A Nation under God

Christianity in the World Today

President and Mrs. Eisenhower, Vice President and Mrs. Nixon and members of their immediate families were seated in the congregation at National Presbyterian Church.

Seated nearby were Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a half a dozen other Cabinet members, the governors of more than 12 states and many members of Congress.

And this is the sermon they heard—from the pastor, Dr. Edward L. R. Elson:

“ ‘In the beginning God.’ On these first words of the Bible early America staked down its life.

“This central tenet of our life was explicit in our Declaration of Independence. It is implicit in our instruments of government. It permeates our institutions. And it is manifest in our common days. The virtues of our people and the values of our culture are derived from the premise that this is ‘a nation under God.’

“This basic truth has been mediated to our people through many religious traditions and by many denominations. All espouse in common a faith in a transcendent God in history and beyond history. In some this faith in God has been intimate and personal; in others an attitude of life derived from the social climate and the cultural atmosphere produced by religious faith, principally evangelical Christian faith.

“To be sure, America has as a principle the complete separation of the institutions of the church from the institution of government. In our plural religious structure, this separation has been a source of virility to both Church and State. But while we cling tenaciously to this principle of separation, no doctrine of American life has ever or ever will eliminate or minimize the presence, the power, or the influence of religion in our national affairs. Religion and national destiny are forever intertwined.

“To be ‘under God’ is to acknowledge that this is God’s world—that he is the sovereign Lord and Ruler of all life. He is the God of Creation. Man, created in his image, bears some of God’s characteristics. Man is a person as God is a person; and the only reason for treating human beings with dignity and respect is that they are persons created in God’s image, with immortal souls and an eternal destiny. Thus created by God in God’s own image, man is free under God’s rulership. His freedom is God-bestowed, not an attainment but an obtainment. Man is born free and the chief end of this free man as the catechism long ago said is—’to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ God himself is the Lord of Creation and he will have no other gods before him. Therefore, that nation which deifies itself, or absolutizes some reality in its life cannot be a nation ‘under’ God. Such is idolatry, for that nation usurps God’s place. Americans have always rejected this temptation. Americans believe God is above the nation.

“To be ‘under God’ is also to be under His Providence. There is a destiny for that nation whose ‘God is the Lord’—a destiny shaped and determined by the Almighty himself. Our spiritual forbears convenanted with God, not as a tribal or a racial deity but as the universal God, who while being the God of all people, becomes in a special sense the God of those who accept his purpose for human life.

“Our history has meaning only in these terms. We are a people under God’s Providence.

“To be ‘under God’ is to be guided by him. That nation which seeks to understand and obey his laws; that nation which seeks to discern and do his will—only that nation becomes an effective instrument of God’s purpose on the earth. Above all, over all, guiding all, empowering all is the transcendent God. To the degree we possess his mind and spirit, which is at the center of the universe, and which we Christians believe to be revealed by Jesus Christ, we are and we shall remain a ‘nation under God.’

“This concept of freedom under God cannot survive as a mere intellectual expression. Apart from its Source, it will wither and die. But enriched by prayer, strengthened by worship, maintained by a variety of spiritual disciplines, our great nation can successfully confront all forces which would corrupt its life or destroy its freedom. A dynamic and witnessing faith is not an option for our time; it is an imperative for all ages.

“But deeper than these truths, a nation ‘under God’ is a nation under God’s judgment. God is sovereign Ruler of a moral universe. Man is not the final source of values. Nor is the nation the highest tribunal of judgment. The values by which both men and nations are judged are eternal. They rest with God. Man and his institutions are under God’s final judgment. There is a divine order above all and beyond all, in time and beyond time, where love and justice and righteousness and truth are absolute—the perfect order of God’s Kingdom, where God rules the heart and conscience of all beings. There is a higher court of Judgment above all persons, above all nations, above all cultures, even above all universes—the Court of God’s eternal perfection. A nation ‘under God’ is always under His judgment.

“Here in this Capital City this truth was legislated into our Pledge of Allegiance, is printed on our postage stamps and impressed on our coins.

“Now let us each impress it deep within our own hearts and manifest it in our lives and national conduct. Such testimony, to be sure, will sharpen the irreconcilable differences between the two great poles of power in our world today. But it will also give us the strength to live in these times and play our God-appointed role in history.

“Our dominating concern in Washington on January 20, 1957, is not what we know, not the skills we possess, not the wealth we have accumulated but rather the spirit we convey to the world. To whom are we committed? By whom are we led? These are the commanding questions.

“Freedom under God is not permanently secured, nor safely installed anywhere without personal responsibility and unceasing vigilance. Freedom is always only one generation away from extinction. Freedom must be won, understood, guarded and enriched in each age.

“Not out of fear, or insecurity, or a substitute for solid thinking; not as an escape to an easy and comfortable way do we seek to reclaim our ancient heritage. But rather we worship and pray, we trust and obey, because it is the very life-spring of our national being.

“On days such as this I like to think of our spiritual kinsman, the pioneer American who faced the frontier and the future with three implements in his hand. He carried an axe, a gun and a book. With the axe he felled the trees, built his home, his school, his church. With the gun he provided meat for his table and protection from the predatory forces about him. The Book was the center of religious devotion, the textbook of his education and the inspiration of his institutions.

“Today’s American no longer carries the axe, the gun, the Book. His axe has become America’s gigantic industrial machine, and the world sees that. His gun has become America’s powerful armament, and the world knows it well. His Book, by the power of the Person revealed therein, is pouring forth the light of a new spiritual birth, and the world must clearly see that.

“If we are to lead in this hour America must become a citadel of man’s true freedom and a vast bastion of spiritual power, whose light shines in American lives so brightly at home it will illuminate the dark places of all mankind.

“Rightly do we sing:

“Our Father’s God, to Thee Author of Liberty,

To Thee we sing Long may our land be bright,

With freedom’s holy light;

Protect us by Thy might,

Great God, our King.”

Two hours after leaving the service, the President and Vice President took their oaths of office for the new terms in a private ceremony at the White House. (This ceremony was repeated the following day before thousands of deeply-interested Americans.)

As President Eisenhower took the oath, his hand rested on a Bible that his mother gave him before he graduated from West Point in 1915.

The King James Bible was open to Psalm 33, verse 12, which reads:

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord; and the people whom He hath chosen for His own inheritance.”

END

Beavan Resigns

Jerry Beavan, public relations director of the Billy Graham team and executive secretary of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has resigned, effective February 1.

The announcement was made in the New York offices of the Billy Graham Crusade.

Beavan, who has been on a two-month rest leave, explained that health was a basic factor in the decision, together with the necessity of curtailing the excessive travel, which has averaged over 100,000 flying miles per year during the past six years.

Dr. Graham, in accepting the resignation with regret, announced that Beavan would serve in a behind-the-scenes advisory capacity to the Graham staff in the direction of the forthcoming New York Crusade. Beavan helped develop the New York organization in the past year.

Dr. Graham also stated, “We have reluctantly accepted the resignation of Mr. Beavan. He has been a key factor in the development of our organization. We will miss him. We remain close personal friends.”

Nae Asks Aid Halt

The National Association of Evangelicals has urged Congress to bar any further economic assistance to Colombia “until such a time as all religious violence is stopped.”

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, Secretary of Public Affairs of the NAE, directed the request to members of the U. S. Senate and leading members of the House.

The request was accompanied by a memorandum giving several examples of the “hundreds of cases of religious pressures which are brought to bear on the Protestant minority in Colombia.”

Officials of the NAE stressed that they were not requesting the action because of any feeling of bitterness, nor in a spirit of retaliation. Rather, they said, the need for this action stems from the fact that it is entirely inconsistent with the U. S. policy in world affairs to grant economic support to a government which has ceased to protect the freedoms essential to the development of free nations.

Only the weight of Congressional concern, expressed in active measures to withhold economic assistance to a country which allows such conditions to exist, will be effective on stimulating corrective measures by the Colombia government, Taylor said.

Laymen’S Leadership

Lively discussions on the problems of the Christian conscience in business and the challenge of being a witness for Christ in every walk of life highlighted the second Laymen’s Leadership Institute at Louisville, Ky.

More than 300 leading laymen, representing business administration, finance, insurance, law, oil and sales, attended the Institute, held at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The main addresses were on such themes as “The Layman and Prayer in a Program of World Evangelization,” by Maxey Jarman;“Christ, the Only Hope,” by General William K. Harrison; “The Layman and His Faith,” by Howard E. Butt Jr.; “The Bible is My Business,” by Dr. Duke K. McCall; “God’s Priority in Man’s Affairs,” by Richard C. Halverson; “A Journalist’s Inquiry Into a Religious Dilemma,” by Stanley High; “Research, Reason and Revelation,” by Dr. George K. Schweitzer, and “Christ In This Hour of Crisis,” by Dr. Billy Graham.

A personal testimony of daily experiences with Christ was given by Alvin Dark, professional baseball player.

Halverson decried the compartmentalization of life by too many business men. He recalled the words of a banker who said, while praising his pastor, “what my pastor does in the worship hour on Sunday morning has absolutely nothing to do with what I do in my bank.” This banker, Halverson said, is a traitor to Christ and all he represents.

He continued:

“Secularism, that is, godlessness, is a worse enemy than communism. And this godlessness is widely practiced by professing churchmen.”

High warned against an “otherworldliness” that is oblivious to the Church’s involvement in the affairs of here and now.

“Christianity,” he said, “has been least significant when it has been too otherworldly and most significant when it has been most deeply involved in the woes and needs of the people.”

The journalist said that Old Testament prophets, once they had a living encounter with God, spoke with a thundering “Thus saith the Lord” to the sins and idolatries of their age.

He added:

“Let the Church be the Church, in the noble sucession of St. Francis, Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, John Wesley … let it proclaim both the grace and righteousness of God for this wicked generation.”

Dr. Graham spoke about the grace that saves, schools and serves. He called for reality in religion, for total surrender to the will of God and for total self-denial.

W. M.

Graham At Yale

Dr. Billy Graham will be guest preacher at the Annual Yale Christian Mission in New Haven, Conn., February 11–14.

His sermons, scheduled to be delivered on four successive evenings in Yale University’s Woolsey Hall, will be broadcast to local churches. Twelve associate missioners will help the evangelist with student consultations and discussions.

Members of Dr. Graham’s evangelistic team are not scheduled to take part in the series of services.

The invitation to Dr. Graham was extended by the Mission Committee, comprising Yale undergraduates appointed by the Council of the Yale Christian Community, the University Church and the Yale Christian Association.

The annual student mission at Yale dates back to the early years of the century. One of the guest ministers at Yale during the last few years was Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr.

Bills In Congress

The following bills, relating to religious affairs, have been introduced in the 85th Congress:

★ To permit income tax deductions for tuition payments to religious schools, on the same basis as charitable institutions … income tax deductions for tuition payments on children through 12th grade of private schools.… excise tax exemptions for private and parochial schools on same basis as public schools.

★ To make Good Friday a legal holiday.

★ To ban serving of alcoholic beverages on commercial airliners (passed House last year but failed in Senate).

★ To permit American missionaries serving abroad to buy supplies at commissaries and post exchanges maintained by U.S. Armed Forces.

★ To provide heavier penalties for peddlers of indecent literature.

★ To make it a Federal penalty punishable by five years imprisonment to mail obscene literature to unmarried minors.

Numerous bills, introduced by a number of congressmen, relate to civil rights.

Broadcast Probe

An effective national policy and organization at the local level to protect the rights of all paid religious broadcasts were among the top items considered in closed business meetings at the 14th annual convention of National Religious Broadcasters, Inc., in Washington, D. C., January 30–31.

The strong considerations followed reports from many evangelical pastors about being taken off the air because of the announced policy of the Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches in favor of “free” and “sustaining” time.

“Free” time may mark the end of “freedom” for evangelical broadcasting in America, said the official news-letter of the NRB.

Delegates to the convention were told that the National Council pressure follows this pattern:

★ “Local churches are objecting to the ‘commercialization’ of religion by the sale of time.

★ “There are too many ‘religious hucksters, religious exploiters, faith healers’ and ‘cultists’ on the air. The only way to control this situation is to put Protestant time in the hands of the Council of Churches.

★ “Paid-time broadcasters do not represent ‘the theology or worship practices of the main body of the American people.’

★ “The NCC represents within its membership all the ‘cooperative, substantial’ and ‘trustworthy’ elements in Protestantism. Local representatives should be given priority in the allocation of radio and television time.

★ “The local Council of Churches or ministerial association should be consulted and should have the right to approve all religious programs other than Roman Catholic or Jewish.

★ “Local stations should have a policy in line with that of the Federal Communications Commission, the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters and the National Council of Churches.”

The NRB estimated that hundreds of evangelical programs have been dropped at local levels since the NCC effort began last April, because of the lack of “effective strategy to meet the situation.” It was stated, however, that the radio-television industry “on the national level” has been “eminently fair and generous in its attitude toward ‘paid’ religious broadcasting.”

Moral Leadership

Christian leaders from many parts of the world have been converging on Washington, D.C., in recent days.

The reason: International Christian Leadership Conference, February 6–9, and highlighted by Prayer Breakfast for the President February 7 at the Mayflower Hotel.

Dr. Billy Graham will speak at the annual banquet. Senator Price Daniel of Texas is president of the organization.

Sigurd Anderson, general conference chairman, stated:

“America’s top role in world affairs is indisputable, as is the fact her leadership must be more than political, economic and military. The world today desperately needs the moral and spiritual leadership which our country is in a unique position to give.

“The International Christian Leadership Conference will be a testimony to the world that America takes her spiritual and moral responsibility seriously.”

Warning To Clergy

Church membership, to some, is not as demanding as membership in many civic clubs.

This opinion was expressed to an estimated 300 ministers from 31 states by Dr. G. Ernest Thomas, director of the first National Conference on Spiritual Birth and Growth sponsored by the General Board of Evangelism of the Methodist Church. The conference was held recently at Kentucky Lake State Park.

Dr. Thomas warned the ministers against permitting their churches to become merely clubs. He stressed the need for “spiritual rebirth bringing with it the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Deep In The Heart

The Baptist General Convention of Texas has launched a mammoth stewardship program aimed at increasing annual gifts to churches from $75,000,000 in 1957 to $80,000,000 in 1958.

Dr. C. C. Warren, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, is one of 27 speakers touring the state in behalf of the program.

Meanwhile, the Southern Baptist Convention’s effort to establish 30,000 new preaching stations by 1964 has been voted the top news story of 1956 in the Convention.

Baptist editors voted as second most important the record $20,000,000 given in direct support to Convention missionary and agency work.

‘Utopian Dreamers’

Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the 11,800-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, lashed out at the “so-called social gospel” in a recent address to the 19th annual Texas Baptist Evangelistic Conference.

He said the social gospel is “destroying Christendom under the guise of social consciousness,” and declared that “its fruits, whether in New York, Japan or India, are a dead church, a dead gospel, a dead denomination, a dead seminary and a dead preacher.”

Dr. Criswell described such preachers as “utopian dreamers and arm-chair philosophers.” He said that liberal churches today, “with their abandoned Sunday evening services, their deserted prayer meetings and their cold intellectual sermons, are occupying themselves with pimples of the skin when the disease of death lies in the blood stream of the heart.”

He added:

“Men with a passion for social righteousness are to be commended. The amelioration of working conditions, the building of better community playgrounds, the organization of groups for the peace and the good of the world—these things and a thousand others like them are acceptable to God and to man. It is not for these things that we arraign the social gospelers. We would support these humanitarian movements with all our hearts and souls. But the modernists have committed evils. They have forsaken the Lord God, ‘the foundation of living waters, and they have hewed them out broken cisterns that can hold no water.’

“They made a God of judgment and wrath a soft, yielding Father, who has so made the world that we inevitably grow better and better. That one should think there is a final reckoning for evil or a hell awaiting the wicked is to insult the sentimental fatherhood of God.

“Salvation, moreover, to the social gospelers, means that what a man requires is not regeneration in the old sense of the terms, but simply an awakening to what he really is.…

“Man has one need above all others, and that is the need for redemption. If he cannot be saved from his sins, no system into which he is placed will work toward peace and perfection.

“Our hope is in the gospel of repentance and faith. We sin individually and we must repent individually. Each one of us must find pardon for himself in the atoning grace of Christ and eternal life through a personal faith in Him. The primary task of the Church today is to preach the gospel of salvation everywhere, to offer redemption from the bondage of sin and eternal life in Christ Jesus now and in the world to come. We can never have a better world until better people live in it. There is more lasting social good accomplished by bringing men to Christ than by all the highspun theories of all the armchair philosophers in the whole world.”

Restudy Of Doctrine

The American Baptist Convention’s missionary program in the Orient, caught increasingly between denominational and ecumencial pressures, has wavered ambiguously for some years.

Lacking a cooperative program, Northern Baptists, who once held the lead in mission work among the Japanese, have now been strongly outpaced by Southern Baptists. At the same time, ecumenical aggression has tended to reduce Northern Baptist strength, whereas Southern Baptists have worked independently of national church agencies.

In an effort to halt this erosion, the ABFMS has named a committee to restudy the Baptist doctrine of the church. Composed of leaders from within the board, the committee, while predominantly conservative in theology, also includes representatives of the liberal view.

The committee’s task is a big one: to exhibit a Baptist doctrine of the church which will encourage cooperation with Southern Baptists and ecumenical forces at the same time, without loss of Northern Baptist strength.

Governor And Bible

Governor Orval Faubus, in his second term inaugural address before the Arkansas General Assembly, cited five passages from the sixth chapter of Galatians, which, he said, have been guideposts of his administration.

The passages are:

“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

“Let every man prove his own work.”

“Be not deceived: God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

“Let us not he weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”

“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men.”

And One Hindu

(The following statistics on the religious affiliation of members of the 85th Congress were compiled by Robert Tate Allan’s Washington Religious Report Newsletter. The figures may vary slightly from reports of other religious news sources, because some members of Congress, at their own request, are classified as just “Unlisted” or “Protestant.”)

Senate

Methodist, 18; Baptist, 14; Lutheran, 4; Presbyterian, 13; Congregationalist 8; Disciples of Christ, 2; Evangelical and Reformed, 2; Episcopalian, 12; Quakers, 2; Unitarian, 2; Mormon, 3; Jewish, 2; Unlisted, 1; “Protestant,” 2; Roman Catholic, 11.

House Of Representatives

Methodist, 84; Baptist, 55; Presbyterian, 52; Lutheran, 15; Congregational, 19; Disciples of Christ, 14; Evangelical and Reformed, 4; Mormon, 4; Episcopal, 45; Quakers, 2; Unitarians, 3; Church of Christ, 4; Apostolic Christian, 1; Universalist, 2; Evangelical Free Church, 1; Christian Scientist, 2; Hindu, 1; Jewish, 8; Unlisted, 26; “Protestant”, 18; Roman Catholic, 75.

Edmunds Honored

A Southern Baptist educator has been elected president of the Association of American Colleges for the first time in its 42-year-old history.

He is Dr. J. Ollie Edmunds, president of Stetson University, DeLand, Fla.

Dr. Edmunds succeeds Dr. Arthur G. Coons, president of Occidental College, Los Angeles.

Digest …

► “Fishers of Men” pin President Eisenhower in hour-long visit at the White House.

► Dr. H. L. Turner, president of Christian and Missionary Alliance, on tour of mission fields in Africa. Returns late in March.… Carl L. Cleaver elected president of New York Bible Society. Associated with Reynolds & Co., member of New York Stock Exchange.

► Methodists launch drive for 1,200 new clergymen a year.… Record $23,533,296 contributed by Methodists in 1956 for missionary work.

► Six American Lutheran church bodies announce giving goal of $35,550,000 for 1957 and $120,635,000 for the three-year period ending in 1959.

► Kresge Foundation of Detroit grants $1,500,000 to help build Methodist Church’s new theological seminary.

Britain

Claims Disputed

The Roman Catholic Church is making rapid progress in Britain, reports the Catholic Directory for 1957.

According to published statistics, the Roman Catholic population in England and Wales rose by 122,300 to a total of 3,292,000 during 1956.

In commenting on these figures, the Sunday Express quotes recent words of Eric Treacy, the Roman Catholic Archdeacon of Halifax, York, who forecast that by the end of this century the Anglican Church will no longer be an established church.

These are the quoted words:

“A nation with a predominantly Roman Catholic population will by then have taken steps to have the Constitution of the country changed, so that the cathedrals and ancient parish churches are made over to the Roman Catholics; the King (or Queen) of this country is crowned by a Roman Prelate; and the Anglican Church and its clergy are deprived of the privileges that now belong to them as ministers of the establishment.”

A qualified Protestant observer had this to say:

“These opinions are without solid foundation, nor are the Roman Catholic statistics so impressive as they appear. It is well known that the numerical growth of the Roman Church in the last few years is due in large measure to the influx into Britain of refugees from Central Europe and of employees (e. g., nurses) from Ireland, nearly all of them Catholics. It is also well known (although no statistics are available) that considerable numbers of Roman Catholics are received each year into the Church of England.

“Despite the high-sounding claims of the Roman hierarchy, the Anglican Church shows no signs of decline. Its membership includes over 60 per cent of the population of England, and the number of its communicants increases year by year. The Protestant Free Churches in Britain are also gaining in strength. This is certainly true of the Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians. And the Free Churches continue to exert a powerful influence in the spiritual life of the nation. The Romans are laboring under an illusion if they think they are having everything their own way.”

F. C.

Revising Canon Laws

The Church of England is in the process of overhauling its Canon Laws—last revised in 1603.

It is generally agreed that a certain amount of revision is called for, if the Canons are to retain any sort of spiritual authority. But evangelical churchmen have become increasingly uneasy, lest in the process of revision, the distinctively Reformed character of the Church of England be endangered.

The Church Society, founded in 1950 and representing the more extreme evangelical opinion in the Church of England, has issued a broadsheet in which a direct attack is made on the proposed new Canons. It describes the revision as “an attempt, behind a smokescreen of respectability and legalism, to whittle away the faith once delivered unto us by the Apostles and to reverse the Reformation doctrine which is built upon this faith.”

Among other things, the Society protests that many of the revised Canons would give increased power to the bishops, undermine the authority of the Bible, legalize Mass vestments and the confessional and enforce Confirmation as an essential condition of admittance to Holy Communion.

A strongly-worded answer to these charges has come from the Bishop of Rochester, Dr. C. M. Chavasse, in a letter to the London Times. Describing himself as “the senior Evangelical Bishop in the Church of England,” Dr. Chavasse repudiates the Church Society’s broadsheet as “false and scandalous” and calls it a “scurrilous document” produced by “irresponsible and unknown agitators.”

Fuel has been added to the fire by speeches made at the recent Islington Clerical Conference—an annual rallying point for Anglican evangelicals. An estimated 500 attended. The president of the conference, the Rev. Maurice Wood, vicar of Islington in N. E. London, disassociated himself from the views expressed by the Church Society and forbade the sale of the broadsheet.

“Canon Law revision,” he declared, “is not a plot to drive evangelical clergy out of the Church of England. There is no need to make ourselves into a persecuted minority.”

F. C.

Sunday School Decline

The London Times has surveyed the place of children in church and concluded that the name, Sunday School, is no longer in favor.

It has discovered some attempts to change the name to “children’s church,” “junior church” and “family church.” Attendance at British Sunday Schools is steadily dropping, however, no matter what the name.

Europe

Crisis Deepens

The crisis within the Italian Communist Party (cited in November 26 issue ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY) is deepening.

The confusion that the Hungarian slaughter caused upon the rank and file of Italian Communists became manifest during the recent Eighth Congress of the Italian Communist Party held in Rome. Some outstanding leaders of the party openly accused the Stalinist bosses and asked for a more democratic leadership. Signor Togliatti and his followers, however, succeeded in silencing the opposition and in closing the Congress in absolute conformity to Moscow’s orders.

In the days that followed, the victory became less real. Signor Eugenio Reale, one of the founders of Italian communism and a former ambassador to Warsaw, resigned from the party. His example was followed by six notable personalities in the field of culture. One of these, Professor Vezio Crisafulli, who had been a candidate to the High Constitutional Court, said on behalf of the others, “To come out from the Communist Party had become for us a matter of conscience.”

An untold number declined to renew their membership cards.

The latest blow was given by Signor Nenni, leader of the Socialist Party, who offered his Stalin Prize (over $25,000), received from the hands of Stalin, to the Italian Red Cross in aiding hundreds of Hungarian refugees pouring into Italy.

R.T.

Seminary In Germany

Formation of a theological training center in West Germany for Spanish Protestant ministerial candidates was voted at the annual conference of the Gustav Adolf Work of the Evangelical Church of the Rhineland.

The decision to set up the new training facilities was made after the conference heard a report by Dr. Manuel Gutierrez-Marin, president of the Spanish Evangelical Church, on the “distressed situation” of that body.

Praise For Niemoeller

Dr. Martin Niemoeller, president of the Evangelical Church in Hessen and Nassau, was greeted on his 65th birthday by religious, cultural and political leaders all over Germany.

Bishop Otto Dibelius of Berlin, chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKID), hailed him as “a courageous man who tells everybody what he thinks must be told.”

Even his adversaries cannot deny that he is one of the most outstanding personalities of German Protestantism in the 20th century, asserted the bishop.

During recent years, Dr. Niemoeller has become a highly controversial figure.

His statements on political questions, particularly his opposition to the rearming of West Germany, have frequently evoked criticism from church and civic leaders and brought praise from pro-communist groups.

News Behind News

A communist newspaper in Czechoslovakia has complained about a slowing down of atheistic propaganda.

The paper, Nase Pravda, said the population is still deeply religious and hence, there must be no relaxation in anti-religious campaigns.

Africa

New Nasser Move

Egyptian President Gamel Nasser, frustrated eastward, may turn westward into the African continent in a bid to regain his prestige as the Arabs’ “strong man.”

Coastal newspapers in West Africa recently have headlined rumors of Egyptian influence among the area’s Moslem population. The papers look upon this influence, based upon religious ties and Arab nationalism, as a threat to their own nationalist ambitions.

With self-government for the Federation of Nigeria approaching, political leaders of the “Christian” south fear that the Moslem rulers of the vast and rich northern region may want to secede from the Federation in favor of the Moslem “lodestar” across the Sahara.

“The Sahara is a bridge rather than a barrier between Egypt and us,” Prime Minister Alhaji Ahmadu of Northern Nigeria said in Cairo during his pilgrimage to Mecca last June. The Prime Minister of Somalia and the Secretary-General of the French Cameroons Party also were among the leading African figures who visited Egypt last year.

Low air fares are making the Mecca more attractive to West Africans. An estimated 10,000 of them now make the “Hajj” each year. So many went from Nigeria last year that the government sent a special mission, including a physician and a team of medical workers, to look after their needs.

It is on this religious feeling of kinship that Nasser is working. The trip to Mecca whets the appetite for national liberty as pilgrims rub shoulders with nationalists from other areas of the colored world. At the same time, the sense of unity in Moslem Africa tends to undermine loyalties to the western world.

Nasser has not been silent in wooing the affections of Africa. In his Philosophy of the Revolution, he said, “If we direct our attention to the continent of Africa, I would say, without exaggeration, that we cannot, even if we wish to, in any way stand aside from the sanguinary and dreadful struggle now raging in the heart of Africa between 5,000,000 whites and 200,000,000 Africans.”

Egyptian officials announced last October that they would open a consulate in Nigeria.

Alhaji M. A. Deke, a former employe of the Islamic Congress, has told the West African press that diplomats from Egypt have been visiting Northern Nigeria in the role of businessmen. He also revealed that the Congress recently sent 20,000 Islamic books of a political nature to the Northern Region. All this, he stated, was designed to build up a Moslem empire headed by Nasser.

Leaders of Christian missions in West Africa, already concerned about the way in which Islamic “evangelism” is outstripping the growth of the Christian Church in some areas, are closely watching these signs of strengthened ties between Nasser’s Arab nationalism and the African Islamic religion.

W. H. F.

Gold Coast Nuggets

Only 10 students showed up when a youth camp, with Christian lecturers, was held on the African Gold Coast four years ago.

Converts among these 10 provided camp officers for the next year. In December, 1956, four camps were held on the Gold Coast, with 170 attending.

The idea has spread along the coast to Sierra Leone and east to Nigeria, where the country’s first boys’ camp was held last Christmas. Two of the many who made decisions for Christ were from Moslem homes.

One of the converts at the camp four years ago was Felix Konotey Ahulu. Today, he is in England studying to be a medical doctor and trying to win students for Christ.

Norway

Report On Revival

Hundreds of Norwegians have surrendered their lives to Christ, in the wake of an evangelistic campaign that began last fall.

The campaign was scheduled to end many weeks ago, but interest has mounted and the rush of people continues. Thousands jam the white parish church of Hoyland near the city of Stavanger. People come from far away and police are kept busy regulating queues.

The revival leader is the Rev. Johannes Skauge, a secretary of foreign missions. He speaks in a simple, objective and direct manner. He never appeals to the emotions. There are no solos and choir numbers. The speaker, in giving the invitation, says, simply, “Let us sing this hymn while you come along.”

A young couple walks toward the altar. Others follow. Soon, there is no more kneeling space. Others wait.

In the periodical, “Our Church,” a reporter wrote:

“Hardly anything has touched me so deeply as what I have just seen: people breaking away from the road of perdition to seek God. Christ has but rarely appeared to me in such majesty as when I was watching the multitude striding forward towards the altar to let God take the lead.”

T. B.

India

Csi Adds Big Church

The executive synod of the Church of South India voted at its meeting in Madras to accept the application of Christ (Anglican) Church at Trivandrum to become a member.

This action brought into the CSI the largest Anglican congregation in Travancore-Cochin state not already a member.

CSI, formed in 1947, now includes Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Reformed and Congregational bodies.

Eutychus and His Kin: February 4, 1957

SACRED BRANDS

“The Best in Sacred Westerns!” Do you, dear editor, know what they are? Do you know a good sacred western from a bad sacred western? Ah—you thought it was the sacred east and the secular west! What an egghead! Get with it, man (i.e. become relevant, communicate)! Turn off your Hi-Fi, put down the Journal of Philosophy and drag down to your local Christian Book Store. See what gives. Spin a few platters plugged by the Gospel disk jockey. Hear that lonesome moan? That is real gone gospel croonin’. Gone west. Look at the full color close-up on the album. Lean type, isn’t he? Plays lead parts in the best sacred westerns.

Of course not all these disks are westerns. Here’s a hill-billy type. This one is more sophisticated. A gal with a mean break in her voice. There’s not much real rock-n-roll yet. The Presley influence may still be months away. The Christian market is very conservative, you know.

Did you look over these sacred novelties at the next table? You must have some Bible text pencils. Have you seen these cross pendant ear-rings? This new lip-stick case has a glow-in-the-dark motto on it. Why don’t you take home one of these Bible Bingo games? They’re reduced for clearance.

… Well, you didn’t have to make that scene! Especially about the books. After all, they still stock some. What did you expect—a counter display for a new book on ethics? You might think the manager’s at fault! He learned at a trade convention his business would fail unless one sells people what they want, not what you think they ought to have.

Now calm yourself, and let’s have an editorial soon—“Is the Christian Western Worth Saving?”

EUTYCHUS

CONFESSION OF FAITH

Some local churches may not require belief on the part of members in the virgin birth, bodily resurrection and substitutionary atonement. But in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. a minister has to “receive and adopt the confession of faith of this Church, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures.” The confession makes a definite statement of our church position on these matters. A minister who has “no truck with any of them” should feel quite out of place in the Presbyterian Church, and his Presbytery should look into this matter.

ARTHUR JAMES YUNKEHS JR.

First Presbyterian Church

Jackson, Minn.

RISING DEMANDS OF ROME

One of the most important articles I have ever read. It should be published very widely.…

CHARLES M. GOOD

Hutchinson, Kans.

The most thorough analysis of the growing menace to religious freedom I have ever read.

WARD S. HUMPHRIES

Pleasant Plains, Il.

I personally think that this “rising tempo” is not to be met with political opposition alone, but with an all-out evangelistic and educational program among the Catholics themselves.…

HERBERT A. HAYES

Beaver Falls, Pa.

NO MAN’S LAND

I do not think the parallel articles (by Allis and Smith on Palestine) are beyond reconciliation … Allis is right until the Jews repent; Smith will be right when the Jews accept the Messiah.…

JAMES MILLER

Bible Presbyterian Church

Lemmon, S. Dak.

… The Covenant made to Abraham does not include the Israel made up out of the seeds, but the seed.…

FLOYD JOHNSTON

Crossville, Tenn.

Although the viewpoints seem contradictory, could they not be synthesized by applying the promises of Palestine’s future glory to Abraham’s spiritual seed (Gal. 3:7), who have the same hope (Heb. 11:20)?… When a new heaven and a new earth are formed … the kingdom of (spiritual) Israel will cover the earth.…

MELVIN E. MATHERS

Cleveland, Ohio

Your meticulously fair presentation of opposing views of the Israel-in-Palestine question suggests the need for … open-minded consideration of a third interpretation … The crux of the

controversy appears … in the … identification of ancient Israel, to whom certain immutable promises were given … with its supposed modern counterpart—namely, the Jews.… It may be readily granted that modern Jewry, in its most substantial racial element, represents a continuation of its Israelitish origin … The continuing House of Judah is indispensable to the Lord in his promised reconstitution … of the nation.… Scriptural and historical clues to the identification of modern Joseph lead conclusively to the Anglo-Saxon nations … The present Israeli state in no way meets the requirements.…

CLYDE CRUSE

Missionary Baptist Church

Springville, Ala.

… I’d like to know why Christians do not seize the name of true Israel and do away with this confusion.

JOHN A. KIRSTEIN

Beulah Presbyterian Church

Fern Creek, Kentucky

Mr. Allis states that the forcing of the Arabs out of Palestine is a grievous wrong. In Genesis 21:10–12, … a similar grievous thing was done by Abraham and since God sanctioned it, Idare not define the grievous thing as a wrong.

THELMA M. THOMPSON

Southern Pines, N. Car.

“Israel’s transgression in Palestine” may have world-wide repercussions … inimical to the message of the New Testament and the mission of the Church to evangelize all nations.

It may precipitate a more universal Armageddon than some Bible teachers insist on reading into the Scripture.

MAX R. GAULKE

Gulf Coast Bible College

Houston, Tex.

… If Israel is worried about overproduction, I would suggest that she give the surplus to the displaced Arabs on her doorstep.…

J. P. SCHISSLER

Innerkip, Ontario, Canada

Is not the burning issue America’s duty in the present crisis rather than predictions of things to come? Whether or not we think Palestine will become the everlasting (!) homeland for Jews, we have no right to help make it so, if that involves us in unethical behavior toward any people now living there!

HAROLD N. ENGLUND

Second Reformed Church

Zeeland, Mich.

When Jesus the Messiah fulfilled all prophecy and the Law, he made it clear that we become his brothers and children of God the Father through our faith. Individual Jews may be sons of God, but as a national group, racial group or adherents of a religion denying Christ, they are not.

When Christians approve or support the establishment of nations like Israel, they not only contribute to the unrest in the world, they encourage the thought that the religion of Judaism is another acceptable and true form of the worship of God.…

Edward O. Lukens, Jr.

St. Stephen’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

Wilmington, Del.

FRATERNIZING WITH DEITY

I do not know just where the thing started, with the ministry, probably, but that portion of it that has come from our Bible schools, not our seminaries of good standing, but the speech habit of praying to God as “you,” etc., etc., ad nauseam, … seems to me to be a very false and ill-considered intimacy.

The thing is growing. Our young people are taking it up, it is getting into our songs at our vacation camps. There is nothing I can find in the Bible to justify this.… It is a false use of the imminence of God and a denial of his transcendence.…

EUGENE M. WILSON

Glenrock, Wyo.

• Christianity Today endorses this plea for reverence and dignity in prayer, without detriment to its intimacy. The debate between partisans of “Thee-Thou” and of “You-Your,” however, hardly coincides with a strict division between Bible schools and seminaries; proponents of each may be found in both groups. Nor does the use of “Thee-Thou” assure a proper view of Divine transcendence, any more than “You-Your” requires a false view of immanence. Moreover, either form may be employed with an absence of reverence. The case for “You-Your” rests apparently upon the same argument used for modern Bible versions—that the Divine speech to man, and hence also that of man to God, is most effectively expressed in the language familiar to the contemporary man. What seems always objectionable, however, is careless fluctuation between the “Thee-Thou” and “You-Your” forms. As to the relative merit of the consistent use of one formula or the other, however, we shall be glad to overhear debate between our readers.—ED.

ARMAGEDDON

I was much dismayed to see in your December 10 issue a quotation of a statement supposedly by me regarding Armageddon. As you will see by the inclosed clipping from the Daily News the statement was not mine but the reporter’s … it contains an unwarranted inference … and … is distorted.…

The views which I tried briefly to propound to the reporter ran somewhat as follows. The Book of Revelation is an apocalypse written apparently in a time of persecution of Christians and calling upon them to be faithful in the hope and expectation that Christ and the forces of righteousness would eventually triumph over evil and the enemies of truth. As commonly in such writings the message of the author is conveyed in highly symbolic language. The term “Armageddon” is such a symbol, representing a decisive conflict between two opposing forces. It stands in a context whose symbolism clearly refers to Rome and the Roman Empire. The immediate application of the author’s meaning is then to the Empire as persecutor and enemy and its downfall is predicted. Here he indicates that some things have already happened and others are future. In general, however, he casts the whole account in the form of a prophecy. And wherever the book be dated the symbolism of Armageddon and related terms is for the author and his readers obviously still in the future, representing the victory of righteousness and truth over evil and falsehood. The chief difference of interpretation of the term Armageddon and the event involved is in the degree to which this is taken either to be symbolic or to be representative of something that will be literally fulfilled in the future.…

ALLEN WIKGREN

Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature

University of Chicago

NEW K.J.V. EDITION

I have been reading Paul Jewett’s excellent article … He says that we need a very conservative improvement in layout; the poetry printed as poetry, the prose in paragraphs.… The recent edition of the K.J.V. (1954) put out by our Bible Society … is exactly the thing he wants, and I am rather surprised that it has not been reprinted in the U. S. The poetry is printed in verses and stanzas, the prose in paragraphs. There are cross-headings here and there to indicate change of subject, but no comments.… This Bible has been produced very cheaply, as the B.F.B.S. is an evangelical and non-profit-making foundation.…

C. G. Chilty

(Angelican)

Draycott, Cheddar

Somerset, England

FROM THE GRAVE

Owing to the proximity of his death to the search for Bridey Murphy, someone will very probably claim to be H. L. Mencken reincarnated within the Christian covenant. Mrs. Grabill is right; we need them.

Arie R. Brouwer

Holland, Mich.

Please discontinue sending this magazine which I consider an insult to one’s intelligence.… It is the same shallow, obscure, ignorant Fundamentalism that I am all to [sic] familiar with. I guess one requirement of the fundamentalist is to stop learning at the mental age of three.

Douglas T. Ibach

Presbyterian Church

West Nottingham, Md.

Ideas

Human Rights in an Age of Tyranny

The modern era has seen the collapse of the Protestant liberal inflation of man into a divinity; now it strives against the naturalistic deflation of man into a slave of the state.

Firming up the case for human rights and responsibilities at the local level has become an imperative necessity for the vagabond West. The logic and urgency of the issues of man’s dignity and duty do not grip the man in the street.

The generation of tyranny has driven many Christian churches in the free world to a fuller accent on human worth and liberty. Christianity has long stood guard against both the romantic and the pessimistic misjudgments of man. Neither a deity nor an animal, man is a creature fashioned in the divine image, fallen into sin, bearing a unique dignity and traveling to an uncommon destiny. What is the meaning of this truth for a time of tyranny?

The theme of human freedom throbbed blood-fresh in the veins of America’s Founding Fathers. Alongside the titanic brutalities of our time, the tyranny they deplored as insufferable was perhaps only the shadow of sorrow. Nevertheless, they appealed to the one eternal Preserver of man’s responsible existence, the almighty Guardian of the dignity of man and Definer of the powers of the state. In the words of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.…”

The Christian conformity of some signers of the Declaration of Independence is definitely debatable. There is little doubt, however, that the great majority were evangelical believers theologically at home in the doctrines of the Bible. True, they disapproved religious sectarian intolerance no less than political intolerance. Devout men, like Roger Williams, an evangelical Baptist, had espoused the cause of separation of church and state, or of religious liberty, as an essential aspect of human liberty. They were determined to spare Americans all the tortures of tyranny.

The Founding Fathers were careful, however, to separate neither the individual nor the state from an obligation to God. Nor did they leave the concept of God nebulous and undefined and wholly subject to private interpretation—contrary to a tendency thriving in American life today. Not the slightest hint can be found that by God they meant anything other than a personal supernatural being, the Creator (a distinctly theistic and biblical conception) through whose specific endowment the human race has been peculiarly endowed with inalienable dignity and with inalienable rights. Even the right of religious freedom had in their outlook a religious basis. Man’s unique place in society and in the universe was guaranteed by rights supernaturally supplied and sanctioned by a sovereign Creator imposing duties which both the rulers and the ruled must everywhere respect.

Confronted by the tyrannical totalitarianism that continues to deform our world, the General Assembly of the United Nations eight years ago overwhelmingly approved the so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The world still outside the spreading Soviet sphere is appropriately constrained and compelled to study anew the important issue of human liberty, lest man’s freedom, taken for granted, and no longer cherished nor understood, be disassembled and dissolved.

The reasons are close at hand, therefore, why the U.S. National Commission for Unesco, commemorating and promoting the national and local observance of Human Rights Day annually on December 10, is disappointed and even somewhat baffled because its enthusiasm has not filtered down to the community level. Even in the District of Columbia only fragmentary participation greeted the occasion.

To overcome this national lethargy to the observance of U.N. Human Rights Day, some leaders of the U.S. National Commission for Unesco (a semi-governmental agency that serves the Department of State in an advisory capacity) have proposed a new organization, whose chairman they hope will be named by the government and functioning as a voluntary private body to solicit funds and provide guidance, a timetable of operations and materials and tools for a grass-roots nationwide observance. Under an alternate plan, the National Commission would itself seek, from the 60 voluntary organizations nominating members to that body, something beyond their present disappointing creation of interest and would secure the time of established organizations to implement the U.N. program on a local basis. By one or other of these mechanisms, it is hoped, the nation, faced by the grave world threats to human dignity and freedom, will be rallied to observance of the U.N. Day of Rights.

The effort to gain a more spontaneous dedication on the American popular level for the theme of human rights has not been limited to the U.N. thrust. The preaching of Christian churches has been increasingly alive and awake to the implications of biblical theology for the socio-political order. Confessedly, the pulpit has lacked the note of uneasy urgency essential to combat the current totalitarian devaluation of man. Why then has there not been a merging of church and civic efforts to firm up the case for human rights on the local level? At the national level, admittedly, the National Council of Churches and the National Catholic Education Association are among the movements represented on the National Commission. Yet the local churches in the hamlets and cities of America tend to show only a spotty enthusiasm for the emphasis on human rights in U.N. dimensions. Why this hesitancy?

Doubtless part of the nonparticipation in the humanrights program results from the indifference of some churches to questions of social morality. They are at home in questions of Christian personal ethics, but not of Christian social ethics, except in the barest personal dimensions. Even where the relevance of Christianity to culture is not excluded, some churches tend to suspect massive movements of any kind, both political and ecclesiastical. Often their reasons are eschatological (the totalitarian world beast of Revelation 13) or anthropological (concentration of power tends to be corruptive), if not both. Those who share this forecast must always square their consciences, of course, with the complaint that whatever a given organization may become, Christian duty today must be judged in terms of what it is.

But this is hardly the whole ground for hesitancy. Many Christian leaders think, and not without reason, that an unhappy ambiguity and obscurity run through the present Unesco handling of human rights. They fear that the American people, and that mankind as a whole, cannot be assured of real progress in the field of human rights until this equivocation is candidly exposed and confronted. Especially is this true of many evangelically minded Protestant ministers, who support an emphasis on human rights that accords with both the historic American spirit and the spirit of the Hebrew-Christian tradition, and who for that reason are less than happy with the U.N. formulation. The vagrant phantoms of totalitarianism and of anarchism, they fear, are not effectually exorcised by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. For the only adequate reply to the atheistic devaluation of man as they see it—and here they are on the side of the inherited tradition of the West—is an alternative that, in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, is frankly theistic.

The very first article of the U.N. Declaration at once reflects its differences with the Declaration of Independence in clear light. That article declares: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

The U.N. statement incorporates no references to a supernatural Creator, nor does it anywhere assert that God endows mankind with specific rights. It asserts that men are “endowed with reason and conscience,” but it does not specify the source of this endowment; it goes on to specify a list of rights, but it nowhere asserts that it is the Living God who sanctions these rights. Its repeated formula is “Everyone has the right to.…” It is remarkable that the fact sheet distributed on Human Rights Day by the U.S. National Commission for Unesco, while quoting the emphasis of the Declaration of Independence on “unalienable rights,” wholly ignores the Declaration’s associated emphasis that these rights are an endowment by the Creator.

The U.N. Declaration therefore leaves in doubt the crucial fact that human rights have an ultimate basis, that God Himself insists upon these rights, that man has been endowed with these rights in view of his unique dignity by creation. It erases, therefore, the emphasis that the Declaration of Independence vigilantly sustained, that the Living God is the source and sanction of human freedoms.

The consequence of this deletion is far-reaching. For one thing, the promulgation of the U.N. Declaration, in the present conflict of ideas, could leaven the confused popular mind with an inadequate and unprotected view of human rights. Furthermore, by disjoining the question of freedoms from God as their source and sanction, the U.N. Declaration shifts the whole discussion of responsibility one-sidedly to that of human rights, and neglects the equally important subject of human duties.

The observance of Human Rights Day in the Free World ought to confront the totalitarian threat to human liberties head-on. But the U.N. formula fails to do so; in fact, its very neutrality leaves human rights vulnerably exposed and endangered.

Since the U.N. Declaration does not assert that God is the source and sanction of these rights, an impression continues to gain ground that the United Nations is their source and sanction. “The U.N. guarantees these rights!”—this is the formula one overhears time and again. If that really be the case, then the individual is guarded from the tyranny of the totalitarian state only by the totalitarian superstate. For if the U.N. is the source and sanction of human rights, there can be no appeal to a source and sanction higher than the U.N., by reference to which even the positions of the U.N. are to be approved or disapproved. In that event, the conflict between the Soviet orbit and the United Nations reduces to a conflict between superstates; the only issue in the balances is, which of them has the power of the totalitarian determination of human life? Either there is a source and sanction of human rights superior to the United Nations, a supernatural exposition of man and his station in the universe, or the conflict over human rights reduces to an intramural struggle between two totalitarian powers. The framers of the Declaration of Independence saw this issue with clearer vision than our modern statesmen. And until this issue of the ultimate source and sanction of human rights is clearly faced within the U.N., those who see dim outlines of a totalitarian superstate need not be dismissed as suffering from eschatological oddity.

If the Free World is really to stand fast against the threat to human freedoms, it will find the first line of defense, and the only unassailable tower, where the Christian patriots who forged the American Declaration of Independence located it, in the fact that man bears by divine creation a unique dignity, and that the state and citizen alike are bound in a responsible way to the Living God.

Stated in this way, the issue of human liberty will not be discussed independently of the issue of human liability. What the nations of the world need, in this sixth decade in the century of tyranny, is the compelling rediscovery of human duties no less than of human rights. Why a human rights day, in disconnection from a human responsibilities day? The one-sided observance easily gives rise to expectations that are not properly bounded by obligations. If the Christian church is to give effective leadership to a world that has lost its way, it dare not detach the question of human liberties from the knowledge of the Living God who has placed all men and nations under divine command.

END

Exchange Rate Confiscation Penalizes Korean Missions

Only one-half of every dollar given for Christian work in Korea is actually received by missions operating in that country. This is due to an arbitrary and unrealistic exchange rate set up by the Korean Government and in which the U.S. Government has concurred.

The official rate of exchange is 500 Hwan for one U.S. dollar. But on the open market (which the Korean Government calls the black market) the U.S. dollar is worth about 1000 to 1.

By maintaining this unfavorable rate, the Korean Government is penalizing all Christian mission work.

In round figures the American Government is pouring about $700,000,000 into Korea. About one half of this goes to the support of the South Korean army. Twenty divisions strong, the South Korean army is the fourth largest army in the world and is a well trained and well equipped bulwark against further aggression from the Communists in the North. For America to maintain a similar number of her own soldiers in Korea would probably cost her ten times as much.

Tire other half of the funds which America is sending into Korea, about $350,000,000, is largely for the so-called relief program. Wisdom and efficiency often are lacking in the distribution of some of this money. Some dispensers of relief might well avail themselves of the experience of Americans who have been longtime residents of Korea. Why the Government appropriates vast sums without adequate provision for effective distribution down to the levels of use is a moot question. Fifty million dollars worth of fertilizer is being distributed, with the ultimate consumer paying up to $8 a bag for this “relief” commodity.

Of far greater concern to Christians is the fact that missions in Korea today are being penalized about fifty cents on the dollar.

How much money goes into Korea today for Christian work? No one seemed prepared to give an answer. The Roman Catholics are spending a considerable sum. A consensus of many individuals, including mission treasurers and some U.S. military and civilian authorities, places the total at a minimum of three million and a maximum of four and a half million American dollars annually.

What is needed (and it will take strong and effective pressure from the U.S. Government) is an agreement with the Korean Government whereby a special category is set up for the “religious dollar.” Since other categories and special exchange rates have been set up, this would not be an innovation; in fact, up to August 1955 the “religious dollar” was in a special classification. This “religious dollar,” whether Protestant, Catholic or Buddhist, could then exchange at the currently realistic figure of about 1000 to 1.

Would this work a hardship on the Korean Government? Hardly. Since this money eventually goes into the Korean economy and is devoted to the welfare of the people, it would create no hardship, and would add to the effectiveness of the religious work in that land.

How can such a solution be reached? Missionaries, American civilians engaged in governmental activities, and American military personnel contend that the only effective means of bringing about a revision of the presently utterly unfair agreement is by arousing public opinion in America to demand a Congressional investigation of the situation with a view to a just settlement, guaranteeing that U.S. investments in Christian work in Korea shall not be penalized.

By any estimate the money going into Korea for Christian missions is less than one percent (possibly less than one-half of one percent) of all American money now being invested there for military or relief purposes. Such a concession should be accorded all bodies engaged in religious or philanthropic work in Korea and in no way would involve special consideration from the Korean Government in other areas of their work. To insist on such an agreement is not asking too much.

END

Children? Yes—But God Has No Grandchildren

This startling statement may sound facetious but it expresses a truth of the deepest significance.

Despite the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man which is so popular and so widespread the fact remains that only those who are born-again are the spiritual children of God.

God is the Father of all men by creation.

But the Bible plainly teaches that only those who have been born into the household of faith by accepting Christ as Savior stand in the true relationship of sons to our Heavenly Father.

Jesus, speaking to his carping critics, said: “If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father, the devil, the lusts … ye will do.”

Yes, it is true: “God has no grandchildren.” Every man must stand by his own faith, or fall through his lack of it. We bring our children to the Lord, dedicate them in baptism and pray for them, and God hears our prayers. But, their salvation depends solely on their own faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

END

The Spirit The Index To Powerless Or Powerful Effort

Jesus is the only way to eternal life. He has so stated, and his Word reaffirms again and again the simple fact that salvation is found in no other way than through faith in Him.

But do not we Christians who believe this often make the tragic mistake of relying on earthly resources of power for the doing of Christian work?

We stress education, and rightly so, when that education is correlated with Christian truth.

We seek to develop personality, and we send out young go-getters who can charm an audience or impress themselves on others in a most attractive way socially.

We organize meetings and campaigns with great stresson men and material resources.

We develop organizations in which all of the work is integrated and developed in a most wonderful way.

These and many other things can be used of God, when offered in humility and complete submission to His service.

But there is One without which no effective Christian work can be done. There is One who alone supplies that power which is absolutely necessary—the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you,” and subsequent events show that the same men who were powerless before became the agents through which God could evangelize the world.

We Christians need to search our own hearts and see how much we are depending on human and material means. To recognize the futility of work without the presence and power of the Holy Spirit pricks the bubble of human conceit. To completely subordinate ourselves and our work to the leadership of the Holy Spirit means a humility which God can honor. To wait for the infilling and the leading of the Spirit often demands a Christian discipline entirely foreign to our experience.

Until we are brought face to face with the sobering fact that we of ourselves can do nothing, and, replace our natural confidence in human methods and instruments with an absolute and final faith in the Holy Spirit as the only One who can energize for effective work, until then we labor in vain.

The power of an individual Christian and the power of a church can come from but one source. We either recognize this fact and seek him, or we continue to wonder why we are powerless.

It is high time that we return to the Scriptural teaching that it is “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit saith the Lord of Hosts.”

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: The Prophecy of Daniel

That the prophecy of Daniel in many respects is difficult to understand goes without saying. For this reason many preachers do not often use the book in their preaching, and the ordinary Bible reader often throws up his hands in despair as he contemplates it. On the one hand, some advance fanciful interpretions which have obscured the central message of Daniel. And on the other, those scholars who deny the historicity of the book also impose upon it an impossible interpretation and consequently do much to keep it from enjoying the understanding and popularity which it deserves.

Authorship Of The Book

It is necessary to say a word about the question of the book’s authorship. In the early third century there lived a man by the name of Porphyry who was an avowed opponent of Christianity. It was his intention to do all in his power to destroy the Christian religion. He wrote some fifteen books, which bore the general designation “Against the Christians.” Of these, only the twelfth is extant, and that only as it has been preserved in part in the commentary of Jerome on Daniel. According to this early opponent of Christianity, the book of Daniel could not have been written by Daniel because he would not have been able to foretell the future. It was, therefore, written by an unknown Jew who lived in the second century B.C. and who used Daniel’s name. According to Porphyry, this unknown Jew lied. In placing the authorship of the book in the second century B.C., many scholars have followed the unbelieving Porphyry, and it is no exagggeration to assert that this position has become dominant in modern scholarship. It is a position that renders impossible a satisfactory interpretation of the book. One need but examine a modern commentary to discover how untenable are interpretations based on the view that the book of Daniel is a product of the second century B.C.

The traditional Christian view is that the book is the work of Daniel the prophet and was written in the sixth century B.C. This is explicitly taught by the Lord Himself, who spoke of “Daniel the prophet” (cf. Matt. 24:15).

For the Christian believer this infallible utterance of Jesus Christ is sufficient. It is bolstered by the fact that the book of Daniel is a literary unit, so that if one part was written by Daniel, the book in its entirety was also written by him. Furthermore, the arguments against the Danielic authorship are not cogent. They have been answered many times, and there is no need in mentioning them here. If we approach the book as a trustworthy prophecy, we are more likely to look with seriousness upon its message.

Foundation Of Daniel’S Message

The reader will find it helpful to observe the following scheme. In Daniel (both in chapter 2 and chapter 7) there is mention of four world kingdoms, set forth in symbolic fashion. In chapter 2 they appear as parts of a great colossus, whereas in the seventh chapter they are given under the symbolism of four beasts which arise from the sea. The interpretations of these beasts have truly been many, but they may be reduced to the following three basic schemes, here labeled A, B, C.

A word concerning each of these schemes will be in order.

A. This is the position of those who deny that Daniel was the author of the prophecy and who date the prophecy in the second century B. C. In positing a Median kingdom as the second in the series, they assert that the author of Daniel made a gross historical blunder. As a matter of historical fact, it was the combined Medo-Persian kingdom which followed Babylon. The author of Daniel, so the charge runs, did not know this but rather assumed that there was first a Median and then a Median Persian kingdom. The blunder, however, was not on the part of the author of Daniel, for a careful study of the book reveals

that he never envisioned a separate Median kingdom following Babylon nor a separate Persian kingdom following Media. The “critical” view simply will not stand the test of close investigation. The reader may judge a commentary by the identification that it makes of the second kingdom.

B. This view is held by many good Christian scholars, although there are not many commentaries which expound it. It is found in Zockler’s commentary (in the Lange series), also in the old work of Moses Stuart and in the modern Roman Catholic commentary of Cuthbert Lattey, S.J. There are strong objections to it, and, in the writer’s opinion, it will not stand the test of close scrutiny of the text of Daniel.

C. This view may be called the traditional position, which is held and has been held in the church. It is distinctive in that it identifies the fourth kingdom as that of Rome. The fifth or Messianic kingdom was established while the Roman kingdom was in existence (in keeping with the prophecy of Daniel 2:44). This latter interpretation has the most in its favor and is clearly supported by the New Testament. If the reader will keep these three schemes in mind, he will find they aid his understanding of Daniel.

Minor Messages Of The Book

While the central thrust of the prophecy is to show that human empires rise and fall, that it is God who sets up kings and deposes them at his will, and that only the kingdom of Christ can be truly eternal and universal, the prophecy also contains several other messages of great importance. The preacher will find that the character of Daniel himself is an admirable subject for discussion in the pulpit. Although Daniel acknowledged his sinfulness (cf. 9:5), not one sin of his is recorded. Daniel was a statesman who was more concerned to do what was right than to follow a policy of expediency. He lived close to God, constantly having recourse unto him in prayer. He was a man of principle, yet ever maintaining a courteous attitude. There is no greater need either of country or of church than for men like Daniel, who are more eager to do what is right than to win the favor of men, more eager to stand up for truth than to be concerned over results.

The book of Daniel is also a rich treasure house of prayers. Indeed, these would furnish interesting material for a series of sermons or Bible studies. They are filled with adoration of the sovereign God whom Daniel worshipped. And they are filled with expressions of rich thought. We may note just a few of these: “May the name of God be blessed for ever and ever,” “Wisdom and power are his,” “He removes kings and sets up kings,” “He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him,” “Oh! Lord, hear, oh! Lord, forgive, Oh! Lord, attend and do, delay not for thy sake, Oh! my God, for the name is called upon by thy city and thy people.”

Outline Of The Book

The following will serve as a brief analysis of Daniel.

1:1–2:4a Introduction. The triumph of God’s grace in Babylon, and the training of the Hebrew youths.

2:4b–49 The dream of Nebuchadnezzar in which he sees the colossus, and Daniel’s interpretation of that dream.

3:1–5:30 The image erected by Nebuchadnezzar and the majestic appearance of the Son of God in the furnance. The madness of Nebuchadnezzar. Belshazzar’s banquet and his death.

6:1–28 Darius the Mede and the episode of the den of lions.

7:1–28 Daniel’s vision of the four beasts and the interpretation of the vision.

8:1–27 A vision of the ram and the he goat, having to do with the second and third kingdoms.

9:1–27 Daniel’s remarkable prayer and the Messianic prophecy of the seventy sevens. 10:1–12:13 A revelation of the future dealing with the exploits of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Antichrist. Conclusion of the prophecy.

Aids In Study Of Daniel

Much exposition of this prophecy is of almost no value inasmuch as it makes little or no serious effort to come to grips with the difficult problems involved in the study of the book. The best presentation of the “critical” position is found in H. H. Rowley Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires in the Book of Daniel (1935). The older commentary of Moses Stuart gives a good explanation of the Aramaic words and is recommended for the minister who desires help in reading the Aramaic portions found in 2:4b–7:28. The lectures of Edward Pusey, Daniel the Prophet (1891), are superb. The same may be said of the technical studies of Robert Dick Wilson, Studies in the Book of Daniel (Vol. I, 1917, Vol. II, 1938). The comments of Hengstenberg in his Christology of the Old Testament (4 vols.) (1955 reissue) are most helpful. The commentaries of Keil and Leupold are valuable and present an interpretation of the fulfillment of the seventy sevens (Daniel 9:24–27) which is not distinctively Messianic but which takes place largely in the history of the church. The best modern defense of a premillennial position is that of Robert D. Culver, Daniel and the Latter Days (1954), which makes a serious attempt to grapple with some of the problems of interpretations. In The Prophecy of Daniel (1949), the present writer endeavored to defend the historical character of the prophecy and also to present and defend the traditional Messianic interpretation.

Edward J. Young.

Cover Story

The Church and Evangelism

A. Skevington Wood

One of the significant features of the Christian situation today is the awakening consciousness of the church to the claimant challenge of evangelism. There was a time, and that not so very long ago, when evangelism, in Professor James Denney’s phrase, was “the disinterested interest” of a comparative few. But now it is taking its rightful place at the head of the church’s priorities. It has become, as the Bishop of Rochester has recently pointed out, “a live and foremost issue in the outlook, planning and strategy of the whole church.” We have, therefore, a new climate ecclesiastically for evangelism.

Technique Not The Secret

Much has been written of late concerning the technique of evangelism. It is indeed an encouraging sign of our times that so much attention should be paid to this vital subject. But perhaps the hour has struck for a warning to be issued against the perils involved in too great a reliance upon method. It is the temptation of this pragmatic age to presume that technique is the secret of evangelism. It cannot be too firmly emphasized, however, that mere methods, mere schemes, mere endeavors will not in themselves produce the desired effect. Without the tide of the Holy Spirit running through them they may prove as futile as the frenzied activism of Elijah’s rivals on Mount Carmel. “And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice; no one answered, no one heeded” (1 Kings 18:28,29, R.S.V.). Method is of secondary importance compared with the primacy of the Spirit and the Word.

It is the purpose of this article to underline certain basic principles relating to the church and evangelism rather than to add to the existing pile of literature on method. And working as I am at the present moment with the “Tell Scotland” movement, perhaps I may be forgiven for utilizing the threefold statement that underlies this great nationwide campaign. Expressed in the words of its leader, Tom Allan, effective evangelism today stems from the conviction “that mission is a continuing engagement with the world at every level; that the true agent of mission is the Church itself; and that the layman has a decisive part to play.”

Engagement With The World

The question of the world is one that should continually exercise the believer’s mind, but not always in the traditional sense. It is, of course, essential that the young convert should clearly separate himself from all that would distract or defile. But once his stand has been made and he is firm on the rock and strong in Christ, then, as the familiar hymn reminds us, he must

“… stretch out a loving hand

To wrestlers with the troubled sea.”

And just as the would-be rescuer must often plunge into the dangerous waters in order to save a sinking man, so the Christian is called upon to risk contamination himself in order to win another out of the world. Remember, it was the Pharisees who drew in their skirts at the sight of the wicked and passed by on the other side. The Son of man was known as “a friend of publicans and sinners” (Matt. 11:19).

Now it is out of this Scriptural attitude that the realisation arises that evangelism is an engagement with the world. Christianity does not represent a flight from the world. That is the choice of the recluse and the ascetic, but it is not the directive of God’s Word. Our Lord’s parting commission, before his ascension to the right hand of the Father on high, was “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). In obedience to that explicit command of Christ, the church must seek to be always in the world yet never of it. And this is not to be a matter of special occasions and specific crusade. Evangelism cannot be relegated to the realm of the sporadic and the intermittent. It is the urgent task of the church all the time. It is a “continuing engagement with the world.”

Moreover, it is to be “at every level.” Too often our evangelism is limited in both conception and scope. We tend to restrict it to stereotyped patterns. We have lost the improvising genius of the New Testament Church. Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul gives us a glimpse of his own evangelistic strategy. “I have become all things to all men,” he says, “that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). When the passion for souls fully dominates our discipleship, then we shall not rest content until every avenue of approach to the unconverted has been explored. We shall covet the beatitude of Isaiah 32:20, “Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.”

The Christian Commando campaigns in Great Britain in the immediate postwar years adopted such a policy. They aimed to penetrate deep into enemy lines and to occupy a bridgehead until the regular troops of the church came. Meetings were held wherever men and women were—in factories, in shops, in cinemas, in dance halls, in public houses, in schools, in clubs and in the open air. Instead of waiting for unbelievers to come to the church to hear the message of salvation (and it might well have been a lengthy interval), the church went to them and confronted them with the Word just where they were. Such a policy must be incorporated into the regular program of every local church. Continuing engagement with the world at every level must be integral to the church.

The Agent Of Mission

A further principle of vital evangelism is that “the true agent of mission is the church itself.” Never before has the church been so closely linked with evangelism at the receiving end. We live in the era of church-centered crusades. It used to be said that too many campaigns failed because they halted on the church doorstep. That is no longer the case. Every possible effort is made in follow-up procedure to channel inquirers into the fellowship of the church.

This reorientation of evangelistic objective brings with it a fresh challenge to the church. It is not sufficient that the actual task of mission should be left to itinerant specialists, valuable though their contribution may be. The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are sadly few. We must therefore pray the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers into His harvest (Matt. 9:37, 38). And the answer to our prayer will be “Go ye.” We shall realise that evangelism is a task for the whole church, and that includes every believer. We cannot conveniently beg off this concern. When the prophet Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” he responded immediately and unhesitatingly, “Here am I: send me” (Isa. 6:8).

We have spoken of the change of attitude whereby the church is now regarded as the natural recipient of converts. There is desperate need for a parallel revolution within the church. Our eyes must be opened to see both our responsibility and opportunity. If we are to fulfill our function in the world by becoming the agent of evangelism, we must be ready for new and unusual ventures in Christ’s name. We must refuse to be fenced in by conventional inhibitions. Over the centuries, sadly enough, the church has built up defences that all too often hem her in, as well as keep the enemy out. God may well be saying to us as He said to Israel of old, “Take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord’s” (Jer. 5:10).

If the church is indeed the agent of mission, then a radical overhaul of our machinery is necessary. Every item must be reassessed in terms of its evangelistic value. The policy of the local church must be evangelistic. Evangelism must be the very air we breathe, the very blood that runs through our veins. So many churches apparently have no policy, spiritually speaking, at all. They are content to drift along from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, from year to year with no evident end in view. No political party would dream of dispensing with a program. No business firm could continue without a clear-cut plan of action. Yet too often in the Christian Church we think that anything will do. We must have a policy and that policy must be evangelistic. We must have a burden for the unsaved. We must have a consuming hunger for souls.

The activity of the local church must be evangelistic. Everything we do on our premises must be related to the task of mission. If need be, we must scrutinize our timetable to ensure that all is done for the furtherance of the Gospel. Every meeting and every organisation must be weighed in this balance and fearlessly dealt with if it is found wanting. The tree will be all the healthier when the branches are pruned.

The worship of the local church must be evangelistic. Every service must be designed to confront the congregation with the claims of Jesus Christ. Every sermon must aim at decisions. What Principal W. M. Macgregor used to call “the preaching of conquest” must return to the pulpit. We must expect conversions, for unless we expect them we shall not see them. And beyond the normal activity and worship of the church, every attempt must be made to reach out to those who are estranged from Christ—especially those resident within the vicinity. All this is implied by the affirmation that “the true agent of mission is the Church itself.”

The Layman’S Part

The final principle of evangelism enunciated by the “Tell Scotland” movement is that “the layman has a decisive part to play.” One of the “Signs of Hope in a Century of Despair” listed by Professor Elton Trueblood in a stimulating book of that title, is what he calls the emergence of lay religion. Such an heartening feature must be capitalized in the interests of evangelism. The growing consciousness within the church of the role of the laity must be harnessed to the task of mission.

This is an unequivocal implication of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. This Protestant insistence is itself derived from Holy Scripture. The Christianity of the Bible is a layman’s movement. Among the twelve whom Christ chose to receive and perpetuate His message not one was a rabbi or a priest. They were all to be found in the ordinary walks of life. Some were fishermen and one was a tax collector. It was to these men, drawn as they were from the common cross section of society, that our Lord issued his clarion call to witness: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19).

Christ is calling laymen still to play a decisive part in the work of evangelism. And if they hesitate on the grounds of inadequacy, they should ponder the second verb in the verse quoted above. It contains the open secret of power for witness. “I will make you.” The disciples were the men Jesus made. It was not what they were that equipped them for their mission, but what he made of them. He who tamed the impetuous Peter until he was known as the apostle of humility; he who enabled the reticent Andrew to become the first home missionary; he who so resolved the dilemmas of doubting Thomas that at last he owned his Lord and his God—this same living Christ can transform the lowliest believer into an ambassador of love.

The layman has a decisive part to play in personal evangelism. In these days of great crusades and mass meetings we tend to overlook the abiding need for the quiet yet fruitful witness of the individual. But in point of fact this is the basis of every sort of evangelism. It is the original New Testament technique. Andrew brings Peter. Philip brings Nathaniel. That was how the Church grew when it was very young. That is how it will still grow today. Obviously, the layman is central here. It is the duty and privilege of every believer to testify to the saving grace of Christ. If our experience is real, it will be evident. If our faith is vital, it will find expression. We shall tell our unconverted friends and neighbors what has happened to us and commend our Saviour to them. We shall say with Paul, “We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak” (2 Cor. 4:13).

The layman also has a decisive part to play in team evangelism. Much of the most effective missioning is being done today by groups. They may go out to visit from door to door or witness in the open air. They may constitute a Christian cell within a factory. Such teams are composed of laymen. They may be trained and instructed by ministers, but they are nevertheless in essence a part of the lay potential of the church.

That is a potential awaiting realisation. “The essential thing in the whole matter,” wrote Dr. Hendrik Kraemer, referring to the layman’s part in evangelism, “is that the churches forget that in the lay membership they have the most precious part of the whole body. If the churches awaken to the importance of the laymen and really try, probably for the first time in history, to give content to the doctrine of the general priesthood of all believers, there will be a deep change in our whole church life and in the relation of the church to the world.” It should be the prayer of every Christian that such a profound and far-reaching revolution may take place. A return to the New Testament principles of every-member evangelism is more than overdue.

Having indicated the fundamental convictions underlying the church’s approach to its commitment of mission in the contemporary situation, let it be stated in conclusion that evangelism is not in itself the answer to the church’s needs and problems. Evangelism is not enough. Our further prayer must be for revival. Only the Pentecostal insweeping of the Holy Spirit can make the dead bones live.

Revive us, Lord! Is zeal abating

While harvest fields are vast and white?

Revive us, Lord, the world it waiting,

Equip Thy Church to spread the light.

We Quote:

RUSSELL MAGUIRE

Chairman of the Board, American Mercury

Of paramount importance, we must have a spiritual revival—we must return to a strong belief in God and the Bible.—In a statement of “Objectives for 1957,” American Mercury, Vol. LXXXIV, No. 396 (Jan., 1957).

A. Skevington Wood served Methodist circuits in Scotland from 1940 to 1951, when he became superintendent of Paisley Central Hall where he still ministers. He holds the B.A. from University of London and the Ph.D from University of Edinburgh, where Church History was his major field. His work on Thomas Haweis (1734–1820) is being published this year by S.P.C.K.

- More from A. Skevington Wood

Cover Story

Jesus as the Ideal of Christian Ethics

Carl F. H. Henry

Much of the fascination which Jesus Christ has held for scholars comes not simply from his supernatural works, nor from his supernatural teaching, but from his supernatural moral life. The conviction that he is the “personal revelation of the holiness of God” is a prime reason for the great number of Lives about him. He was more than the great Teacher of ethics. He was its great Liver.

Nowhere else does human history show the moral glory of the Divine in human life. Nowhere else has the world found such inspiration for moral earnestness. Christ stands behind what D. M. Ross has called “the singular moral heat” of the early Christians. “From Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ to Charles M. Sheldon’s In His Steps,” Hillyer Straton remarks, “Christian ethics has been centered in Jesus.” And the sweep of his moral influence does not stop with Christian writing. “The track of His footsteps is seen,” Pressense writes, “wherever there has been any real progress in good, in love, in right, in the moral elevation of men.” L. H. Marshall affirms that “beyond Jesus of Nazareth … the moral stature of humanity can never go” and that Jesus is “the last word on all the great issues of right and wrong.”

We are told that “his biography may be summed up in the words, ‘he went about doing good’ ”; that he lived “the only perfectly unselfish life ever seen on earth”; that the “grand outstanding characteristic of Christ’s work” was his “absolute submission to the will of God”; that the uniqueness of Christianity consists in “his utter realization of the immanence of God in this present life”; that he is “the moral law incarnate.… The law of the ‘good’ is in His person a reality.”

The Wonder Of Our World

The magnificent feature of Jesus Christ is that he not only proclaimed a superlative ethic, but he lived it out to the full. In common with the earlier Hebrew prophets he held a morally majestic view of God. He supplemented this view in his teaching. Granting the holiness of their living, the life of Jesus stands apart from them and from the whole of humanity as a brilliant lightning flash in the dark night. His pure walk is the wonder of our world of mixed motives and deeds. Alongside him, even the best of men must confess unholiness. Schleiermacher agrees that the “entire history of humanity” supplies no analogy for this one whose “whole conduct, … deeds, … addresses, have a supernatural character. He must be a divine ambassador.” Here the moral life is unveiled with no discordant note, with nothing that is less than ethically superlative.

Whatever may be said about him, whether as a teacher or as a redeemer, his sinlessness is unique in the stream of human life. Nowhere does history show a fountain of righteousness like the ethical pureness which ever lives in him. He presented the ideal of the kingdom not merely in word but in deed and fact. He is the word of truth and of goodness become flesh. What he taught he uncompromisingly exemplified. “The whole of the active work of Jesus,” Wendt writes, “was an exposition of His teaching through His own example.” In him the kingdom itself appeared on earth, in that “the perfect human life, the moral ideal for man, was perfectly realized.” “No miracle of Christ equals the miracle of His sinless life,” remarks H. R. Mackintosh, in a chapter devoted to the features which set apart “the one quite unspotted life that has been lived within our sinful race” as “solitary and incomparable.” Jesus Christ, even if more remains to be said, is the faultless exemplar of virtue, “a self-determining will, perfectly bent on perfect ends,” the lone exhibition of ethical excellence to be found in the history of the fallen race.

A Superb Moral Weapon

Christ’s moral perfection has given to Christian ethics one of its choicest weapons against speculative ethics. It sets Jesus not only against the champions of a moral naturalism, from Epicurus to Dewey and Sarte, but also against the most earnest idealistic moralists, from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Kant, Hegel and Fichte, or to Hocking, Brightman and Flewelling. Indeed, none of the founders of the other world religions binds his followers in such personal moral dependence. Whether one looks to Buddha or Confucius, to Laotze or to Mohammed, to Mary Baker Eddy or to Joseph Smith, he finds this ethical teaching to be higher than their own ethical living. In this they do not differ from the philosophers of ethics. The life of Jesus thus gives authoritative power to his ethical teaching, since his life accords to it an atmosphere of personal earnestness and realization.

The point is not that all other religious ethics and moral philosophy are the work of scoundrels. Man really does wrestle with moral claims in human experience. His very death marked Socrates as an ethical martyr. Plato is passionate in his call for social and individual justice. Kant gave a dramatic centrality to the moral life. But Jesus is not related to his teaching simply as Socrates and Plato and Kant were to theirs. His life was comprehensively “the example of His own words.” As MacLennan observes, “The life of Jesus differs from that of all other great teachers of religion and morality in that He lived out His teaching Himself to the full.… What Jesus taught He was.” And this fact of itself makes all the other religious and philosophical moralists seem tame and drab, if not ethically shabby, alongside Jesus Christ. Indeed they may be men or women whose teaching here and there strikes our fancy. They may even give us some significant insight. But they do not lay upon us the duty of following them. And if they did, we could not do so with good conscience. Where does the study of philosophy or of religion, we may well inquire with Hovey, “recall the name of any saint or sage whose temper was so sweet and just, so holy and pitiful as his? whose word was so luminous and penetrating and vivifying; whose endurance of wrong was so meek and heroic; whose work was so beneficent and God-like?” Where is even one other who has not been victim of the conditioned ideals of his own day? Who by his self-giving love and supreme virtue has challenged and placed on the defensive men of all ages, notions, temperaments, and stations of life? Where else is a flawless and imperishable pattern for behavior to be found, where else is one who stands in no need of ethical renewal from without? Christ did not simply venture to define the moral ideal. He manifests it. The private lives of the great secular moralists are relatively unknown even where their ethical works are well-known.

The Philosophers Are Sinners

How are we to account for the lack of dynamic in speculative ethics? The moral philosophers of antiquity and their modern successors ignore the tragic factor of sin in the life of man. How account for their relatively lower ethical claims? They formulate objective standards for morals and religion without any dependence on special Divine disclosure. And they assume that man can fulfill the will of God by works. They do not see that he needs special redemption. On every side they betray the pride of reason.

True as it may be for Socrates that the doctrines of providence, prayer and immortality were controlling principles in his philosophy, his conviction that he had “never deliberately wronged a single person” shows dim understanding of the law of love in practice. It also shows the classic moral philosophers were wrong when they said it is impossible to have knowledge of the good without acting upon it. One cannot think of Plato without recalling that he was not taken seriously as the philosopher-king he idealized in The Republic. Seneca, the lofty mirror of Stoic ethics, praised the poverty of those around him while he lived in luxury. He even wrote the shameful document in which Nero defended the treacherous murder of his own mother. The moral achievement even of the greatest ethical philosophers falls under the biblical verdict that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The Pattern Of Perfection

All the excellences of the best men are seen in Jesus, undiminished and unceasing. His spell over the science of ethics, therefore, is not simply that of an attractive, balanced, and deep personality. He does not simply command the respect due a sage. He presents the ideal not only in his teaching but in the flesh. He speaks to the moral dilemmas of life as One who, though sharing the temptations and the burdens of men, nevertheless is a true representation of the Divine nature. “For Christians, the true standard of life exists, not in the dream land of some ideal realm, but concretely embodied in a human life.” The Christian ideal is not left to abstraction, but is manifested in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the pattern of perfect living.

Even those who hesitate to make the highest religious claim for Jesus Christ, and whose philosophy leads them in quite other directions, have acknowledged his peerless character. The distinguished personalist, Edgar S. Brightman, said “in Jesus … the ideal of personality had its highest historical illustration.” Whoever has learned of Christ can be satisfied with no lesser ideal of humanity. And whoever disregards him will fruitlessly search for a superior ideal. Christ brought ethics at the summit and lived out its most exacting demands. David Smith said: “He is never worsted in the moral conflict,” but “passes through the daily ordeal stainless and blameless.” That is why the proud Greek, the noble Roman, the barbaric tribes of the early West, the heathen of the Orient and the modern pagan and sophisticate are halted in his presence. Here, indeed, is “God living a human life.”

Rationalistic Counterattack

It was to be expected that the life and ideals of Jesus would be assailed vigorously by rationalistic ethics. To admit that Jesus authoritatively forged and achieved the moral ideal is the death-blow of speculative morality. The anti-supernaturalism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, later to emerge as a world cultural force in Communism, damned the moral attitudes and example of Jesus as obsolete. The bolder and more radical critics, such as Bruno Bauer, rewrote history in order to do away with Jesus Christ as a historical person, but the Nazarene could not be erased so easily.

The new spirit assails Jesus as a damaging example, attacking such virtues as humility, self-sacrifice and self-abnegation. It proposes to add modern ideals from contemporary science, art and socio-economic interests. The complaint of the American humanist is zealously worded by Harry Elmer Barnes and Edwin A. Burtt. Nels Ferre, a professing supernaturalist, attacks the moral purity of Christ, declaring that “sinlessness is a bloodless category, making an anemic saviour.” He charges Jesus with “unnecessary sharpness,” “moods of undue and exaggerated joy,” “impatience.” He was “almost neurotically self-concerned and invidious of others.”

Tribute From The Uncommitted

But moralists who would not allow themselves to be counted in the tradition of theological ethics have acknowledged the excellence of Jesus’ example. John Stuart Mill superficially reduced Christianity to the Golden Rule. Yet he said an unbeliever would find it difficult to locate a better example of the rule of virtue than that given by Jesus. His example of mercy, compassion and service admits no comparisons.… Even those who are loudest in their repudiation of Christian ethics have borrowed from it more than they know. “While they have been undervaluing the inner worth of Jesus Christ, they have actually been living on the virtue which came out of the hem of his garment.” One need only contrast modern to pre-Christian Naturalism to discern the debt contemporary Humanism owes to the coming of Christ into the world. Even Communism cannot escape his influence. The best elements in its concern for social justice are ultimately rooted in his example. Martineau has noted that Comte propounds as the single maxim which should guide the whole of Positivism the words “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Comte did not even know the source of these words. Yet he deliberately loosed his religion of humanity from the theological fetters of Christianity. But he could not escape the influence of Jesus Christ. So in eclectic outlooks which are openly hostile to Christianity there are unacknowledged debts to Jesus and the prophets who spoke of him.

The older attacks on Jesus’ life are fast disappearing. He is no longer accused of ill-temper or disrespect for human personality. Those protests stemmed from philosophies which tended to make human nature divine. Therefore they concealed the wrath of God. William Ellery Channing spoke for early Unitarianism of “his spotless purity, his moral perfection, his unrivalled goodness.” Jesus was “perfect, spotless in virtue, the representative and resplendent image of the moral goodness and rectitude of God.” His displeasure arose, as Karl Adam has put it, “from a wounded love of truth and honesty,” and he never surrendered moral control in manifesting it. “His anger is detached from all selfish interest; he is enraged against those who have had opportunity and yet remain opponents of the truth and of mercy,” writes George M. Stratton. And we may add that this is precisely the anger of the future judgment.

Preacher In The Red

MUSIC FOR THE MOOD

In a parish I served a number of years ago considerable tension had developed between the organist and the pastor. It reached its most glaring expression when, on a Sunday morning, I announced my resignation from the pulpit. I had hardly finished reading my resignation before the organist, with full organ, played the Doxology. The Rev. O. E. CLAUSON, pastor, Pilgrim Lutheran Church, Portland, Oregon.

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

The Academic Snub

The current trend is simply to ignore Jesus Christ. There is not a single reference to Jesus Christ in Dewey and Tufts’ Ethics that has pointed significance for the subject. Visit the reserve or stack shelves in the specialized graduate libraries. Comb the indices for mention of Jesus in books on general ethics. One will find such references few and far between. When they do occur, it is often in company with others to whom he is arbitrarily levelled. The tendency is simply to overlook die historical Jesus with indifference, and to assume that no significant ethical system—indeed, no ethical system at all—can be associated with him.

Strangely enough, Christian scholarship of the past century has encouraged this nonchalance toward Jesus. It argued that we do not know enough about Jesus to justify any estimate of his character. The higher critical assault on the New Testament not only undermined confidence in the inherited picture of Jesus but also filled the gap it left in the records with highly fanciful reconstruction. The implication of a verdict like Wundt’s was all too plain: “With the exception of a few incidents in the narrative of the Passion, … the outward life of Jesus is a tissue of legends.” The inward life would be even more difficult to recover. The result of such doubt was well expressed by Warner Fite: “It would be not too much to say that for the part of the world called Christendom the life of Jesus is history’s greatest problem.” The next step is to separate the discussion of the Christian moral ideal from a necessary dependence on the historical Jesus.

Neglect Of The Historical

Modern theology, after having mistakenly “rescued” the “ethical Jesus” from the “biblical Jesus,” today sketches his example only in the most cautious and skeletal manner. The significance of Jesus Christ to the progressive revelation of the plan and character of God is placed “behind the historical.” A curtain intrudes between the life and teaching of the historical Jesus and the exact content of revelation. One of the marks of the current dialectical theology is that both the teaching and example of Jesus lose their central and authoritative significance for the ethical life.

Rudolf Bultmann denies that Jesus regarded himself as Messiah. He finds no essential relationship whatever between the Kingdom of God and the historical person of Jesus. Barth complains that “Jesus Christ … the Rabbi of Nazareth [is] historically so difficult to get information about, and when it is got, one whose activity is so easily a little commonplace alongside more than one other founder of a religion and even alongside many later representatives of His own ‘religion.’ ” So too Brunner treats the historical Christ. He locates Christ’s moral authority wholly outside history. The believer cannot learn the content of Christian behavior from the past, either from the Bible or the historical example of Jesus, but only in immediate revelation-encounter with God. Niebuhr rejects the conviction that the historical Jesus is the incarnation of absolute perfection. “The Christian believes that the ideal of love is real in the will and nature of God, even though he knows of no place in history where the ideal has been realized in its pure form.” Niebuhr never satisfactorily resolves the tension between the Jesus of history and the Christ of Christian faith in his writings. There is little light in the verdict that “the Jesus of history … created the Christ of faith in the life of the early church, and … his historic life is related to the transcendent Christ as a goal and ultimate symbol of a relation which prophetic religion sees between all life and history and the transcendent.”

All such reconstructions neglect the connection between Christian faith and morals and the conviction that the historical Jesus was the embodiment of absolute and sinless morality. Because of this confidence the followers of Christ find their moral example in him. Where else can they turn? Lecky noted that Christianity has been “the main source of moral development of Europe, and … has discharged this office not so much by the inculcation of a system of ethics, however pure, as by the assimilating and attractive influence of a perfect ideal. The moral progress of mankind can never cease to be distinctly and intensely Christian so long as it consists of a gradual approximation to the character of the Christian Founder.” …

A Biblical Motif

This connection between Jesus and Christian morality has not only been recognized across the centuries. It comes from the New Testament witness itself. It is inseparable, as Smyth observes, from the apostolic picture of the moral life. “The ethical example of Jesus as an object of faith was clearly and positively given in the apostolic witness to him, and it is a known and distinct Light in the Christian consciousness.” But that is not all. Jesus himself implied it—more, he explicitly taught it—to his earliest followers. Our Lord’s invitation “follow Me” implied a discipleship in the ethico-religious sense. He is “the Way” (Jn. 14:6). The Christian is to walk in him. Jesus consciously knew that he gave man the ideal pattern of behavior, or more accurately, that he fulfilled the requirements of true human morality in his own life.… The New Testament writers candidly confess themselves to be sinners. They are men who have fallen short of the moral ideal. Their hope is redemption. Yet again and again they set Jesus forth as the supreme moral ideal (Eph. 5:2, Heb. 12:3, 1 Pet. 2:21 ff.). Their verdict is that Jesus Christ is “holy, guileless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens” (Heb. 7:26). He is Jesus Christ “the Righteous” (1 Jn. 2:1).

This portion of Christian Personal Ethics, published this month by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., is an abridgment of Chapter 17, without footnote references, and is reprinted by permission.

- More from Carl F. H. Henry

Cover Story

Too Little and Too Late

John Morrison

The fact that this terse expression has become trite does not invalidate its significance, and it is apposite to the situation in many mission fields today. It takes on added significance when we realize, if we do, that time is running out on us and that the coming decade may well decide the issues of our world missionary program. Africa, or at least part of it, is the one continent that is still adolescent in development, and as such, offers the best opportunity for Christian missionary work.

Victory In A Pagan Land

It is computed that there are some four million Roman Catholic and two million Protestant adherents in the Belgian Congo today. Even allowing for a certain enthusiastic exaggeration, the two faiths could probably number, at least, four million sympathizers. That is over 30 per cent of the total population, surely an amazing success in a land and among a people who were entirely pagan eighty years ago, and where the Christian message was quite unknown.

It may be said, with some degree of truth, that the missions went in for quantity at the expense of quality, and that in the early days of missionary work their eagerness to break the crust of pagan life inclined missionaries to impose the minimum of conditions on those brave enough to break away from stark heathenism. Yet, as the impact of the Christian truth made a breach in the walls of pagan thought and custom, it became necessary to hold up a standard for Christian aspirants that exceeded by far that in the home church of which the missionary was a representative.

In the Belgian Congo, for instance, the Congolese did not consider lying a sin. Rather, it was regarded merely as a defensive measure adopted until one could be sure he could somehow wriggle out of the possible consequences of any given predicament. Often a convert would tell a lie when the truth would have served him better, simply because he was faced with an unknown situation, and he was conscious of the fact that he could always tell the truth as a last resort. The evil consequences of drunkenness made abstinence a necessary qualification for entry into the church, and this was not easy in a land where native brews were considered food and drink.

Animism, with its degrading and cruel practices and customs, was woven into the very warp and woof of native life, and was the most difficult of all evils to overcome. What missionary has not been bitterly disappointed and chagrined to discover among those he nurtured in the faith some relapse into pagan belief?

It could also be said that Christianity was a novelty, that the missionaries brought in strange and interesting articles, such as the victrola, the sewing machine, even an organ or piano, and that these enticed the native into taking a chance by breaking away from that which had previously been inviolable, his pagan way of life.

As schools and hosiptals developed in the missionary program, the need for trained workmen became acute. This added incentive to break away from the old things appealed to many. Yet it was as true in these early days of missionary effort as it was in the early days of history that the “spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” and in the ranks of those who came forward was to be found the nucleus of a new order.

Competition For The Spirit

Although Christianity stands today on its own intrinsic worth, many competitors have appeared on the scene.

The lure of wealth is one of these. One former pastor received $40,000 for his yearly crop of coffee; as a pastor he had received $6.00 a month. There is position (fame on a lesser scale); a former school clerk of the mission is flown some 1,200 miles by plane and lodged in the best hotel in the capital at government expense, in order that he may attend the Governor-General’s Council, of which he is a member. One might also mention entertainment; athletes and theatrical artists are brought from Europe and America to instruct and develop the Congolese in these arts and pastimes. Then there is government education. Until the last few years all education was directed by missionaries. Now government schools have been created throughout the Congo, up to and including the university standard, and these appeal to the Congolese.

Finally, one might mention distraction. I call it distraction in the French sense of the word, while keeping in mind the English, for one can hardly call it entertainment or amusement; it is neither. Cheap drinking bars have sprung up, crowded at night where jazz, that primitive African harmony, comes back to its home to roost after having clothed itself with the garments of civilization. It blares forth from loudspeakers, sometimes in the native dialect, and is often obscene. It even mocks the church, by using hymn tunes and putting words of its own to the music. As one travels down the main artery in the native city, it is impossible to reconcile this with the scene of several decades ago, or even with the unsophisticated village of the “hill country.”

Yet the large cities are the mecca of the young boys and girls who are now attending our schools in the interior. Few among the youth think of spending their lives in the drudgery of trudging out to the field or the plantation in the early morning, laboring all day, and then returning at dusk to the primitive habitation and monotonous life of the village. The cities call to them. Returning visitors paint a glowing scene of life in the metropolis, and the tale loses nothing in the telling. The young boy or girl is entranced with the prospect of a glittering life, which holds so much of novelty and diversity, and so the trend to the large centers continues. This means that where the orientation of missionary plans was formerly directed to the “hill” village (as the Congolese call the villages distinct from the nontribal centers), the emphasis is gradually turning to the large commercial and industrial centers. It is estimated that about 10 per cent of the Congo population is concentrated in the larger towns and that most of the brighter students in school, the future leaders of the Congo, are looking eagerly to these places for their future life. Protestant missions have been slow, or reluctant, to admit that the center of emphasis has changed, and that, while the Christian work in the “hill” villages must be maintained, the towns afford opportunities of concentrated work that are unique in Congo.

The Roman Catholic Church has been wiser, and Leopoldville today counts several hundred of their missionaries. The Protestant missions, who have a ratio of about one to three with Roman Catholic missions throughout the whole Colony, have but a score of their workers there. Most of these are engaged in secretarial or cooperative enterprises that have little, if any direct touch with Congolese life.

Crucial Moment In Missions

This may well be the crucial moment for Protestant missions, for it is easy for these bright young men and girls to drift away from the church amidst the temptations of the bright lights. And a new way of life adopted in these surroundings may be quite difficult to change.

The moment is crucial, also, for transferring power to the indigenous church. The fledgling should, if necessary, be pushed out of the nest into trying his wings, for it is the experience of most missionaries that the Congolese, as a group and even as individuals, are reluctant to accept responsibility. The day is ripe for placing the Congolese on the same level of ecclesiastical responsibility as he has attained in government and commercial circles. The church cannot afford to drag behind secular and mundane forces in its efforts to build an indigenous and autonomous Christian institution, the Church of Christ in Congo.

Yet, even as the younger nations of the world today look for help, in counsel and finance, to the older ones, it is no less true that this situation exists in the missionary program. The home churches, if they would ultimately avoid the reproach of “too little and too late” must gain a new understanding of the church’s program “to make disciples of all nations.”

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, John Morrison served in World War I with British forces in France and East Africa. For more than 30 years he has been in the Belgian Congo as a missionary of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., being presently in charge of the new strategic work of that mission in Leopoldville.

- More from John Morrison

Cover Story

The Bible and the Christian Writer

Frank E. Gaebelein

As we think about the Bible in relation to Christian writing, we must define Scripture in terms of the King James or Authorized Version. The literary influence of other translations through more than three centuries has been but a drop in the bucket compared with that of the King James Bible. Perhaps the Revised Standard Version or some other new translation may eventually supplant the King James Bible. If so, the loss from the literary point of view will be very great, as some versions of inferior nobility and vigor of language replace the book that is literature’s chief glory.

Turning now to the Christian writer, we need first of all to look closely at the objective, “Christian.” If we limit our discussion to the evangelical segment of Christianity, let us be careful to avoid any parochialism of outlook. Evangelicals are not the only Christians. There are those who share with us a firm belief in historic, supernatural Christianity, who worship Christ as Lord and Saviour, who take a high view of Scripture, yet who may not use all our terminology and who hold a view of the church and of the ministry different from ours. They, too, are Christians; and from some of them we have much to learn, especially when it comes to writing.

What Is A Christian Writer?

Let us grant that the writer whom we are considering is a Christian, a regenerated child of God, committed to the evangelical doctrines of Scripture. The question is, What do we really mean when we talk about a “Christian writer?” We might say simply that we mean Christians who write. That is much too broad a definition. The other day I asked the editor of a leading Bible study magazine, “What’s the matter with Christian writing today?” His answer was candid, if not entirely elegant: “Most Christian writers,” he said, “can’t write. Many of them can’t spell or punctuate. And a lot of them have nothing to say anyway.” The plain fact is that not every Christian who writes is a Christian writer!

We must go on, therefore, to identify the Christian writer as a Christian who, being reasonably competent in the craft of writing, treats his subject in a manner that directly or indirectly reflects his spiritual convictions. He may be working in such fields as theology, biblical exposition, philosophy, or other areas closely related to the faith. Or he may be writing about so-called secular matters. Again, he may be practising what is often called “creative writing,” such as fiction or poetry. Whatever his subject matter, he is a Christian writer if the Christian world view, which is the world view based upon the Bible, is reflected in his writing.

This distinction is subtle but all-important. Reflecting the Christian world view does not mean conscious and obvious moralizing or, heaven forbid, labored preaching. It does mean that Christians, and certainly Christian writers, ought to have a God-centered view of life and the world. And it means also that this view of life, this Weltanschauung, to use the German term, is not held in a vacuum. Anyone, whether writer, teacher, or scientist, who has genuinely committed himself to the Christ who is the living God incarnate has made a decision that henceforth will color all of his work and all of his thinking. How far-reaching that decision is Browning tells us in “A Death in the Desert”:

I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ

Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee

All questions in the earth and out of it,

And has so far advanced thee as to be wise.

All writers must write from some particular point of view. And Christian writers ought to write from a God-centered, Christ-oriented, biblical view of life.

But at this point in our discussion we must turn back to the Bible. What is there about Scripture that makes it the one book of incomparable influence upon the Christian writer? First, the truth that the Bible reveals; second, the manner in which it states this truth. The two are organically related in that the second grows out of the first. To begin with, it is primarily the distinctive, biblical view of life and the world that influences the Christian writer. The major premise of Scripture is the living God. He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the God who, through his Spirit, inspired the Book. He is the God who, when he speaks in the Book, tells the truth. In the Bible, therefore, he tells the truth about himself and about man, sin, the world that now is and the world that is to come. Thus the Bible presents a view of life and of the world distinctively its own and in a class apart from all other philosophies and all other religions. And this view the Bible equates with truth.

Next, turning to style and form, we find a correspondence with the content of Scripture. The Book that communicates truth speaks truly. The reference here is not to the inerrancy of Scripture, important though that is. Rather am I speaking from the writer’s point of view. Though we must always remember that our Bible is a translated book, it is remarkable how little fumbling for words the sensitive reader sees in Scripture. In its use of words, the Bible is the best model, because it speaks directly and truly; in it the right word is in the right place.

Think, for example, of the declaration of John the Baptist, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Here is finality of expression. So also with the words of our Lord, “By their fruits ye shall know them” or, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Go back to the Old Testament and there is the same rightness of expression, as in the psalmist’s petition, “Search me, O God, and know me; try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting.” Likewise with Job’s great affirmation: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” It was not without reason that the Greek rhetorician, Longinus, in his treatise On the Sublime, which, by the way, every writer ought to know, took as an example of sublimity in literature the words of Moses in Genesis: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

Contagious Greatness Of Scripture

Now this quality of unerring choice of the right word in the right place carries over to the writer who is steeped in the Bible. In the Princeton University Alumni Bulletin (June 1, 1956), there is a moving address by Judge Harold Medina on “The Influence of Woodrow Wilson on the Princeton Undergraduate, 1902–1910,” a period covering the judge’s own college years. In this address, Judge Medina says this of Wilson:

But how he could talk! And we flocked to hear him … At first we were fascinated by his perfect diction and the skill with which he chose just the right combination of words to express his meaning. Pretty soon it dawned on us that what he had to say was important. There was no mistaking his sincerity; he spoke with a singular intensity; he was always quoting from the Bible; and bit by bit he got his spiritual message over to us …

Moral principles, ideals, action, achievement, power; all these spelled out to us in the words of Christ, with continual emphasis upon unselfishness and sacrifice, the peace and good will to men which went beyond one’s own borders and reached out to all mankind, and the unending fight against what he called “the thraldom of evil.”

Here was a man who really believed in unselfish devotion to one’s country, who was seeking, in the words he quoted from the Bible, to “prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God,” and to lead us out of the wilderness into green meadows where ideals and principles were formulated and acted upon. This is what young people craved to hear in 1909, it is what they crave to hear now, and it is what they will always crave to hear.

Woodrow Wilson was not only a great president; he was also a great writer, a great Christian writer, if you will. And he was a great Christian writer in large part because of his intimate and continued use of the Bible.

In his Aims of Education, Professor Alfred North Whitehead has written what Sir Richard Livingstone of Oxford calls the greatest statement about education outside Plato: “Moral education is impossible apart from the habitual vision of greatness.” Unfortunately, Whitehead lets us down as he points to the history and culture of ancient Greece and Rome as “the habitual vision of greatness.” Certainly for the Christian writer, “the habitual vision of greatness” is not classical history and literature but the Bible, the Word of the living God. And a host of great writers rise up to prove this point.

An Inescapable Influence

The influence of the Bible upon our literature is inescapable. Think of Shakespeare, who in his thirty-seven plays alluded to fifty-four of the sixty-six books of the Bible. How many Christians today know their Bibles that well? There is Bunyan, who, with meager education and knowing little beside the Bible, produced the greatest allegory in the English language. Edgar Allan Poe, whose subject matter was far removed from Scripture, drew heavily upon it, as Professor Forrest of the University of Virginia showed in his fascinating study, Biblical Allusions in Poe. We think too of Lincoln, the writer of our most imperishable American prose. In his recent book, A Clerk of Oxenford, Professor Gilbert Highet of Columbia University has a fascinating essay tracing, line by line and phrase by phrase, the influence of the Bible upon the Gettysburg Address. And at that he misses the echo of the close of the eleventh chapter of Romans in Lincoln’s climactic series of phrases: “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

The most telling illustration of the inescapable influence of the Bible upon great writers comes from the poet Shelley. Shelley was expelled from Oxford because he wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Necessity of Atheism.” In it he said, “The genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed Book of God ere man can read the inscription on his heart.” Or, in less rhetorical language, “Man must tear up the Bible, if he would know himself.” Just eight years later Shelley wrote his greatest prose work, the critical essay, “In Defense of Poetry.” At its climax, this is what he said: “Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance [an allusion to Daniel]; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow [almost an exact quotation from Isaiah]; they have been washed in the blood of the Mediator and Redeemer, [New Testament, evangelical phraseology].” The brilliant, unbelieving poet of the nineteenth century could not escape the Bible.

Paradox Of Christian Writing

Now we come to the paradox of the Christian writer today. More than any other of his fellow writers, the Christian writer of our time is close to the Bible. His faith in a biblical one, so much so that he has been labeled bibliolater, biblicist, or literalist. The epithets may not be accurate, but they show that he is known for his closeness to the Bible. Yet in spite of this relationship to the Scriptures, evangelicals by and large are not writing well.

I happen to be associated with a book club that is committed to the policy of selecting for its members only evangelical writing of genuine worth. A survey of our selections since 1954 shows that a large proportion of them have been books from other countries—England, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Australia. Indeed, if we had depended upon the writings of American evangelicals, we should have had difficulty in continuing. Not only that, but of the many books submitted to us for consideration many are marred by careless writing.

To cite another example, a while ago I read Albert Schweitzer’s autobiography, Out of My Life and Work. The difference, theology aside, between this book and one by an evangelical writer that I read at about the same time was as the difference between day and night. With Schweitzer I felt in touch with a distinguished mind; the other book, although well-intentioned, was flat and uninspiring.

Evangelicals Have Written Well

It was not always so. A few generations ago, and, in fact, even more recently, evangelicals were writing a great deal better than today. Nor need we go as far back as Bunyan. Take, for example, a man of more modest ability, the Princeton theologian Charles Hodge. This is the tribute The Cambridge History of American Literature (Vol. III, pp. 202–203) pays him:

There is a strange sublimity and extraordinary perspicacity about the style of Charles Hodge. It is not style at all.… Yet … few books open the mind on fields of grandeur more frequently than this systematic theologian. Its prose is not unworthy of being associated in one’s mind with that of John Milton. Out of the depths this man cried unto his God and found Him.

He writes with transparent sincerity. There is neither condescension nor cringing. There is nothing left at loose ends. There is no sparing of thought.… He only claims to apprehend the Word of God.”

Of more recent evangelicals there is J. Gresham Machen, a writer not inferior to C. S. Lewis in his lucid facility in handling ideas. The Systematic Theology of Lewis Sperry Chafer contains passages of genuine nobility and power, especially in his treatment of the Atonement. Dr. Samuel Zwemer, apostle to the Moslems, wrote with notable vigor. And the books of Robert E. Speer, another evangelical, contain some eloquent writing; while for simple clarity, there is the work of Harry Ironside.

Why The Present Mediocrity?

But why are Christian writers not doing better today? To put it bluntly, there seems to be a short circuit between the Bible and most of our contemporary evangelical writing. We ought to be doing some of the best writing of the times simply because we are, of all writers today, nearest the Bible. But we are far from producing the best work. Why? Why is our supreme model, our authentic “vision of greatness,” being thwarted in its communication, if not of greatness, at least of distinction to our writing? The answers are not easy. I suggest six reasons why present-day Christian writing seems to be so little influenced by the Bible.

First of all, can it be that in this busy day of radios, TV, picture magazines, tabloids, condensed books, much traveling and many meetings, we simply do not know the Bible as well as we think we do—or as well as our predecessors knew it? Yes, we use the Book for preaching, for reference, for proof texts, for help and comfort. But is not much of our use of Scripture for an ulterior purpose? Do we really know, and love, and read the Bible for its own sake? There is such a thing as living in the Word, making it literally the vital context of life and thought. Bunyan did that and God used him to write a book of incomparable power.

Some years ago Professor Charles Grosvenor Osgood of Princeton wrote a little essay, Poetry as a Means of Grace. This is what the Princeton humanist—and he is a Christian humanist—advises, after recommending an intimate acquaintance with any one of the great poets as an antidote to modern materialism (p. 22):

Choose this author as friends are chosen … think of him daily in odd moments. Read a bit of him as often as you can, until at least parts of him become part of yourself. Do not consult other books or people by way of explaining him any more than you can help. Let him explain himself. What you thus come to know in him will every day seem new and fresh; every recourse to him brings forth new thought, new feeling, new application, new aspects of things familiar. He becomes an antiseptic agent against all the agencies that tend to make life sour, stale, and insipid.

Apply this counsel to the Bible, as Professor Osgood himself does. This is what we need—this kind of living in the Book, if the Bible is to communicate power to our writing. But for it to do this the evangelical writer must know the daily discipline of the Word of God, or it will never be for him a means of grace.

A second thwarted biblical influence in our writing is this: Many of us are not bringing to the Bible a truly Christian education. There is within us a tension between the secular and the Christian world view. Even in Christian institutions, the secular frame of reference has crept in. Yet all truth is God’s truth; the Bible knows no other truth but God’s. But most of us at some time in our education have become habituated—perhaps unconsciously—to the false dichotomy between sacred and secular truth. Thus, not being fully committed to a God-centered world view, we have allowed the secularism in our thinking to offset to some extent the biblical view of life.

Danger Of Trifling With Truth

A third reason for the short circuit between Scripture and Christian writing may be the comparatively low estate of aesthetic appreciation among evangelicals today. Is it possible that debasing the aesthetic faculty in some fields affects it in other fields? Consider the third-rate music that we so often hear and sing in our services—the jingling, flip choruses unequally yoked to the name and work of our Saviour, the hymns dripping with sentimentality. Think of the lack of good taste in some public presentations of the grand truths of redemption. At the close of a recent telecast by a popular evangelical leader, viewers were urged to write in for fifteen-cent key rings with “a cute, little cross” attached. What has happened to our Christian, let alone our aesthetic, sensibilities? There is artistic integrity, there is truth in art as in science, history, or finance. The tear-jerking religious tune is false, because musically it lacks integrity. The heart-rending sermon illustration that never happened in the first place, though all too often told by the preacher as though it happened to him, everything in our life and thought that savors of sentimentality and pretension—these too violate integrity. Do not be mistaken. The Bible knows what sentiment is; it is full of true and valid feeling, because it is par excellence the book of the human heart. But the Bible never sinks to pretense and sentimentality. And when evangelicals traffic in these things, the noble and wholesome influence of Scripture may be thwarted in our thinking and in our words.

In the next place, the supplanting of sound values by the world’s methods of popularity and success may be clouding the influence of the Bible upon our writing. This is a difficult problem. Christian writing needs the note of contemporaneity, but never at the expense of truth and never at the price of debasing the coinage of sound usage. Words are important. The right word need never be irrelevant. It is doubtful whether the right and the true word is ever the cliche of the popular, mass-circulation periodical. Exactness in usage is no more equated with stodginess of style than good taste with a dull, unattractive format in our publications. In an article in the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago Jacques Barzun dissected the growing vocabulary of business and bureaucracy. Words like “processing” as applied to human beings and the pretentious business usage of “contract” came under his scalpel. Perhaps a similar deflation is due some of the overworked words in our evangelical vocabulary, so that some day we shall no longer have to read about ministers “pastoring” churches and writers “authoring” books.

Biblical Criterion Of Work

The foregoing is related to a fifth explanation of lack of biblical influence upon evangelical writing today. It may be that some of us have forgotten the Scriptural principle of hard work, resulting in the achievement of excellence to the glory of God. As Solomon put it in Ecclesiastes, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might”—a saying that finds its New Testament extension in Paul’s advice to the Colossian church, “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not to men,” coupled in the same chapter with this great criterion: “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.” But this costs; it costs hard work, and the price will not come down. Whatever we are doing as Christians, whether it be writing, or teaching, or anything else, let us remember that nothing is ever too good for the Lord. On the title page of his autobiography, I Remember, Abraham Flexner, whose report on medical schools revolutionized the teaching of medicine in America, quotes Hesiod: “Before the gates of excellence, the high gods have put sweat. Long is the road thereto and rough and steep at the first, but when the height is achieved then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning.”

The Snare Of Pedantry

Still another reason for the comparatively low estate of writing among evangelicals may be an overconcern with the outward marks of scholarship. In recent decades a good many evangelicals have been among the “have nots” when it comes to recognized scholarship. Today we are concerned, and rightly so, with the growing prestige of evangelical thought. Thus, some who are writing in the more technical fields may be betrayed into a cumbersome vocabulary under the delusion that they are thereby being scholarly and profound. We may, however, safely leave that kind of style to theologians like Niebuhr and Tillich, both of whom excel in it. Instead, we should try to write clearly and incisively like Gresham Machen, or with the fluid lucidity of C. S. Lewis, neither of whom is ever obscure and both of whom are scholarly without pretense. Or, more modestly, we may seek the unadorned simplicity of an H. A. Ironside.

“The Man Of Letters As Saint”

Finally, consider a noble example of the Christian writer at his best, the greatest writer and theologian of the Reformation, John Calvin. Before his conversion Calvin was one of the most brilliant humanists of the Renaissance. In a biographical essay (Calvin and Augustine, pp. 4–5), Professor B. B. Warfield says:

It is interesting to observe the change which in the meantime [i.e., after Calvin’s conversion] has come over his attitude toward his writings. When he sent forth his commentary on Seneca’s treatise—his first and last humanistic work—he was quivering with anxiety for the success of his book.… He was proud of his performance; he was zealous to reap the fruits of his labor; he was eager for his legitimate reward. Only four years have passed, and he issues his first Protestant publication—the immortal “Institutes of the Christian Religion” … free from all such tremors. He is … content that no one of his acquaintance shall know him for the author of the book.… He hears the acclamations with which it was greeted with a certain personal detachment. He has sent it forth not for his own glory, but for the glory of God; he is not seeking his own advantage or renown by it, but the strengthening and the succoring of the saints.… He has not ceased to be a “man of letters,” … but he has consecrated all his gifts and powers … to the service of God and His gospel.

What we see in Calvin, thus, fundamentally is the “man of letters” as saint.… He was by nature, by gifts, by training—by inborn predilection and by acquired capacities alike—a “man of letters,” and he earnestly … wished to dedicate himself as such to God.

“The man of letters as saint.” It is an exalted ideal that we see in a man like Calvin, or, to turn to our own American literature, in Jonathan Edwards, whose literary eminence is so clearly recognized in the recent life by Professor Perry Miller. Verily, it is a great thing to be a Christian writer—a writer who tells the truth about God and His Son, a writer in whose work there is reflected even in a very small way the beauty and power of the Bible.

END

Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, Headmaster of the Stony Brook School, on Long Island, is a gifted lecturer and writer in biblical and educational subjects. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of New York University, with an A.M. from Harvard, he holds honorary degrees from Wheaton College and the Reformed Episcopal Theological Seminary. This article abridges his lecture at a recent Workshop and Conference on “The Christian and the Literary Scene” at Wheaton.

- More from Frank E. Gaebelein

Cover Story

God and the Continental Congress

Stewart M. Robinson

The Journals of the Continental Congress make an excellent textbook on free government. Excerpts would be suitable for the Voice of America. Full sets given to political leaders in a dozen languages might help the cause of peace.

The thirteen original states of our Federal Republic sent a total of 337 official delegates to this remarkable convention during the period September 5, 1774, to the end of 1786, after which its work was taken up by the Constitutional Convention.

A Working Congress

The Congress put in 3,100 working days. The 1774 session was designedly brief, 35 working days. The 1775 session began by appointment May 10, and took the month of August off. In the following years, Congress was on duty twelve months, and took no time off save for Sundays, Good Fridays, and Christmas Days, but not New Year’s Days. It met six days a week. It lost a week in 1776, moving from Philadelphia to Baltimore. In 1777 it lost about two weeks shifting from Philadelphia to New York, via Lancaster. Its sojourn in Princeton in the summer of 1783 was marked by a rather desultory ending. The Annapolis residence became a little sketchy at the end, that at Trenton only an episode. But the last two years in New York saw a strong comeback in pertinacity. The score by years and work-days runs thus: 1774, 35 days; 1775, 146; 1776, 291 days and no day lost by reason of no quorum or no business; 1777, 287 days with 7 lost; 1778, 304 with 1 lost; 1779, 309 with 2 lost; 1780, 299 with 1 lost; 1781, 284 with 2 lost; 1782, 231 with no day lost; 1783, 214 with 21 days lost; 1784, 182 days (26 as Committee of the States) with 33 days lost; 1785, 215 days with 37 days lost; 1786, 206 days with 14 days lost. The founding fathers accepted the Ten Commandments, which state that the Sabbath Day is holy, and that “six days shalt thou labor.”

Sunday Sessions Unusual

In spite of the tensions of that period only seven Sunday sessions were held. Sunday, July 14, 1776, Congress determined “That an express be sent to overtake the powder wagons going to Virginia … that the committee … of Virginia … send … as much of the lead they now have at Williamsburg as they can spare … that a letter be written to the commanding officer in the Jerseys, to march such of the militia, and flying camp … as they may judge necessary … that the committee … of Pennsylvania be requested immediately to order to the several places of their destination all the British officers, prisoners, in this city; their ladies not to be requested to go until the weather is more suitable … that the commanding officer in Pennsylvania … exert himself to forward the immediate march of the militia to New Jersey … that the deputy quarter-master general be directed to request the use of some house of public worship, to cover the troops during their short stay in this city.”

Congress met Sunday, December 29, 1776, to arrange to get “cannon and ordnance stores as are required … being immediately necessary.” Sunday, August 3, 1777, Congress ordered Washington to relieve General Philip Schuyler of command. Sunday, September 14, 1777, Congress met to resolve “that the Board of War be directed to … remove all public bells in Philadelphia … upon a near approach of the enemy … that if Congress shall be obliged to remove from Philadelphia, Lancaster shall be the place at which they shall meet … that the public papers be put under the care of Mr. Clark … General Dickinson … is hereby directed … to conduct the said papers safe.”

Sunday, April 26, 1778, brought Congress together at 3 P.M. to conduct several “yea and nay” votes which had been demanded the previous day. On Sunday, September 26, 1779, Congress met to hear letters announcing the arrival of the French fleet. Congress met on Sunday, April 8, 1781, upon receipt of intelligence that the British fleet was moving out of New York harbor, presumably for the Chesapeake.

Prayer Indispensable

Almost the first item of business in September, 1774, was to obtain a Chaplain for Congress and ask him to open Congress with prayer. With a broad-minded recognition of good religion and good sense the strongly nonliturgical New Englanders plumped for an Episcopalian. Thenceforth, chaplains were regularly elected, two of them at a time. One liturgical and one nonliturgical cleric made up the team. The Journals contain references to stipends, and calls made upon them for additional duty at the funerals of members who died while in attendance. There is one period when the daily Journal commences with the word “Prayers.” The pay schedule on an annual basis indicates that the chaplains officiated regularly as a part of each day’s proceedings. While Congress met in Philadelphia and in New York, and these two places were the principal places of meeting, the clergy were local churchmen, and doubtless carried on other responsibilities.

Recognition Of God

Reference should be made to the public statements of the Continental Congress that recognize God. 1775 had a Fast-Day Resolution; 1779, 1780, 1781, 1782 saw Congressional proclamations for both a Fast-Day and a Day of Thanksgiving. We are familiar with Thanksgiving Days. Where are the Fast-days? Perhaps we are missing something in the most important form of public relations: “getting right with God.” The first Fast-Day Resolution (June 12, 1775) might well be cited since most moderns do not know what the term signifies. “As the great Governor of the World, by his supreme and universal Providence, not only conducts the course of nature with unerring wisdom and rectitude, but frequently influences the minds of men to serve the wise and gracious purposes of his providential government; and it being at all times our indispensable duty devoutly to acknowledge his superintending providence, especially in times of impending danger and public calamity, to reverence and adore his immutable justice as well as to implore his merciful interposition for our deliverance: This Congress, therefore, considering the present critical, alarming and calamitous state of these colonies, do earnestly recommend that Thursday, the 20th day of July next, be observed, by the inhabitants of all the English colonies on this continent, as a day of public humiliation, fasting and prayer; that we may, with united hearts and voices unfeignedly confess and deplore our many sins, and offer up our joint supplications to the all-wise, omnipotent, and merciful Disposer of all events; humbly beseeching him to forgive our iniquities, to remove our present calamities, to avert those desolating judgments with which we are threatened, and bless our rightful sovereign, King George the Third, and inspire him with wisdom to discern and pursue the true interest of all his subjects, etc.”

The Thanksgiving proclamation of October 11, 1782, still glows with the flush of great achievements. “It being the indispensable duty of all nations, not only to offer up supplications to Almighty God, the giver of all good, for his gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner to give him praise for … great and signal interpositions of his Providence in their behalf, the United States in Congress assembled, taking into consideration the many instances of divine goodness to these states … the present happy and promising state of public affairs … do hereby recommend to the inhabitants of these states in general, to observe, … Thursday, the 28 day of November next, as a day of solemn Thanksgiving to God for all his mercies; and they do further recommend to all ranks, to testify their gratitude to God for his goodness, by a cheerful obedience to his laws, and by promoting … true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.”

Spiritual Priorities

A series of letters to the people stud the annals of the Continental Congress, and they are real jewels in the treasury of our country. Besides rendering a faithful accounting of legislative service, they sound a clear note of truthful information, and upon occasion call attention to the spiritual nature of man and to the place which God has in the life of national society. Not every such communication mentions God, but enough do to emphasize the feelings of the heart.

“Above all things we earnestly intreat you, with devotion of spirit, and penitence of heart and amendment of life, to humble yourselves, and implore the favour of almighty God; and we fervently beseech the divine goodness, to take you into his gracious protection.” (Address to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies—October 21, 1774.)

On the same day that Congress assembled in Philadelphia, in May, 1775, pursuant to a call issued on their adjournment in October, 1774, doughty Ethan Allen entered Fort Ticonderoga and demanded its surrender. Captain Delaplace, commanding the garrison, required his authority. Allen answered, as told by Washington Irving, “In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” No tell-tale radio babbled hourly news reports of Philadelphia events to forest-bound Ticonderoga. Many Americans, however, in those days, believed that people should do what they were intended to do, that authority issued from proper agencies, and that God and man linked together make an unbreakable chain.

On December 10, 1776, Congress addressed the citizens: “Confiding in your fidelity and zeal in a contest the most illustrious and important, and firmly trusting in the good providence of God, we wish you happiness and success.” Trenton and Princeton came as an answer to that firm trust.

May 29, 1777, another report was made to the nation, closing: “Do what it is in your Power to do; and you have the greatest reason to rest assured that, under the gracious protection of divine Providence, your virtuous struggles will be crowned with abundant success.”

May 26, 1779, Congress addressed “The Inhabitants of the United States of America” in a summary of the situation which was read beside firesides where the chill of evening still traveled on the wind.

“Fill up your battalions … place your several quotas in the continental treasury … prevent the produce of the country from being monopolized … effectually superintend the behaviour of public officers; diligently promote piety, virtue, brotherly love, learning, frugality and moderation; and may you be approved before Almighty God worthy of those blessings we devoutly wish you to enjoy.”

The principal business of Congress while the fighting lasted was to read the daily communications from George Washington and make suitable answers. Washington was a member of the Congress until he accepted its commission as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Continent in June, 1775. On December 23, 1783, Washington appeared before Congress to return his commission. It is a moving statement: “Mr. President: The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place, I have now the honor of offering my sincere congratulations to Congress, and of presenting myself before them, to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country … my gratitude for the interposition of Providence, and the assistance I have received from my countrymen, increases with every review of the momentous contest … I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have superintendence of them to his holy keeping. Having now finished the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theatre of action and bidding affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose order I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take leave of all the employments of public life.”

END

Ordained to the ministry in 1918, Stewart M. Robinson served as divisional chaplain, U.S. Army, with the American Expeditionary Forces and then served churches in Ohio, New York and New Jersey until, in 1934, he became editor of The Presbyterian. A frequent contributor to religious journals, Dr. Robinson is editor of Political Thought of Colonial Clergy.

- More from Stewart M. Robinson

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: January 21, 1957

John H. Gerstner

We shall comment on Roman Catholic matters currently discussed in Roman periodicals.

The Jesuit weekly, America (Dec. 22, 1956), reports with satisfaction that California is the 48th state to permit tax exemption for private schools. The magazine rejoices in this triumph for religion in general. The concluding words are: “The will of the people, confirmed by the courts, now prevails. A dubious legal quibble has been destroyed—and with it, is to be hoped, the spectre of an injustice in education alien to every Christian nation.”

This is a characteristic attitude of the Roman church in this country. Every act that tends to favor her and other religious groups’ interests she approves as triumphs for religion in general. This gives the impression that Rome is concerned with liberty and benefits for all religious groups. But in Barcelona we visited with an evangelical minister. A little second-story room was all he was allowed to use for a church. Even then he had no sign to indicate the nature of the building. This was against the law in officially Roman Catholic Spain. This evangelical pastor was not supposed to speak to Roman Catholics about his religion. And he had much more time to do so because Franco’s Roman Catholic state closed all non-Roman schools. So it goes in Peru and other Roman nations.

The Roman Catholic refutes the charge of inconsistency, thus: We claim religious liberty for ourselves on your principles and deny them to you on our principles. But why does Rome not say this openly and plainly? Why is this information hidden in textbooks for scholars only? And why, in 99 cases out of 100, is the opposing idea implied, as in the article above cited?

How the Roman scholar looks on Protestantism is revealed in the current Ecclesiastical Review. “An English theologian recently visiting America asked to speak to an expert on Protestant theologies at a Catholic seminary. He was promptly informed that no such expert existed precisely because Protestantism is not theological. If the Englishman had put the question differently by asking for the expert on Protestantism, he would probably have been introduced to the professor of Church History. Protestantism is too often treated in our seminaries as a sixteenth-century phenomenon which has somehow perpetuated itself for the past 400 years.” The article develops the idea that Protestantism is theologically amorphous varying with the denomination and the century. “Which Protestantism?” is the question.

There is undeniable truth in this pet Roman polemic. Variations in Protestantism are many and confusing, we must penitently acknowledge. But, Roman Catholics almost never mention relevant further considerations. Vast variations exist also within the unity of Rome, and a core of unity exists within the diversities of Protestantism. One variation within Romanism was alluded to in the preceding paragraph. The Roman Catholic teaching concerning religious liberty varies between the U.S. and Spain, for example. It has broken out at times in controversy between American ecclesiastics and Cardinal Segura. In the practical realm one Romanist promotes bingo and another attacks it. In the theological arena opposition is most apparent. Almost every variety of doctrinal opinion in the denominations of Protestantism is found in the orders of the Roman church.

Rome does not deny these things, but rather points out that, despite them, all her different schools acknowledge the authority of the pope. But Protestants may reply: We all recognize the authority of Christ and the Bible. The Roman Catholic counters: Yes, but you have different opinions about Christ and the Bible. We can then observe: Your theologians differ in the definition of an ex cathedra statement. It would be good if both sides would let this point rest about here: the Roman Catholic, admittedly, has more external, visible, constrained and conspicious unity; the Protestant has more internal, invisible, unconstrained and inconspicuous unity.

The Marian Year is now past, but deification of the Virgin continues apace (Ecclesiastical Review, Nov., 1956). In a remote way, Mary became our Co-redemptrix already in the Incarnation, for Christ took on himself a human body with all its sufferings in order to redeem us and atone for our sins. Mary agreed wholeheartedly to be mother of just such a suffering Redeemer, hence already in the Incarnation Mary cooperated in our redemption. At the cross the Saviour consummated his work of redemption amid great sufferings. He gave himself up entirely as our Sacrifice to the Father. But Mary is there too: ‘with her suffering and dying Son, Mary endured suffering and almost death. She gave up her mother’s right over her Son to procure the salvation of mankind; and to appease the divine justice, she, as much as she could, immolated her Son so that one can truly affirm that together with Christ she has redeemed the human race.’ (Benedict XV). Hence not only remotely in the Incarnation, but also proximately and immediately in the very act of the Redeemer on Golgotha, Mary is our Co-redemptrix. Not that the price paid by Christ was not sufficient. It was all-sufficient. But God willed to accept Mary’s offering as part of the price, even though that of the Son was all-sufficient.”

The entire article is in the same vein. But we confine ourselves to but one other phase of mariolatry—Mary’s Queen-ship. The present Pope Pius XII had said in 1946: “Jesus, the Son of God, reflects in His heavenly mother the glory, the majesty, and the dominion of His Kingship, for, having been associated to the King of Martyrs in the ineffable work of human redemption as mother and Co-operatrix, she remains forever associated to Him, within an almost unlimited power, in the distribution of grace which flows from the Redeemer. Jesus is King throughout all eternity by nature and by right of conquest; Mary, through Him, with and subordinate to Him, is Queen of grace, by divine relationship, by right of conquest, and by singular election. And her kingdom is as vast as that of her Son and God, since nothing is excluded from her dominion.” “Mary is also Queen by conquest, for she cooperated with the Saviour in redeeming us from Satan.…”

Since the statements are made, criticism is necessary. If Mary is thought of as Co-redemptrix, this implies her divinity. Redemption is, as the Roman Catholic church teaches, a work of infinite grace: an infinite sacrifice to an infinite God to remove an infinite guilt. If Mary could cooperate in that—if she could be a co-effector of an eternal and infinite redemption—she must need be infinite and eternal. The Roman church is nothing if not logical—so it should not take long for her to say this in so many words, rather than leaving the inferences to Protestant polemicists.

- More from John H. Gerstner

The kingdom of God is near.

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