(Part II will appear in the next issue)

If we were to ask today’s average Christian (whether he be Protestant or Catholic, intellectual or not) what he conceived to be the New Testament teaching concerning the fate of man after death, with few exceptions we would get the answer: “the immortality of the soul.” Nevertheless, this idea in just this form is one of the greatest misunderstandings of Christianity. There is no point in attempting to hide this fact, or to veil it by means of a reinterpretation of the Christian faith. Rather it should be discussed quite candidly whether the concept of death and resurrection as anchored in the Christ-event (to be developed in the following pages), precisely in its incompatibility with the Greek belief in immortality, precisely in its orientation in Heilsgeschichte which is so offensive to modern thought, is not such an integral element of the early Christian proclamation that it can neither be surrendered nor reinterpreted without robbing the New Testament of its substance.

But is it really true that the early Christian resurrection faith is irreconcilable with the Greek concept of the immortality of the soul? Does not the New Testament, and above all the Gospel of John, teach that we already have eternal life? Is it really true that death in the New Testament is always conceived of as “the last enemy” in a way that is diametrically opposed to Greek thought, which sees in death a friend? Does not Paul write, “O death, where is thy sting?” We shall see at the end that there is at least an analogy, but first we must stress the fundamental differences between the two points of view.

The widespread misunderstanding that the New Testament teaches the immortality of the soul was actually encouraged by the rock-like post-Easter conviction of the first disciples that the bodily resurrection of Christ had robbed death of all its horror and that, from the moment of Easter on, the Holy Spirit has awakened the souls of believers into the life of the Resurrection. The very fact that the words “post-Easter” need to be underscored illustrates the whole abyss which nevertheless separates the early Christian view from that of the Greeks. All of early Christian thought is oriented in Heilsgeschichte, and everything that is said about death and eternal life stands or falls with a belief in a real occurrence, in real events which took place in time. This is the radical distinction from Greek thought.

If one recognized that death and eternal life in the New Testament are always bound up with the Christ-event, then it becomes clear that for the first Christians the soul is not intrinsically immortal, but rather became so only through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and through faith in him becomes so; then it becomes clear that death is not intrinsically the Friend, but rather that its “sting,” its power, is taken away only through the victory of Jesus over it in his death; then it becomes clear that the accomplished fact of resurrection is not the condition of perfection, but rather this condition remains in the future until the body is in fact resurrected, which will not occur until “the last day.”

It is a mistake to read into the fourth Gospel an early diversion toward the Greek teaching of immortality, because also in it eternal life is bound up with the Christ-event. Within the bounds of the Christ-event, of course, the various New Testament books place the accent in different places, but common to all is the view of Heilsgeschichte.

I

Nothing shows more clearly than the contrast between the death of Socrates and that of Jesus (a contrast which was often cited, though for other purposes, by early opponents of Christianity) that the biblical view of death from the first is focused in salvation-history and so departs completely from the Greek conception.

In Plato’s impressive description of the death of Socrates in the Phaedo occurs perhaps the highest and most sublime doctrine ever presented on the immortality of the soul. What gives his argument its unexcelled value is his scientific reserve, his disclaimer of any proof having mathematical validity. We know the arguments he offers for the immortality of the soul. Our body is only an outer garment which, as long as we live, prevents our soul from moving freely and from living comfortably to its proper eternal essence. It imposes upon the soul a law which is not appropriate to it. The soul is confined within the body; it belongs to the eternal world. As long as we live, our soul finds itself in a prison, that is, in a body essentially alien to it. Death, in fact, is the great liberator. It loosens the chains, since it leads the soul out of the prison of the body and back to its eternal home. Since body and soul are radically different from one another and belong to different worlds, the destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul, any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed. Although the proofs for the immortality of the soul do not have for Socrates himself the same value as the proofs of a mathematical theorem, they nevertheless attain within their own sphere the highest possible degree of validity, and make immortality so probable that it amounts to a “fair chance” for man. And the great Socrates, tracing the arguments for immortality in his address to his disciples on the day of his death, did not merely teach this doctrine: at that moment he lived his doctrine. He showed how we serve the freedom of the soul, even in this present life, in our occupation with the eternal truths of philosophy. For through philosophy we penetrate into that eternal world of ideas to which the soul belongs, and we free the soul from the prison of the body. Death is then only that which completes this liberation. Plato shows us how Socrates goes to his death in complete peace and composure. The death of Socrates is a beautiful death. Nothing is seen here of death’s terror. Socrates cannot fear death, since indeed it sets us free from the body. Whoever fears death proves that he loves the world of the body, that he is thoroughly entangled in the world of sense. Death is the soul’s great friend. So he teaches; and so, in wonderful harmony with his teaching, he dies—this man who embodied the Greek world in its noblest form.

And now let us hear how Jesus dies. In Gethsemane he knows that death stands before him, just as Socrates expected death on his last day. The Synoptic evangelists furnish us, by and large, with a unanimous report. Jesus begins “to tremble and to lose heart,” writes Mark (14:34). “My soul is troubled even to death,” he says to his disciples. Jesus is so thoroughly human that he shares the natural fear of death. Jesus is afraid, though not afraid, as a coward would be, of the men who will kill him, or still less of the pain and grief which precede death. He is afraid in the face of death itself. Death for him is nothing divine: it is something dreadful. Jesus does not want to be alone in this moment. He knows, of course, that the Father stands by to help him. He looks to him in this decisive moment as he has done throughout his life. He turns to him with all his human fear of this great enemy, death. He is afraid of death. It is useless to try to explain away Jesus’ fear as reported by the evangelists. The opponents of Christianity who already in the first centuries made the contrast between Socrates’ and Jesus’ death saw more clearly here than the exponents of Christianity. He was really afraid. Here is nothing of the composure of Socrates, who met death peacefully as a friend. To be sure, he already knows of the task which has been given him, to suffer death, and he has already spoken the words, “I have a baptism with which I must be baptised, and how anxious (or afraid) I am until it is accomplished” (Luke 12:50). Now, when God’s enemy stands before him, he cries to God, whose omnipotence he knows: “All things are possible with thee; let this cup pass from me” (Mark 14:36). And when he concludes, “Yet not as I will, but as thou wilt,” this does not mean that at the last he, like Socrates, regards death as the friend, the liberator. No, he means only this: but if this greatest of all terrors, death, must befall me according to thy will, then I submit to this horror. Jesus knows that, because death is the enemy of God, to die inherently means to be utterly forsaken.…

Can there be a greater contrast than that between Socrates and Jesus? Like Jesus, Socrates has his disciples about him on the day of his death; but in sublime repose he discourses with them on immortality. Jesus, a few hours before his death, trembles and quakes and begs his disciples not to leave him alone. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who, more than any other New Testament author, emphasizes the full deity (1:10) but also the full humanity of Jesus, goes still further than the reports of the three Synoptists in his description of Jesus’ fear of death. In chapter 5, verse 7, he writes that Jesus “with loud cries and tears offered up prayers and supplications to him who was able to save him.” Thus, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, Jesus wept and cried in the face of death. There is Socrates, calmly and composedly speaking of the immortality of the soul; here Jesus, weeping and crying.

And then the death-scene itself. With sublime calm Socrates drinks the hemlock; but Jesus (thus says the evangelist, Mark 15:34—we dare not gloss it away) cries: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And with another inarticulate cry he dies (Mark 15:37). This is not “death as a friend.” This is death in all its frightful horror. This is really “the last enemy” of God. This is the name Paul gives it in 1 Corinthians 15:26, where the whole contrast between Greek thought and Christianity is disclosed. Using different words, the author of the Johannine Apocalypse also regards death as the last enemy, when he describes how at the end death will be cast into the lake of fire (20:14). Because it is God’s enemy it separates us from God, who is life and the creator of all life. Jesus, who is so closely tied to God, tied as no other man has ever been, for precisely this reason must experience death much more terribly than any other man. To be in the hands of the great enemy of God means to be forsaken by God. In a way quite different from others, Jesus must suffer this abandonment, this separation from God, the only condition really to be feared. Therefore he cries to God, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” He is now actually in the hands of God’s great enemy.

We must be grateful to the evangelists for having glossed nothing over at this point. Later, as early as the beginning of the second century, and probably even earlier, there will come people who will take offense at this—people of Greek provenance. In Christian antiquity we call them Gnostics.

I have juxtaposed the death of Socrates and the death of Jesus. For nothing shows better the radical difference between the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. Because Jesus underwent death in all its horror, not only in his body but also in his soul (My God, why hast thou forsaken me?), and as he is regarded by the first Christians as the mediator of salvation, he must be the very one who in his death conquers death itself. He cannot obtain this victory by simply living on as an immortal soul, thus fundamentally not dying. He can only conquer death by actually dying, by betaking himself to the sphere of death, the destroyer of life, to the sphere of “nothingness,” of abandonment by God. When one wishes to conquer anyone else, one must repair to the other’s province. Whoever wants to conquer death must die; he must really cease to live. Not simply live on as an immortal soul, but die in body and soul, lose life itself, the most precious good which God has given us. For this reason the evangelists, who none the less intended to present Jesus as the Son of God, have not tried to soften the terribleness of his so thoroughly human death.

Furthermore, if life is to issue out of so genuine a death, a new divine act of creation is necessary. And this act of creation calls back to life not just a part of the man, but the whole man—all that God had created and death had annihilated. For Socrates and Plato no new act of creation is necessary. For the body is indeed bad and should not live on. And that part which is to live on, the soul, does not die at all.

If we want to understand the Christian faith in the resurrection, we must completely disregard the Greek thought that the material, the bodily, the corporeal is bad and must be destroyed, so that the death of the body would not be in any sense a destruction of the true life. For Christian (and Jewish) thinking the death of the body is also destruction of God-created life. No distinction is made: even the life of our body is true life; death is the destruction of all created by God. Therefore it is death and not the body which must be conquered by the resurrection.

Only he who apprehends with the first Christians the horror of death, who takes death seriously as death, can comprehend the Easter exultation of the primitive Christian community and understand that the whole thinking of the New Testament is governed by belief in the resurrection. Belief in the immortality of the soul is not belief in a revolutionary event. Immortality, in fact, is only a negative assertion: the soul does not die, but simply lives on. Resurrection is a positive assertion: the whole man, who has really died, is recalled to life by a new act of creation by God. Something has happened—a miracle of creation! For something has also happened previously, something fearful: life formed by God has been destroyed.…

Whoever paints a pretty death can paint no resurrection. Whoever has not grasped the horror of death cannot join Paul in the hymn of victory: “Death is swallowed up—in victory! Oh death, where is thy victory? Where, death, is thy sting?” (1 Cor. 15:54 f.)

II

Yet the contrast between the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul and the Christian belief in the resurrection is still deeper. The belief in the resurrection presupposes the Jewish connection between death and sin. Death is not something natural, willed by God, as in the thinking of the Greek philosophers; it is rather something unnatural, abnormal, opposed to God. The Genesis narrative teaches us that it came into the world only by the sin of man. Death is a curse, and the whole creation has become involved in the curse. The sin of man has necessitated the event which the Bible reports and which we call the redemptive process. Death can be conquered only to the extent that sin is removed. For “death is the wages of sin.” It is not only the Genesis narrative which speaks thus. Paul says the same thing (Rom. 6:23), and this is the view of death held by the whole of primitive Christianity. Just as sin is something opposed to God, so is its consequence, death. To be sure, God can make use of death (1 Cor. 15:35 ff.; John 12:24), as he can make use of Satan for the tempting of man.

Nevertheless, death as such is the enemy of God. For God is life and the creator of life. It is not the will of God that there are withering and decay, dying and sickness, the by-products of death working in our life. All these things, according to Christian and Jewish thinking, come from human sin. Therefore, every healing which Jesus accomplishes is not only a driving back of death, but also an invasion of the province of sin; and therefore on every occasion Jesus says: “Your sins are forgiven.” Not as though there were a corresponding sin for every individual sickness; but rather, like the presence of death, the fact that sickness exists at all is a consequence of the sinful condition of the whole of humanity. Every healing is a partial resurrection, a partial victory of life over death. That is the Christian point of view. According to the Greek interpretation, on the contrary, bodily sickness is a corollary of the fact that the body is bad in itself and is ordained to destruction. For the Christians, on the other hand, an anticipation of the resurrection can already become visible for the time being, even in the earthly body.

That reminds us that the body is in no sense bad in itself, but is, like the soul, a gift of our Creator. Therefore, according to Paul, we have duties with regard to our body. God is the creator of all things. The Greek doctrine of immortality and the Christian hope in the resurrection differ so radically because Greek thought has such an entirely different interpretation of creation. The Jewish and Christian interpretation of creation excludes the whole Greek dualism between body and soul. For indeed the visible, the corporeal, is just as truly God’s creation as the invisible. God is the maker of the body. The body is not the soul’s prison, but rather a temple, as Paul says (1 Cor. 6:19): the temple of the Holy Spirit! The basic distinction lies here. Body and soul are not opposites. God finds the corporeal “good” after he has created it. The Genesis story makes this emphasis explicit. Conversely, moreover, sin also embraces the whole man, not only the body but the soul as well; and its consequence, death, extends over all the rest of creation. Death is accordingly something dreadful, because the whole visible creation, including our body, is something wonderful, even if it is corrupted by sin and death. Behind the pessimistic interpretation of death stands the optimistic view of creation. Wherever, as in Platonism, death is affirmed, there the visible world is not recognized directly as God’s creation.

Now it must be granted that in Greek thought there is also a very positive appreciation of the body. But in Plato the good and beautiful in the corporeal are not good and beautiful in virtue of corporeality but rather, so to speak, in spite of corporeality: the soul, the eternal and the only substantial reality of being, shines faintly through the material. The corporeal is not the real, the eternal, the divine. It is merely that through which the real appears—and then only in debased form. The corporeal is meant to lead us to contemplate the pure archetype, freed from all corporeality, the invisible Idea.

To be sure, the Jewish and Christian points of view also see something else besides present corporeality. For the whole creation is corrupted by sin and death. The creation which we see is not as God willed it, as he created it; nor is the body which we wear. Death rules over all; and it is not necessary for annihilation to accomplish its work of destruction before this fact becomes apparent—it is already obvious in the whole outward form of all things. Everything, even the most beautiful, is marked by death. Thus it might seem as if the distinction between Greek and Christian interpretation is not so great after all. And yet it remains radical. Behind the corporeal phantasm Plato senses the incorporeal, transcendent, pure Idea. Behind the corrupted creation, under sentence of death, the Christian sees the future creation of the resurrection, just as God willed it. The contrast, for the Christian, is not between the body and the soul, not between outward form and Idea, but rather between the creation delivered over to death by sin and the new creation; between the corruptible, fleshly body and the incorruptible resurrection body.

Interpretation Of Man

This leads us to a further point: the Christian interpretation of man. The anthropology of the New Testament is not Greek, but connected with Jewish conceptions. For the concepts of body, soul, flesh, and spirit (to name only these) the New Testament does indeed use the same words as the Greek philosopher. But they mean something quite different, and we understand the whole New Testament amiss when we construe these concepts only from the viewpoint of Greek thought.…

The New Testament also knows the difference between body and soul, or more precisely, between the inner and the outer man. This distinction, also present in the New Testament, does not, however, imply opposition, as if the one were by nature good, the other by nature bad. Both belong together, both are created by God. The inner man without the outer has no proper, full existence. It requires a body. It can, to be sure, somehow lead a shadowy existence without the body, like the dead in Sheol according to the Old Testament, but this is not a genuine life. The contrast with the Greek soul is clear: it is precisely without the body that the Greek soul first attains to full development of its life. According to the Christian outlook, it is the inner man whose very nature demands the body.

And what now is the role played by the flesh (sarx) and spirit (pneuma)? Here it is especially important not to be misled by the secular use of the Greek words, although these are to be found in different places even in the New Testament and although the individual New Testament writers’ use of terminology is never completely uniform. With these reservations, we may say that according to the use which is characteristic, say, for Pauline theology flesh and spirit of the New Testament are two transcendentpowers which can enter into man from without; but neither is given with human existence as such. On the whole it is true that the Pauline anthropology, contrary to the Greek, is also grounded in Heilsgeschichte. “Flesh” is the power of sin or the power of death. It seizes the outer and the inner man together. Spirit is its great antagonist: the power of creation. It also seizes the outer and inner man together. Flesh and spirit are active powers, and as such they work within us. The flesh, the power of death, entered man with the sin of Adam; indeed it entered the whole man, inner and outer; yet in such a way that it is substantially linked with the body in a much closer indissoluble manner. The inner man finds itself less closely connected with the flesh; although through guilt this power of death has more and more taken possession even of the inner man. The spirit, on the other hand, is the great power of life, the element of the resurrection; God’s power of creation is given to us through the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament it works only singularly in the prophets. In the End-time in which we live—that is, since Christ has broken the power of death in his own death and has arisen—this power of life is at work in all members of the community (v. Acts 2:17: “in the last days”). Like the flesh, it too already takes possession of the whole man, inner and outer. But here the situation is quite the reverse of that with flesh. While, in this age, the flesh has established itself to a substantial degree in the body, and rules the inner man, it is not in the same inescapable way; the quickening power of the Holy Spirit is already taking possession of the inner man in such a decisive manner that the inner man is “renewed from day to day,” as Paul says (2 Cor. 4:16). The whole Johannine Gospel emphasizes this point. There we are already in the state of resurrection; of eternal life—not immortality of soul; the new era is already inaugurated. The body, too, is already in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Everywhere the Holy Spirit is at work we have what amounts to a momentary retreat of the power of death, a certain foretaste of the End. This is true even in the body, hence the healings of the sick. But here it is a question only of a retreat, not of a final transformation of the body of death into a resurrection body. Even those Jesus raised up in his lifetime will die again, for they did not receive a resurrection body. But the transformation of the fleshly body into a spiritual body does not take place until the End. Only then will the Holy Spirit’s power of resurrection take such complete possession of the body that it transforms it in the way it is already transforming the inner man. It is important to see how different the New Testament anthropology is from that of the Greeks. Body and soul are both originally good insofar as they are created by God; they are both bad insofar as the deadly power of the flesh has hold of them. Both can and must be set free by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit.

Here, therefore, deliverance consists not in a release of soul from body but in a release of both from flesh. We are not released from the body; rather the body itself is set free. This is made especially clear in the Pauline epistles. But it is the interpretation of the whole New Testament. In this connection one does not find the differences which are present among the various books on other points. Even the much-quoted saying of Jesus in Matthew 10:28 in no way presupposes the Greek conception. “Fear not them that kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.” It might seem to presuppose the view that the soul has no need of the body, but the context of the passage shows that this is not the case. Jesus does not continue: “Be afraid of him who kills the soul”; rather: “fear him who can slay both soul and body in Gehenna.” That is, fear God, who is able to give you over completely to death; to wit, when he does not resurrect you to life. We shall see, it is true, that the soul is the starting point of the resurrection, since, as we have said, it can already be possessed by the Holy Spirit in a way quite different from the body. The Holy Spirit already lives in our inner man. “By the Holy Spirit who dwells in you (already),” says Paul in Romans 8:11, “God will also quicken your mortal bodies.” Therefore, those who kill only the body are not to be feared. It can be raised from the dead. Moreover, it must be raised. The soul cannot always remain without a body. And on the other side we hear in Jesus’ saying in Matthew 10:28 that the soul can be killed. The soul is not immortal. There must be resurrection for both; for since the Fall the whole man is “sown corruptible.” For the inner man, thanks to the transformation by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection can take place already in this present life: through the “renewal from day to day.” The flesh, however, still maintains its seat in our body. The transformation of the body does not take place until the End, when the whole creation will be made new by the Holy Spirit, when there will be no death and no corruption.

The resurrection of the body, whose substance will no longer be that of the flesh but that of the Holy Spirit, is only a part of the whole new creation. “We wait for a new heaven and a new earth,” says 2 Peter 3:13. The Christian hope relates not only to my individual fate but to the entire creation. Through sin the whole creation has become involved in death. This we hear not only in Genesis, but also in Romans 8:19 ff., where Paul writes that the whole creation even in the present waits longingly for deliverance. This deliverance will come when the power of the Holy Spirit will transform all matter, when God in a new act of creation will not destroy matter, but set it free from the flesh, from corruptibility. Not eternal Ideas, but the concrete objects will then rise anew, in the new, incorruptible life-substance of the Holy Spirit; and among these objects belongs our body as well.

Because resurrection of the body is a new act of creation which embraces everything, it is not an event which begins with each individual death, but only at the End. It is not transition from this world to another world, as is the case of the immortal soul freed from the body; rather it is the transition from the present age to the future. It is tied to the whole process of redemption.

Because there is sin there must be a process of redemption enacted in time. Where sin is regarded as the source of death’s lordship over God’s creation, there this sin and death must be vanquished together, and there the Holy Spirit, the only power able to conquer death, must win all creatures back to life in a continuous process.

Therefore the Christian belief in the resurrection, as distinct from the Greek belief in immortality, is tied to a divine total process implying deliverance. Sin and death must be conquered. We cannot do this. Another has done it for us; and he was able to do it only in that he betook himself to the province of death—that is, he himself died and expiated sin, so that death as the wages of sin is overcome. Christian faith proclaims that Jesus has done this and that he arose with body and soul after he was fully and really dead. Here God has consummated the miracle of the new creation expected at the End. Once again he has created life as in the beginning. At this one point, in Jesus Christ, this has already happened! Resurrection, not only in the sense of the Holy Spirit’s taking possession of the inner man, but also resurrection of the body. This is a new creation of matter, an incorruptible matter. Nowhere else in the world is there a new matter, a spiritual matter. Nowhere else is there a spiritual body—only here in Christ.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Oscar Cullmann is Dean of the Theological Faculty of the University of Basel and Professor of the Sorbonne in Paris. He holds the degrees D.Theol., D.D. (Edin.) and D.D. (Manchester). This two-part article comprises most of Dr. Cullmann’s Ingersoll Lecture for 1954–55 at Harvard University. The complete text (including footnotes), copyrighted 1958 by Dr. Cullmann, has just been published under the title Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? by The Macmillan Company, with whose permission, as well as Dr. Cullmann’s, this excerpt is used. The British publisher of the same material is the Epworth Press of London.

During the next twelve months or so the centenary of “Darwinism” will be attracting a considerable amount of attention and there are already indications that the celebration of this centenary will not disclose a situation of complete harmony within the ranks of the scientists. It is a subject in which the theological world can hardly fail to be deeply interested.

Last May 21st the London Times published a mildly satirical letter from Dr. H. Graham Cannon, F.R.S., Professor of Zoology in the University of Manchester. He referred to the recent appearance in the magazine Endeavour of “a laudatory article in praise of Charles Darwin” in which Sir Gavin de Beer, F.R.S., who is Director of the British Museum (Natural History), stated that “new species have been artificially produced in the laboratory,” and requested that the author give “chapter and verse for this remarkable achievement,” adding that at the same time “it would be useful if he would tell us exactly what he means by the word ‘species,’ ” since “it is one of those little points which Darwin omitted to define.” As Sir Gavin had also written that the French zoologist Lamarck had brought the subject of evolution into disrepute by the “fanciful nature” of his views, Professor Cannon invited him to “give us any examples of ‘what Lamarck really said’ of this nature which cannot easily be beaten by Charles Darwin in his more exhilarating flights of fancy.”

Sir Gavin de Beer’s reply, printed the following day, claimed that certain new botanical species have been produced under experimental conditions, but failed to comply with Professor Cannon’s request for a definition of the term “species.” It concluded with the following categorical assertion: “Disparaging remarks about Darwin are best refuted not by any words of mine but by the past 40 years’ research in laboratory and field, which has proved beyond the possibility of error that natural selection of random variations has been the chief factor in evolution.” In this statement two things are worthy of remark: (1) that the theory of evolution is treated unconditionally as a fact which admits of no doubt; and (2) that the evolutionary process and the ordered system of nature it has (ex hypothesi) produced are built upon a foundation of chance, not design or purpose.

In so speculative a field, however, claims like the above that affirm “proof beyond the possibility of error” are more easily uttered than justified. They certainly do not represent the unanimous judgment of scientists on the question of evolution. Perhaps the most remarkable recent expression of discontent with Darwinism from within the scientific camp is to be found in the introduction to the latest edition of no less a volume than Darwin’s The Origin of Species in the Everyman’s Library (published by J. M. Dent and Sons, London, and E. P. Dutton and Co., New York, 1956). This introduction is written by Dr. W. R. Thompson, F.R.S., who is Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control, Ottawa. “I am not satisfied,” he says, “that Darwin proved his point or that his influence in scientific and public thinking has been beneficial.” He explains that he could not content himself “with mere variations on the hymn to Darwin and Darwinism that introduces so many textbooks on biology and evolution,” and that he is well aware that his views “will be regarded by many biologists as heretical and reactionary.”

Dr. Thompson complains that in the argumentation used by evolutionists “personal convictions, simple possibilities, are presented as if they were proofs, or at least valid arguments in favour of the theory.” Darwin, he reminds us, “did not show in the Origin that species had originated by natural selection; he merely showed, on the basis of certain facts and assumptions, how this might have happened, and as he had convinced himself he was able to convince others.” But, he points out, “the long-continued investigations on heredity and variation have undermined the Darwinian position. We now know that the variations determined by environmental changes—the individual differences regarded by Darwin as the material on which natural selection acts—are not hereditary.”

As for mutations, the main straw at which contemporary evolutionists clutch, they are not adaptive; indeed, “in general, they are useless, detrimental, or lethal.” Dr. Thompson quotes Emile Guyénot’s criticism of the explanation of evolution as the result of chance mutations in the genetic structure, as follows: “It is impossible to produce the world of life where the dominant note is functional organization, correlated variation and progression, from a series of random events.” Arguments founded upon the supposition that certain structures or organs are rudimentary or vestigial, and upon the so-called “biogenetic law” according to which the development of the embryo is said to recapitulate an animal’s evolutionary ancestry, receive short shrift in this essay.

The taxonomic system, whereby organisms are classified, presents, as Dr. Thompson points out, “an orderly arrangement of clear-cut entities which are clear-cut because they are separated by gaps.” These gaps are not explicable on the evolutionary theory. This is the case also with fossils, for investigation has revealed “a remarkable absence of the many intermediate forms required by the theory.” Dr. Thompson charges that “the modern Darwinian paleontologists are obliged, just like their predecessors and like Darwin, to water down the facts with subsidiary hypotheses which, however plausible, are in the nature of things unverifiable.” Even more serious is his verdict that “the success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity.” The doctrine of evolution by natural selection has, further, been associated with the decline of belief in the supernatural and the decline of Christianity, and the biblical account of creation has been abandoned for a view which, despite the evidence in nature of finality and design “and, therefore, of an intelligent providence,” ascribes all to chance.

“The general tendency to eliminate, by means of unverifiable speculations, the limits of the categories Nature presents to us, is,” Dr. Thompson declares, “the inheritance of biology from The Origin of Species. To establish the continuity required by theory, historical arguments are invoked, even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypotheses based on hypotheses, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion.”

These are strong words. But theologians and educationists, no less than scientists, must give serious attention to strictures of men like Dr. Thompson and to re examine the whole matter candidly.

It was reported more than a year ago that in one of Dead Sea caves fragments of 13 manuscripts of Deuteronomy had been discovered as compared with 12 of Isaiah and 10 of the Psalms. This count may have been modified by subsequent discoveries; and the remarkable popularity of Deuteronomy among the Sectarians of Qumran may have been due to special reasons. Needless to say, the quotations from and references to Deuteronomy in the New Testament are “very numerous” (Angus-Green). This popularity is not surprising; rather it is to be expected. Deuteronomy is a unique book in more ways than one. It contains the farewell addresses of Israel’s great leader, Moses. It is full of reminiscences of the greatest events of Israel’s early history, the deliverance from Egyptian bondage and the giving of the Law. It looks forward to the conquest of the Promised Land with a confidence conditioned only by the ever present danger of apostasy. It contains a body of laws which are lofty in their ethical standards, stem and uncompromising; and yet they are surrounded by an atmosphere of loving concern which gives them the note of prophetic exhortation and urgency. By every test and standard, authorship, content, and circumstance, Deuteronomy is a very remarkable book.

Authorship

There are few books, if any, which bear more plainly the stamp of authorship than does Deuteronomy. This is shown by the following analysis:

Introduction—“words which Moses spake” (1:1–5)

First Discourse (1:6–4:40)

Second Discourse (5:1–26:19)

Third Discourse (29:1–30:20)

The Song of Moses (32:1–43)

The Blessing of Moses (33:1–29)

These discourses are all attributed to Moses. They make up the bulk of the book and are joined together by a narrative which tells what Moses did:

1. He appointed cities of refuge (4:41–49)

2. He gave instructions for ceremony at Ebal (27:1–28:68)

3. He appointed Joshua, wrote the Law, gave it to the priests (31:1–30)

4. Repeated the song and received final command from God (32:44–52)

The book concludes with an account of Moses’ death and a brief eulogy (34:1–12). Especially significant are the statements that “Moses wrote the words of this law in a book until they were finished” (31:24–27).

Content

Introduction (1:1–5). These are the words which Moses spake unto all Israel states the claim of the book to Mosaic authorship. The names of the cities mentioned in verse 1 and the statement that there are 11 days journey from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea, together with mention of the 40th year suggest that much of the contents of the book was delivered twice: first, in the second year before the people’s refusal to go up and possess the land when the conquest of it seemed imminent (Num. 13:1), and a second time and in its final form in Moab at the end of the 40 years.

The First Discourse (1:5–4:40). Deuteronomy may be called quite suitably, the book of the commandments of the Lord (4:2). “Command” occurs 81 times in AV and “commandment” 43 times. Israel’s attitude had been marked by “rebellion” (1:26, 43; 9:7, 24) and will be in the future (31:27). Hence the frequent rebukes and exhortations to obedience. Israel’s great sin, the refusal to possess the land, is dealt with in detail (1:26–45). The wanderings are followed by the conquest of the lands east of the Jordan in which Joshua is to see a foreview of the conquest of Palestine after Moses’ death (3:21). Deuteronomy is also the great book of remembrance, the word “remember” occurring 15 times, “(lest ye) forget” 11 times. This discourse concludes by emphasizing especially the great theophany at Sinai and the giving of the Law. They must never be forgotten. At Sinai Israel became the worshipers of the one true God (4:35, 39), a covenant people (vss. 13, 23), the special object of God’s love (vs. 37) and of his peculiar dealings (vss. 32–35). At Sinai they heard only a voice; they saw no shape, that they might shun idolatry. Another great word in this book is “love,” occurring 20 times—God’s love (4:37), demanding man’s love to God (11:1), and man’s love also to his fellow men (10:19). Here also the duty of teaching is stressed. The people must teach their children (4:9) the wonderful things Moses is teaching them (4:1, 5, 14). The most solemn warning is given against apostasy (4:23–28) because of God’s singular blessings and also because of Israel’s record of disobedience.

First Narrative (4:41–49). A brief statement that Moses set apart three cities of refuge east of Jordan. It is also stated that Moses spoke these “testimonies, statutes, and judgments” on this side of Jordan over against Beth-Peor (4:46).

The Second Discourse (5:1–26:19). This longest of the discourses falls into two main parts, chapters 5–11 and 12–26. The first part repeats the Decalogue and what follows may be regarded as an exposition of it The great affirmation, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord” (6:4) is at once followed by two commands: to love the Lord supremely, and to treasure this wonderful revelation, teaching it to their children and making it a constant topic of meditation and conversation. The command to teach (cf. 11:18–21; 31:19–22) was sadly neglected by the Israelites. But the literal interpretation of the word “frontlets” (vs. 8) led to the use of phylacteries by the Pharisees of New Testament times. The extermination of the seven nations in possession of the land is commanded (7:1–6). Israel is to remember that they are a holy people and not corrupt themselves with the people of the land. The Lord is faithful (vs. 9). If they obey him, he will love them and bless them; and they will be able to overcome their mighty enemies (vss. 16–26). In chapters 8–11 they are exhorted to remember God’s wonderful dealings with them in the past as they look forward to the conquest of the land. The God who has so wonderfully blessed them is their hope for the future. But they have been rebellious (9:7, 24). Hence the constant intermingling of promise and exhortation with warnings and threats. God’s love for them is stressed, and they are exhorted to love him and to love their fellow men (5:10; 7:9–13; 10:12–19; 11:1, 13, 22).

The Code of Deuteronomy (Chaps. 12–26). The name “code” is appropriate to this group of chapters because it contains so many specific commandments and laws, despite the fact that the preceding section is markedly legal and consists of the Decalogue and its application. These statutes and judgments they “shall observe to do in the land which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it.” This future reference of the code is important. It is significant that it begins by commanding that everything connected with heathen worship is to be utterly eradicated (12:2–4). This is the negative side. Then follows immediately: “But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there … thither thou shalt come and thither ye shall bring your burnt offerings …” A full discussion of this much debated passage cannot be given here. However we note the following. The law of the central sanctuary goes back to Sinai; the tabernacle was “the tent of the congregation” for all Israel (Exod. 40:12). Also, this law points forward to the time of the erection of the temple by Solomon (Deut. 12:10f.; cf. 2 Sam. 7:11f.). Thirdly, the building of altars wherever “I shall record my name” (Exod. 20:24) accounts for such altars as were erected by Joshua at Ebal and by Gideon, Manoah, Samuel, David, and Elijah. While these were extraordinary and may be called irregular, the disordered state of the worship, due to frequent apostasies and their consequences (e.g., the sin of Hophni and Phineas and its consequences) gave them a certain legitimacy; and they were tolerated by good kings like Asa (1 Kings 15:14).

For a detailed discussion of the many diverse laws which are contained in the code, the reader must be referred to the commentaries. The laws are intended to govern the entire life of the people when they shall have entered the land. The peril of apostasy and its punishment is dealt with repeatedly (12:29–13:1–18; cf. 16:21f.; 17:2–7; 18:9–14). Israel is a holy people (14:2, 21); they are not to disfigure themselves for the dead (14:1–2), nor eat unclean food (vss. 3–21). They are to keep the annual feasts (16:1–17) and observe the law of tithing (14:22–29; cf. 26:12–15) and the year, of release (15:1–18). Kingship (17:14–20) and prophetic guidance (18:15–22) are provided for. Humanity is enjoined (24:6, 10–15; 25:1–4). Especially noteworthy is the law regarding inherited guilt (24:16). The widow, the orphan and the stranger are to be humanely treated (16:11, 14; 24:17–22; 26:12f.). We have also the law of divorce (24:1–5) and of the levirate (25:5–10).

The priests, also called “priests the Levites,” which is not a distinguishing but an amplifying phrase, since all priests were Levites, are given a position of honor. They are supported by their portion of the gifts and sacrifices (18:1–5), they serve with the judges (17:9; 19:17), they are to teach (24:8), and they are here associated with Moses in the imposing of the Law (27:9; 31:9). On the other hand the Levites occupy an insecure position (12:19; 14:27). Their status is similar to that of the widow and orphan (14:29; 16:11, 14; 26:12f.), and they are commended to the liberality of the laity. Consequently we do not wonder that so few of the Levites returned from the Captivity with Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:40) and with Ezra (Ezra 8:15).

All of these laws are given to Israel that this people may fulfill the destiny which their God had set before them, a glorious destiny to be realized only through obedience (26:16–19).

Second Narrative. Instructions are here given regarding Mt. Ebal (Chaps. 27–28). The ceremony at Mt. Ebal (cf. 11:29f.; Josh. 8:30–35) which was to take place when the Lord had brought them into the land (11:29) must have been tremendously impressive. “All the words of this law” are to be written on the altar as upon a great writing tablet. Sacrifices are to be offered upon it; and the blessings and curses are to be pronounced by the Levites.

The Third Discourse (Chaps. 29–30). Moses is commanded to make a covenant with Israel “beside the covenant which he made with them at Horeb” (29:1). This covenant is a comprehensive one (vss. 14–15), and it is enforced by warnings and curses—exile the penalty of dis-obedience, restoration conditioned on repentance and obedience (30:1–10). The great alternative, obedience and life, or disobedience and death (30:15–20), is again solemnly stated.

Third Narrative (Chap. 31). Moses is to die. The people are exhorted to be strong and courageous. Moses writes the law and entrusts it to the priests (vss. 9, 24). It is to be read every seven years. Joshua is to become the leader, which is attested by the pillar of cloud (vs. 15; cf. Exod. 40:34f.; 1 Kings 8:10f.). There is warning against disobedience. Moses writes a song (vs. 22).

The Song (32:1–43). Moses celebrates God’s greatness, records his past mercies and blessings to Israel and Israel’s unfaithfulness, and after terrible threatenings he closes with a promise of mercy (vs. 43).

Fourth Narrative (32:44–52). Moses follows the reciting of the song with a final solemn warning. He is then commanded to ascend the Mount to die, but is promised a “sight of the land.”

The Blessing (Chap. 33). This blessing resembles in some respects that of Jacob (Gen. 49). Moses has been for a generation a “nursing father” to Israel (Num. 11:11f.), and this fact makes this fatherly blessing doubly appropriate.

The account of Moses’ death which follows is written as history, not as prophecy. It might have been written by Joshua. But the mention of Dan as in the far north suggests that it was written after the events recorded in Judges 18.

Relevance Of Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy is of special importance today for two reasons. We have seen that it definitely and repeatedly claims to be Mosaic. Accepted as such it gives us a very clear and impressive statement of the nature of the religion which Israel received by revelation at Sinai and covenanted to keep. This religion is a lofty, ethical, spiritual monotheism which is unique among all the religions of the world. It is so high, its demands are so great, that the danger of adopting a lower form of worship, of accepting the standards of the heathen is very great. The people are warned that the adopting of such lower standards, the turning aside to heathen idolatries is a disloyalty, an apostasy which will surely take place but will be most severely punished. They have a vastly different, a vastly higher religion than that of the heathen, and they are to be ever mindful of this unique distinction.

Despite its obvious claims to be Mosaic, “critical” scholars have been maintaining for more than a century that the book of Deuteronomy is the product of the time of Josiah, that it represents the viewpoint of a much later age than that of Moses, and that its “discovery” in the temple led not to reform but to radical innovations in the religious worship of Israel. Space will only permit us to point out that here the biblical and the critical understandings of Old Testament religion and history are in sharp and irreconcilable conflict. It has been the claim of the critics that the religion of Israel was originally very similar to, if not identical with, the religions of the neighboring peoples, that it evolved gradually through animism, polytheism, henotheism, to an ethical monotheism which was not attained to until shortly before the time of Josiah and Jeremiah. The book of Deuteronomy regarded as Mosaic is an insuperable obstacle in the path of such a reconstruction of the religious history of Israel. Small wonder that the critics have been so insistent that the book is late and that its Mosaic dress is camouflage. The best answer to this claim is the book itself.

A second reason that Deuteronomy is now of such importance is that it gives the Christian of today a correct and much needed philosophy of history. Deuteronomy emphasizes and illustrates the tremendous importance of the teaching function of the Church, the imperative duty of passing on the wonderful heritage of faith and life of which the Church is the custodian, lest the people forget and fall away and perish. Moses’ exhortations to Israel were soon forgotten. After Joshua and the elders who outlived him were gathered to their fathers, “there arose another generation after them which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10); and so evil days came upon Israel. Today in our cities and throughout our land there is growing up a generation that does not know the Lord and does not want to obey him. We call this phenomenon in the sphere of philosophy, existentialism. In essence it is the law of the jungle—every man a law unto himself, and it is finding starting, even appalling expression in what we know as juvenile delinquency. It is the story of the book of Judges in modern conditions. Deuteronomy warns us to remember and to teach, to serve the Lord ourselves and to teach our children.

Instead of adding a bibliography, it will suffice for the purposes of this article to refer the reader to the recent book by G. T. Manley, The Book of the Law (Eerdmans, 1957). Mr. Manley has been active in the Inter-Varsity Fellowship for a number of years. He was the editor of The New Bible Handbook which I.V.F. published. His special interest in recent years has been the defense of the early date of Deuteronomy. He wrote the article on that book for The New Bible Commentary (Eerdmans, 1953). In The Book of the Law, Mr. Manley has given us a very able, scholarly, and up-to-date defense of the traditional view regarding this pivotal book in the face of the many arguments which are brought against it. The book well deserves a wide and careful reading.

OSWALD T. ALLIS

Former Professor of Old Testament

Princeton and Westminster Seminaries

Contemporary Culture

Testament of Vision, by Henry Zylstra, Eerdmans, 1958, 234 pp., $3.50.

The product of an orthodox Christian who can think and also write, this book is a pure delight. Here is writing which speaks modestly but with great sincerity and keen perception on contemporary education, literature, religion, and life generally. Are you bothered about the shortcomings of Christian fiction? The reason, says Dr. Zylstra, is that orthodoxy is at bay against modern culture and consequently this sort of writing emerges from outside, not inside, our culture and therefore is unrelated to the structure of life and reality. Genuine fiction, says he, is free from posturing, mere contrivance, and evasion. Because they show a willingness and an authenticity in exploring the fundamental issues of life, a Christian ought not to be afraid of Hardy, Kafka, Joyce, Hemingway, and Camus, because “there is more of you, after reading Hardy, to be Christian with than there was before you read him.” Christian novelists, on the other hand, are likely to substitute propaganda for witness, and in all propaganda “the soul of the free self” turns up missing.

Dr. Zylstra makes an analogous criticism of Christian education, and, in general, the orthodox way of thought. He cites Matthew Arnold’s comment on the English Nonconformists of the nineteenth century: “He has worshipped the fetish of separatism so long that he is likely to wish to remain, like Ephraim, ‘a wild ass alone by himself,’ ” and declares that as important as it is for orthodox Christians to maintain their identity through a species of isolation, they must not allow isolation to impoverish and cut them off from the resources of mankind. It is only as human beings that we are Christians and an undue isolation leaves us inhuman and consequently ineffective.

In the current debate on what both public and private schools should teach, Dr. Zylstra has no uncertain opinion. He emphatically favors formal discipline, and he traces the logic of his belief back to the Logos and the rational nature of man. He holds with Robert Maynard Hutchins to a hierarchy of values in subjects to be taught and therefore comes into radical disagreement with John Dewey that such subjects as “dancing, dramatics, and doll dressing” are as valuable as Greek, Latin, and mathematics.

This book ought to be read by every Christian who cares to think seriously about orthodoxy. Not often has so much keenness of perception, so much simple honesty of mind and clear expression gone into a single volume.

CLYDE S. KILBY

Humanist Approach

American Freedom and Catholic Power, 1958, by Paul Blanshard, Beacon Press, 1958. 395 pp., $3.95.

This work appeared first on the market just ten years ago. At that time it faced a concentrated attack by the Roman Catholic hierarchy, an attack which for a time was so successful that many American bookstores would not display it on their counters lest they be boycotted by Roman Catholics. In the long run, as usual, this helped the book’s sale and today it reappears enlarged and revised.

In his preface to this new edition, the author has outlined what has happened since 1948 in the field of Roman Catholic activities on this continent. He points out in general that during the past 10 years the Roman hierarchy has not really succeeded in extending or in enforcing its plans more effectively. Indeed in some spheres, such as those relating to censorship, the church has been forced to curtail its demands. Nevertheless, as he states more than once, this does not mean that the Roman church has really changed its point of view. Ten years form a very short period in the history of the church of Rome.

Perhaps because of the proposal for one of the major parties in the United States to nominate a Roman Catholic for the next presidential election, Blanshard now introduces for the first time a certain amount of material on the subject of Al Smith’s political campaign, and adds a short discussion of the question of an American ambassador to the Vatican. Probably even more important is his attempt to deal with the biblical basis of papal claims.

It is the last mentioned addition to this new issue of the book that highlights its basic weakness. Blanshard, who is obviously a thoroughgoing humanist, stresses throughout the book the fact that it is impossible to separate Roman Catholic action from Roman Catholic doctrine. At the same time, with the exception of his rather inadequate study of the Romanists’ interpretation of Matthew 16:18, he never deals with their religious teachings. His whole attack is upon Romanism’s social and political action. To the present reviewer, if one confines himself to this approach it cannot but lead to what Blanshard does not want: political intolerance and legal restraints upon Roman Catholics.

Any convinced Protestant will quickly realize that this humanist approach will not solve the problem. Indeed he will recognize that in many cases humanists’ conceptions are themselves faulty. For instance, it is impossible to have an absolute separation of State and Church when one is both a Christian and a citizen of a state. Thus, while it is necessary to expose, as Blanshard does, the political and social operations of the Roman church, the only real solution is a new Reformation. Only as men are brought back to a renewed understanding of the grace of God in Christ Jesus, and only as this doctrine once more becomes more widely spread and accepted will the Catholic threat to American freedom be curtailed.

W. STANFORD REID

Weakened Evangelicalism

A Companion to the Bible, edited by J. J. Von Allmen, Oxford, 1958. 480 pp., $6.00.

This volume of 479 double-column pages is a dictionary of the theological terms and concepts of the Bible. The work of 37 Swiss and French Protestant scholars, it was originally published in French in 1954 under the title Vocabulaier Biblique. A second French edition followed in 1956, from which the present English edition was translated. The work is not a Bible dictionary in the usual sense, for it does not undertake to provide geographical, historical or biographical information concerning places and persons, though there are some exceptions to this: an article on Names (Geographical) and one on Names (Personal) discuss the theological significance of a few places and persons.

The erudition of the authors is evident throughout the book. The reader will find here no crude theological blunders, no amateurish superficiality. The waiters are thoroughly at home in their fields, and their writing shows the careful clarity and precision which are characteristic of French style. From the technical point of view this book is a first-class production.

It is perhaps unavoidable that in a composite work by nearly 40 scholars there should be some differences of view point. In spite of individual differences, the general theological viewpoint is that of an evangelicalism considerably weakened by concessions to liberalism. Because of this liberal taint, those who need a book of this type the most will be in danger of being misled by it; on the other hand, those readers who are able to read it with due critical discernment will profit least by using it, just because they are already familiar with the main contents.

Of basic importance in any theological work is the view of Scripture held by the author or authors. The article on Scripture in this volume assumes the general historical trustworthiness of the Bible, but nowhere asserts its inerrancy or infallibility. It is stated that Jesus and the earliest Christians held the same view of the Old Testament as was held by their Jewash contemporaries, namely that “it was the sole authority for religious doctrine and practice” (p. 387). It is stated that “The O. T. canon had not been finally fixed by the time of Jesus” (ibid.). The same article adds that the Jewish doctrine of the inspiration of the O. T. “was apparently adopted by … the first Christians without reservation” (ibid.).

The divisive “higher critical” theory of the Pentateuch is accepted, at least by some of the authors of this work. In the preface the following paragraph appears: “Yahwist, Elohist: these terms denote the oldest literary sources of the early books of the O. T. It is known of course that these books as we read them today constitute a sort of puzzle, the several parts of which have been provided by at least four main sources (to the two sources mentioned must be added the so-called deuteronomic and priestly sources). The designation of the two sources in question by the terms of Yahwist and Elohist is derived from the name by which they refer to God, i.e., Yahweh or Elohim.”

This critical viewpoint is manifested here and there in the body of the book. For example, it is stated that: “The deuteronomic code (Deut. 12 to 26) is already much more developed than the preceding laws and seems to have been inspired by the spirit of the first great prophets … Leviticus is a collection of laws of which the principal part is sometimes called the code of holiness … Its redaction is without doubt less ancient than that of the other legislative texts of the O. T.…” (p. 227).

The concessiveness toward liberalism appears also in the treatment of the early chapters of Genesis. It is affirmed that “The Bible contains two accounts of the creation of different origin and of different date” (p. 71; cf. p. 249, column 2). The garden of Eden is referred to as a “myth” (p. 72), and we read that the creation of Eve from the side of Adam is a “myth … designed to explain the particular physical characteristics of the male and female …” (p. 250).

The book contains no article on Atonement, but this subject is discussed in the articles on Reconciliation and Ransom. On p. 353 the substitutionary doctrine of the atonement seems to be set forth, but on page 350 language is used which, while not perfectly clear, seems rather to favor the governmental theory of the atonement: “It is clear that Jesus will pay this ransom to no one but God, whose holy and righteous anger weighs on sinners. Jesus does not tell us why God requires of Him just this: He simply indicates the meaning of His death without telling us why it must be so. It would be useless to seek an explanation of this mystery in the speculations of mediaeval theology on the nature of God (e.g. the relation between His mercy and justice, and the offence to His honour which required satisfaction) … Jesus declared to sinners the forgiveness of God. But if He was not to cause them to minimize the gravity of sin and to blunt their sense of the divine demand, He must at the same time give them proof of His own utter loyalty to the will of the holy God to whom the sinner is odious and who perforce pronounces on him the sentence of death.”

On p. 375 the plenary ability of the sinner to believe the Gospel is affirmed. On p. 408 the doctrine of original guilt is said to be not implied by Paul’s doctrine of sin. On p. 400 we are told that “It seems probable … that … the Servant of the Lord” in Isaiah 53 “is a fluid conception passing readily from the collective to the individual life, or from the present to the future, and that we should not expect it to show the rigorous logic which the modern mind requires.”

The writer adds that “Jesus Christ saw in these passages the description of His own mission” and that “from the point of view of the Christian Church” Isaiah 53 is “the prophetic foreshadowing of Christ crucified for the salvation of the world.” This seems a perilous attempt to hold a middle ground between the liberal and the orthodox interpretations of Isaiah 53. When the Ethiopian eunuch asked the evangelist Philip, “Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?” (Acts 8:34), Philip had nothing to say about a “fluid conception passing readily from the collective to the individual life.” He “opened his mouth, and began at the same Scripture, and preached unto him Jesus” (vs. 35).

In spite of its great learning and many worthy features, this book is recommended only to readers possessing enough theological knowledge to enable them to discern its unsound tendencies. For well-grounded ministers and teachers it has considerable value. For laymen without theological training it will prove an unreliable guide.

JOHANNES G. VOS

The Christian Hope

Immortality of the Soul, or Resurrection of the Dead?, by Oscar Cullmann, Macmillan 1958, 60 pp., $1.25.

This booklet is the Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality which Dr. Cullmann delivered at Harvard University for the academic year 1954–55. It stands in diametric opposition to the Ingersoll Lecture which Dr. H. E. Fosdick delivered the year 1926–27. That one was a resurrection of Plato’s Phaedo; this has placed the Christian hope in direct antithesis to the Hellenic doctrine. Socrates and the Emperor Julian died meditating upon the worth of the human soul; Stephen and Paul died with their eyes focused upon Jesus who died for their sins and rose for their justification.

Among older writers, Stuart Robinson carefully distinguished between the doctrine of the future life as set forth by the philosophers and the doctrine as taught by the Gospel (Discourses on Redemption, 1866). Among recent writers Nygren’s Agape and Eros and T. A. Kantonen’s The Christian Hope are in about the same line.

For Socrates, death is the friend of the soul; for Paul, death is its last enemy. To the former, the body is the soul’s prison; to the latter, it is the temple of the Holy Spirit. For the one, man’s eternal state begins at death; for the other, it begins at the parousia. Christ invaded the domains of death despite its terrors, and by dying he conquered it and all the enemies of God. His resurrection body and his spirit in the hearts of believers are the firstfruits of the final resurrection at his coming. Between death and this second advent, believers are in special proximity to Christ but are not in their final state. Every item of hope, the easing of death, the assurance of going to be with Christ, the resurrection of our bodies comes not out of the worth of the soul, but from Christ, his death for us, his resurrection as our representative.

If one be so bold as to differ with such a distinguished scholar as Dr. Cullmann, it would be in his conception of the spiritual body. The lecturer begins with the flesh and the spirit as opposing forces working in the human life, and ends with them as the respective substances of the present and of the future bodies. But to the reviewer’s mind, the spiritual body is a body raised and controlled by the Holy Spirit even as the present natural or physical body is controlled by our sinful, fallen psychology, or “the flesh.” The adjective “spiritual” does not describe the substance or composition of the resurrection body. In the resurrection our bodies will be fully under the control of the Holy Spirit as was Jesus’ during his ministry. They will inhabit not only a new heaven but also a new earth. The view Cullmann holds would seem to bear traces of Origen’s Platonism.

WM. C. ROBINSON

Pretribulationism

The Rapture Question, by John F. Walvoord, Dunham, Findlay, Ohio, 1957. 204 pp., $3.00.

In this book Dr. Walvoord, president of Dallas Theological Seminary and editor of Bibliotheca Sacra, makes “a comprehensive biblical study of the translation of the Church.” The study turns out to be a trenchant defense of the theory of pretribulationism against the rival theories of posttribulationism and midtribulationism. In fact, we have here a recapitulation of the well-known arguments, pro and con, on the question (hotly debated among dispensationalists) whether the Church will go through the Great Tribulation at the end of the present age.

Walvoord’s thesis defending the pretribulational rapture of the Church rests squarely on the assumption, which he does not attempt to prove, that Daniel’s seventieth week (cf. Dan. 9:24–27) has not yet been fulfilled but still awaits its realization in the events initiated by “the rapture” and climaxed by “the revelation.” The arguments for a pretribulational rapture, therefore, will be largely ineffective and invalid until the assumption of the futurity of Daniel’s last week is established upon an impregnable foundation. There are some, including the reviewer, who believe that this goal is not likely to be attained.

There can be no question concerning Dr. Walvoord’s orthodoxy and high view of the Bible’s inspiration and authority; but this does not mean that equally competent students of prophecy could come to his conclusions or adopt some of his methods of interpretation. In fact, some proofs advanced by Walvoord approach very closely to the impossible in sober exegesis. For example, 1 Thessalonians 1:9 f. and 5:9 are cited as supports for the view that the Church will not go through the Great Tribulation (pp. 69 f.). The “wrath” of these passages is undoubtedly hell—not a brief period of seven years!

The exigencies of the dispensational system require a literal approach which sometimes pushes our author to positions that appear to be untenable. We are told, for instance, that neither the Old Testament saints nor the saints of the Great Tribulation belong to the Christian Church (pp. 24, 34, 38 f., 143 f.). Believers during the Great Tribulation constitute a kind of tertium quid—neither fully Christian nor altogether Jewish or pagan! The theory demands the exodus of the true Church and the Holy Spirit simultaneously at the rapture; therefore, it is difficult to understand how any real conversions can take place during the Great Tribulation.

In support of his pretribulationism Walvoord gives tacit approval to what appears to be an erratic exegesis of 2 Thessalonians 2:3, which transmutes the apostasia (“the failing away”) into “the rapture” itself. Pretribulationism, if it has any support at all in the Scriptures, surely does not commend itself by this kind of interpretation.

Those who equate Daniel’s seventieth week with the Great Tribulation will find in Walvoord’s volume a classic defense of pretribulationism.

WICK BROOMALL

Upwards of 5,000 delegates and visitors to the American Baptist Convention gathered June 12–17 appropriately enough at a bend in the river—this time the beautiful Ohio, where Cincinnati’s famed Garden provided a mammoth roof for the 51st chapter in the life of what formerly was known as the Northern Baptist Convention. Uppermost in the messengers’ minds was the search of a permanent home for administrative offices. They were committed to a move, but as Abraham they knew not whither they went, for none could be certain where the convention dialectic would take them.

A “Commission on Headquarters” had for seven months conducted an “intensive study” resulting in the recommendation that American Baptist headquarters be located in New York City’s Interchurch Center, to be completed in 1960. The commission’s vote was divided, New York gaining eight votes, with three going to a Chicago Midway site offered through lease by the University of Chicago, and a single ballot being drawn by a Valley Forge property of the convention’s Board of Education and Publication.

Hope was held out that this matter would be entirely cleared away on Friday the 13th. An isolated superstitious soul may have sought vindication in the fact that the issue remained the almost constant preoccupation of the delegates until the following Monday, second to last night of the convention. Proponents of the various sites served up a variety of pitches which put to shame the Cincinnati Redleg mound staff.

Able commission chairman Ellis J. Holt confessed he had prayed he would not lose his temper in the heat of debate. Delegates observed that his prayers were barely answered as subsequent applause indicated impending defeat of the commission’s recommendation of the 20-million-dollar New York building. Having voted for the requirement of a 55 per cent majority, the convention rejected by almost two to one the ecumenical center-just shortly after, as it turned out, an address strongly advocating ecumenicity by Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, American Baptist pastor and current president of the National Council of Churches.

Then the Chicago and Valley Forge protagonists settled into a war of words which produced some amazingly even encounters. A motion to choose a site—undesignated—in the Chicago area received a majority vote (1149 to 1084) but fell short of the required 55 per cent.

Girded by a nightlong strategy session, the Chicago party managed to block the following day’s Valley Forge bid by an even narrower margin—1235 for and 1228 against. Then it was the turn of the University of Chicago site to be blocked, its majority of 1236 to 1183 being inadequate.

Back to Valley Forge. A delegate requests there be no applause for speeches, that more spiritual means of determination be applied. His request receives light applause. It is late Monday afternoon. Chicago supporters finally throw support to Valley Forge in the interest of convention harmony and spiritual unity. Valley Forge is victor by a 69 per cent majority—1477 to 655. But a motion to make it unanimous does not pass unanimously. And the Rev. Dr. Everett P. Quinton, 47, collapses after speaking for Valley Forge, dying without learning the result of the balloting.

Various reasons were projected for the turn of the voting. New York’s Interchurch Building was said to have been rejected on the following counts: a grassroots revolt against being steered in any one direction, desire for a building belonging only to the convention as a symbol of unity, and a wariness of proximity to ecumenical leadership.

Strong sentiment for a move to the Midwest was tempered by reservations as to identification with the University of Chicago. But any other site in the area would probably entail considerable delay. And if nothing else, the Baptists were eager to settle the matter. Besides, Valley Forge moving and labor costs were said to be much lower than those of Chicago. Some felt the more expensive move would curtail the missionary program.

But many felt the issue had been magnified out of all proportion to its importance. Chairman Holt had early classified the issue as involving “not a great decision” but one incidental to the greater tasks of missions and evangelism. Convention president, Dr. Clarence W. Cranford, whose gentle manner and quiet sense of humor acted to soothe the troubled convention, supposed he would regret so much of this convention having been devoted to one issue, but he added that he would be “grateful for the fine spirit” in which the matter was conducted.

A source of exasperation, as well as humor, was the suburban location of the great coliseum, a 45-minute bus ride from the hotels. This fact coupled with the long debates deprived delegates of rest periods. It was more than Baptist flesh and blood could stand. Members had been speaking of getting to the “more important issues.” But by the time they did, the majority of the delegates had departed the scene. This year’s energies had been absorbed by the choice of a headquarters.

Thus, significance of passed resolutions was lessened. The roaring voice votes had subsided to comparative whispers. Cincinnati’s ex-mayor and noted churchman, Charles P. Taft, had seen it happen in many conventions. Calling for the churches to give careful consideration to significant political issues, he remarked upon the familiar practice of delegates “pushing through resolutions on the last day with a whoop and a holler when half the people have gone home.”

But American Baptists had faced an unfortunate set of circumstances. A move was made to shorten future conventions.

Resolutions were adopted favoring the halting of nuclear bomb testing, ending of universal military training, and the abolition of capital punishment.

Under personal exhortation of President Cranford and Southern Baptist Convention President Brooks Hays, the convention passed a resolution requesting establishment of a “Peace Commission,” thus taking action similar to that of Southern Baptists last month toward “mobilization for peace.”

Some predicted for Dr. Cranford re-election—American Baptists are traditionally reluctant to re-elect presidents—because of his proximity to Mr. Hays in Washington and their mutual interest in the “peace plan.” However, the convention approved the nomination of a Westerner, Mrs. Maurice B. Hodge of Portland, Oregon. Nomination is tantamount to election; thus Mrs. Hodge, a housewife, became the American Baptists’ fourth woman president. She is a past president of the Oregon Baptist State Convention.

Delegates heard Ohio’s Governor C. William O’Neill pay tribute to the Baptist youth organization as the center of all his religious and social activities throughout his youth. Every Sunday he traveled with a gospel team about his county. He voiced his chief fear in regard to public life—not as concerning the evil done by evil men, but the good which is left undone by good men.

Observers took note of certain statements and attitudes in the course of convention activities which seemed to indicate a defensive posture, seen generally in connection with the overarching shadow of the Southern Baptists, who greatly out number their northern brethren (about 9 million to 1.6 million). But more impressive is the Southern Baptist rate of growth. Glancing at a Saturday newspaper in Cincinnati, nominally northern territory, one could see advertised 16 Southern Baptist Churches as against 18 American. Dr. Porter Routh, executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Executive Committee, assured American Baptists that Southern Baptists are embarked on no “church stealing escapade.”

Dr. William H. Rhoades of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, felt compelled to note “the claims of some that ours is a dying denomination.” Dr. Edward Pruden warned against blaming slow progress of growth on denominational machinery. The Rev. Reuben Nelson, general secretary of the American Baptist Convention, talked of how “we sometimes get blue because we are not growing as fast as we’d like.”

Efforts were often made to preserve denominational significance through comparison with Southern Baptists in areas other than growth. Dr. Dahlberg spoke of some segments of the Southern Convention “so exclusive and isolationist that they seem almost like a Baptist Roman Catholicism.” Cranford and Nelson both spoke of distinctive American Baptist contributions in the fields of ecumenism and race relations.

On the other hand, Mr. Taft paid tribute to “the great responsible church bodies like Southern Baptists and the Presbyterian, U. S., who have stood to their colors under community threats.” He then went on to speak of the northern church bodies who have “failed miserably in the new threat to community peace … in our great cities, where the impact of urban renewal and the interstate highway program … is stirring the worst race feeling we have yet seen outside the South.… Relocation of minority groups … in slums or in the way of … public improvements, is taxing our ability to hold our towns together.” Signs of brightness for American Baptists are seen in a renewed concern for the often abandoned Sunday evening and midweek services, increased giving by members in time of recession, numerous loans being made for starting of new churches, and the sturdy gospel preaching and strong missionary emphasis heard in Cincinnati. Dr. Cranford sees the convention poised on the edge of a “great evangelistic advance.”

And next year the Baptists may go to Des Moines with the comforting thought that their search for a headquarters site is safely behind them.

F. F.

Ministers’ Pay

An average of $4,432 is earned annually by Protestant ministers questioned in a nation-wide National Council of Churches survey.

Ministers in the Southwest reported the highest salaries, Averaging $4,911 a year. Those in New England represented the lowest figure, $4,018.

Other averages: North Atlantic, $4,654; North Central, $4,603; Rocky Mountains, $4,549; Pacific, $4,480; South Atlantic, $4,449; South Central, $4,383.

The survey was part of an examination of the role of the church as employer, money raiser and investor, conducted by Dr. F. Ernest Johnson, head of the study group of the NCC’s Department of Church and Economic Life, and Dr. J. Emory Ackerman, minister in the United Lutheran Church. The study will be published in the fall by Harper’s as the concluding work in a series of 10 books on ethical issues in current economic life.

The survey was limited to ministers in the following denominations: American Baptist Convention, Church of the Brethren, Congregational Christian, Disciples of Christ, Protestant Episcopal, Evangelical and Reformed, Methodist, and United Lutheran.

Professional expenses were pictured as taking a big bite out of clergymen’s income. Annual allowances for housing and auto travel reported in the survey averaged $1,468, but more than a third of the ministers said they received no travel allowance. Among those who receive a travel allowance, the average figure was $472 a year.

Two-thirds of the ministers queried said they were in debt. One-fourth of those indebted said the amount was increasing; one-fourth said it was dropping.

Seminary To Close

Declining enrollment and withdrawal of church financial support prompted Lincoln University’s board of directors to close their theological seminary as of June, 1959.

The Council on Theological Education of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. had decided that the Pennsylvania seminary would be unable to gain accreditation and so stopped subsidies.

The sponsoring university hopes to use the seminary’s “human and material resources” for “a future religious program.”

Seminary Dean Andrew E. Murray said small enrollments are plaguing all Negro theological institutions.

Friendship Fleet

Out in the bush, planes are an invaluable asset. Few realize this more than the 800 personnel of Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc., who find their way to the most remote parts of the globe in producing literature for the uncivilized.

Because a million-dollar-a-year budget must stretch from posts in North and South America to Southeast Asia, little money remains to purchase aircraft, however valuable. Thus Wycliffe, which trains its people at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in affiliation with the University of Oklahoma, is obliged to appeal to civic pride. By now, a pattern has been established for the purchase of planes in which Christians in a particular city will organize to gain enough funds for an aircraft.

Wycliffe has also established a pattern in cooperating with foreign governments who want to promote literacy. Wycliffe language specialists have already been welcomed in such countries as Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Australian New Guinea, and Viet Nam.

The linguistic experts do the countries great service, even from a secular standpoint, in reducing to writing indigenous languages, and producing dictionaries, grammars, and primers. They usually operate under contracts, which always provide for the distribution of Scripture portions to new literates.

Planes used in Wycliffe language work normally are given to respective governments, which in turn provide them for exclusive use in language work. Twenty such planes, known collectively as the Friendship Fleet, now are operating under such arrangements. The latest, “Spirit of Seattle,” was presented to President Carlos P. Garcia of the Philippines during his visit to Washington. At a ceremony at Washington National Airport, Mrs. Garcia christened the plane with a bottle containing water from Manila Bay and a Seattle river.

The aircraft destined to penetrate the deepest jungles of the Philippines is known as a Helioplane. Made by the Helio Aircraft Corporation of Norwood, Massachusetts, the Helioplane is specially suited for such operation in that it can take off and land in comparatively short distances.

Sixth Suit

A new case was filed in New York’s Federal Court challenging legality of Fordham University’s purchase from New York City of two blocks in Lincoln Square at marked-down prices.

The new action is the sixth suit started by opponents of the redevelopment program in order to halt the entire 13-block $205,000,000 slum clearing project.

Last month the United States Supreme Court declined to review and thereby affirmed a recent decision of the New York Court of Appeals which declared that the city did not violate the constitutional guarantee of Church-State separation in reselling land to the Roman Catholic school.

The appeals court had ruled that Fordham was not getting a subsidy of public property in buying the area at less than acquisition cost to the city because the university did not pay for the actual property but for its “reuse value.”

The Mark Of The Hawk

Eighty minutes of color film produced for release in commercial theaters, “The Mark of the Hawk” (Missions Visualized), represents an effort by the premerger Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. to create public interest in Christian missions.

Action is graphic (transitions sometimes choppy), the plot moving, though somewhat disjointed, and the photography is first-rate. As to message, the film is aptly named. While it has no sympathy for the mark of the Beast, it shows the “marks of the Lord Jesus” obscure; and more than the Church’s emblem of evangelism, it bears the emblem of social reformers urging political independence and racial equality.

The passion for social justice, of course, is biblical. It is refreshing to find a religious film that does not restrict the significance of Christianity to private devotion, that rebukes white man’s materialism and arrogance in the Orient, that refuses to yield the interest in racial and political equality to the communists, and that asserts love and justice rather than violence as the weapons of triumphant warfare.

Yet the film allows secular movements of the day (political democracy) to define one-sidedly content of Christian social action, and hence it seems at times to nurture quasi-revolutionary patterns of social change. The notion is conveyed that the Church fails to support freedom whenever it does not promote these programs. Only marginally does the film introduce the notion of equality before God; and the relevance of redemption is even more obscure. The Christian apostles faced the inequalities of the Roman Empire in a quite different orientation. They kept the death and resurrection of Christ at the center of their message; and the idea of Christian influence did not take precedence over supernatural regeneration. Nor did they appeal to Christianity’s provision of schools and hospitals for pragmatic leverage (benefits also available from Shell Oil Company and the Point Four program). In this whole film there is not a prayer, not a Bible, not a hymn; the one song would do for a night club (in fact, the featured players include at least one night club performer). Here and there, perhaps, one finds a strand of old time religion foundering on flats of modernity; for example, missionaries are said to have “given us the Word of God that we may be free from the jungle swamps of fear and sin”; “the greatest gift one man can give another is Christ”; “Jesus Christ in his sacrifice has shown us the way and we must learn to follow in that way before we can call ourselves truly free.” One carries away a feeling that he has been lifted into the life and fellowship of the worldly party at the opening of the film more intimately than into the life and fellowship of a mission.

C.F.H.H.

Student Revival?

Chinese students in American universities are showing a deeper interest in the Christian religion, according to Calvin Chao, who carried on a campus ministry in Nationalist China before the communist revolution. Chao reports some 600 conversions the past year on campuses in Canada and the United States, with gains at the graduate student level.

“Chinese students seldom argue any longer about the existence of God,” Chao notes. “They want to know about the significance of Christ and the Bible.” Thus they are moving beyond the naturalistic tendencies of Confucianism, and of the Dewey philosophy that for a generation dominated the Chinese intellectuals who enrolled at Columbia University and later returned to their homeland proclaiming science and democracy as twin saviours. In the face of the communist conquest, Chao notes, they are also raising the social question.

Chao, reported to be on the Red China “blacklist,” says 3,000 Chinese students are now pursuing studies here, and 3,000 former students are now living in the States. Many are young intellectuals who turned to Europe and America for graduate study in the sciences. New York City, which has 50,000 Chinese, boasts the largest cultural Chinatown outside China itself, with 1,500 educated Chinese in the Columbia University area, while San Francisco has the largest commercial Chinatown outside China.

Dollar Difficulty

Commissioners to the 84th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada were told that the body is seriously short of money.

Financial needs are so great that missionaries might have to be recalled, according to Dr. G. Deane Johnston, chairman of the board of missions.

Spending by all church boards has been cut drastically. Salary increases for board secretaries and seminary professors, approved last year, have been withheld.

James Dutton, chairman of the board of administration, told the Toronto meeting that more modern fund-raising techniques were needed.

Europe

Italian Alternatives

The results of the Italian general elections of May 25 are seen as clear indications that the strongest communist party in the West still is a menace. On the other hand, Vatican-supported Christian democrats came out an even stronger majority party. Both parties, neither of which really support a free church in a free state, scored small gains over 1953 elections at the expense of small factions.

In a broad breakdown, the results show 53 per cent of the vote for democratic parties, 37 per cent for communists and fellow-travelers, and 10 per cent for reactionary parties.

Policies of the two major forces suggest that the success of one is due to the strength of the other. Many who voted for Christian democrats probably did so not because they supported Vatican principles but because they feared atheistic Communism. On the other hand, anticlerical attitudes probably provided the dominating motivation for some communist votes.

Thousands of Italians are straddling the Christian-communist fence. They think nothing of attending mass in the morning and a Red rally in the evening.

The question in the minds of Protestants now centers on what course Christian democrats will follow. How much consideration will be given principles advanced by minor democratic parties which support true separation of Church and State to guarantee freedom of religion?

A spokesman of the Federal Council of Protestant Churches in Italy warns that a government formed with Christian democrats alone can mean difficult days ahead for non-Catholics.

One of the council’s committees has called for “full and loyal implementation of the constitution, especially with regard to freedom of religion, which is still threatened by the ambiguous keeping in force of restrictive laws imposed by the Fascist regime.”

R.T.

Christian ‘Crime’

One of the “crimes” for which former Premier Imre Nagy of Hungary was executed was his plan to restore the Christian democratic and other “notorious bourgeois fascist parties,” Budapest radio reported.

It said the groups included the Hungarian Christian, the Christian Front, the Catholic People’s, and the Christian People’s parties.

Nagy, 62, was born of a peasant family of strict Calvinist faith. Although a convinced communist who had fought in Russia at the outbreak of the Revolution, he apparently raised no objections when his daughter wedded a Protestant minister.

Bochum Action 1958

Today’s religious attitudes in Germany are in sharp contrast with those of a few years ago when it was generally said that the time for evangelism had passed. The word was that only personal work could have success, public efforts were considered “unbiblical.” Some Christian groups even suggested that there was no more reason to believe in a special effect from evangelism, much less could a revival be expected.

In the summer of 1958, it is evident that there has been an “about face.” Those in influential positions with the Lutheran and Free churches are reconsidering evangelism. One of the first indications came six years ago with the establishment of the Elias Schrenk Institute to promote biblical evangelism.

The latest major evidence of evangelistic interest was a series of meetings sponsored by the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church of Westfalia, May 28—June 8. The meetings were referred to as “Bochum Action 1958.” Their objective was to rouse evangelical influence and to interest the unchurched. The approach was to deal in individual problems as a means of getting to the big question: “What will you do with Jesus?” Among the themes discussed were “Love, but How?” and “Pain, Sickness and Death.”

Without a doubt, the 1955 visit of Billy Graham did much to spur evangelistic thinking. Although it is unusual in Germany and always has an unpleasant smack to call people to a public decision for Christ, Graham’s meetings provided an exception. Throughout Germany, reports of lasting decision made at the Graham meetings continue to spread.

In Berlin, a giant evangelistic campaign is being planned for 1960. German evangelicals are hoping that Graham will agree to be on hand.

W.B.

Middle East

Delicate Balance

For years Christians and Moslems have had equally strong influence upon the government of Lebanon. The presidency invariably fell upon a Maronite while the premiership was held by a Moslem.

Amidst continued strife prompted by rebels, indications were piling up that the delicate balance could not be preserved much longer. As Lebanese Christians have emigrated to the United States, Moslems have been building up a population majority. This trend may lead Moslems to bid for the presidency.

By the middle of June, both Moslems and Christians, including the Maronite patriarch, Paul Boutros Meouchi, were urging the resignation of President Camille Chamoun. Moslems said they wanted a fundamental change.

Archaeological Find

A Wheaton College archaeologist speculates that Elisha of old may have stood in a building uncovered in current Holy Land excavations.

Professor Joseph P. Free’s expedition found the building, believed to date back to the biblical Dothan of about 1000 to 700 B.C. The archaeologists are digging in an area 60 miles north of Jerusalem.

Accommodations

The Vatican seems lately to be bent on accommodating individuals from every last walk of life. Evidence:

—Pope Pius XII received five American rock-’n-roll singers in a special audience. He was quoted as telling “The Platters” that because popular singers had such a tremendous following they had a responsibility to set an example, especially for youth.

—A new medal of St. Bernardine of Siena, patron saint of publicity agents, was unveiled at a special program in San Francisco sponsored by a Catholic newsmen’s group. The Pope made St. Bernardine the official patron saint of the public relations profession last year.

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

For almost two months the San Francisco Bay area was subjected to an intensive bombardment of biblical theology and mass evangelism. Now that Billy Graham is gone, and the kerygma is no longer heard in the Cow Palace, pastors and laymen alike are beginning to survey the spiritual results.

During his stay Dr. Graham expounded a number of Christian doctrines. San Franciscans heard about justification, reconciliation, adoption, new birth, the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, sacraments, hell, the second advent of Jesus Christ, the last Judgment, the kenosis, the dual nature of Christ, the authority of Scripture, and the centrality of the Cross. Undoubtedly these doctrines, long absent from many bay area pulpits, are now being preached with a new earnestness. Testimonials from pastors point to more biblical sermons as a direct result of the crusade. Two ministers known for their liberal leanings made public decisions, one at the Cow Palace and the other in his own church during an invitation given by a Graham team member who was occupying the pulpit.

Other Protestant pastors were not as enthusiastic. Some labeled the doctrinal content of the Cow Palace messages shallow and superficial. Some felt that fanfare and publicity made it difficult for the Holy Spirit to do his most effective work. Still others held that tension created by Dr, Graham’s warning, “This may be your last chance!” made it impossible for the worshiper to be brought gently into a living relationship with the Saviour.

Classification of bay area theological types is a dangerous undertaking, but if inevitable shading and overlapping are assumed, certain colors can be detected in the theological spectrum.

Right wing fundamentalists. Extreme conservatives were vocal prior to Dr. Graham’s arrival, issuing tracts which asked, “Shall we obey the Bible or disobey God and follow Billy Graham?” During the crusade they remained quiescent, although no softening of attitudes came to light.

Evangelical conservatives. This group seems to have enjoyed the crusade greatly, and felt completely at home in the Cow Palace. It provided the heart of the praying and counseling ministry. Night after night the people turned out, filling buses with neighbors and friends. Their churches drew the largest number of referrals. They came from both the large and small denominations. Dr. Graham’s theology served to strengthen their convictions, while his prophetic message rebuked their walk, so that many came forward in response to his invitation. Some of the pastors in this group had misgivings about Dr. Graham’s associations, but most of them came to join in wholeheartedly.

Graham admirers. The term could describe many of evangelical conviction whose church backgrounds were often alien to mass evangelism but who were tremendously impressed by the Billy Graham mission. Among both pastors and laymen there was shifting in attitude as the crusade progressed and the results of changed lives became evident.

Evangelical Liberals. This group, drawn from many backgrounds and shades of churchmanship, made up much of the opposition to the crusade. Some represented a rather sophisticated evangelicalism which did not actively oppose, but did little to encourage attendance at the Cow Palace. Others likened what happened there more to a county fair than a church service and felt that it was contrary to the mind and spirit of Jesus. They disliked the “old-time religion” flavor of the meetings and such tools as the King James Bible. They charged that Graham over-simplified things; that he did not understand the world he lived in, or the modern-day dilemma of the “man in the gray flannel suit.” They considered his doctrine of the Church inadequate. They compared him unfavorably with other evangelists who have visited the bay area in years past, namely, Bryan Green and Charles Templeton.

A common accusation from this direction was that Graham preached a foreshortened and truncated Gospel. One seminary professor in a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle charged that Graham was preaching against the “wrong sins.” Some considered the evangelist’s approach to Scripture (“the Bible says”) as hopelessly outdated and obscurantist. Even more, perhaps, they objected to mass invitations; they feared that emphasis on sin and guilt might do serious damage to the mental health of the hearers. In general, it could be said for this group that while they considered Graham less harmful than Billy Sunday, they nevertheless maintained that crusade proceedings seemed to forego a genuine reverence for God in favor of exploiting feelings.

Secular liberals. The extreme left wing consisted of those who felt but slight interest in the Church. They looked upon Billy as a shouting fundamentalist whose ability to win public attention was something to be endured.

How did the bay cities crusade affect this constellation? There was a polarization of extremes; many of those opposed at the beginning were more so at the ending. Yet in the center, there seems to have taken place a wonderful warming and softening of hearts, probably because of many factors, not the least of which was Billy Graham himself. One suburban pastor spoke for many when he said, “I can’t agree with his whole theology, but I can’t get over the fact that God is with him.”

The obvious blessing of the Holy Spirit upon Dr. Graham’s ministry, when studied at first hand, pulled more than one bay area minister from the fence. Then there was the arrival of decision cards upon pastors’ desks; the strong social content of the nightly messages; the courageous facing of community evils; the affectionate relationships between those of diverse social origin, whether on the team, on the executive committee, in the choir, in the counseling room, or in the congregation; and above all the simple proclamation of the Word of God. All of this served to disarm suspicion and win over the reluctant.

At the end of eight weeks, the theological center was more united than it had been in the history of the West. There was a noticeable absence of things that have tended to separate Christians. A real secret of Billy Graham’s power was manifest—his ability to bring believers into touch with each other by omitting the things which divide them.

Today Christian unity in San Francisco is very real, for it is established at the cross of Christ. Yet at Seals Stadium, in his final message, Dr. Graham warned, “Satan would like nothing better than to get us at each other’s throats again!” How effective the churches will be in taking the initiative for Jesus Christ depends in good part on the zeal of the thousands of new Christians and the results of crusade follow-up. S. E. W.

Statistics

In seven weeks of meetings, the Cow Palace meetings drew an aggregate attendance of 696,525, according to official statistics released by crusade headquarters in San Francisco.

There were 25,544 recorded decisions at the Cow Palace.

At the climactic Seals Stadium service an additional 1,354 decisions were counted. The estimated attendance was 38,000.

Nineteen meetings at the Cow Palace drew capacity crowds. The largest crowds were counted at Sunday afternoon services and Thursday youth rallies.

Highlights

These were among highlights of the San Francisco Bay Cities Crusade:

April 27—Some 18,000 jam Cow Palace for crusade’s opening meeting. Graham speaks to 5,000 more who could not get in.

May 1—First Thursday night youth rally draws 16,500, with 989 decisions recorded. Many are teen-agers.

May 3—First of weekly Saturday night telecasts emanates from Cow Palace. Via 160 stations the Gospel is carried into millions of North American homes.

May 8—The Cow Palace sees the largest response to a gospel invitation as 1, 243 come forward on youth night.

May 15—Graham holds outdoor rally at San Quentin Prison. Nearly 4,000 of 4,500 inmates hear him explain the plan of salvation. More than 600 respond to his invitation to receive Christ.

May 20—Graham speaks to overflow crowd of 1,050 at San Francisco State College, where his invitation had prompted a sharp controversy.

May 21—At San Francisco Civic Auditorium, 4,000 delegates to the American Red Cross national convention hear the evangelist call for a foreign aid program based on “Christian compassion.”

May 23—The Berkeley campus of the University of California, world’s largest, becomes the scene of a gigantic rally as 11,000 gather to witness the North Carolinian’s message.

May 25—Graham travels to the Central California city of Turlock for a rally held in connection with the community’s 50th anniversary celebration. Some 15,000 turn out to hear him, a crowd almost twice the city’s population.

May 27—A noon meeting in the Oakland City Hall plaza attracts an estimated 12,000. City officials say it is the largest crowd ever to gather there.

June 15—The 19th full house of the Cow Palace meetings turns out for the final meeting there.

June 21—Half-hour program from San Francisco studio bids farewell to nationwide television audience until this fall’s Charlotte crusade.

June 22—About 38,000 jam Seals Stadium for climactic service. More than a third of the crowd sits on the outfield grass. Decisions total 1,354, highest of the crusade.

Worth Quoting: Billy Graham

Billy Graham’s remarks to Californians touched upon a variety of subjects. Here is a random sampling taken from his sermons:

“We are not a Christian nation. We are a nation with Christians living in it.”

“Teen-agers today know the statistics on Jayne Mansfield better than they know the First Commandment.”

“I agree with Mr. Nixon that our diplomats are spending too much time in white tie society and not enough with the intellectuals … and laboring people.”

“Some people don’t like the new sack dress. I like it because it has taken the sex out of women’s dresses. Dean Acheson said it looks like an Idaho potato. I happen to like Idaho potatoes.”

“An Englishman told me that Communism would be inconvenient for Britain, but would be easier to take than Americanism.”

“If we get to the moon, so what? We’ve only begun.”

“A generation ago we threw God and morality from education. We sowed the wind and now we are reaping the whirlwind.”

“The ultimate hope of the world is the coming of Jesus Christ.”

Engagements

Following the San Francisco meetings, an intensive week-long visitation evangelism program was undertaken by hundreds of churches which had cooperated in the crusade.

The entire Graham team then went to Sacramento for meetings June 29-July 6 at the state fairgrounds.

This week Graham has a speaking engagement at Mt. Hermon Bible Conference (July 11). He also has public meetings scheduled for Fresno (July 12–13), Santa Barbara (July 17), Los Angeles (July 18), San Diego (July 19–20), and San Antonio, Texas (July 25).

‘Sadder Than Funeral’

Thirteen professors were dismissed from the faculty of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, last month.

The dismissal action by the seminary’s board of trustees, unprecedented in the school’s 99-year history, climaxed a controversy between the 13 professors and Dr. Duke K. McCall, seminary president.

A list of charges leveled against President McCall had challenged his administrative policies. Last-ditch mediation efforts failed.

The way was left open for reinstatement of any of the 13 in the event of “genuine reconciliation.”

The dismissals were effective immediately, though salaries were to be continued until July 31 “or a later date if deemed wise by a committee of the board.”

The verdict reportedly was supported by an “overwhelming majority” of the 55-member board of trustees, who were to meet again this month to rebuild the faculty. The dismissal of the 13 left the theological faculty with 15 members.

Those who were told to leave are listed as follows with their official faculty status, home states and the years they joined the faculty:

J. J. Owens, professor of Old Testament, Oklahoma, 1948; William H. Morton, professor of archaeology, Missouri, 1948; Theron D. Price, professor of church history, Arkansas, 1948; Henry E. Turlington, associate professor of New Testament, Florida, 1949; T. C. Smith, associate professor of New Testament, Louisiana, 1950; J. Estill Jones, associate professor of New Testament, Oklahoma, 1951; Guy H. Ranson, associate professor of Christian ethics, Texas, 1952; William L. Lumpkin, associate professor of church history, Virginia, 1954; J. Morris Ashcraft, associate professor of archaeology, Arkansas, 1955; Heber F. Peacock Jr., associate professor New Testament, Arizona, 1956; John M. Lewis, associate professor of theology, Florida, 1956; Thomas O. Hall Jr., associate professor of Old Testament, North Carolina, 1956; Hugh Wamble, associate professor of church history, Georgia, 1956.

All are alumni of the seminary except Hall, who is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Commented one observer: “A funeral atmosphere pervaded the whole affair. Indeed, to me, it was sadder than any funeral in my ministry. Many times there is a bright side to death, but no ray of light could be detected here.”

Jesus Christ the Lord proclaimed! In the spirit of an apostolic sweep through Asia Minor, through one Billy Graham, Northern California had in two months perhaps its greatest collective chance to meet God.

“You could be a dictator,” Vice President Nixon has reportedly remarked to Graham. No doubt many of Nixon’s fellow Californians would say the same of the evangelist, now that they have seen him draw thousands nightly to the Cow Palace, a gigantic cattle exhibition hall often shunned by entertainers because of its remote location. Yet is it not to Graham’s credit that he has been endowed with magnetic personality and authoritative delivery to an extent that more than 600 at San Quentin took up his challenge to confess Christ even though it inevitably meant incurring the ridicule of fellow convicts? If there can be faith to move mountains, can there not also be faith to move men?

The human conclusion might be that the San Francisco Bay Cities Crusade was characterized by a militant came-saw-conquered attitude. But as God would have it, the mood was rather like the loving planted-watered-increase sequence of 1 Corinthians 3:6.

Man’S Part And God’S

This planted-watered-increase pattern, which exhibits simultaneously power and charity—a tribute to the wisdom and love of God—provides the framework for evaluating the impact of an evangelistic effort. Someone plants the seed of the Word of God as containing the message of the only means to human salvation. Another lends impetus to the prospect of growth by watering the seed. And God gives the increase.

How does this pattern apply to the San Francisco Bay area? What stage of the sequence does the recently-ended Graham crusade represent? Is Northern California about to enter a new spiritual phase?

A prerequisite for understanding the answers is a realization of obstacles which prevailed. The facts are that hardly another area in the United States was so indifferent to the Gospel. Even in the city proper, in the metropolis named for St. Francis, people were peculiarly hard-hearted toward their Creator. Churches exercised pitifully little influence, partly because there were comparatively few of them.

It would be wonderful to interject at this point that the crusade changed all this. It did not. Billy Graham’s meetings in San Francisco ended short of a sweeping revival. Yet there is surely rejoicing in heaven over the results of the crusade. And Christians who can appreciate how formidable the barriers had been ought likewise to be gladdened.

To Hell Via Literature

“Where to Sin in San Francisco.” The individual responsible for the title of this newsstand guide to local night spots must have had an insight into bay area norms. For before Graham’s visit, it truly was a place appallingly void of spiritual interest. Obstacles to the presentation of God’s plan of redemption had been left over from the madly-pagan days of the Gold Rush and Barbary Coast. The resistance to evangelistic efforts stood like a barrier reef around the bay, a reef which already had repelled many a would-be spiritual invasion.

Then God’s people prayed! And God commissioned his most popularly-known servant to level the reefs.

For seven weeks, Graham, fearless and uncompromising, preached daily to the people of Northern California forcefully, consistently, and simply. He told them of the missing (not the lost, for they never had it) dimension in their lives. People began to soften their attitudes toward spiritual things. Many of them, including thousands of teen-agers, saw commitment to Christ as a transition from existence to living. They sensed true relevance. They comprehended, for this was not a theology exclusively for sophisticated intellectuals, but for whosoever will. They admired the evangelist for sticking to the Bible as a basis.

As the crusade mushroomed into the best spiritual opportunity ever afforded Northern Californians, the reefs began to fall. Then “on one of the finest days California has ever been able to deliver” (Crusade Co-chairman W. Earle Smith) came the climactic Seals Stadium rally. Early comers quickly took all available seats in the grandstands and bleachers. The rest were obliged to sit on the outfield grass. They totalled a shirtsleeved mass of humanity hungry for God—some 38,000. Many were Christians. Said one woman: “This would be a good time for the Lord to come. We’re all in one place.” Many others were unsaved, and a portion of these—1354—made a decision for Christ then and there. Others stood as an indication of spiritual need. Still others left the park without doing anything about their souls. True, effects varied, but this was clear: barriers were broken.

Christians Surge Forth

“The church has begun to go on the offensive, something new in the bay area,” said Crusade Co-chairman Carl G. Howie.

“Our Protestants have lost their inferiority complex,” commented a newspaper editorially.

Outstanding press coverage marked the entire crusade, serving as one more instrument for evangelism. Newspaper and wire service accounts served right from the start to augment the effects of crusade meetings. (Ventured Associated Press: “Hottest public attraction within memory in the San Francisco Bay area.”) Detailed reports of the evangelist’s remarks and letters to the editor all helped people to think and talk not only about Billy Graham but about religion in general, if not about salvation itself.

It was apparent from the beginning that the Cow Palace meetings, though the focal point of the evangelistic thrust, were only part of the crusade. The message was going out by a multitude of means as one aspect grew out of another. Graham was moving at an awesome pace, speaking to service clubs and school assemblies, at churches, athletic fields, and military centers. Fellow team members were doing likewise.

Then There Was Fellowship

Not to be overlooked are the warm Christian fellowships which came out of prayer meetings, counselor training sessions, choir rehearsals, Operation Andrew bus and car pools, and the usher orientations. Christians from different denominations became acquainted. Seeing many of like faith bolstered personal beliefs.

Neither was the crusade without its human interest twists. The Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company sent a representative to several meetings to get sales pointers from Graham. And Billy Graham, aged 11, (no kin) was converted at a Cow Palace meeting.

Coming back to the planted-watered-increase sequence, the question may be asked as to how all this came into pattern. The classification of crusade phenomena, the answer to the application of the sequence, varies according to the perspective in which it is viewed. For those who made public confessions, the sequence was made complete as by the grace of God they became children of God. In those who heard without yielding, at least the seed had been planted.

Collectively, the seed was planted around San Francisco Bay, but only because there were barriers broken, obstacles of indifference and resistance brought down. To fit the framework, the unusual bay area barriers may have to be classed as a sub-stage or a preliminary to planting. But regardless of where they belong, this much bears repeating: old hindrances were overcome.

“The overall effect of the Billy Graham crusade is good,” said California Governor Goodwin J. Knight. “The fact that thousands have been helped to a better spiritualization makes it worthwhile.”

The Mayor Agrees

San Francisco Mayor George Christopher, on hand for a word of greeting at the Seals Stadium service, agreed. Speaking of Graham, Christopher said “we are better off for his having visited us.”

Said Alan K. Browne, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce: “While it seems to be that there is a spiritual awakening abroad in the land, real progress cannot be made without stimulation, and this has been provided through the crusade. I am sure that many of the results will be permanent and this augurs well for the future of the San Francisco area.”

“Only God knows the real effects,” said Co-chairman Howie (Calvary Presbyterian Church), pointing out that the campaign could still turn out to be the means of wide-scale spiritual awakening “if we let (it) be a beginning and not a conclusion.”

Possibly because they were a little more open to the Gospel at the start, San Francisco suburbs seemed to realize more benefits than did the city. But in the city and out, the impact upon youth was a most heartening aspect of the crusade. Around the bay area there is much talk of the “beat generation.” In contrast to it, Billy Graham was offering the challenge of a life dedicated to Christ. Thursday night, an “off” night in most evangelistic crusades, found youth pouring in—and taking up the challenge! Invitation response was consistently the largest on Thursday nights, and the greatest number of decisions in any Cow Palace meeting, 1243, came on a youth night.

The response among youth insures lasting impressions. These will be complemented by personal contacts made through a week of visitation evangelism which followed the Seals Stadium rally. A spirited nucleus of bay area ministers saw in the visitation evangelism effort a watering and made further plans for follow-up in the fall. As they persevere, and as God’s people pray, God will give the collective increase to the Church, which is Christ’s body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

News Editor David E. Kucharsky flew to San Francisco to prepare this analytic account. A former United Press correspondent, he holds the A. B. in journalism from Duquesne University. For two years he served as squadron adjutant in the Air Force with the rank of lieutenant.

Some weeks ago we said that orthodoxy can be deadly (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, April 23 issue), for an unlovely thing appears when it becomes an end in itself rather than a means to an end.

But a theological liberalism which rejects the complete reliability and authority of the holy Scriptures is also a deadly thing.

Nothing has robbed the Church of her witness so much as a low view of inspiration. Nothing has detracted so much from current preaching as this shift from an authority higher than man. Nothing has caused more needy souls to leave their pews on Sunday with a sense of emptiness and frustration as much as the substitution of man’s opinions for divine affirmations.

Theological liberalism is deadly because:

The basis of authority shifts from divine revelation to human reason. Even where the Bible is said to “contain” the word of God, the discovery of what is asserted to be authentic depends on scholarship, deduction and human receptiveness. One man finds one part “inspired,” while another finds that another portion “speaks.” The concept of total inspiration, irrespective of man’s reaction, is rejected.

The inevitable corollary of this attitude to the Bible is a loss of conviction. A sense of authority, urgency and vital importance is thereby lost. Although the individual concerned may be unaware of it, those who come under such a ministry know that something is lacking.

With such liberalism inevitably comes a shift in emphasis: symptoms are magnified while the underlying disease is ignored or minimized. The fact that Christ came to save sinners is lost in the emphasis that he came to make this world a better place in which to live. The biblically based doctrines of sin, judgment, the new birth, eternal punishment, and so forth, are ignored or qualified, while corporate social righteousness is stressed.

Such liberalism inevitably results in the loss of spiritual power. Just as Samson lost his physical prowess after having his head shorn, so too the theological liberal experiences a loss of spiritual power when he rejects divinely revealed truth and substitutes a Christ and a gospel foreign to the Scriptures.

We say that the theological liberalism so described is deadly because it is based on rejection of Christian truth revealed in the Scriptures and the substitution of ideas often completely at variance with such truth. To reject the historical accuracy and the spiritual implications of the Bible is to be “liberal” with that which we do not have the right to liberalize. It is one thing to interpret Scripture so that historical background, linguistic implications and significance of local customs and usages are clarified. But an “interpretation” which is actually a denial of clearly stated truths is no longer interpretation but presumption.

If the Bible merely contains the word of God, mixed with inaccuracies, deliberate frauds, statements stemming from ignorance, pre-dated history palmed off as prophetic truth, and thought-forms which actually mean the opposite of what they are intended to convey, then who will sort the true from the false? We are told that this must be left to the scholars. But it is disconcerting to find that the “assured findings” of scholars of yesterday have been replaced by other equally “assured” conclusions of a new generation.

Not for one moment should Christians tolerate anti-intellectualism. But a distinction must be made between a reverent scholarship, and that which sits in judgment on Scripture, and magnifies rather than reconciles difficulties. That increasing numbers of scholars are shifting back to far more conservative conclusions is significant and encouraging.

Theological liberalism is deadly when it assumes an attitude to the Scriptures at variance with that of our Lord and his disciples. A study of the record shows that to them the Old Testament was authentic and authoritative. To say, as some do, that our Lord’s own understanding was limited, is to assume a position utterly untenable to those who accept him as revealed in the Scriptures.

Of course there are difficulties in the Bible. A supernatural revelation transmitted through human instruments of varying personalities, nationalities and backgrounds inevitably poses problems.

The amazing thing is the unity and continuity of the revelation, and a rejection of its truthfulness poses even greater difficulties for the theological liberal. His greatest dilemma is to be found in his own contradictions and the strange phenomena of an emerging philosophy which is at complete variance to that presented in Holy Writ.

But the place where theological liberalism is most deadly is in the area of life and death itself. Face to face with man’s need of salvation and the fact that without Christ he is in spiritual darkness, dead and lost, what can one offer if the necessity of the new birth is debatable? What is there to offer if Christ did not die for his sins? What hope can be held out if the reality of sin and the judgment of God on unrepentant sinners are questioned?

We deplore the philosophy of Christian Science which denies the reality of pain and suffering; but is that more serious than a denial of the clear affirmations of the Scriptures with reference to sin, righteousness and judgment to come?

For instance, when liberal preaching stresses the fact that “God accepts man,” without at the same time making clear that this acceptance is based solely on the person and work of Christ, it is a deadly thing for it offers a false hope.

Liberalism is a good word but in recent years it has earned connotations which have little in common with the original meaning. Where it means the exercise of Christian love and tolerance in matters where men of equal piety may differ, it is good. Where it becomes a rallying point for ecclesiastical pressures or an intolerance of conservative Christians, it becomes a misnomer. Just as fundamentalism which is harsh, critical and unloving is a tragedy, so also is a liberalism which denies the liberty it espouses for itself.

It has been said that the liberalism of today is the conservatism of tomorrow. Where the basic elements of the Christian faith have been rejected and faith in eternal verities has been superseded by adherence to the changing currents of human speculation, liberalism is now and always has been deadly.

These are days when, in a shaken and uncertain world, men need something they know will never change. Theological liberalism offers no such message. This is a plea to those who stand on the ramparts to give bread instead of a stone; fish instead of a serpent.

L. NELSON BELL

CARTOON EXPLANATION:

There are two things I have always wanted. One is to draw a cartoon. The other is to have someone explain to me the cartoons other people draw.

You see my cartoon.

Now for the explanation.

The two clergymen in the picture are in an art gallery. One is reading from a guidebook. The masterpiece they are inspecting has felt the impact of a recent article in the Post by a Harvard theologian. The professor says that the dimension of depth is religious. He seems to feel that modern art has it all over Billy Graham in this dimension. It asks a sincere and religious question “when the painter breaks the visible surface into pieces.”

This picture shows how sincere a painter can get.

It also symbolizes what I think the professor has done to the Christian gospel in seeking his lost dimension of depth.

EUTYCHUS

IN SEARCH OF A DIMENSION

In the issue of June 14, 1958, the Saturday Evening Post contained an article on religion by Professor Paul Tillich of Harvard University.… It appears to be the purpose of Professor Tillich in this article to interpret the present popular revival of religious interest as a “desperate and mostly futile attempt to regain what has been lost,” which lost thing he calls the “dimension of depth” in religion. Professor Tillich defines the dimension of depth as being “the religious dimension in man’s nature.” To him religion in its innermost nature “is the state of being concerned about one’s own being and being universally.” … To him also, “being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers even if the answers hurt.”

Professor Tillich rejects the idea that any particular religion, including Christianity, can furnish the answer or be the key to the search for the answer. To him the only key is that concern to know which causes us passionately to seek to learn the meaning of our existence.… Tillich says “there is always an answer but the answer may not be available to us.” He says that the real answer “is given by the awareness that we have lost the decisive dimension of life, the dimension of depth, and there is no easy way of getting it back. Such awareness is in itself a state of being grasped by that which is symbolized in the term, dimension of depth. He who realizes that he is separated from the ultimate source of meaning shows by this realization that he is not only separated but also reunited. And this is just our situation. What we need above all—and partly have—is the radical realization of our predicament, without trying to cover it up by secular or religious ideologies. The revival of religious interest would be a creative power in our culture if it would develop into a movement of search for the lost dimension of depth.” …

To try to understand Professor Tillich’s paragraph it may be useful to substitute X for the expression, dimension of depth, or for whatever is referred to by that expression, and omit unnecessary portions. So simplified his statement might appear to be: The real answer to the question of how to regain X is given by the awareness that we have lost X and there is no easy way of getting it back. Such awareness is in itself a state of being grasped by X. He who realizes that he is separated from X shows by this realization that he is not only separated from X but reunited to it. What we need above all, and partly have, is to realize that we have lost X. The revival of religious interest would be a creative power in our culture if it would develop into a movement of search for X.

Then finally he terminates his article with a remark which similarly clarified would read: In spite of the loss of X, its power is present, and most present in those who are aware of the loss and are striving to regain it with ultimate seriousness.

Presumably in all of this Professor Tillich is trying to say, as in the early part of his article, that man has lost the answer to the question: What is the meaning of life? And he has also lost the courage to ask this question; but those who, like himself, are truly aware of this loss (as distinct from persons who accept Christianity or other faiths) are the most competent and likely to regain both the courage and the answer. In the simplest possible terms it appears that Professor Tillich is pointing to himself and others who concur with his views on religion as being the only hope of ever learning the answer to the question: What is the meaning of life? Where do we come from, and where do we go?

… Although Professor Tillich avows that there is an answer to this basic question, he obviously has no real idea what it is—he is only groping for it. Nevertheless at the beginning of his article he states that man has lost the answer to the question. If it is lost there is no existing record or knowledge of it and therefore how can he know that it ever was known so that it could later be lost?…

If in all of his groping for the meaning of life throughout recorded history and undoubtedly before that, man has not progressed beyond the groping phase, why should anyone expect that the search which Professor Tillich urges so strongly will make any appreciable progress? Apart from a truly miraculous revelation our generation and those which follow will still he unhappily groping—provided man’s capacity and urge to self-destruction do not prevent those future generations from being born.…

Is it better to remain deliberately in the negative, confused and futilely hopeful state of Professor Tillich? Or, is it not common sense to investigate and try to learn from personal examination and experience the biblical answers to his question and to enjoy forever the glorious gifts of God to those who seek and trust him?

Lt. Gen., U.S. Army (Ret.)

Chicago, Ill.

FUTURE’S CHALLENGE

“The Challenge of the Future” by J. Edgar Hoover (May 26 issue) should be read by every American.

First Christian Church

Cimarron, Kan.

One quote you included … by Hoover … seemed to favor investigation of various organizations as to their communist affiliation. If your inclusion of the quote means you endorse anything like what we have lived through—may God forbid!

First Methodist Church

Loomis, Calif.

NATION’S FUTURE

An expression of appreciation … for the splendid quality of CHRISTIANITY TODAY as you tackle problems with which the Christian faith is confronted in contemporary life. Your reporting of “Religion in a Free Society” (May 26 issue) was a real service to the nation. The “proposed exchange of thought on Protestant-Catholic anxieties” I must say is courageous, but timely. It is encouraging to hear leaders in American life raising and discussing these questions that have to do with the future of the nation.

First Baptist Church

Minonk, Ill.

Your excellent report … helped the reader to gain knowledge of what the great dialog in America is all about. Your boxed quotation of a remark by Dr. Robert M. Hutchins regarding his terror of the Dial-A-Prayer movement caught my attention. I am surprised that so learned and experienced a gentleman … would dismiss the value of a telephone devotional so abruptly. We have used the automatic answering device for one and one-half years. It is not a substitute for personal prayer, Bible reading, or reading of devotional classics. It is one of many ways to assist the troubled heart in his struggle against sin in his life. The telephone devotional illustrates once again the desire of the Christian prophet to use every available means of communication to make disciples of all nations and to edify members of the body of Christ.

Saint Paul Lutheran Church

Oak Lawn, Ill.

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE

Dr. Vos has taken his stand (May 12 issue) at some considerable distance from popular understanding when he argues that the righteous in the intermediate state are deficient, abnormal, and not completely happy. Undoubtedly, this position tends to give greater relevance to Paul’s incessant stress upon the Second Advent as introductory to the glories of the future state. However, to characterize Paul’s attitude toward the possibility of appearing before the Lord Jesus in a disembodied condition as “much less desirable” is to overstate the case. In the passage (2 Cor. 5:1f.), Paul states repeatedly and unqualifiedly that he does not desire to be so found. If Paul is considering the possibility of appearing before the Lord Jesus at the resurrection in an unclothed state (see the introductory passage, 2 Cor. 4:14), one may be led to wonder, after all, if dead souls are not normally unconscious and therefore subject to resurrection. Then the passages quoted (Rev. 6:11; Heb. 11:39, 40; Rom. 8:23–25; 1 Cor. 15:50–54), and many others, might be taken unqualifiedly. In fact, Dr. Vos has quoted 2 Corinthians 5:8 inaccurately …

New England School of Theology

(Advent Christian)

Brookline, Mass.

MORE ON THE GRAVECLOTHES

May I respectfully question the position set forth in the letter entitled “Grave-clothes” (Apr. 28 issue)?… The correspondent rejects the translation of John 20:7 given in both the AV and the RV and offers instead his view that the linens collapsed retaining “the annular, ringlike shape they had been given.”

On the other hand, the best Greek lexicons, namely those by Bauer, A & G, L & S, M & M, and Thayer all support the versions, rendering the Greek verb entulisso as wrap up, fold together, roll up, fold up. The verb seems to occur three times in the N.T., twice of Joseph’s wrapping the body of Jesus in linen clothes, Matt. 27:59; Luke 23:53, and once of Peter’s finding the sweat-band that had been about the head of Jesus folded up in a place by itself, thus suggesting an ordering hand, John 20:7. In their respective commentaries Bauer and Bultmann interpret the last reference as due to an apologetical interest, that is, to show that the body was not suddenly snatched from the grave, but that everything had been left in good order. Hendrickson has a sane note on the verse in his recent commentary.

Columbia Sem.

Decatur, Ga.

In eastern lands there was a space between the main funeral garment round the torso and the napkin round the head. The latter, as Mr. Rufle points out in the account, retained its “annular” shape. It is notable that the word (rolled up) used is identical with the word in Matthew 27:59 telling how Joseph of Arimathea had rolled up the body of Jesus. It was thus apparent to the two apostles that the Lord’s body had disappeared or “evaporated” from the graveclothes without disturbing or removing them.

Belfast, No. Ireland

Former Bishop of Down and Dromore

NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINES

Everet R. Johnson (Apr. 14 issue) … talked of New Testament “doctrines.” Perhaps, as a theological journal, you should be more watchful of your authors’ use of words. There are, of course, no “doctrines” in the N. T. (And this is of great reassurance to thoughtful Protestants.) Christ enunciated no doctrines—these were made later by mundane churchmen.

Associate Editor

Christian Herald

New York City

• Concordance study reveals that the New Testament speaks often of the doctrines and teachings of Christ and the apostles, (cf. Matt. 22:33; Rom. 16:17; 1 Tim. 1:10; 4:6; Titus 2:10, and 2 John 9). Both Christ and Paul warned against antithetical “human doctrines” (cf. Matt. 15:9; Col. 2:22). Webster’s New International Dictionary distinguishes between “the doctrines of the New Testament” and the “dogmas” of church confessions. Surely Christ’s death for sinners and his resurrection are New Testament doctrines.—ED.

WHENCE REVIVAL?

Many … will disagree with Mr. Pollock’s statement (Apr. 28 issue) that “for a lasting revival, the Church of England must take the lead.” I personally cannot see revival coming from this direction. The dead hand of Anglo-Catholicism lies upon our national church.… I do most heartily agree … that a return visit of Billy Graham is essential. With or without the support of the bishops and free church leaders, he can win the British public for Christ.

St. Clement’s Church, Spotland Vicarage

Rochdale, England

PULLING NO PUNCHES

Thank you for the sane and spiritual article about cooperative evangelism (Apr. 14 issue). Billy Graham doesn’t pull his punches to avoid offending cooperating bodies and I have no doubt the same could be said of many other evangelists. So long as this principle is observed what is there to fear? It is therefore difficult to understand the opposition of your correspondents in the May 26 issue. What alternative have they for making contact with the unsaved masses? “By their fruits ye shall know them” surely applies to the Christian’s work as well as to himself, and God’s blessing so manifestly poured out on Dr. Graham’s crusades is the best answer to critics of the methods employed. Denial that there is such blessing accompanying the crusades seems to me perilously near the sin of ascribing to the devil the work of the Holy Spirit. Let us get our emphases properly balanced—we are to separate from sin, but not from our brethren in Christ. St. Paul went even further—he said he became all things to all men “that I might by all means save some.” Does anyone dare to suggest that he compromised sinfully?

Redhill, Surrey, England

CONCERN FOR SELF-CONCEPT

For fear of causing a phobia with our friend Eutychus, would you kindly suggest in a nonthreatening manner that will not destroy his self-concept, that he review his … somatology (Apr. 28 issue) for a more adequate formulation.…

We shall be watching for the new fashionable Genevan chemise robe (52 short) which should be a knotty disclosure in the pulpit.

Philadelphia, Pa.

HYMNS

I was rather distressed at Eutychus (May 26 issue).… Don’t you agree it is highly questionable to encourage parodies on the great hymns? When I was a child my godly parents strictly outlawed such lightness in our family. To them it was almost like making sport of the Bible.

Dillon Presbyterian Church

Dillon, S. C.

I was delighted with your article “Incognito Chorales”! I have been needling my colleagues on the staff with what you term “psychotherapeutic psalmody.”

Psychotherapy pilot me

Over life’s tempestuous sea;

Unknown fears before me roll,

Hiding blocks and treach’rous goals;

Peace of mind comes from thee:

Psychotherapy pilot me.

As an analysis probes a child,

Thou canst calm an ego wild:

Boisterous ids obey thy will

When thou sayest to them, “Be still.”

Wondrous sovereign of anxiety

Psychotherapy pilot me.

When at last I near the shore,

And the fearful breakers roar

’Twixt me and the peaceful rest

Then while leaning on thy couch

Shall I hear thee say to me?

“From here on, Don’t count on me.”

Chaplain

Veterans (NP) Hospital

Sheridan, Wyo.

The critic snips the sacred page—

His brilliance dims the sun—

He sorts his slips, assigns their age,

And tells who made them one.

Indianapolis, Ind.

SHOCKING DISCOVERY

The review of Will Oursler’s “The Healing Power of Faith” (Apr. 28 issue) reflects … preconceived notions held by the reviewer.… Speaking as a completely orthodox conservative, of the holy, Catholic, Apostolic faith, I take issue with Mr. Girod’s labelling of the author as a ‘theological liberal,’ simply because he asserts that wholeness of the body and mind are God’s will. (The liberals will be shocked to learn Oral Roberts is now in their ranks!)

Trinity Church (Episcopal)

Wheaton, Ill.

ESSAYS ASSAYED

The essays on eschatology … are recommended reading in my systematic theology class. Often things are discussed in class which have been presented in your fine magazine.

Another feature … I look forward to each issue is “Bible Book of the Month” … excellent source of … material.

Richmond, Ind.

THE EVANGEL

The true “evangel” should cut through all doctrinal positions. You are corrupting the “evangel” by narrowing it to a modified fundamentalism tempered with a slightly disguised Calvinism.

Asbury Seminary

Wilmore, Ky.

The need has been for some unifying force to rally the disorganized and often frustrated forces of evangelical Christianity. The strength is there but it needs to be encouraged and articulated, both with evangelistic fervor and dedicated scholarship. I believe that CHRISTIANITY TODAY in a literary sense is doing much to meet this need. Give us more of it. Keep true to the Word—fan the fires of evangelism—interpret the great issues of our day without fear or compromise, and you may be assured that multitudes of Christians around the world will uphold you, pray for you, and believe God for greater things.…

Asbury Seminary

Wilmore, Ky.

This is a note of sincere appreciation for the great help it has been in maintaining my conviction that the basic tenets of the evangelical faith need not be abandoned, nor in any way vitiated, but can be solidly adhered to by the minister of Christ.

I have especially appreciated your occasional articles on the basic trustworthiness of the Scripture—perhaps the doctrine most in danger today.…

Princeton Seminary

Princeton, N. J.

Please accept my heartfelt thanks to you for the role it has played in my recent re-birth in Christ. Its evangelical articles have strengthened me and enlightened me in finding the prize of the regeneration in Christ. After 15 years of searching, while in the ministry, I was marvelously found of God.… Since my blessing in Christ, my wife who is a graduate of an eastern seminary in religious education, has come into the born-again ranks. We now both read and discuss articles in your magazine. It is helping us keep our minds alert and our hearts warm with the Gospel.

John Stewart Methodist Church

Upper Sandusky, O.