly was seriously out of harmony with Christian truth.

A Creeping Naturalism

And naturalism crept up on them gradually, without their suspecting its true character. When Justin Wroe Nixon, in 1925, drew the attention of his brethren to the real character of the principles upon which they had been building, they reacted with horror and dismay; and the contemporary era came upon American theological thought. For they then saw that their principles led to pure naturalism. Why had they not seen that previously? It had overtaken the movement gradually. How it proceeded in every area may be seen by studying as an example the way in which it penetrated Christology; and Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historcial Jesus will picture that for us with sufficient accuracy and vividness. It began, as he shows us, as an ill-defined discomfort with regard to particular supernatural actions attributed in the Gospels to our Lord and as an effort to suggest a natural explanation. The rationalists tried that in one way; Strauss tried it in another. By the time of Schleiermacher, this naturalism had become a highly skillful dialectic, which might almost have been expressly designed to conceal from the reader just what that great thinker did believe about the miracles. In Harnack, Jesus was forced within the limits of human genius, and “miracles do not occur.” Most of the liberals went approximately as far as that; but they did not go along with the spate of volumes that presently presumed to diagnose the mental ill health of the man named Jesus. What had happened was that, in that century of rich confusion, the desire of Christian scholars to get away from the woodenness of eighteenth-century theology and to make Christianity appeal to contemporary thinkers opened the way for an alien “camel” to get its nose into the Christian tent. That camel, the naturalistic humanism of contemporary university life, pushed itself further and further in, always most graciously and plausibly, until finally the owner of the tent was outside in the storm without ever discovering, until it was too late, what was happening to him. When that discovery was finally made, in the second decade of the present century, a new theological era was upon us. Liberalism was, indeed, a mirror of the secular invasion of a Christian country.

A native of Australia, Professor Rule has an international education: M.A., University of New Zealand; B.D., Princeton Theological Seminary; Ph.D., University of Edinburgh. Since 1927 he has served as Professor of Church History and Apologetics at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary.

- More from Andrew K. Rule

Cover Story

Peter’s Confession

R. V. G. Tasker

MATTHEW 16:13–17

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them “But who do you say that I am?” Simon replied “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him “Blessed art thou Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven.”

When a great personality appears on the stage of history, the opinions about him held by his contemporaries are often diverse. It is certainly true that the views held about Jesus of Nazareth by the men and women of his generation differed widely. All of them, rabbis and rulers, priests and peasants, were agreed that here was an astonishing person; but only a very few could say with truth as well as conviction who and what manner of man he really was. Some, to be sure, imagined that they had found the clue to the understanding of him; but for the most part their attempted explanations were at best inadequate and at worst little more than the products of ignorance and prejudice.

Verdict Of Contemporaries

Those who disliked him most, the scribes and the Pharisees, forced as they were by the evidence to recognize his supernatural power, concluded that he was a dangerous sorcerer in league with the prince of devils, regardless of the lack of logic such a verdict involved; for how could Satan cast out Satan? On the other hand, the ordinary folk among whom his early life had been spent, baffled by the mystery of his person and behavior, dismissed him as abnormal and eccentric. “He is beside himself,” they said. Moreover those of a more jealous nature could not forget that he belonged to their own level of society. “This is the carpenter’s son,” they complained, “whose father and mother we know”; and the implication was that he was obsessed by an exaggerated idea of his own importance. Whatever the views men came to hold about him, one thing was certain; here was a man who made others conscious of the impact of his personality and compelled them to attempt some answer to the question “Who do you say that I am?”

Jesus was no doubt aware of much that was being said about him; but one day when he was alone with his disciples in the district of Caesarea Philippi, when they were free from the danger of interference from the partisans of Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, at a time in his ministry when he was anxious (if they were at all ready to receive it) to tell them about the necessity for his own submission in the near future to a criminal’s death, he felt constrained to question them about what men were saying of him. What in fact was the gossip they had heard about him in the synagogues, the bazaars and the country towns of Galilee? And in reply they gave him three specimen answers, typical no doubt of the more thoughtful and less superficial views that were current. “Some are saying,” they answered, “that you are John the Baptist risen from the dead; others that you are a second Elijah; and others that you are another Jeremiah.” All three suggestions had two things at least in common. They all identified Jesus with a figure of the past instead of acknowledging him as unique, someone whose like had never been seen in this world. And they contained dangerous and misleading half-truths; for, though Jesus possessed some of the characteristics of each of these three great men, he transcended them all.

Greater Than The Baptist

But, we naturally ask, why should some of his contemporaries ever have imagined that Jesus was the martyred John the Baptist returned to life? We cannot be sure of the answer. We only know that John made a very deep impression upon his fellow countrymen when he first appeared in the desert of Judea. People flocked to hear him, and all sorts of people responded when he called upon them to repent and return to the Lord their God, in view of the impending judgment. Soldiers, tax collectors and many others came to him for practical advice as to how they ought to conduct their lives in this critical time of waiting. John, moreover, in true prophetic tradition, had boldly rebuked vice even when he found it in royal circles and rebuked it with such effect that Herod, who had somewhat reluctantly given the order for his execution, never forgot the impression that this martyred prophet had made upon him. When subsequently news reached him of what Jesus was doing, he was ready enough to believe the rumor that Jesus was John, the troubler of his conscience and the disturber of his dreams, restored to life. “This is John the Baptist,” he said to his servants, “he has been raised from the dead; this is why these powers are at work in him.”

There was, it is true, some likeness between John and Jesus. Both were children of the divine wisdom. Both had vital parts to play in the working out of God’s plan for man’s salvation. But the difference was far greater. Many, who knew both men better than Herod did, had been quick to observe this difference both in their behavior and in the way they exercised their ministry. John, they noticed, lived an ascetic life typical of the holy man of the east; Jesus came, as they put it, “eating and drinking.” John moreover ministered away from the haunts of sinners, Jesus was known as “the friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Jesus to be sure repeated, with equal emphasis, John’s call to repentance, but he also did what John could never do. John could prepare men to receive the reign of God in their hearts, but he could not enable them to receive it. He stood on the threshold of the kingdom of God: Jesus was the door alone through whom men could enter the kingdom. The truth was that sinful men and women had need of a Saviour, himself human and divine, who could make atonement for their sin, as no ordinary man however pious could ever make it and restore them to fellowship with the all-holy God—and that Saviour John could never be. Some said “John the Baptist”—but they were wrong.

Greater Than Elijah

But others were saying, “Jesus is another Elijah.” It is perhaps less difficult to understand how this identification should ever have arisen; for Elijah had come to occupy a unique position in Jewish thought. As the earliest of the great prophets of Israel, his name had become representative of the entire prophetic revelation, just as Moses represented the entire revelation embodied in the sacred law. The blows that Elijah had struck for true religion at a most critical period in Israel’s history were both mighty and decisive. He had been indeed “the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof” glorified in his mighty deeds; and according to biblical tradition he was translated to heaven without experiencing death. So wonderful did the achievements of Elijah seem to subsequent generations that he was regarded as more than human; so much so that James (as we read in the Epistle in the New Testament which bears his name) when he wished to hold up Elijah as a supreme example of what a man of prayer can effect, had to remind his readers that Elijah was in fact no demigod or superman, whose example they could not be expected to follow but a man of like nature with themselves.

There are real parallels between Elijah and Jesus. Both were men of prayer; both performed supernatural works of healing; and both waged triumphant war against false religion. But the victories of Elijah were won by physical force, while the victory of Jesus was won not by shedding the blood of others but by allowing his own blood to be shed. One day his impetuous disciples requested him to command fire to come down from heaven, as Elijah did, and consume the inhabitants of a Samaritan village that had refused him entrance. But the answer of the Master came swift and sure: “Ye know not of what spirit you are. The Son of Man came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

Elijah, moreover, wavered in his vocation, but Jesus set himself consistently and steadfastly to accomplish the work he had come into the world to do. Single-handed, Elijah defied 850 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel; but a little later we find him cowering in a cave at Mount Horeb, crushed by a sense of futility and failure, a victim of an almost suicidal self-pity, wincing at the thought of his own spiritual isolation and requesting, even though his work was unfinished, that he might die. Jesus, on the other hand, learned not self-pity but obedience through the things he suffered. He was faithful to him who had appointed him, faithful even unto death. He endured to the end, despising the shame. Some said “Elijah”—but they too were wrong.

Greater Than Jeremiah

But others were saying, “Jesus is another Jeremiah.” This estimate was perhaps nearer the truth than the other two. For of all the historical characters of the Old Testament Jeremiah approximates most closely to Jesus himself as an outstanding example of patient endurance of undeserved suffering. He was known to subsequent generations of Jews as “the prophet”; and they looked back to him for inspiration and courage in their own trials and persecutions. This hypersensitive, warm-hearted patriot, commissioned by God to proclaim a succession of divine messages to his countrymen that were unpopular because they were of necessity pessimistic, who was so sympathetic with others in their sufferings, was himself beaten, put in the stocks, imprisoned in a dungeon and thrown into a cistern by the very men he gladly would have saved, had that been possible, from the doom that awaited them. Surely this weeping prophet, whose eyes ran down with tears day and night for the sins of his people, was indeed akin to the divine Man of Sorrows, who, on a spring morning over five hundred years later, wept over the faithless city of the children of his people, the city outside whose walls within a week he himself was destined to be crucified.

But for all the nobility of his character, Jeremiah remained a prophet and no more. He foretold the new covenant, by which men with their sins forgiven would be given a direct knowledge of God, but neither he nor any prophet like him could ever bring it into being. For all his sympathy and patience he was not good enough, as Jesus was good enough, to pay the price of sin, by allowing his own blood to be shed in the only perfect sacrifice by which the way was opened for sinners to draw nigh boldly unto the throne of grace.

Some said “Jeremiah”—but they too were wrong.

Verdict Of Disciples

What then did Jesus’ own disciples think about him? The answer they would give was of vital importance. For if their estimate of their master had not risen to a higher level than the answers of their contemporaries, he could never have gone on to teach them the most vital truth that they had to learn. Men may do many things for other men. They may die for other men as so many in our own lifetime have done. But no man may deliver his brother from the penalty of human sin or make atonement to God for him: that was precisely what Jesus had come to do. And it was the fact that he was divine as well as human that alone could give infinite value to all that he was to suffer as man on behalf of men. Simon Peter’s answer to the great question, however, did not disappoint him who had asked it. However slow and even unwilling Peter was to prove in accepting the further truth that Jesus was now to unfold to them about the necessity for his death, his confession at least showed that he understood one thing very clearly. The age of prophecy was over because the hour of fulfillment had come. Peter knew there was no need for another John the Baptist, another Elijah or another Jeremiah, because he to whom all these prophets had been pointing was standing there before him. He knew that Jesus was not just another in the long line of prophets to whom the living God had spoken in many and various ways in the past but the Son of the living God who knew, as only such a Son could know, the mind and purposes of his father. And because his Master was the Son of the living God Peter knew that he need not—nay he could not—look elsewhere for salvation. “Lord to whom shall we go?” he said to him on another occasion when some were turning away from him; “Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

Christ The Son

This great confession of Simon Peter (as the last part of our text reminds us) was no wild leap in the dark: he did not make it on the spur of the moment as if “stung by the splendor of a sudden thought.” Nor was he voicing at second-hand an opinion learned from some other human being. Flesh and blood, as Jesus told him, had not revealed it unto him. On the contrary, ever since that day when he first stood before Jesus and felt compelled to say, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” and yet in spite of that reluctance had found himself irresistibly led to respond to Jesus’ call and leave his nets and follow him—during all the time that he had witnessed his master’s mighty works and listened to the words of eternal life that fell daily from his lips, the living God, the God who acts and intervenes in the affairs of men, had been leading him to see that Jesus was indeed his Son—his Christ or anointed one, anointed to bring the Gospel of salvation to sinners. In consequence, there was only one answer that Peter could make. It was: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

And Jesus pronounced him blessed, just because his heavenly Father and no one else had made this confession possible. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

And the way by which Peter was led to make this confession is always the way by which men are led to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God. No man is even led to this faith solely as the result of human reasoning or solely through the example of others or solely through hearing the Gospel preached. All or any of these things may play, and do play, a vital part in the process by which men are brought to Christ. But unless the Spirit of the living God is at work in the human heart, the deductions of reason, however convincing, will not lead to a life of active discipleship; the example of others, however inspiring, will have but a temporary influence; and the message of the Gospel, however faithfully proclaimed, will fall on soil where it takes no permanent root. Only the Holy Spirit can take of the things of Jesus and so reveal them to us that we are led to make with Peter the great confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

So may I put to you the question that Jesus put to Simon Peter: “Who do you say that I am?” It may be that you have tried to answer it in the past, but that your answer has not risen much higher than the answer given by so many of Jesus’ contemporaries. It may be that to you, as to them, Jesus may have been just one more, even though perhaps the greatest, of the prophets. But it may also be that the Holy Spirit of God is leading you to a fuller confession of faith. And it is certain that if you listen to his voice, you will be able to say what only a Christian can say: “The life I now live I live in faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me” and you will be counted among those blessed ones, who, though they have not seen Jesus as Peter was privileged to see him, yet have believed.

For twenty years the Rev. R. V. G. Tasker, M.A., B.D., has served King’s College, University of London, as Professor of New Testament Exegesis. The sermon printed here was preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London.

- More from R. V. G. Tasker

Cover Story

Faith and Reason

Gordon H. Clark

Part 1

[Part II is here]

According to many Protestant writers, Roman Catholicism is seriously mistaken in making faith a mere intellectual assent to certain dogmas. Faith, true faith in Christ, these writers say, is a personal trust rather than a cold intellectual belief. On the other side, the Catholic Encyclopedia (in loc. cit., p. 752, 1913 ed.) states “Non-Catholic writers have repudiated all idea of faith as intellectual assent.” The truth of the matter, however, seems to be more complicated than these brief characterizations suggest.

These complications include the uncritical assumption that personality should be divided into intellect, will and emotion rather than into id, ego and superego. Granted, the Freudian division may have an evil odor, but its very recognition of an evil nature in man could be closer to the biblical view than the other division allows. For the older division is not self-evidently scriptural. At any rate, those who use it often assume that intellect, will and emotion may be equated with specific biblical terms, when a study of the Bible shows that this is not so.

The Head And The Heart

The key term of biblical psychology, particularly in the Old Testament where the fundamental principles are laid down, is the term heart. When contemporary Christians, often in evangelistic preaching, contrast the head and the heart, they are in effect equating the heart with the emotions. Such an antithesis between head and heart is nowhere found in Scripture. In the Psalms and the Prophets the heart designates the focus of personal life. It is the organ of conscience, of self-knowledge, indeed of all knowledge. One may very well say that the Hebrew heart is the equivalent of the English word self.

To understand Old Testament usage, consider the following few examples.

Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually … (Gen. 6:5).

Then Abraham … said in his heart, Shall a child be born … (Gen. 17:17).

In the integrity of thy heart thou hast done this … (Gen. 20:6).

My heart exulteth in Jehovah … (1 Sam. 2:1).

Commune with your own heart (Psalm 4:4).

God, who saveth the upright in heart (Psalm 7:10).

They speak falsehood … and with a double heart do they speak (Psalm 12:2).

The fool hath said in his heart … (Psa. 14:1).

He … speaketh truth in his heart (Psalm 15:2).

Lest they … understand with their heart (Isa. 6:10).

Neither doth his heart think so (Isa. 10:7).

He hath shut … their hearts that they cannot understand. And none calleth to mind [heart], neither is there knowledge nor understanding (Isa. 44:18, 19).

As there are somewhat over 750 occurrences of the word heart in the Old Testament, these form a meager sample. But they are enough to show that many verses would make complete nonsense if the term were translated emotion. For example, if this identification were made, it would be necessary to say, “He speaketh truth in his emotions”; and, “Lest they understand with their emotions.” Obviously this substitution results in nonsense. It is not to be denied that the biblical term heart can and does occasionally refer to the emotions, as in 1 Samuel 2:1, though even here there must be some intellectual understanding. But although sometimes referring to the emotions, the term heart more often signifies the intellect. It is the heart that speaks, meditates, thinks and understands. At the same time, since the self acts emotionally, volitionally and intellectually, the three activities are each represented in the several occurrences of the term.

But the preponderance of the intellectual references shows the preponderance of the intellect in the personality. It is extremely difficult to appreciate the motives, at least in the case of those who are attached to the Bible, which lead to a disparagement of the intellect. Why is it that thinking, meditating, understanding are to be condemned? Why is knowing and thinking of God a poor way, an impossible way or an impious way of coming to him? What is wrong with intellectual activity?

The common modern contrast between head and heart is thus evidently unscriptural. There is a scriptural contrast. It is the contrast between the heart and the lips, for Matthew is quoting Isaiah when he says, “This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” When the scriptural contrast is refused, the possibility cannot be ruled out that other scriptural theses are discarded at the same time.

Two results of this unscriptural belittling of intellectual activity will be discussed.

The Element Of Trust

In describing the nature of faith, fundamentalists, evangelicals and even modernists in a certain way stress the element of trust. A preacher may draw a parallel between trusting in Christ and trusting in a chair. Belief that the chair is solid and comfortable, mere intellectual assent to such a proposition, will not rest your weary bones. You must, the preacher insists, actually sit in the chair. Similarly, so goes the argument, you can believe all that the Bible says about Christ and it will do you no good. Such illustrations as these are constantly used, in spite of the fact that the Bible says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”

Confusing The Issue

There is here at least a confusion of mind, a confusion between something unscriptural and something else that is entirely scriptural. The weak point of the illustration is that it contrasts an intellectual act of believing with a physical act of sitting in a chair. This distinction is a matter of common experience; but how is it supposed to apply? In the spiritual realm there is no physical action but mental action only; hence the act of sitting down, if it means anything at all, must refer to something completely internal and yet different from belief. Belief in the chair has been made to stand for belief in Christ, and according to the illustration belief in Christ is of no value. Something else is needed. But what is this something else that corresponds to the act of sitting down in the chair? This is the question that is so seldom answered. Now, there is such an internal factor, though it is extremely doubtful that those who use the illustration have this factor in mind. But since there is another facet of mental activity, the truth that has been confused with the error needs to be given its due. However, when the true element is identified, the illustration collapses.

In addition to “mere belief” or “intellectual assent” faith in Christ surely involves an “act of will.” Whether faith requires emotion or not and if so, which emotion it requires are at best secondary considerations. Emotions notoriously depend on bodily conditions; a good meal or a bad meal can alter them; atmospheric pressure and anemia likewise. Emotions by definition are fluctuating; whereas throughout our constantly changing emotional states, our beliefs and the volitions founded on them remain comparatively fixed. And, to return, faith surely involves the will.

Here, however, the original difficulty returns in full force. Is there such a thing as “mere belief,” or “mere intellectual assent?” Indeed, is there such a distinguishable phenomenon as a “mere” act of will? Intellectual assent is itself an act of will; and conversely, no volitional action could possibly take place without belief. If you will to eat ice cream, you must believe at least that there is some ice cream to be eaten. Intellect and will are not two separate “faculties”; rather they so interpenetrate in a single mental state that it is difficult and perhaps impossible not only to separate them in time but even in definition.

Faith And Belief

There is perhaps another flaw in the illustration, a flaw which also combines an element of truth with a confusion of thought. It would seem that those who say belief in Christ is of no value have an incorrect notion of belief and intellectual assent. They probably mean—though it is rash to guess what they might mean—that salvation is not obtained by knowing the propositions in the Bible and understanding their meaning. Obviously this is true. Many intelligent men know very well what the Bible says; they understand it far better than many Christians; but they are not saved and they are not Christians. The reason is that though they understand, they do not believe.

Clear thinking, however, will reveal that faith, Christian faith, is not to be distinguished from belief. Consider Hebrews 11:1. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The A.R.V. says that “faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.” Assurance and conviction are belief, strong belief, voluntary belief and as intellectual as you please. The heroes of faith, whom the chapter goes on to describe, all believed some definite intellectual content. Hebrews 11:3 says, “Through faith we understand” something about the creation of the world. Surely this is an intellectual content. And in explaining why “without faith it is impossible to please God,” verse 6 says, “for he that cometh to God must believe that he is.” As a reply to those who disparage the intellect within the limits of this first example, let this suffice.

[TO BE CONCLUDED IN NEXT ISSUE]

- More from Gordon H. Clark

Cover Story

Theological Climate in America

G. Brillenburg Wurth

To a European the study of contemporary American theology is highly important. America is one of the two political, cultural and spiritual poles (Russia being the other), around which oscillate the main currents of the life and thought of Western Europe.

For a long time America was of no concern to the spiritual vision of a European. Indeed, Europe looked down upon an America it considered immature and culturally undeveloped. The “Yankee” did not appear to be a cultured inhabitant of Western Europe. Fie seemed solely concerned with the dollar. He appeared to have little understanding of spiritual life. Since the last World War, however, the European’s attitude has changed. Personal contact with Americans has led to a better understanding and appreciation. In any case, the economic and political life of Western Europe must take America into account. The luxury of ignoring the existence of this great power in the West is no longer permissible. Nor, for that matter, can we Europeans ignore Russia and the Far East.

Present-day American theology is still predominantly liberal or modernistic in character. In the past, this was not the case. Once America was the land of the Pilgrim Fathers. The public life bore a Christian stamp in all social expressions. American theological faculties, for example, at Harvard, were fortresses of orthodox Christianity and orthodox theology.

Retreat From Orthodoxy

The spiritual powers now in control of American life cannot be called Christian. In philosophy, the Pragmatism of which William James is the spiritual father has exercised a great influence for many years. Its modernized form is found in the Behaviorism of John Dewey.

Pragmatism is closely connected, in some respects, with the historical origin of the American people. The colonist, who daily encountered the hard facts of reality and therefore did not have much time and interest for abstract philosophical speculation, was inclined to ask, “What is the benefit of it?”

The specific type of Pragmatism encountered in James and Dewey is one of the characteristic off-shoots of the Enlightenment, which at the end of the eight-teenth century propelled life along radically new paths. The Enlightenment exchanged historical Christianity for a humanistic rationalism, strongly optimistic in character and nearly unconditional in its faith in the unlimited possibilities of human nature. The roots of this philosophy have gone deep in America. The eighteenth century American stood on the threshold of its natural development. Under the influence of the Enlightenment it suddenly became conscious of its enormous potentialities. In this respect no figure was more important for his own time and for later periods than Benjamin Franklin, in whom the young America was so-to-speak incarnated. With him was launched the triumph of modern science, especially the application of science to technique. The unbelievable accomplishments of technology have shaped America into a land where the majority, not just a fortunate few, can achieve a standard of living higher than any previously conceived. This trend in development was favorably disposed to the rise of Pragmatism.

Truth Reduced To Utility

Pragmatism implies the radical denial of each concept of truth. Truth is no longer a magnitude of an entity in its own right. Just as modern American life was oriented toward utility, so truth became reduced to usefulness. Truth is what is useful, what in one way or another serves the vital needs of the individual in society. And since different individuals have different needs, Pragmatism for the first time in the history of philosophical thought consciously proposed a pluralistic concept of truth. Truth is not unitary; truth is just as much a plurality as life is pluriform. What is true for one person does not necessarily have to be true for another.

The Behaviorism of John Dewey, a mild form of this early Pragmatism, is known by the term Instrumentalism. For Dewey, the human spirit is in its essence nothing but an instrument, a utensil, a tool, suited for the attainment of a specific aim. It is clearly evident how thoroughly undermining this concept is for the Christian faith. Nothing is more devastating to our spiritual life than such a devaluation of the concept of truth. It results in a spiritual decline of human life in its entirety, especially in the field of religion.

Religion is not denied its right to exist. Dewey believes, however, that religion comes into its own only when it breaks all connection with the supernatural. What is left, however, is a religion that no longer deserves the name of religion. It is a religion without God. Some may continue to speak of something divine, but faith in a personal God as the creator of the world and of man is abandoned. Man was not created by God. God is a creation of man. Man is able to manufacture everything that he desires. Man makes or fabricates all he desires and needs, also his God.

It is deplorable that Dewey’s viewpoint still gives the general tone to present-day scientific America and controls much of the entire philosophy of education.

Gospel Becomes Social Energy

What has been the attitude of the Christian Church during the last century with respect to Pragmatism and Humanism? Has it been asleep? Did it simply allow the life of its time to slip by unnoticed? Certainly not. The large ecclesiastical bodies in the United States (e.g., Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist) have so far been a model of powerful activity in this twentieth century. For example, their enormous accomplishments in the field of philanthropy and missions are well known. Financially and organizationally, America has for a long time played a dominant role in the missionary enterprise.

To a large extent, however, the prevailing American spirit has left its mark upon the official life and theology of the larger denominations. In particular, this is evidence in the social gospel movement, which since the beginning of this century has been the motif of American theology. The attempt to confront with the Gospel of Christ the problems of modern American life, especially the important problem of an industrialized society, is in itself worthy of respect. What is seriously to be regretted, however, and what has resulted in great spiritual damage, is that this movement has been accompanied by a complete lack of resistance to the dominating spirit of the time. The latter has been given a completely free hand to dictate the path to be followed. What is characteristic of the social gospel is not so much the application of the gospel to social questions but rather the overwhelming emphasis placed on social problems by this gospel. The entire gospel is seen as a social and ethical totality; everything that does not fit into this framework is discarded.

This accomodation of the gospel to social and ethical problems was readily accomplished through the inner affinity of the social gospel and the dominant American liberal theology.

Triumph Of Enlightenment

The spirit of the Enlightenment with its rationalism, moralism, optimism, and tolerance had conquered the entire New World. In harmony with the spirit of tolerance, the separation of church and state was not guarded against an exaggerated and libertarian concept of religious freedom. The acceptable view was that everyone can believe and teach whatever he wishes. The day was not distant when faith was strongly reduced in its content. Of the original Christian confession, very little was to remain in force. In the broadest circles, the ideal became a religion as free as possible of any dogmatism and predominantly moral in character. Even unitarian tendencies became respected as essentially Christian. Inevitably, the grace of God was little understood. Much more important than God’s mercy in Christ, it was held, is the dignity of man. One can thus truly speak of the trend as the humanization of religion. “The biggest goal of God’s laws and religion,” said one of the spiritual leaders of the time, “is human happiness.” He did not bother to add “… the happiness of unregenerate man.”

Impact Of Evolutionary Science

The theology of the social gospel clearly contains trends of the piety of the Enlightenment, especially its individualism, rationality, and unconquerable faith in human progress. These tendencies acquired a special emphasis with respect to the Darwinian theory of evolution, so cherished by the modern ideal of science.

One task of science was thought to be that it should, as much as possible, purify religion of all so-called nonessential elements (especially the miraculous!) so that it would be a suitable foundation for modern society.

In the form of modern biblical criticism science was expected to lead to the creation of a more “correct” picture of Jesus, which would replace the ecclesiastical Christological dogma by a completely human Jesus.

The idea of development was now applied to the New Testament message of the Kingdom of God, viewed as a human accomplishment, to be developed by human effort, within the boundries of our human era.

Religion Narrowed To Ethics

A new type of Christian piety arose. The religious, in its entirety, was nearly subordinated to the ethical. Honest moral conduct was considered to be the best form of religiosity.

Great value was ascribed to the idea of the brotherhood of man on the basis of the universal Fatherhood of God. This brotherhood discloses itself in the cooperation envisioned by the social gospel, in the equality of man, and in a recognition of the absolute value of human personality.

In time the ideal of the democratization of the industrial social order arose; that is, the workers must receive the right to organize.

In international relations the Christian ideal of life was also to be applied according to the Golden Rule, “Do unto others that which you would have them do unto you” (Matt. 7:12). War was viewed as a serious violation of the divine world order.

Although these concepts undoubtedly have some real values, Christianity is hereby conceived in a predominantly collective fashion. Very little value is placed on personal salvation. The entire Christian faith is restated in terms of collective solidarity. God’s plan primarily consists in saving and reforming human society.

Inseparably connected with this movement was the removal from Christianity of all “transcendent” elements. Walter Rauschenbusch, a representative figure of the social gospel, sought to humanize all religion, including the conception of God. He frankly said that today God must be dethroned in order to meet the needs of men. What is necessary is “a God with whom men may cooperate, not to whom they must submit.” God is openly proclaimed to be a partner of man. And Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of America’s most popular preachers, ascribed only one function to religion, namely, the service of man and humanity. Religion according to him was a question of psychology. It was not concerned with the knowledge of God but with a knowledge of man and his human end.

It is no wonder that in this spiritual atmosphere no room remained for the biblical evangelical proclamation: the preaching of Christ as God’s Redeemer, reconciliation through his sacrifice, and justification by faith in his Atonement and Resurrection. The historicity of Christ no longer had any integrating significance. The only thing important, declared A. W. Palmer, one-time President of Chicago Theological Seminary, is “that Christ shall be reduplicated in a myriad of Saviours.”

Fidelity To The Bible

American Fundamentalism has also contributed to the theological climate of America. In sharp contrast to the predominantly moralistic social gospel in which the atoning death of Christ has almost no place, in Fundamentalism one often finds a hearty inner piety, especially a joy in the blood of the atonement and in the grace of the Holy Spirit. Characterized by an unconditional respect for the witness of the Scriptures, Fundamentalism views modern biblical criticism as a serious threat to true Christianity. Unconditionally it retains the plenary inspiration of the Bible and requires that, above all else, one must bow in faith to what is revealed in Scripture.

Special emphasis is laid, however, upon what are considered to be fundamental biblical truths: the virgin birth of Christ; his metaphysical Sonship; his crucifixion as the only basis of salvation; his resurrection; original sin, and the consequent depravity of man; and eternal life and eternal death, as the twofold starting points of human life. Fundamentalists deem it impossible to have any bond or fellowship with one who denies any of these fundamental truths.

Lack Of Cultural World-View

Often, however, the impression is given that faith in these truths is only a blind subjection to an external authority without the integration of these truths into the totality of life. And, in many cases, no attempt is made to reach a solution to questions of the relevance of Christianity to modern science and culture. Such questions are in fact often met by a hostile attitude. Usually there is no awareness of the call and obligation of a Christian to culture or the intellectual content of civilization. Christianity is thus in danger of degenerating into a morbid and sickly enthusiasm.

Niebuhr On Liberalism

After this short and incomplete characterization of the twentieth century American spiritual and theological situation, it may be well to discuss briefly a representative of contemporary American theology, Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr’s theology is usually described by the term “Christian Realism.” This designation distinguished it from the older theology of the social gospel, which was characterized by a definite idealistic tendency and a naive trust in the goodness of human nature.

The social gospel limited itself to social programs and high-sounding social slogans, but it scarcely disturbed the actual life of society. Niebuhr gradually discovered the cause of this failure of liberal theology to lie in its anthropology, its theory concerning man, which lacks all understanding of the demonic depth of human existence. In its thoughtless optimism, Liberalism imagined that a proclamation of law of love could of itself conquer the natural egoism of the human heart. Its perfectionism, its new faith in human perfectability, did not take into account the deeply rooted power of sin in human nature.

In addition to his campaign against Liberalism, Niebuhr conducted a second front against orthodoxy. The basic fault of Liberalism was to be sought in its sentimentality; the lack of power of orthodoxy was due to its pessimism. Orthodoxy’s vision was too exclusively directed to the sinfulness of our world. Therefore, orthodoxy maintained the status quo as much as possible. It feared that if changes were made in the existing order, the result could only be complete chaos.

Niebuhr is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the theological world of today; in more than one respect he is worth listening to. We consider it of great importance that Niebuhr was one of the first to recognize the pernicious totalitarian structure of such ideologies as National Socialism and Communism. Niebuhr was one of the first to understand that sin is more than a wrong subjective attitude of the human heart; it can also become incarnate in certain social relationships, which then constitute the greatest threat to temporal human life.

Flaws In Niebuhr’S Thought

At the same time, we believe that there are serious objections to Niebuhr’s theology and ethics.

His views are dangerous because Niebuhr is one of the most noteworthy and most gifted representatives of a new type of theology, often qualified in America as “neo-orthodoxy.” Many hope that neo-orthodoxy will provide the basis of a future ecumenical theology. As a matter of fact, neo-orthodoxy contains something which makes it appropriate for this purpose. It is preeminently a theology of synthesis. The chasm between orthodoxy and Liberalism appears to be bridged in a genial manner. Basic evangelical sounds are heard and what offends modern man’s world view and religious autonomy is discarded.

In this respect Niebuhr’s theology displays a striking agreement with another fashionable theologian of our time, Rudolph Bultmann, who by his de-mythologizing seeks to escape the offense of biblical revelation. Bultmann does not realize that in the meantime he has exchanged revelation for a modern religious Existentialism. The latter is ready to speak to modern man in his despair, but it shares with the true gospel of Jesus Christ only a verbal similarity.

Our century is apparently repeating the same mistakes made by the theologians in the nineteenth century. Everything points to the fact that a new theology is more adapted to the needs of twentieth century man; it contains dialectical tension, is less strange to reality, and has a better understanding of the tragic depths of human life. But like nineteenth century theology, it accomodates the gospel in its deepest kernel to the dominant spirit of the time, and has received its stamp from the dominating philosophy of the day.

Because of the important influence of America upon the economic and political life of the world, Europeans watch with interest the theological climate of this great nation. It is hoped that the humanization of religion under Liberal influence will be halted, and greater emphasis given the transcendental elements of Christianity.

Dr. G. Brillenburg Wurth has taught for a number of years at Kampen Theological Seminary in the Netherlands. He is author of many books, and writes frequently on such themes as pastoral counselling, the Christian life, Christian morals, and Christian ethics.

- More from G. Brillenburg Wurth

Cover Story

Are We Obscurantists?

Bernard Ramm

A frequent criticism of evangelicalism is that it is obscurantist. An obscurantist is one who binders knowledge, or actively resists its progress. In religion it refers to those who oppose the progress of critical biblical scholarship and the findings of modern science. Because evangelicals do not accept much of the current theories in Old and New Testament criticism they are branded as obscurantists. The charge is that obscurantism is essential to evangelicalism and as long as evangelicals persist in it they are anachronisms in the modern theological world.

To the contrary I shall defend the thesis that obscurantism, far from being essential to the evangelical position, is positively not a part of its essence. Further, it is impossible for an evangelical who truly understands his position to be an obscurantist. That obscurantism does associate itself with conservative religion cannot be denied; but the reasons for this are psychological and sociological. It is not the product of the essence of evangelicalism.

Role Of Scientific Scholarship

The Roman Catholic Church professes to be graced with an infallibility that enables her to determine the canon of scripture; to issue decrees on matters of biblical introduction; and, if necessary, to give an authoritative interpretation of a passage of Scripture. The Reformers substituted a different program. They accepted the divine authority of Scripture and the inner witness of the Divine Spirit. But they cut off their divine certainties at this point. They did not profess to possess a special means of knowing the text, canon or interpretation of Scripture. Such items were not considered matters of revelation. The only hedge put around such matters was that no position could be held that was a virtual denial of the revelatory content of Scripture nor of its divine inspiration. The authenticity and genuineness of Scripture could not be challenged without serious damage to its inspiration and its revealed content.

If the Reformers rejected the Roman Catholic position in these matters, there was only one other avenue open to them: these matters are settled by principles of scientific scholarship working with due reverence for the word of God and trusting that these matters were under the providential guidance of the Holy Spirit.

It was the essence of the Reformers’ position to commit themselves to a program of devout, critical biblical scholarship. Biblical obscurantism is therefore not part of the essence of the evangelical Protestant tradition. Just the opposite happens to be the case.

Text Of Scripture

The evangelical has no means of settling the text of the Scripture outside the usual methods of scholarship. There is no official copy of either the Hebrew or Greek Testaments. There are only copies of them. There is only one conceivable method of settling the text of Scripture and that is by the employment of the general science of textual criticism modified to fit the peculiarities presented by the biblical texts. When Calvin treated the text of Scripture, he employed the methodology he learned as a humanist and attempted scientifically to determine the true readings (cf. B. B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine, p. 58). Warfield himself affirmed in another place that “processes that are valid for the ascertainment of a secular are equally valid for the ascertainment of a sacred text” (Critical Reviews, p. 81).

Evangelicals may believe that God has remarkably preserved the text of the Old and New Testaments, but to determine the precise text of Scripture is a problem for scientific criticism. This is the essence of the evangelical position, and there is, therefore, no place for obscurantism here.

Calvin accepted the canon of the Church but it was no blind acceptance. His acceptance was (in Warfield’s phrase) “critically mediated” (Calvin and Augustine, p. 54). Again Calvin put his former humanist learning to service. He investigated the history and the internal characteristics of the books of the canon.

Faith that God would lead the Church to establish a canon does not settle the limits of the canon. The internal witness of the Holy Spirit bears witness to the divinity of Scripture, but the internal witness of the Spirit does not determine the canon. The canon is determined by historical research and criticism, and there is no place here for obscurantism. The very opposite was the essence of the Reformers’ position.

The scholarly ability of Luther and Calvin may be readily gathered from the relevant chapters of E. H. Harbison’s The Christian Scholar in the Age of the Reformation. Much of the powerful striking force of Luther and Calvin must be credited to their scholarly backgrounds. Luther’s translation of the Bible earned for him the right to be called a scholar, and no one acquainted with the Commentaries and Institutes of Calvin could dare think otherwise of the Swiss Reformer. Warfield also sketches for us the remarkable education and scholarly traits of Calvin (Calvin and Augustine, Chapter I).

Interpretation Of Scripture

The Reformers’ rejected Rome’s claim to be the infallible and authoritative interpreter of Scripture. Their counterblow was to develop a critical and scientific hermeneutics, whose greatest achievement is in Calvin’s Commentaries. While not depreciating nor underestimating the necessity of prayer and faith in understanding sacred Scripture, the Reformers proceeded to develop a scientific hermeneutics to replace the authoritarian hermeneutics of Roman Catholicism.

A battle raged over the use of the Hebrew and Greek Testaments by the Reformers and the Latin Vulgate by the Catholics. A scientific understanding of exegesis drove Luther and Calvin back to the original languages of Scripture. Thanks to the Reformers, Hebrew and Greek were restored to their proper places in exegesis. The story of the contest over the original languages versus the Latin Vulgate is briefly recited in Preus’s The Inspiration of Scripture (p. 134 ff.). Here again the evangelical position is pledged to a scientific scholarship operating within the circle of Christian faith. No obscurantist methodology is available to the evangelical to enable him to interpret Scripture.

The scientific attitude of Luther and Calvin toward matters of biblical criticism is a matter of record. By no means was their approach characterized by obscurantism. Perhaps the most serious differences between evangelicals and much of contemporary biblical scholarship are at the level of literary criticism. But the essence of the Reformers’ position and of the evangelicals is that matters of literary criticism must also be settled by the canons of the highest scholarship. The evangelical insists that revelation and inspiration are as much objective data as the other materials of literary criticism, and it is this insistence which creates the divergences between them and contemporary schools of thought. However this may be judged, the point is still obvious that the essence of the evangelical position is not obscurantist.

Role Of Scientific Scholarship

First, evangelicals admit that much biblical learning has been contributed by non-evangelical scholars (e.g., Bible dictionaries, Bible encyclopedias, commentaries, lexicons). The outstanding Reformed scholar of France wrote: “We are not foolish enough to condemn modern criticism as a whole. The works of the best representatives have contributed and still contribute to a better understanding and a greater love of the sacred text. It would be absurd as well as unjust to accuse all modern critics of a spirit of systematic hostility to divine realities” (A. Lecerf, An Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics, p. 304). The great Reformed scholar of another century in Holland was of the firm conviction that the scholarly works of men outside the boundary of orthodoxy could be employed with profit by the Christian scholar (A. Kuyper, Principles of Sacred Theology, p. 581).

Second, evangelicals admit that there is no short cut for the hard work of biblical criticism. They may venture an opinion that much of modern critical work is hay, wood and stubble but that does not settle the data for them. Evangelicals must make their peace with the Pentateuchal problem, the Synoptic problem, or the Johannine problem. “The believer cannot at any time afford to be obscurantist; and orthodox scholarship must set right criticism over against wrong criticism” is the outspoken opinion of a Reformed theologian (John Murray, The Infallible Word, p. 10).

Evangelicals may be flayed for not facing up to modern criticism or for not making a significant contribution to it. They may be accused of harboring too large a population of obscurantists. But the thesis here propounded is undamaged: The pattern of the Reformers states that when divine certainties end, the only safe guide is the finest of scientific scholarship excercised in humility before God. Obscurantism has no place in an evangelicalism which properly understands itself; in fact, the essence of evangelicalism demands the wholehearted denial of it.

Bernard Ramm is Professor of Religion and Director of Graduate Studies in Religion in Baylor University, and was formerly Professor of Philosophy at Bethel College and Seminary, St. Paul. He holds the A.B. degree from University of Washington, B.D. from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Ph.D. from University of Southern California.

- More from John Calvin

Korean Missions: Triumph and Shadow

L. Nelson Bell

No Christian can visit Korea and not be moved with a sense of deep gratitude to God for what he has done in that land. In no other field where Christian missions have had a reasonably adequate opportunity to work has there emerged a church of the strength and influence on the life of the nation as a whole comparable with that to be found in Korea.

Comparisons can be unwelcome for they are not always justified. But on any given Sabbath it has been estimated that more people worship in Seoul’s largest Presbyterian church than in all churches of that denomination in all of Japan. And this church is but one of over four hundred in that city, over half of which are Presbyterian. This may give a relatively true picture of the comparative impact which Christianity has made on these two nations.

Presbyterianism is strong in Korea because of the combined work of American, Australian and other missions of that denomination over the years. The Methodists, Baptists and others also have much to show for their work.

Reasons For Growth

Many factors have entered into the success of the Christian enterprise in Korea. They are a religious people, devout in worship and ready and anxious to hear. National frustration during the years of Japanese occupation may have driven some into the church for solace. In addition, exceedingly wise mission policies were adopted by the early missionaries. What is known as the “Nevius Plan” led to the establishing of a self-reliant national church, looking to the missions primarily for spiritual cooperation rather than for financial assistance.

Furthermore, the Korean Church has been a Bible-instructed church. For many years, during the cold winter months, centers of organized study were held in central locations. Here church officers and lay readers, men and women, would join in two or more months of intensive study. The courses were set up on a long-range basis so that Christians received comprehensive instruction over a period of several years. This led to probably the highest rate of spiritual literacy to be found.

The Korean Church has been a praying church. Even today almost all places of worship are open long before dawn and thousands of Christians resort to them to pray. That these buildings are unheated and the weather sub-freezing does not deter these earnest people.

Suffering too has taken its toll and borne its precious fruit. Because of their faith, thousands of pastors and other Christians have undergone imprisonment, torture and death. The Shrine issue, imposed by the Japanese, found hundreds of Korean pastors ready to endure prison and torture rather than violate their consciences. To them submission to the demands that they attend Shrine ceremonies involved an act of idolatrous worship and they were willing to suffer for conscience and principle’s sake.

Later even greater and more universal atrocities were perpetrated by the Communists who rightly considered the church and Christians their greatest source of opposition. At least five hundred pastors were martyred by the red invaders and tens of thousands of other Christians died because of their allegiance to Christ.

The Korean Church has been a generous church, Christians often giving far more than their tithe. Many bring an offering of rice each week, having taken a part of this major source of their diet and set it aside for the work of the Church.

Such faith and virile Christianity have resulted in churches scattered over the length and breadth of Korea. Prior to the taking over of the North by the Communists, the Church was particularly strong in that area. Reliable information today indicates that rigorous suppression has driven the church underground. Of great significance is the fact that there is a Christian church on an average of every three miles along the southern border of the DMZ (demilitarized zone) which stretches across Korea.

The present Korean government recognizes the significance and importance of the Christian movement through the appointment of Christian chaplains for the armed services. Prisons also have chaplains. Only under the Nationalist government on Taiwan (Formosa) does a similar situation exist in the Far East.

A Time Of Burden

But it would be wrong to imply that World War II, liberation from the Japanese, the arbitrary division of the country, the invasion of the South by the Communists with the attending loss of life and destruction of property and now the uneasy truce and the blight of economic instability, have not all combined to affect the church adversely. These things are taking their toll.

Prior to the communist invasion the population of Korea was more or less equally divided geographically. Today twenty-two million people live in the South, only six in the North. This influx of people from the North has brought its blessings and its serious problems. Many Christians have come South, men and women strong in the faith and willing to bear their witness. Literally hundreds of new churches have been started by and for these displaced persons and most of them are self-supporting.

But such wholesale transplanting of the population has been attended by serious economic problems. The North has been developed industrially and in that area there are rich reserves of iron, good coal and other minerals. The South has been largely the granary of the country. New industries are now being gradually developed but last year the entire exports were said to be only twenty million dollars. The refusal of the present government to accept normal economic relations with Japan is a handicap to both countries, particularly Korea. It is also encouraging wholesale smuggling from Japan.

The disruption of wars and their aftermaths are also to be noted in the life of the Church. Less emphasis is now laid on organized Bible study than formerly. Standards in some theological seminaries have been lowered until a graduate of a “night seminary,” of which there are many, is now accepted in the senior class and subsequently graduated.

Relief money and goods have been poured into Korea in recent years. Desperately needed at the beginning, the continued flow of help from the outside is in danger of having an adverse effect in the important realm of self-support and self-reliance. Also, seeing hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the country by the American government, some of which is obviously squandered and misused, seems to be creating a desire for more money from abroad, even in the work of the church.

It is of more than passing significance that an American administrator recently asked an experienced missionary to explain to him the “Nevius Plan,” with the candid admission, “We have made a mess of much of our relief program in this country.”

Experienced mission personnel in Korea seems united in the opinion that certain mission boards are now complicating the situation for the Korean Church by proposing a policy directly antithetical to the policy that was so largely responsible for the strong Church which exists in Korea today. The observation has been made by one missionary that the recipients of relief funds should never be the ones who administer those funds. Also, that any move to subsidize a church, be it in America or in Korea, is a “step backward, nor forward.”

Preacher In The Red

FOR PAGANS ONLY

The problem of making an early contact with newcomers to the city has always been a problem for me as a minister.

In my pastorate of the First Christian Church, Lynchburg, Va., I thought I was on the way to finding a solution when I obtained the names of all newcomers to the city each week from a merchant association.

I wrote each new resident a brief note of welcome. I urged them to join in the religious life of the city and I invited them to attend a morning or evening service of worship at my church.

Everything was going well until one day I received a letter of reply from one of the newcomers.

The letter read:

“Your letter expressing interest and welcome to us on our arrival here is very kind. I am sure that you did not note that I will be occupying the pulpit here in Fairview Heights Methodist Church each Sunday for both services, but nevertheless it is good to be welcomed. Trusting I may have the privilege of meeting you soon, and with best wishes, I am Sincerely, (signed) F. Lester Hylton.” COLBERT S. CARTWRIGHT Pastor, Pulaski Heights Christian Church, Little Rock, Ark.

Faith And The Future

What of the future? Korea is a land of uncertainties. Divided by the agreement of outside powers; an armed camp by necessity; living perilously on an economy based on outside aid; controlled by a government strong in determination to resist Communism, (and even economic ties with Japan), but weak and often corrupt at local levels; little wonder that optimism is a lagging commodity in that land. There is an overwhelming sense of uncertainty, of living from day to day, of an unwholesome dependence on American money and might. There is also a rightful yearning for a re-united country, a country now divided and for which American leadership is rightly blamed.

The bright spot on the horizon, and it is a bright spot, is the devotion, loyalty and faith of the Church. Those who have invested their lives or their money in Christian work in that land have much to show for their investment. The same God who has strengthened and blessed that Church is still present and active today.

Apparently secure in the peace and plenty of American Church life we should pray earnestly for our brothers in Christ in Korea, a land of triumph and a land of shadow.

END

My Father

He knows! My heavenly Father surely knows

The mortal limitations that oppress

This earth-born frame: the dire distress

Of surging griefs: the diabolic foes

That hold the soul in grim encounter: every need

He knows, and all my wants His mercies still exceed.

He cares! I know my heavenly Father cares,

And bids me cast on Him the pressing load

Of dark, foreboding thought. ’Tis mine the road

Of filial trust to tread, since He who bears

In hands omnipotent the sparrow and the ages

Makes me His care, and for my weel His might engages.

He can! My Father’s boundless grace can meet

The high demands of full salvation: sure

His succour in temptation, to endure

His help sufficient, swift His rescuing feet.

His promises arc matched with equal powers: the score

Of all my prayers this motto bears, “He can do more!”

He will! Performance crowns the triple grace

Of knowledge, care and power divine. What work

Begun will be performed until the murk

Of time dispels. Complete before His face

I then shall stand from pain and tribulation brought,

While powers supernal loud acclaim, “What hath God wrought!”

J. C. MACAULAY

- More from L. Nelson Bell

Theology

Bible Text of the Month: John 14:6

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh

unto the Father but by me (John 14:6)

Jesus here says: I am the means of coming to the Father (the way) in that I am the truth and the life.—F. L. Godet.

The three terms lay down the proposition that no other than Christ is the Mediator of eternal salvation with God in the Messianic kingdom, under three several characteristic aspects which are coordinated yet in such a way that the advance is made from the general to the particular.—H. A. W. Meyer.

Note as belonging to all three of these that remarkable: I am. We show a way, Christ is it. We speak truth, Christ is it. Parents impart life, which they have received, Christ is life. He separates himself from all men by that representation that he is not merely the communicator or the teacher or the guide, but that he himself is, in his own personal being, way, truth, life.—Alexander Maclaren.

The way without error, the truth without darkness, the life without end. The way in exile, the truth in counsel, the life in reward. All the words call us to Christ. Post me, per me, ad me, after me, by me, to me. After me, because I am truth; by me, because I am the way; to me, because I am life.—Thomas Adams.

The Way

I am the way. This is spiritually spoken of that union of the believer with Christ, which opens a way of approach to God, so that as Christ himself returns to the Father, the believer may follow in his footsteps and attain to the same place of glory and bliss.… Christ opens for all his followers a way to heaven, by the atoning efficacy of his blood. He is therefore figuratively declared to be the way, because he is thus the author of salvation to them that believe in him.—John J. Owen.

God did at the beginning assign us a path to walk in with him, even the path of innocency and exact holiness, in a covenant of works. This path, by sin, is so filled with thorns and briers, so stopped up by curses and wrath, that no flesh living can take one step in that path; a new way for us to walk in must be found out, if ever we think to hold communion with God. It is hid in Christ. All the world cannot, but by and in him, discover a path that a man may walk one step with God.—John Owen.

In the religious language of the Jews, it meant the path which a soul should follow in order to reach the true goal of its destiny; in order to be conformed to the will of God. Thus the Psalmist speaks of the way of the righteous, the right way, the way of God’s statutes, the way of truth, the way wherein I should walk, the perfect way; and the Book of Proverbs of the way of life; and Isaiah of the way of the just, the way of holiness, the way of peace; and Jeremiah of the good way, the one way, the way to Zion, the way which God would show; and Amos of the way of the meek; and Malachi of the way that the forerunner should prepare; and Zacharias of the way of peace into which the Day-star from on high would guide our feet.—H. P. Liddon.

The Truth

He does not say, “I teach the truth.” All teachers would at least wish to say that. He does not say, “I am the greatest teacher of truth that the world has seen.” That would have been true; but it would have fallen short, almost infinitely short, of the reality. He does say, “I am the Truth.” … His message is bound up indissolubly with his person; nay, he is his own message to the world. His language is intolerable or meaningless unless there exists such a person as he proclaims himself to be, and unless he is that person. In short, Christ is Christianity.—H. P. Liddon.

God himself is the first and only essential Truth, in whose being and nature the springs of all truth do lie. The counsels of God are the next spring and cause of all truth that is so declarative. Of them all the person of Christ is the sacred repository and treasury—in him are they to be learned. All their efficacy and use depend on their relation unto him. He is the centre and circumference of all the lines of truth—that is, which is divine, spiritual, and supernatural. And the beauty of it is presented to us only in his face or person.… So we are said to learn the truth as it is in Jesus (Eph. 4:21). And the knowledge of all evangelical sacred truth is, in the Scripture, most frequently expressed by the knowledge of him (John 8:19; 17:3; 2 Cor. 2:14; 4:5, 6; Eph. 1:16; Phil. 3:8, 19; 1 John 1:1, 2; 2:4, 13; 5:20; 2 Pet. 2:20).—John Owen.

But now where is this truth? I will tell you an apologue. Four friends parting inquired where they should find one another again; the water, the fire, the wind and the truth. Fire said, You shall be sure to find me in a flint stone. Water said, you shall be sure to find me in the root of a bulrush. Wind said, you shall be sure to find me amongst the leaves. But poor truth could appoint no certain place of meeting. What say you to Westminster Hall? Indeed, there is room enough, but small room for truth. What say you to the exchange? There be fair walks, but they may exchange away truth. Is she then in the courts? We behold there always the seat of truth, but not always truth in him that supplies that place. You would smile to find her in children and fools; yet they say, children and fools tell truth. But if it be childhood or folly to tell truth, I am sure we have but a few children, a few fools. Where then shall we find truth? I hope in the church, in the pulpits: oh God forbid else! yet often truth keeps only in the pulpit, and does not go down-stairs with the man, but stays there till his coming up again.… There is no certain place to find truth, but in the word of God; there let us seek her, there we shall find her. Now the God of truth give us the truth of God, in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.—Thomas Adams.

The Life

The life which believers derive from God is through Christ. He is that eternal word, by which all things were made on their first creation, and do still subsist. And he is made the basis of the second creation, in a wonderful way, becoming himself a creature; and so, the root of the new progeny is from heaven, the sons of God.… Man is knit to God in the person of Christ so close, that there is no possibility of dividing them anymore.—Bishop Leighton.

Though a man be physically a living man, i.e. his natural soul hath union with his body, yet his soul having no union with Christ, he is theologically a dead man (Luke 15:24; Col. 2:13). Alas, it deserves not the name of life, to have a soul serving only to season and preserve the body a little while from corruption; to carry it up and down the world, and only enable it to eat, and drink, and talk, and laugh and then die. Then do we begin to live, when we begin to have union with Christ, the fountain of life, by his Spirit communicated to us.—John Flavel.

Let us not deceive ourselves. Christ came not to free us from damnation only, but as an head, to infuse spiritual life into us, and to live in us by his Spirit. He came not only to purchase a life of glory for us, but likewise to live in us by his Spirit; and if he overcome for us, he will overcome in us; if he hath a life for us, he will have a life in us. The life Jesus must be manifested in us.—Richard Sibbes.

Only Mediator

Christ spans the distance between God and the sinner. Man would fain manufacture a ladder of his own, and by means of his resolutions and reformations, his prayers and his tears, climb up to God. But that is impossible.—A. W. Pink.

There is no choice. You must accept of him, or remain unreconciled and be cast into hell. Israel found but one path through the Red Sea; the church shall never find more than one way to the heavenly Canaan. Christ is the elect and beloved of the Father, the appointed medium of man’s approach, the designated channel of God’s communication.—Christmas Evans.

He is the medium through which intercourse is carried on between heaven and earth. Through him the love of God descends upon us, and through him our prayers, and thanksgiving, and all our holy services, ascend to God. He obtains for us all spiritual blessings. They are granted in consideration of his merit, and in answer to his request; and they are not dispensed immediately by the Father, but pass to us through the hands of his Son. The fountain of Divine love has found a channel, in which it flows to refresh and gladden the souls of the guilty and unworthy.—John Dick.

The kingdom of God is near.

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Mission In Berlin

‘Without Parallel’

French Version

Deaths

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Useful Collection

Facing Decay

Social Implications

Strong Meat

Enough Of Barth

The Good Life

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Decline Of True Liberalism

Humanism At The Crossroads

Theological Road To Pride

A Creeping Naturalism

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Verdict Of Contemporaries

Greater Than The Baptist

Greater Than Elijah

Greater Than Jeremiah

Verdict Of Disciples

Christ The Son

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The Head And The Heart

The Element Of Trust

Confusing The Issue

Faith And Belief

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Retreat From Orthodoxy

Truth Reduced To Utility

Gospel Becomes Social Energy

Triumph Of Enlightenment

Impact Of Evolutionary Science

Religion Narrowed To Ethics

Fidelity To The Bible

Lack Of Cultural World-View

Niebuhr On Liberalism

Flaws In Niebuhr’S Thought

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Role Of Scientific Scholarship

Text Of Scripture

Interpretation Of Scripture

Role Of Scientific Scholarship

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Reasons For Growth

A Time Of Burden

Preacher In The Red

Faith And The Future

My Father

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The Way

The Truth

The Life

Only Mediator

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