And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Matt. 22:39).

The shortest and most comprehensive commentary ever given of this commandment is that of our Lord, several times repeated: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” This is declared to be “the law and the prophets”; that is, it comprehends all the duties which we owe to our fellow men, inculcated in the law and the prophets.

The New Testament makes a great deal of that summary of duty. No fewer than three several times do we find our Lord appeal to it as embracing the pith of the whole second table of the decalogue; and after his example it is twice cited in the letters of St. Paul, and once by St. James. Of course, thoughtful students of the Hebrew canon must always have felt it to be one of its profoundest ethical axioms. But the current teaching of our Lord’s day broke down the force of the glorious old saying, not only or so much by forgetting the important words “as thyself,” which made man’s selfishness the very measure of his charity, as by narrowing that area of neighborliness within which charity is commanded.

Like Unto First

The love of man is intimately connected with the love of God. Philanthropy and piety are sister sentiments. It was a doctrine of the Pharisees, that the strict observance of one precept would atone for the neglect of others. But Jesus inculcates obedience throughout, both in our relations to God and to man.

A. A. LIVERMORE

The second part of the summary is the corollary of the first, and cannot be realized except in connection with it. Nothing but the reigning love of God can so divest the individual of devotion to his own person, that the ego of his neighbour shall rank in his eyes exactly on the same level as his own. The pattern must be loved above all, if the image in others is to appear to us as worthy of esteem and love as in ourselves.

F. GODET

Jesus teaches that a divine unity pervades the law, a unity that cannot be broken; all its separate commands resting upon a common, immutable basis; also connected in spirit and obligation, that you cannot truly obey one without obeying all, nor break one without breaking all. Looking at the law in this oneness of character, Jesus points to the two requirements of love to God and love to one another as containing the sum and substance of the whole.

WILLIAM HANNA

It is just the circumference of the duty, whose centre is represented in the preceding commandment. Whosoever really loves God supremely is emancipated from selfishness; and whenever this emancipation takes place, the unselfish spirit goes out with its love to all kindred spirits around. In imperfect man, indeed, sometimes the Godward tendency over-weighs too much the manward; and sometimes, on the other hand, it is the philanthropic tendency that is “loaded.” But the two tendencies are not in antagonism. They are complementive, the one of the other. And when either is clear and pure, it involves the other.

JAMES MORISON

Degree Of Love

Self-love, as being an original principle of our nature, and therefore not subject to the caprices of the will, is wisely made the standard of men’s love to one another, which would otherwise be ever sinking far below the level of our natural regard to our own welfare.

J. A. ALEXANDER

Now, thou lovest thyself truly, really, fervently, freely, constantly, hiding thine own defects and deformities as much as may be. Thou wouldst have others rejoice with thee and condole with thee as occasion serves. Go thou now and do likewise to others.

JOHN TRAPP

This second commandment condemns every one of us; for no one, by nature, loves his neighbor as he loves himself. And those of us who are under the influence of God’s grace are fully conscious that our love for our brethren, as our desire for our own highest good, is wavering and fragmentary. But if we are truly converted, regenerated people, then this commandment has begun to be realized in our lives; we have begun to love men, even all men.

R. E. GOLLADAY

Therefore, if thou wouldst know how thy neighbour ought to be loved, and wouldst have a plain example thereof, consider well how thou lovest thyself. If thou shouldst be in necessity or danger, thou wouldst be glad to have the love and friendship of all men, to be holpen with the counsel, the goods, and the strength of all men, and of all creatures. Wherefore thou hast no need of any book to instruct and to admonish thee how thou oughtest to love thy neighbour; for thou hast an excellent book of all laws, even in thy heart.

MARTIN LUTHER

The principle difficulty which has been found in explaining this second commandment is the degree of love which is required of us, toward our neighbour. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Now, to many this seems to be simply impossible. Some expositors have therefore explained the meaning to be, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as truly as thyself, or with the same kind of love. But this cannot be admitted to be the true import of this commandment. For in the first and greatest commandment, the degree in which we should love God is fixed. It must be with all the heart, all the soul, all the mind, and all the strength. If it had only been intended to teach that we should love our neighbour in some degree, there would have been no use in saying “as thyself.” And according to this interpretation, the least conceivable degree of love would have answered the demands of the law. Undoubtedly, the commandment should be taken in its plain and obvious meaning. It does require, that we should love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves.

A. ALEXANDER

We dare not, by any subterfuges, try to get away from the obligations of the second great commandment. It is God who says, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor,”—love him as we do ourselves. We have no more right to say that we will not love our neighbors than we have to say that we will not love God. Jesus Himself says this second commandment is like unto the first. It comes from the same high source of authority. It requires the same thing. Its binding force is just as irrevocable. Its violation comes from the same fundamental source, offends the same supreme authority, and leads to the same consequences. It is vain for us to claim to be children and worshippers of God while we entertain feelings which lead us to look down upon or hate our brethren of mankind.… The love of God and man are but two sides of one great emotion. The love which goes out to God supremely is, as far as part of the rays are concerned, simply deflected toward man, the child of God.

R. E. GOLLADAY

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Where do Protestant ministers stand on economic freedom? How do they feel about a free market as opposed to socialistic attitudes in trade? What are their views on the link between economic and religious freedom?

To learn some of the answers, CHRISTIANITY TODAY enlisted the services of Opinion Research Corporation, noted survey-conducting firm with headquarters at Princeton, New Jersey. The firm included barometer questions on free enterprise in a representative nation-wide poll of Protestant ministers taken in behalf of CHRISTIANITY TODAY last fall. Answers were secured in detailed private interviews in the ministers’ homes and offices. Clergymen were selected for the interviews on the basis of scientific random-sampling methods.

About one clergyman in five in the survey was reported as “decidedly socialistic” in his economic views. Little more than half of those interviewed saw any definite connection between economic and religious freedom.

Results Of Earlier Survey Confirmed

The poll thus indicated that while a majority of Protestant ministers stand for a free enterprise position, a minority lean strongly toward socialism. Spokesmen for Opinion Research Corporation said these findings showed tendencies to vote for economic freedom at about the same level as those in another national survey the firm took on free market versus socialistic sentiment in 1953. The earlier survey likewise found one out of every five clergymen socialistic in his thinking.

In the CHRISTIANITY TODAY survey, four barometer questions were used to pin-point ministers’ attitudes. The first of the four was asked to establish where the ministers stood on economic and religious freedom. This was the query:

Economic and religious freedom are linked. If the government owns and operates all industry, religious freedom will disappear. In the main do you agree or disagree?

Fifty-five per cent said they agreed unqualifiedly. Twenty-two per cent said they disagreed. The remainder had qualified answers or no opinion.

Noticeable was a tendency for ministers who classified themselves as fundamentalists to be more positive in seeing the connection between economic and religious freedom. Of the fundamentalists, 64 per cent agreed there was a link (17 per cent disagreed) while only 50 per cent of those who categorized themselves as conservatives agreed (25 per cent disagreed). Among those who said they were liberals, 49 per cent agreed; among the neo-orthodox, 46 per cent.

Relatively few clergymen concurred in the following two clear-cut “anti-free enterprise” arguments:

(1) Most businessmen look upon labor as a commodity rather than as human beings. (2) There is little economic justice in the way our business system distributes wealth.

Only 15 per cent commenting on the two statements said they were in agreement with them.

Socialized Housing Wins Majority

The survey also resulted in a high vote for socialized housing, which led to the observation that it “points up the well-known problem of translating principle into solutions for problems facing society.” This was the statement:

The federal government should provide low rent housing for low income people.

Sixty-one per cent of the ministers surveyed said they agreed. Commented the pollsters: “The fact that ministers have a deep feeling of the necessity and Christian correctness of charity leads them to accept answers for pressing social problems that, by their implementation, tend to sap all freedoms including religious freedom.”

A breakdown of the responses on the first inquiry indicated that feelings on the subject of economic freedom cut across denominational lines freely. No one-sided totals were attributed to any single church association. Nor were there any block votes according to ministers’ ages or the size of the congregations they served.

In all cases where percentages do not equal 100, those unaccounted for either had no opinion or had qualified opinions.

The ministers were also asked how important they felt it was to interpret the moral side of social-economic issues. Forty-nine per cent said they thought it was “very important.” Another 43 per cent said it was “fairly important.” The remainder of those reporting said it was not a task of the church.

Worth Quoting

“Surely by this time we have discovered that soft sayings about virtue, the evolution of the race, and the inherent goodness of mankind, will not produce the evangel ism the world sorely needs. We must speak again of the ghastly reality of sin, of the atonement of Christ, of justification by faith, of the eternal profit of goodness and of the everlasting loss to those who will not have Christ.”—Methodist Bishop Arthur J. Moore, at a mass rally in Washington’s Griffith Stadium closing a Methodist convocation on local church evangelism.

Catholic ‘Monopoly’

Beginning August 21, Roman Catholic priests will hold all three chief chaplaincy posts of the U. S. military establishment. For on that date Catholic Chaplain (Brigadier General) Terence P. Finnegan is scheduled to take over as Air Force chief of chaplains, succeeding Major General Charles I. Carpenter, a Methodist who has held the post since it was created nine years ago.

The “monopoly” will end November 1, when Catholic Chaplain Patrick J. Ryan, a major general, retires. Slated to succeed Ryan is Chaplain Frank A. Tobey, an American Baptist brigadier general.

Rear Admiral George A. Rosso currently heads Navy chaplains. A domestic prelate with the title of Right Reverend Monsignor, Rosso last month relieved Rear Admiral Edward B. Harp Jr., an Evangelical and Reformed minister who had served for five years.

Evangelism—Two Types

Evangelist Billy Graham drew an aggregate of nearly 150,000 persons during a series of eight meetings at the California state fairgrounds in Sacramento.

An overflow crowd of 26,000 witnessed the last Sacramento meeting, Sunday night, July 6.

In San Francisco, meanwhile, follow-up teams were counting results of a week-long visitation evangelism program held in the wake of the two-month bay cities crusade. Directors of the program were trained by the Rev. George Housewright of Kansas City, field director of evangelism for the United Lutheran Church.

On July 8, the Church Federation of Greater Chicago said it had decided against sponsoring a Graham campaign.

Alaska Challenge

Does statehood for Alaska open up new Christian opportunities? Will there be extended avenues of witness when the territory comes into the Union?

Says the Rev. Felton H. Griffin, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Anchorage, “The most rapidly growing churches today are the ones where the simple Gospel is preached and practiced.… Statehood will provide (1) added interest on the part of mission boards and added funds to meet the needs here (2) a more stable population (which) will have more interest in the churches (3) growing churches (which) will bring encouragement to the missionaries and pastors.”

“The accelerated rate of evangelical growth,” says Griffiin, “will be increased as we welcome our new citizens.”

The Rev. Malcolm Stuart Sweet, Presbyterian pastor in Juneau and former chaplain of the Territorial Senate, says that Protestant Christianity in Alaska is “definitely conservative, as one might expect in a predominantly mission field, but along with this theological conservatism is a militant social liberalism.”

Church And Farm

Last month the National Council of Churches’ General Board cited seven ethical goals for this country’s agricultural policy: national programs designed to assist farmers to higher levels of living; preservation of the integrity and enrichment of the rural family; the encouragement of voluntary, cooperative, and mutual aid associations among farmers; the conservation of nature’s resources; adequate and healthful diets for the world’s growing populations; fair and reasonably stable levels of income for farm producers; and recognition of human interdependence on a national and world scale.

Some board members sought unsuccessfully to delete a section of the statement which declared that “a violation of the Christian concept of justice exists in the fact that wage workers in agriculture are denied most of the legal and economic protections long accorded to wage workers in industry.”

Asked to comment on the statement as a whole, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson said:

“These seven basic goals are so soundly conceived and effectively presented that no thinking and well-informed person could view them with anything but sincere regard. Indeed, these objectives are fundamental to many of our agricultural policies now in operation (in America) …

“There is little serious disagreement in agriculture about the basic goals to be sought, though there are differences of opinion as to the best procedures to be followed. This is only normal in a free society. The task of all of us, who have the welfare of agriculture at heart, is to see to it that the people have the facts at their disposal. I have the utmost confidence in the good judgment of a well-informed public.

“It is vital that our individual as well as governmental approach to agriculture should begin, as the statement so well points out, with the acknowledgment that ‘the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof,’ and that man’s task is one of ‘stewardship of the earth’s resources for the nourishment and enrichment of human life.’

“It is my belief that our rural people are the salt of the earth and a solid bulwark against forces which threaten our free way of life. More than perhaps any other segment of our population they know that ‘whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ From our rural people must come much of the faith, courage, and leadership to face effectively the local, state, national and world problems of tomorrow. And that is why it seems to me self evident that the ultimate test of any governmental policy must be an ethical test. It must answer the question, ‘How will this policy or this program affect the character, morale, and well-being of our people.’ “It is heartening to have such a clear and forthright presentation of ethical goals for agricultural policy. I feel sure the statement will do much good and I pray God’s blessing upon the good work of the National Council of Churches.”

Dismissal Statements

Here are official reactions to the dismissal of 13 professors from the faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

Excerpts from a statement by the chairman of seminary trustees, Dr. Wade H. Bryant, Roanoke, Virginia:

It roots back in part to the change in the by-law structure of the seminary made by the trustees in 1942 placing the administrative responsibility in the hands of a president rather than in the hands of the faculty.

Race Showdown—An Unlikely Site

Early this month Washington-Lee High School won international renown when its national champion oarsmen reached the quarter-finals of the Royal Henley Regatta in England. Washington-Lee had the distinction of being the first U. S. public high school to be invited to the world’s top rowing event.

In coming weeks this same school could conceivably gain world-wide attention again, this time in disgrace. For Washington-Lee High School in the South’s northernmost segregation citadel—Arlington, Virginia—is under federal judicial order to admit Negro students with the resumption of classes on Thursday morning, September 4. Hard-shell segregationist Virginians are dedicated to see that this never happens.

Reason seems to be against a race showdown in Arlington. Situated just across the river from the nation’s capital, the county is an integral part of the Washington melting pot; many of its citizens are northern natives who hold few qualms about integration. The Arlington Council of Churches has displayed a solid front against segregationists who would use sanctuaries for classrooms in the event schools are closed. The proportion of white students to Negro pupils is about fifteen to one.

True, Arlington would appear to be an unlikely place for the school integration problem to come to a head. But so was Little Rock, a city “too far north” for any trouble; surely any strife would be in the Deep South.

A determined minority opposes integration in Arlington schools. The group appealed unsuccessfully to the U. S. Supreme Court. The fear is that other methods may be used come Thursday morning, September 4. Christians are urged to pray that in the shadow of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, peace will prevail.

(The difficulties) were not matters of doctrinal difference nor of academic freedom in the strict sense. Rather they were involved problems dealing with convictions about theological emphasis and the direction in which the seminary should go, the part the faculty should have in the selection of faculty members and deans as well as the promotion and salaries of faculty members, the way the president used his administrative authority, personal differences both with the president and with other members of the faculty, etc.

Statement of joint faculty:

In view of the circumstances that have arisen at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary leading to the dismissal of a number of the members of the faculty of the School of Theology, we take this means of expressing confidence in both the integrity and the administrative ability of President McCall. We pledge to him afresh our loyalty and our continued cooperation.

We wish to express our sympathetic concern for our colleagues who have been dismissed and to express our confidence in their academic ability and their dedication to the Kingdom of God. We cannot concur, however, in their attitudes and conclusions concerning the administration.

As the servants of our Lord Jesus Christ we reaffirm our commitment to seek to know and to teach the truth, using every instrument which God has made available to man in this search for truth, and always under the conviction that our final authority is the inspired revelation of God. We will pursue this ideal as the agents and servants of our beloved Baptist people.

We count upon the continuing love, prayers, and support of our student body, our alumni and the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention of which the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is a vital part.

Statement of dismissed professors:

It was our grave concern over the inner workings of the seminary which compelled us to take our action.

We believe that our problems had to do with (1) relationships between the administration and faculty members, (2) the basis on which the faculty shares in determining educational matters, (3) personal responsibility in the light of Christian teaching, and (4) mutual respect in working together.

Only after many unsuccessful efforts with the administration to correct these problems in a way consistent with these principles, did we refer the problems to the Board of Trustees.

We had hoped for a reconciliation, but all efforts have been unsuccessful.

We express our continuing interests in the welfare of the seminary, those charged with responsibility for guiding its future, and our former colleagues, with whom we share a continuing love for the seminary.

The following report on Russia was written especially forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Dr. Bob Pierce, president of World Vision, Inc., upon his return from a two-week visit to Russia.—ED.

The Protestant church in Russia is being systematically destroyed by the Communist party.

I saw a frightening close-up of the plan in action during the same days when my heart was warmed at overflow worship services in Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow and Leningrad. Russians have freedom of religion to an extent, partly as an outward Presidium show to the free world and partly because the church has some measure of power in several satellite countries.

Possibly 15,000 are added yearly to Baptist ranks in the Soviet Union. The total number of Soviet Baptists is now estimated at well over a half million.

Moslems, on the other hand, are also showing strength in numbers and activity. Jews are severely persecuted.

I saw tears stream down the cheeks of men and women as they sang and prayed during Protestant services. Thousands stood and listened intently for more than two hours while two complete sermons were preached. The hunger was great. These people were in tune with God.

Then I looked behind the scenes at the Communist plan. It works like this:

Religious instruction is forbidden in all institutions for any child up to the age of 18. Sunday Schools do not exist. Give me a child during the formative years, Lenin had said, and his future as a Communist is certain. The Communist party has severed the roots of the

Protestant church by taking the children.

At the age of seven, boys and girls are encouraged to join the Octobrists, Communism’s youngest organization. They proudly wear a red star. At the age of nine, they are pressured to join the Young Pioneers and wear the famous red neckerchief. Young Pioneers have special clubrooms in schools. They sponsor every athletic contest and award every prize. Membership is almost unanimous. What youngster would have the courage not to join? At fourteen, they graduate to the Komsomol (Young Communist League) which leads to the Communist party.

No Christian can belong to the Octobrists, Young Pioneers or the Komsomol. This is why churches have so few youth.

The Kremlin goes another step. Not one Protestant seminary exists in Russia proper. The Kremlin says churches are free to have seminaries, but that buildings are not available.

And still another step. The greatest book ever written is not sold in Russian book stores. What few Bibles the government has printed are distributed within churches. I saw ladies with the love of God in their faces and the frayed Word of God in their hands. Some of the pages were tied together with strings. Others had loose pages folded in papers and scarves.

That is the Communist plan: cut young roots, eliminate pastors, and cut off publication of Bibles.

The plan is ingenious, and thus far successful, but I met men and women who had fallen in love with Jesus Christ. And they are telling others, with the aid of their yellowed pages. The Word of God will not return unto him void.

The Lutherans

Convening Lutherans occupied themselves largely with church merger discussions last month. Two key union movements moved through the talks virtually unchallenged in formal action.

The bigger of the two merger plans would bring together the United Lutheran Church in America, the Augustana Lutheran Church, the American Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church (Suomi Synod). The new body, tentatively called the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, would have more than 3,000,000 members.

Augustana’s 99th annual synod at Jamestown, New York, voted down internal reorganizational proposals in view of anticipated union, but also rejected a delay in current talks to allow discussion of a larger merger. Suomi’s 69th annual convention in Detroit upheld a decision to affiliate its seminary with a United Lutheran theological school.

The other Lutheran merger plan, though smaller, is closer to consummation. It would bring together the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the American Lutheran Church, and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church into a denomination of more than 2,000,000 members.

Evangelical Lutherans, at their 23rd biennial convention in Minneapolis, took issue with a joint merger committee’s recommendation that the united memberships be called the American Lutheran Church. They preferred “The United Evangelical Lutheran Church.”

Perhaps ironically, the group now known as the United Evangelical Lutheran Church, meeting in its 62nd annual convention at Blair, Nebraska, gave blanket approval to the name originally suggested and other plans which call for completion of the merger by 1961.

The Lutheran Free Church decided at its 62nd annual conference in Minneapolis to submit a plan for participating in the smaller merger to a third congregational referendum in 1961.

Other Meetings

These were among highlights at other leading religious gatherings:

At Boston—Some 2,000 delegates to the 14th biennial meeting of the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches had to deal with congregations which are refusing to merge with the Evangelical and Reformed Church. The council says only 100 or 200 of its 5,544 churches have declared they will not join the new United Church of Christ formed a year ago. Dissidents, nevertheless, prompted concern at the seven-day meeting. Dr. Truman B. Douglass, executive vice president of the Congregational Board of Home Missions, urged that the legal principle of “obedience and support to the will of the majority” be followed “in our relationships together as a fellowship of churches.” Board of Home Missions directors said nonmerging churches would not be forced to pay off “grant mortgages.” The church union is fighting a suit brought by four Midwest Congregational churches and 10 individuals. A constitution for the new body is subject to approval of local churches after it is presented to a United Church general synod. The meeting of the Congregationalists, who now number 1,392,632, opened with a call for more world-wide sharing of mission resources by Dr. Alford Carleton, executive vice president of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Carleton warned, however, against duplicating mission channels and “top heavy administrative machinery.” Referring to the projected merger of the International Missionary Council with the World Council of Churches, which has headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, he said “there must be no Vatican created in Geneva to handle the Protestants’ work around the world.”

At Salt Lake City—The world’s largest Mormon metropolis was host to the 14th biennial congress of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America June 29-July 5. Archbishop Michael told some 2,000 clergy and lay delegates that “all departments and phases of Greek Orthodox life in America show progress.”

At Des Moines, Iowa—Some 1,000 delegates to the 250th anniversary conference of the Church of the Brethren agreed to allow ordination of women. Until now, Brethren women have been allowed to preach but have had no general right of ordination. The conference featured a “brainstorming” session during which delegates came up with about 6,000 specific proposals for strengthening the future program of the church. They also approved a new policy statement permitting acceptance of members from other denominations without rebaptism.

Tax Relief

The Internal Revenue Service says official clergy and lay delegates to church conventions are now entitled to claim unreimbursed travel expenses as income tax deductions.

At Cleveland—Back in 1863, 20 delegates met at a Battle Creek, Michigan, meeting house for the first “general conference” of the Seventh-day Adventist church, when they had a membership of 3,500. Last month, the booming church’s 48th quadrennial session drew 1,200 delegates plus thousands of traveling members representing more than a million Adventists in 185 countries. Said the Rev. Reuben R. Figuhr, who was re-elected world president, “We are a universal church.” Adventist tithing, at $213 per capita in North America, surpasses all the large denominations, and Adventist public relations tries to set a corresponding pace. Said the Rev. Howard B. Weeks, Bureau of Public Relations secretary, “The past four years have seen many gains in the release of favorable Seventh-day Adventist information. In the press in North America alone more than 2,000 church press secretaries, cooperating with public relations officials, have been responsible for the publication of 225,000 newspaper articles about the church. This represents a gain of approximately 50 per cent over the preceding four years.”

At Keystone Heights, Florida—Delegates to the biennial General Conference of the Advent Christian Church voted to amalgamate its American Advent Mission Society and Women’s Home and Foreign Mission Society.

At Birmingham, Alabama—Retiring Moderator Dr. William T. Ingram warned commissioners to the 128th General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church that Christians are in danger of being engulfed by secular culture. Ingram was succeeded by Dr. Wayne Wiman.

At Winona Lake, Indiana—“The Christian church today is sick from an overdose of the three T’s—taboos, tradition, and tranquilizers,” said Dr. Arnold T. Olson, president of the Evangelical Free Church of America. Olson told the church’s 74th annual conference that there is a need to get back to the three P’s—prayer meeting, personal witness, and private Bible study.

At Anderson, Indiana—The 70th annual convention of the Church of God drew some 20,000 persons. The policy-making General Ministerial Assembly, representing more than 115,000 members in the United States, voted to establish a commission on Christian education.

At Grand Rapids, Michigan—The annual synod of the Christian Reformed Church upheld women’s right to vote in congregational affairs.

At Flat Rock, North Carolina—Delegates to the 154th annual general synod of the 28,000-member Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church voted to emphasize evangelism in programs for the coming year.

At Winona Lake, Indiana—Delegates at the 23rd quadrennial General Conference of the Pilgrim Holiness Church approved a proposed merger with the Wesleyan Methodist Church of America. The Wesleyan church will vote on the union at its General Conference at Fairmount, Indiana, in June of 1959. If the union is consummated, it would create a new denomination of about 100,000 communicants in some 2,000 congregations.

At Denver—Mounting nationalism is posing difficult problems for American missionaries in many countries, according to the Rev. Vincent Brushwyler, general foreign missions director of the Conservative Baptist Association. Brushwyler told the association’s 15th annual meeting that “there is an increasing resentment toward America and toward our missionaries in India and many nations of the Middle East.” He reported the association now has 365 missionaries in 12 foreign fields.

At Miami Beach—Resolutions passed by nearly 500 delegates at the 73rd annual meeting of the Evangelical Mission Covenant Church of America urged boycotts if necessary to (a) curb indecent literature, and (b) to discourage materialistic advertising.

At Cape May, New Jersey—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Alabama pastor and a Negro leader, said his race has developed “a sense of dignity and self-respect” since World War II. King addressed more than 2,000 Quakers at the biennial meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (General Conference).

At Des Moines, Iowa—The Baptist General Conference of America voted, in deference to its Canadian churches, to drop “of America” from its name. The change will become effective with an altered constitution in about a year. In 1945, the group dropped the word “Swedish” from its name.

At West Lafayette, Indiana—United Presbyterian Women, formed with the merger of Presbyterian and United Presbyterian women’s groups, dedicated themselves anew to an active program of evangelism. Some 5,000 women attended the week-long merger meeting.

At Philadelphia—The Rev. David P. Johnson of Kitchener, Ontario, was elected to a second three-year term as president of the General Convention of the New Jerusalem in the U. S. A. (Swedenborgian) at its annual meeting.

Canada

Baptists Waning?

“Statistical reports suggest that our numbers are on the wane,” the Rev. J. Frank Patch, general secretary of the Baptist Union of Western Canada, told 260 delegates attending the group’s 85th convention in Regina.

In contrast, the Rev. Arnold T. Ohrn, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, told 8,000 at the Baptist World Youth Conference in Toronto that “there is nothing in church history to equal” Baptist growth. Nonetheless, Baptists are too often “oblivious, indifferent, and unconcerned” about evangelism, said Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa, secretary of evangelism of the American Baptist Convention. A conference rally addressed by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, a Baptist, attracted 15,500 persons.

Other Dominion developments:

—The annual convention of the American Lutheran Church in Canada was told that bilingualism is dying out among U. S. Lutherans even though Canada needs pastors fluent in both German and English.

—Commercial Sunday sport was made legal in Vancouver over church protests.

—A Sacred Heart League rally witnessed by 25,000 heard progress reports against indecent literature in Montreal.

Britain

Lambeth Opening

The ninth Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops convened in London this month. More than 300 delegates were on hand for the once-a-decade meeting.

The Lambeth Conference is the only central authority among Anglican churches. It is a deliberative assembly whose “duty” in formulating conclusions and spiritual advice for the fellowship of Anglican churches is “not command and coercion but guidance and persuasion.”

After a week of joint sessions, the bishops split into committees. Topics being discussed are the authority and message of the Bible, church unity, reconciling international conflicts, the family in modern society, and progress in the Anglican communion.

A “message to the world” will be drafted in the plenary session which is to conclude the conference August 10. The report will be released later.

Bishops were meeting at the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dwindling Ranks

Annual assemblies of principal Protestant churches in Northern Ireland found problems of church extension and dwindling non-Catholic ranks.

The Methodist conference meeting in Belfast and the Presbyterian General Assembly meeting in Dublin both approved arrangements for closer cooperation in areas where Protestants are few and in a new district near Belfast where a second Presbyterian-Methodist joint congregation is to be established.

Middle East

Nature Of A War

Maronite Patriarch Paul Meouchi is credited with saving the Lebanon civil war from becoming a solely Christian-Moslem religious conflict.

Christian Arabs reportedly believe that issues behind the revolution are now relegated to the political realm because Meouchi allegedly opposes the government of Maronite President Camille Chamoun.

E. N.

Israeli Orthodoxy

Orthodox Jewish religious standards spelled trouble for the government of Israel last month.

Minister of the Interior Israel Bay Yehouda ruled that citizens would be considered Jewish on their own word, whereupon two of his colleagues withdrew from the government. Fears were expressed that the ruling was liable to destroy the 2,000-year-old Jewish tradition of identity between the nation and religion, since children of mixed marriages might then be registered as being of the Jewish faith.

Conservative Jews elsewhere saw additional reason to protest. Some 200 representatives of the World Union of Orthodox Jewish Communities paraded in front of the White House as a demonstration against the drafting of women into the army of Israel and the building of a swimming pool for both sexes in Jerusalem. They also charged that religious demonstrators in Israel are jailed.

The Central Conference of American Rabbis, on the other hand, challenged orthodox monopoly in Israel. At a meeting in Chicago, the group announced it would seek joint action with conservative Jews to promote non-orthodox religious practices in the Holy Land. Orthodox rabbis are the only Jewish clergy in Israel allowed to perform such functions as marriages, divorces and burials.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Dr. Umphrey Lee, 65, chancellor emeritus of Southern Methodist University, in Dallas … Israel A. Smith, 82, president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in Bethany, Missouri … the Rt. Rev. Herbert Gresford Jones, 88, Britain’s oldest Anglican bishop, in Liverpool … Dr. Edward Scribner Ames, 88, minister and philosopher, in Chicago … Alexandros III, 90, Greek Orthodox patriarch, in Damascus … Ignatius Moubarak, Maronite archbishop of Beirut … Dr. George Russell Olt, 62, Anderson College dean and Cincinnati pastor, in Anderson, Indiana … Dr. Sam Higginbottom, 84, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., on Long Island … the Rev. Alexander A. Pieters, 87, retired Presbyterian missionary to Korea, in Pasadena, California … Miss Frances T. Wooding, 59, Presbyterian missionary-educator in Iran, in New Haven, Connecticut … Dr. Carl Heath Kopf, author and pastor of the First Congregational Church, Washington, D. C.

Elections: As moderator of the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches, Dr. Ray E. Phillips … as chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, Dr. Ramsey Pollard … as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Robert E. Naylor … as a Methodist Board of Education staff member, the Rev. Elmer A. Thompson … as president of American Association of Theological Schools, Dr. Ernest C. Colwell … as president of the Evangelical Mission Covenant Church, Dr. Clarence A. Nelson … as president of the National Sunday School and Baptist Training Union Congress, Dr. O. Clay Maxwell … as moderator of the Church of the Brethren, Dr. William M. Beahm … as president-designate for 1959–60 of the Methodist Conference of Ireland, the Rev. R. E. Ker … as moderator of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Dr. B. L. Hamilton … as president of the Lutheran Free Church, Dr. John M. Stensvaag … as editor of Crusader, official monthly newsmagazine of the American Baptist Convention, Paul C. Allen … as Ministerial President of the Hungarian Reformed Church, the country’s largest Protestant body, Dr. Albert Bereczky … as editor of the Canadian Presbyterian Record, the Rev. DeCourcy H. Rayner … as chairman of the board of directors of Emmaus Bible School, Dr. Theo J. McCully … as president of Christian Medical Society, Dr. Ralph Blocksma.

Appointment: As dean of Southeastern Baptist Seminary, Dr. Olin T. Binkley … as professor at Drew University, Dr. Will Herberg … as faculty member in charge of the Missions Department at Toronto Bible College, the Rev. Douglas C. Percy … to the staff of Word of Life Fellowship, Inc., Dr. Charles J. Woodridge … as news director of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Ashley P. Cox, Jr.

Resignations: As staff member of the National Lutheran Council, the Rev. Charles P. Carroll … as staff member of the Methodist General Board of Education, the Rev. R. Delbert Byrum … as minister of the First Presbyterian Church, Princeton, Indiana, the Rev. Edward W. Greenfield (to become editor of Faith and Freedom for Spiritual Mobilization).

Construction: Commenced on a new office building for the Young Calvinist Federation, youth organization of the Christian Reformed Church, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Grant: To the American Association of Theological Schools Fund, Inc., $500,000 from Sealantic Fund.

Digest: Christopher Dawson, British Catholic historian and author named to be first guest professor of Roman Catholic theological studies at Harvard Divinity School, was refused a United States visa for health reasons … Don Biagio Bailo, a parish priest in Italy, was acquitted of defamation charges stemming from accusations against couples married outside the church … This fall, Wheaton Academy becomes independent of Wheaton College. In recognition of the college’s centennial year, 1959 Illinois auto license plates will bear Wheaton colors, orange and cobalt blue … Ground has been purchased for Hawaii’s first Presbyterian church.

TA THUNG

I have just returned from the beach. It is such a relief to get away from the city crowds on the street and get among the city crowds at the shore. I love to watch the ocean. Since I couldn’t see it for people, I decided to watch people. Ocean watchers, prone on the sand, can observe the bubble and wash of spent waves, the boisterous dance of the junior combers, and beyond, in endless line, the proud plunging plumes of the great breakers. People watchers, from a similar posture, can observe padding feet, mincing legs, peeling haunches, paunches, sagging silhouettes, and the endless line of beach umbrellas—until a rush of running feet ends all vision in a blinding sandstorm.

The charm of the beach is equaled only by the subway in achieving the modern ideal of “togetherness.” Even the Iron Curtain is no screen against togetherness. The Chinese Communists call it Ta Thung, “the Great Togetherness,” a phrase from the classics describing a legendary golden age. Ta Thung can also mean “great similarity,” a remarkably apt term for the drab, mechanized uniformity of totalitarian togetherness. Seaside togetherness is not mechanized or drab, but just as uniform, in spite of the best efforts of swimsuit stylists.

Too often togetherness is confused with the Christian ideal. The idea of heaven which masses lounging saints on a golden strand can be forbidding to a man fresh from the seashore. Dante saw unending proximity as one of the torments of hell.

What makes comradeship a delight, and a great host inspiring? Not that they are together, but what they share together. Christian fellowship is koinonia, a sharing in the blessings of God. Christians are together with one another because they are together with Christ.

Without this relation to the Giver and Meaning of life, togetherness is only crowded emptiness. Men surrender their personal freedom to the packed prisons of mass society and the modern state in vain flight from loneliness—and God. We find one another when we are found of Him, and join the singing saints in the Ta Thung in Christ.

EUTYCHUS

FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK

For those who think the Christian observance of the first day an aberration, let me refer (beyond the New Testament intimations) to Justin Martyr’s First Apology (A.D. 136–150): “Now we all hold our common meeting on the day of the Sun, because it is the first day, on which God changed the darkness and matter in his making the world, and Jesus Christ, our Savior, on the same day rose from the dead.…” Ignatius makes the distinction between the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day very emphatic in his Epistle to the Magnesians (Ch. 9, 10).…

Philadelphia, Pa.

A common assertion of the SDAs is that the Roman Church displaced Sabbath observance with Sunday … There was no Roman Church in the begininng of Christianity. The Apostolic Constitutions, accepted as historical, tells about worship on the Lord’s Day.…

United Lutheran

Eau Claire, Wisc.

Eaton R. Burrows … wants to know if anyone has gone back to the year one and traced all the weeks down to the present date to be sure we have the right days (“Eutychus and his kin,” May 26 issue). Yes, such a book has been written by Dr. Dimbelby, a noted scientist and astronomer. The book … All Past Time … proves that the first year of time began on Sunday … and … that the weekly cycle has never been broken, or altered.

Arlington, Calif.

God … knew what day he was talking about when he commanded its [Sabbath] observance at Sinai.… Jesus knew what he was doing when he worshiped on the Sabbath.…

Hamilton SDA Church

Hamilton, Ont.

It is absolutely erroneous for us to assume that the ancient Jewish (Commandment) Sabbath always fell on the day that corresponds to our Saturday, or that the weekly cycle of days has come down in unbroken sequence from Eden. In ancient times the first day of the Jewish New Year was automatically under Sanhedrin law the first Sabbath, thus the day changed from year to year, or rather the cycle of days changed according to lunar reckoning. The Sabbath did not fall every seventh day as our Saturday and Sunday do now. At this time, every day began and ended at sunrise and sunset. The Jews in dispersion found it impossible to hold to the ancient Hebrew calendar with its realignment of days according to lunar astrology differing each year, and about 360 A.D., in the fourth century after the inauguration of our Lord’s Day, … the Jewish rulers throughout the world, at Alexandria, Egypt, established the Saturday Sabbath in accord with the universal calendar cycle. Hence the Christian Lord’s Day is of older observance than the Saturday Sabbath.

Wolff Memorial Presbyterian Church

Newark, N. J.

SDAs go all out to keep only a part of the Fourth Commandment and overlook the rest. Sabbath labor of servants is … definitely prohibited. The hewers of wood and drawers of water, whose labor is clearly under the ban, have in the 20th century moved into the pumping stations and public utility plant control rooms. I challenge any SDA to show how he can flush a toilet or observe a traffic light at any time between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday without violating his favorite commandment. It is impossible to keep the Fourth Commandment since the Jews lost their sovereignty and their land.

Winnetka, Ill.

Every breach of the law incurred the penalty of stoning within hours or days. Such condemnation must be as unavoidable for disobedience for those under law now.

Gerrards Cross, Bucks, U. K.

It does seem passing strange that it should be considered tantamount to pronouncing Ellen White “immaculate” for an author to merely refer to her as having been granted the high privilege of acting as the Lord’s stenographer or general reporter of much of his special warning and instruction to his people in the perplexing situations of these perilous closing days of earth’s history! No such immaculance has ever been generally assumed for Isaiah, Jeremiah or John.

Beacon Light Mission

Minneapolis, Minn.

It is interesting to note in Revelation 19:8, RSV, in speaking of the bride, John says, “It was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” Could it be the Adventists have a right to have at least “one stitch … of [their] own making” … in their celestial robes?

San Gabriel, Calif.

Before me is one of their [SDA] decision cards.… “My decision. Jesus, I come to thee. Recognizing that the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath, is the day of the Lord, I promise with the help of God, to observe it as His holy day and obey all the rest of the holy commandments.”

In Uberlandia [Brazil] this group managed to seduce one family from the Presbyterian church and half a dozen from the Methodist. We “gladly” say goodbye to those who find the fellowship in another evangelical church more to their liking. I am no strong sectarian. However, it is distressing to see a group infiltrate and slander and use all manner of deceit to win adherents, and do it in the name of Christ.

PAUL J. COBLENTZ

W. Brazil Mission, Presby. Church, U.S.

Paracatu, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Thanks for articles on church unity (May 26 issue). These should stop controversy on SDA. “External union is the product and expression of internal (spiritual) unity.” Both my Christian love and my business have caused me to try hard for fellowship with SDAs, but it is very difficult (impossible in a true spirit of fellowship).

Marquette, Mich.

Having once been an Adventist myself, and under the delusion of such doctrines as their “sanctuary doctrine,” and their investigative judgment theory, and having finally realized that those teachings are out of harmony with the Word of God, I left them voluntarily … and sought fellowship with other Sabbatarian Groups.… All of us connected with … The Gathering Call … magazine … were formerly Adventists. We felt the call to try to help our former brethren see through some of their delusions.

Asst. Ed. and Mgr.

The Gathering Call

Riverside, Calif.

ETERNALLY SEEKING

Dr. Wilbur Smith’s … review of Bishop Oxnam’s … A Testament of Faith (June 9 issue) reveals a most interesting analogy. Bishop Oxnam extends his thinking beyond Biblical precision. Dr. Smith conforms to the most rigid … interpretation. The point … involves freedom of thought in a theological field of infinite interpretation.… Bishop Oxnam may not be right in his own conclusions on major theological issues—but his spirit is absolutely right because it is broad enough to be stimulating and eternally seeking.

Shelton, Conn.

It is nothing unusual for a Methodist bishop to hold several high positions at once.… In his one-year position as president of the Council of Bishops, Bishop Oxnam is not the voice of Methodism. He can speak for the bishops only when they authorize him to do so. He can speak for Methodism only when he follows the Discipline, concerning which the Judicial Council is the court of final appeals, and not the Council of Bishops. Anything else that he may say or write is private opinion. Wherein the Bishop’s theology does not follow the Discipline, which follows the Scripture, it is regrettable. However, as Dr. Smith’s own Presbyterian Church officially teaches the questionable doctrines of limited atonement, perseverance of the saints, and unconditional election—all as unscriptural and repellent to many orthodox Christians as the worst errors imputed to Oxnam—the reviewer is singularly unsuited to throw stones.

First Methodist Church

Belen, N. M.

Such statements as, “Someday the Bishop will know, before the judgment seat of Christ, what Christ thinks of ‘theological discussions,’ ” leave very little to the imagination.… Thank God that he alone makes judgments as to who is right and who is wrong, for I feel that if either Wilbur Smith or Bromley Oxnam were to establish the criteria for salvation many areas of Christendom would be doomed to eternal damnation.

Aldersgate Methodist Church

Wilmington, Del.

May I remind Wilbur M. Smith that Billy Graham has also said any number of times that he is not a theologian. Considering Graham was president of a Bible school why should Smith be so alarmed at our intrepid Bishop Oxnam’s admission that he is no theologian. Without having read Oxnam’s “A Testament of Faith,” I would suppose it is at least as theologically sound as “Peace with God,” which I have read.

First Methodist Church

Sebring, Ohio

I deeply appreciate the fine … reviews that you have published … of books by Fosdick and Oxnam.

Evart, Mich.

In the … fine … review Dr. Smith mentions that Dr. Oxnam is “the president of the Board of Trustees of Westminster Theological Seminary.” … This is a Methodist seminary, now located at Westminster, Maryland. This institution is moving to Washington, D. C., this fall and is changing its name to Wesley Theological Seminary. Bishop Oxnam has never had the remotest connection of any sort with Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. His theological positions are, of course, abhorrent to us.

Exec. Sec.

Westminster Theol. Sem.

Philadelphia, Pa.

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS

From the bottom of my heart I want to thank you for the splendid report of the Southern Baptist Convention (June 9 issue).… We Southern Baptists make lots of mistakes but we do sincerely love the Lord and want to win people to him. Your report seems to me to catch the spirit of our convention better than any other I have seen.

Editor

Baptist Messenger

Oklahoma City, Okla.

Thank you for your helpful interpretation and … your genuine concern in the field of religious news. In a day when material things can be blown to bits in seconds and the dimensions of time and space have lost much of their significance, there is a hunger on the part of people for spiritual values which sustain in times of crisis. We feel that you perform a real service in taking note of these values and their significance in modern society.

Exec. Sec.

Executive Committee

Southern Baptist Convention

Nashville, Tenn.

Thank you for your splendid story.… I thought this a most constructive and enlightening piece.

Executive Com.

Southern Baptist Convention

Nashville, Tenn.

COMMUNITY ETHICS

In reference to the … comment on gambling in … “Current Religious Thought” (May 26 issue) … it is high time Christians, both laymen and ministers, raise their voices against the deplorable conditions found in many of our communities. In our area gambling is wide open along with its accompanying vices. The county officials were approached by a local ministerial group concerning the matter and were told that because of the widespread corruption in both local and county authorities, nothing could be done. Some of our communities are so full of this vice, seemingly protected rather than halted by law officers, that a good Christian parent dreads the day that his children will become of age. No good Christian desires to bring his children up in a community where every good ethic taught in the home is denied and made light of by the deplorable ethics of his community.

Salem Evangelical Congregational

Church, Mahanoy City, Pa.

CULTURE IN THE BASEMENT

What a beautiful, touching, and unusual activity is beautifully described … by Robert K. Churchill (June 9 issue).

Didcot, Berks, U. K.

INSOLUBLE DILEMMA

I was very much interested to see your note concerning the discussion now going on at Harvard (May 12 issue). It seems to me that the function of a university is to teach and not attempt to fulfill the role of a church. If the university does its job well, whether its administrators are Christians or otherwise, they will include courses, competently taught, in the Christian religion. But when the university plays church, it asks for trouble. Exhibit “A”: the ultimately insoluble dilemma of the Jewish couple’s request. The only answer is an uneasy and transparent compromise on both sides. You can no more mix church and university than church and state. The university has no just claim to return to anything but President Eliot’s “minimum,” pathetic as it may be to the theologian.

Lutheran Student-Work Committee

Philadelphia, Pa.

PREACHING TO THE TIMES

William H. Beckmann (May 26 issue) … should read again the prophecy of Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or Amos. In ancient days the presbyteries in the church in Scotland inquired of its ministerial members whether they had “preached to the times.” Why not the same inquiry today.

Lisbon, N. Y.

CHURCH OR CHAPEL

Your paper seems to include … every denomination … as a “Church” … There is nothing to stop people … breaking away from the original Church and calling themselves the “new church” … but that will never make them a “Church”—possibly a “chapel” which is the correct name for present-day sects.

Church of England

Stow Bedon, Norfolk

CHRISTIANITY TODAY … seems to be written, chiefly, by nonconformist ministers outside the Church who have no authority to teach, and obviously do not know the faith, since they elect to remain outside the Church.

Dean Prior Vicarage

Buckfastleigh, Devon

I have left my parish in Suffolk, and the Church of England, and have become a Roman Catholic.… I feel I must write to express my appreciation of this periodical and my admiration of the very important principles it stands for—for instance, the authority of Holy Scripture and the original teaching of the Church on the Person of Christ. Besides this, I remain a firm supporter of Dr. Billy Graham because of his magnificent presentation of these fundamental truths of our religion.

Ipswich, England

May I say that I consider CHRISTIANITY TODAY the finest piece of Christian literature being published at the present time. One may not perhaps agree 100% with everything written, that would not be possible; but in no other publication of its kind, known to me, is there to be found such a wealth of sound doctrine, learned exposition and interesting and valuable information.

The Vicarage

Frome, Somerset

I warmly appreciate the substantial and dynamic quality of its many articles, with their clear and positive presentation of the original faith and practice. This is in strong contrast with most British theological journals, which for the work-a-day minister are too often merely technical and vague. In an age of theological dilution it is vastly encouraging to find that there are still so many first-class minds, with the necessary scholastic equipment, who maintain and articulate the original simplicities of the Word of God, and their relevance to these modern times. I pray that wherever it is sent it will challenge the superficiality of prevailing liberalism, and have a tonic effect upon the thinking of those who stand by a genuine scriptural Christianity.

Methodist Supt. Minister

Castle town, Isle of Man, U. K.

READER TO READER

How anyone can take the stand of H. D. Sanders (Apr. 28 issue) and live with himself is beyond comprehension.… Idol worship never produces sane reasoning. We are persuaded that the great American idol today is the naked human female form!

United Presbyterian

Franklinville, N. Y.

There are some like A. A. Cone … who … see what is facing us.… I am acquainted with a man who is a converted Roman Catholic who can mention time after time when the Catholic church and her puppet priests and people have made attempts on his life but have not as yet succeeded.… When seven-year-old boys are threatened with excommunication because they take a Gospel of John from a Protestant minister, what is that but slavery.…

Writers use the term … “Adventism” as though it refers only to SDA. I am of the Advent Christian … denomination which is a completely evangelical group.…

Advent Christian

Crouseville, Me.

With reference to Mr. H. Hawkin’s remarks (Apr. 28 issue) … to present Jesus on the cross would mean that he did not “resurrexit.” I might understand the symbol of the Cross but not the crucifix.

South Boston, Mass.

Mr. L. H. Saunders … in a letter (Apr. 28 issue) … objects to the term “born-again Christian” … However, the term “Christian” in many circles, has come to be a synonym for “Gentile”.… Though the terminology is redundant, nonetheless it is often needed and may … afford an opportunity to witness to … saving grace.…

Tucson, Ariz.

A clear apprehension of the biblical revelation of man bears more significantly on the character of evangelism than is often recognized. Many extravagances, weaknesses, and failures in present-day evangelism come from a deficient understanding of biblical anthropology—the doctrine of man. To be successful the physician must know the nature of the human body. An evangelist has to know the nature of the human soul. And he who would serve the Church in the task of evangelism must evaluate that soul in the light of revealed truth. However much the books of nature and history can reveal of man, Scripture stands as the infallible source of true knowledge. To neglect such a basic text is indolence of the worst order.

What a minister believes about man determines the nature of his preparation, the content of his message, and method of appeal. Component parts of public worship are often selected with a view to the character of man, particularly in evangelistic services. The depth and passion of the preacher’s prayers reveal his comprehension of man’s natural condition. Important consequences—good or evil—depend in great measure on the evangelist’s comprehension of the true nature of the human soul.

Biblical Anthropology

The doctrine of man, revealed in Scripture, vividly sets forth the tremendous and difficult task of evangelism. We observed that a physician ceases to work when life leaves the body of his patient. But the evangelist begins with something that is dead; for according to Scripture, man is dead in trespasses and sin (Eph. 2:1), he is of the flesh (John 3:6), shapen in iniquity (Ps. 51:5), his heart is deceitful above all things and is desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9), in his condition he is unable to receive the things of the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14), without the restraining influence of the Spirit every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is continually evil (Gen. 6:5), he seeketh not after God (Rom. 3:11), and doeth no good (Ps. 14:3). What can be a more discouraging estimate of man than this?

Spiritual deadness, according to biblical revelation, finds its historical and causal origin in the voluntary apostasy of Adam. We read in Romans 5:12–21 that all men experience death, not in themselves, nor in their parents, but in Adam. All men without exception died in Adam: “wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). But strangely absent from so much modern evangelism is just such reference to the specific and historical cause of spiritual death and its corollary, the objective righteousness of the second Adam as requisite to salvation. Martin Luther’s conversion occurred when he perceived that the gospel of Christ revealed the righteousness of God. And it is just as important for the sinner to know that Christ’s obedience is imputed to his own account through faith, as it is to know that at one time Christ died for his sin on the cross (Rom. 1:17; 5:19; Phil. 3:9). Often forgotten is that precious title of Christ in Jeremiah 23:6, “the Lord our righteousness.” Yet there lies the depth, strength and durableness of Reformation evangelism. It is true that some would shrug all this off as unnecessary theological detail; but is that not shrugging off a vital scriptural teaching, without which a sinner remains ignorant of his relationship to the Adam of death and the Adam of life?

This desperate situation of fallen man also implies the tremendous power that was required to rescue him. The same mighty and miraculous power that was necessary to raise Christ from physical death must needs be exerted as well on behalf of the spiritually dead (Eph. 1:19, 20). This truth is echoed in Colossians 2:12, 13: “Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him.” Regeneration, spoken of here, is likened to a passing from death to life, a resurrection from the dead.

Spiritual death signifies a state of alienation from God and a loss of the moral image of God. It is an estrangement wherein men walk not according to the law of God, but “according to the course of this world” (Eph. 2:2). The ungodly spirit of the world governs their conduct; loving, serving, and worshiping God do not actuate their lives. They are children of darkness who walk “in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph. 4:17, 18). It should be observed that alienation from God issues in more than inactive deadness—it leads to active opposition, as we note in Jesus’ crucifixion and the stoning of Stephen. And this is what the evangelist must accept, this biblical evaluation of man’s ignorance, blindness, deadness to the Spirit and hatefulness if he is to undertake at all the mission of evangelism in the Church.

Implications For Evangelism

But how can the spiritually dead be quickened and made alive? Certainly not through eloquent speaking or the wisdom of this world. The state of the unsaved sinner is such that the evangelist must distrust any power of popular persuasion, thunder, or terror of the law. However much he has the art to depict the beauty of holiness or the blessedness of a virtuous life, this can produce no motion within the spiritually dead. He may instill dread by his descriptions of the lake of fire and brimstone or implant longings in the hearts of his people for the glories of paradise, delineate in dramatic fashion the sufferings of Christ or describe the manifold love of God, but none of these skills in themselves can impart to a sinner life. Such a one is wholly insensitive to the spiritual truth and beauty of God.

The biblical doctrine of man, therefore, makes necessary an evangelist’s complete dependence upon almighty God in the effecting of man’s salvation. Only God has the power to give sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. Only he can create light in the darkened and distorted understanding of the unregenerate. And until the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, infuses divine life into a man’s soul, no man can put forth a hand of faith to lay hold upon Christ. No man can come forth out of the tomb of death, except by the voice of the Son of God: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” This is the source of power and life.

While the power to awaken the dead is the Lord’s he has ordained means and does use instruments for the carrying out of his purpose. One of these, of course, is the preaching of the Cross and Christ crucified: “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21). This does not mean foolish preaching. It means preaching what the world considers foolishness through which God is pleased to save those that believe. One common fault with evangelists today is that their messages contain a minimum of Gospel and a maximum of the extraneous—the witty, frivolous, and the inane (a form of man’s “wisdom”). And what is worse, they evidently mistake their foolish talk for the preaching of the Cross. Paul, knowing that God had ordained the Gospel to establish the faith, depreciated the excellency of speech and enticing words of man’s wisdom lest the preaching of the Cross be of no effect. And the Lord blessed his faithful preaching with the power of the Spirit.

A striking and encouraging illustration of how effective the preaching of the Word to the dead can be is seen in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek. 37:1–14). The prophet is shown a valley of dry bones and is urged to preach over them. He preaches as he is directed and indicates the marvelous results in these words: “So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.” The significant fact here is that the preaching of the Word alone was insufficient to restore life, and the prophet was directed to prophesy to the wind. Undoubtedly the wind symbolized the Holy Spirit and Ezekiel, in effect, was to pray, for the outpouring of him who alone could give breath to the house of Israel. It was thus the Word and the Spirit made a living army out of a valley of dry bones. God’s means for quickening the spiritual dead in the twentieth century are no different from those at the time of Ezekiel, and the same blessed results may always be expected.

The figure of death which is used here in no way implies that natural man is destitute of intellectual power. Spiritual deadness consists in the perversion of the pure intellectual capacity created in man by God. And in regeneration God merely takes what he has made and gives it a new and holy direction. The true evangelist knows, therefore, that he is addressing the unconverted as rational beings, and must confront them with the truth of the Gospel, beginning with the terrors of the law, the fact of eternal punishment, the way of salvation and then the gracious but urgent invitation to it. To a corrupt and depraved generation the Lord said through Isaiah, “Come now, and let us reason together … though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow: though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isa. 1:18). Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come before Felix and Drusilla. Thus Isaiah and Paul addressed themselves to the intellect and conscience of the unregenerate. Both would recognize that the actual change within a man is engendered by the Holy Spirit. Paul declared, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.”

Biblical Precedence

It is true that much criticism has been directed against the means by which people are often drawn to the evangelistic meetings. Many deplore fanfare and Madison Avenue tactics as secular and undignified. However, these means are many times employed for the purpose of attracting average people to the preaching of the Gospel and it does have biblical precedent. In the second chapter of Acts, we note one rather spectacular way of gathering a multitude. It consisted of the rushing of the wind, cloven tongues like as of fire, and the speaking of other tongues. And when this was advertised abroad, a multitude came together (Acts 2:6) and Peter preached a sermon that was instrumental in saving some three thousand souls.

Another spectacular means which God used to bring one soul under the preaching of the Word was an earthquake (Acts 16). By what may be termed common grace a man can be attracted to hear the gospel, but only by special supernatural grace can he be made to respond to it. He may be brought to the pool by various means, but he can only be healed as God stirs the waters (John 5:4). One need not be greatly concerned how a sinner is brought under the preaching of the Gospel, as long as the method does not become a substitute for true preaching in the power of the Word and demonstration of the Spirit.

Knowledge Of Scripture

How carefully then must an evangelist’s message be prepared. Superficial knowledge of the Scripture can only produce superficial preaching and in turn superficial response. This means, therefore, that he ought to give to the Word his most careful attention, that he be, in short, a theologian, knowing well the essential teachings revealed in Holy Scripture. His calling to the preaching of the Gospel in simplicity and clarity does not give him margin to be simple (ignorant) of knowledge. God’s Word has the effect of making the simple wise (Ps. 19:7; 119:130). “Simple,” of course, means “not blended, mixed or compounded with something else.” When an evangelist adulterates the Gospel with irrelevant humor, anecdotes and personal experiences, he comes far from proclaiming the simple Gospel wherein he boasts, and it is that which God has specifically ordained as the means to awakening the dead.

It is the Spirit of God that gives power to resurrect a dead soul, however. And here is where prayer for that power becomes one of the most important factors in evangelism. Billy Graham constantly attributes the conversion of souls in his ministry to the prayers of God’s people. Regeneration of a man’s soul depends wholly upon God’s grace and power. Would that more evangelists understood this. They seek by human means to bring about “decisions,” they feel that they have failed unless they can present a good count; some will even stoop as low as to trick people into coming forward at meetings. But of what avail is it that the church be thus filled with the dead? Is that way more profitable and more glorious than appealing to God for true regenerating power?

Evangelism, if exercised according to the nature of man as revealed in Scripture, will have none of the extravagances, idiosyncrasies, or weaknesses that have justified so much criticism toward it, and it will certainly induce men to greater dependence upon the Lord of life. Only God can quicken the soul that is dead in trespasses and sins.

Past All Understanding

Tired? Let go!

Hear the “Come unto Me,”

Of His heavenly voice,

If rested you’d be.

Lonely? Look up!

Let the world grow dim;

There is steadying strength

When you journey with Him.

Hungry? Draw near!

For a feast is spread

Of living water

And heavenly bread.

Doubting? Fear not!

For the promise holds true,

That the child of God’s care

Shall his faith renew.

So, rested and steadied

And nourished and stilled,

Claim each promise of God,

And each need shall be filled.

—Sue C. Boynton

The evangelical status of Seventh-day Adventism has been questioned in recent issues of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Contributors and correspondents participating in the debate voice appreciation of many features of Seventh-day Adventism—zeal of its lay workers, faithful “observance” of the Saturday-Sabbath despite economic disadvantage and cultural pressures, evidence that detailed doctrinal confession and patterns of behavior do not retard church growth or community impact, and tithing of income for support of the ministry before church offerings are given for missions and other purposes. Adventist acceptance of many basic evangelical tenets, moreover, is not in dispute. Even the formal Adventist insistence on the perpetual and universal validity of the moral law as divine standard of conduct is widely regarded as an emphasis unfortunately neglected by many evangelicals. What is in question, however, is the advocacy of certain doctrines peculiar to Seventh-day Adventism. CHRISTIANITY TODAY has correlated these criticisms in the form of specific questions and has addressed them to Dr. Frank H. Yost, formerly Professor of Church History, and of Systematic Theology, at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in Takoma Park, Washington, D. C., and Editor of Liberty: A Magazine of Religious Freedom. His reply is printed below.—ED.

1. Is the General Conference the only authoritative voice of Seventh-day Adventists?

Yes, in the ecclesiastical sense. Every Seventh-day Adventist is a free man, answerable to God, walking under the blessing of the Holy Spirit, who illuminates the Scriptures, the norm of his spiritual and moral experience. But the General Conference in session is the highest administrative body, and is alone qualified to speak for the entire body of Seventh-day Adventist believers.

2. Has the General Conference endorsed or approved the views recently enunciated in the publication Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine (Review and Herald Pub. Assn., Washington, D. C., 1957)?

Not in the administrative or creedal sense. The book is not a creed. Seventh-day Adventists purpose to have no creed. In our opinion, creeds tend to limit the spiritual freedom of individuals, or to produce creedal loyalty rather than loyalty to the Scriptures. Both of these, Seventh-day Adventists intend to avoid. But the book has been widely read, both in manuscript form and since publication, by the ministry and the laity, with general acceptance. “The officers of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists felt that the material appearing in this volume would not only be helpful to the members of their own church but that it would also furnish reliable information on Adventist beliefs and teachings to the many inquiries, that, in recent years, have arisen regarding Adventist doctrines. They have therefore requested that this book be published for general use with the fervent prayer and hope that it may be useful in making clearer the way of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Questions on Doctrine, p. 10).

3. (a) Is it acknowledged that Saturday observance lacks precedent in the long sweep of church history until its 19th century introduction by Captain Joseph Bates of New Bedford, Mass.?

No. We have at hand documentary source evidence (in the technical historical sense) that the seventh-day Sabbath has been observed by Christian bodies at many geographic points in Europe and the East, and at many times in past Christian history. We recognize and emphasize that these bodies were the “sects” of Christian history, not the creedal groups. However, history does not establish or validate scriptural doctrine or scriptural observances. It can only illustrate them.

The most marked and significant revival of Sabbath observance in the post-Reformation period was by the Baptists, and it was by Baptists, as well as by individual Bible students, that Adventists of the early 19th century were admonished to follow the Bible in keeping the seventh-day Sabbath. Seventh-day Adventists acknowledge freely their debt to these Sabbath-keeping Baptists in respect to this observance, as well as the practice of immersion baptism.

3. (b) Is it acknowledged that the early Church specially marked the first day of the week, and that the New Testament epistles specifically refer to the seventh day only by way of prohibiting observance of the Jewish Sabbath?

Again, No. The New Testament emphasizes repeatedly the spiritually practical, nonlegalistic observance of the Sabbath, from the example and admonition of Jesus Christ, who asserted his lordship over the Sabbath (Mark 2:28), and rebuked pharisaical Sabbath observance (Matt. 12:1–13), through Paul’s own repeated examples (Acts 13:14–44; 16:12–15; 17:1–4; 18:1–11) to the “Lord’s day” of John’s experience in Rev. 1:10. What our Lord had to say about the keeping of the seventh day was patently not to negate the day, but to rebuke pharisaical interpretation of it, which led to abuses in its observance. “The texts of the New Testament specifically mentioning the first day of the week cannot rightly be construed as enjoining the observance of Sunday, or as transferring the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first day” (Questions on Doctrine, pp. 151f.).

As a matter of fact, reliable church historians, falling into the category of historical sources, record that both the seventh-day Sabbath, and the Sunday Sabbath, after its weekly observance was introduced at Rome in the second century, were used by Christians generally for worship, side by side, decade after decade, till as late as the 5th century (Sozomen, Church History, bk. 7, chap. 19, and Socrates, Church History, bk. 5, chap. 22; in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, Vol. II, pp. 390, 132). This historical fact shows clearly, of course, that the rejection of Sabbath [Saturday] observance was not apostolic (cf. Questions on Doctrine, pp. 149–202).

4. Waving aside Seventh-day Adventist adherence to the Arminian view that believers may lose their salvation, the question remains whether the believer possesses salvation—on Adventist principles—on the sole ground of the atonement without any admixture of works. If Saturday-Sabbath observance is the special sign of spiritual obedience by the true saints of God (so that something man does specially qualifies him for heaven), is not the Saturday-Sabbath given a special priority in relation to salvation, and justification specially conditioned on its observance? If men now or in a later age must keep the Saturday-Sabbath to avoid forfeiture of salvation, then is not salvation a matter of both faith and works, since the righteousness of Christ no longer is the sole ground of the sinner’s hope but requires as its correlate an element of salvation by works?

God has a standard for all men to live by, and that is his own holiness and righteousness, as seen in the life of our blessed Lord and expressed in the Ten Commandment law (Rom. 7:12). Failure to meet the terms of his standard is sin (1 John 3:4; Rom. 7:7–14). We are saved from sin by the grace of God alone, through the vicarious sacrificial atonement of Jesus Christ our only Saviour and sinbearer. However, to continue in known sin, or to repeat sin, is to deny or to frustrate the saving grace of God (Rom. 6:1, 2, 11–18). The character of God, the example of the sinless Jesus Christ on earth, the standard of the Ten Commandments, and the will of God as expressed in the life and teaching of our Lord, comprise one holy pattern for the positive godly life, and define conversely the nature of sin. The keeping of the commandments, in any spiritually significant sense, can only be through the power of God. Indeed, only he who has been saved by grace, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, can keep the law of God (Rom. 8:1–9; 1 John 2:3–6; 3:22–24; 5:1–4). An excellent recent presentation of the relation of the Christian to the Ten Commandments is Harold Lindsell and Charles J. Woodbridge’s A Handbook of Christian Truth (published by Revell, Westwood, New Jersey, 1953, chap. 13). All Seventh-day Adventists can subscribe to this statement.

The grace and power of God have created the former sinner into a new-born man, “created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Eph. 2:8–10). The result is a godly life, manifesting obedience, not to be saved, but because salvation has been received. Mrs. E. G. White wrote in the year 1900: “Only the covering which Christ Himself has provided, can make us meet to appear in God’s presence. This covering, the robe of His own righteousness, Christ will put upon every repenting, believing soul. ‘I counsel thee,’ He says, ‘to buy of Me … white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear’ (Rev. 3:18). This robe, woven in the loom of heaven, has in it not one thread of human devising” ([italics added]—Christ’s Object Lessons, Southern Pub. Assoc., Nashville, Tenn., pp. 311f.).

Should the Christian, saved by grace, be honest? The answer is yes. The character of God, the experience of grace, and the eighth commandment all require this. Should the Christian, saved by grace, be truthful? The answer is yes. The character of God, the experience of grace, and the ninth commandment all require this. Then, should that same Christian, saved by grace, keep the Sabbath? Again, the answer is yes, for the character of God, the experience of enabling grace, as well as the fourth commandment, naturally lead him to do this. Seventh-day Adventists believe that if as sons of God they did not observe the fourth commandment along with the other nine, they would be making a false distinction between the commandments, which is a discrimination condemned in the Bible (Jas. 2:8–14).

It is noticeable that all Protestant communions agree as to the applicable function of the eighth commandment in portraying the honest Christian. There might be a more or less sophistical argument as to whether in a given case a man who has appropriated another man’s property without his consent has stolen; but there is no dispute over the fact that stealing is immoral. So it is with the other commandments.

Except the fourth. Here the lines of cleavage are sharply drawn. Either all ten commandments merit a thorough-going application, or only nine of them. We firmly believe that here is a test which will become more and more serious and significant as we approach the time of the parousia of our Lord. In this connection, we are sincerely and deeply concerned in behalf of those who are accepting salvation by grace, but who are not manifesting the full richness of that experience by allowing Christ to work out in their lives, in the power of God’s grace, the revealed terms of God’s will (cf. Questions on Doctrine, pp. 101–145).

5. In view of the Seventh-day Adventist defense of Mrs. Ellen G. White’s teaching as authoritative and of her life as immaculate, does the movement affirm that Mrs. White was sinless? that she was infallible in propounding doctrines not drawn from Scripture? Is she to be believed when she states of her writings: “It is God and not an erring mortal who has spoken?” Are her writings to be considered normative? Questions on Doctrine refers to her words as “inspired counsels from the Lord.” Do her writings share in the inspiration of the biblical writings? Since it is often asserted that “the spirit of prophecy” reappeared in Mrs. White, is it contended that she shared an apostolic gift nowhere else manifested since that era but in Mrs. White? What is its independent authoritative significance for the whole Church? What authority is assigned the extra-biblical elements in her writings?

Seventh-day Adventists believe that Mrs. White was a godly woman like any other godly woman, no better, and no worse. They have never put forth by word, or even by suggestion, that she was “immaculate,” and deny that she was. We believe that the Spirit of God addressed himself to her, and that she put down as accurately as was humanly possible the instruction she received. Use of her writings over the years has led us to recognize her spiritual accuracy.

As to God speaking through her, the quotation here given is exactly what would be expected wherever the gift of prophecy is manifested (cf. A. G. Daniells, Abiding Gift of Prophecy, Pacific Press Pub. Assoc., Mountain View, Calif., 1936). As shown in numerous statements of hers, Mrs. White did not believe herself verbally inspired, nor infallible. Seventh-day Adventists do not attach these qualities to her work (cf. F. M. Wilcox, The Testimony of Jesus, Review and Herald Pub. Assoc., Washington, D. C., printing of 1944, pp. 74–89).

We believe that Mrs. White was in the stream of those who were entrusted with the prophetic gift, but hold firmly to the canonical Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, as our only rule of faith and practice. By this standard, too, we reject all religious rites and observance of “days,” such as Sunday, Easter, Lent, Christmas, and saints’ days which cannot be clearly supported in Scripture, and which are, we believe, condemned as frustrating to grace by Paul in Galatians 4:9–11.

If Mrs. White did not give additional details and instruction for the spiritual guidance of Advent believers, what she wrote would have been a needless if not impertinent repetition of biblical revelation. Her writings do include details shown to her in vision, and practical applications of scriptural principles for current living. But these are always consonant, we believe, with biblical revelation, and they are, at her repeated insistence, always to be tested by Scripture (cf. Questions on Doctrine, pp. 89–98).

6. How can the emphasis that the Bible is the sole rule of faith be reconciled with the lack of a definite biblical basis for the novel Adventist interpretations of the 70 weeks and 2300 years and the cleansing of the sanctuary (that Christ in 1844 entered the heavenly sanctuary and is now carrying on the investigative judgment), which arose after the collapse of 19th century prophecies of the Lord’s return?

“No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation” (2 Pet. 1:20). The understanding Seventh-day Adventists have of the eighth and ninth chapters of Daniel has been held by numerous Bible commentators, some of them noted scholars and churchmen for many centuries. The interpretation is certainly no novelty devised by early Adventists (Questions on Doctrine, pp. 309–316). Actually, the prophecy of the 70 weeks in the ninth chapter of Daniel, clearly understood in parallel with other prophecies and in view of history (Seventh-day Adventists adhere to the historical method of prophetic interpretation as opposed to the “futuristic method, Questions on Doctrine, pp. 296 f.), gives unshakable testimony to the messiahship of Jesus Christ and to the efficacy of his atoning work; and it shows such recent innovations as the teaching of the “rapture” to be unacceptable.

As to our application of the 2300-year prophecy to Christ’s intercessory work in heaven, the meaning of this could scarcely have become clear until the progress of events, including the 1844 “disappointment,” had cleared away the debris of preconceived notions. Remember the disciples’ complete failure to understand Christ’s foretellings of his death and resurrection until after the event. Our Lord laid down this principle of prophetic application: “I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe” (John 14:29) (cf. Questions on Doctrine, pp. 246–249; for a full treatment of this question cf. pp. 205–337).

7. Can the legalistic legislation of details of Christian conduct (not only the prohibition of alcohol and tobacco, but of indulgence in tea, coffee, ham, shrimp, lobster, claims, oysters, and snails!) be reconciled with any specific scriptural requirement binding on the New Testament Church?

The application of God’s standards to Christian living is not legalism. It is the normal life of the child of grace “created unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8–10). Probably a majority of the readers of this journal believe that the habitual use of alcoholic beverages and tobacco is harmful, bodily and spiritually. Seventh-day Adventists agree very strongly with this view, and make the use of either a test of church membership. The sixth commandment calls for the preservation of life. Alcoholic beverages and tobacco are destructive of life. It is not legalism for a man saved by grace to experience the power of God in bringing his life into harmony with the sixth commandment, or the second, or the fourth, or the eighth, or any other of God’s commandments.

The Lord pointed out to Noah, forefather of Jew and Gentile alike, a distinction concerning the creatures of his creative hand, that some were “clean” and some “unclean” (Gen. 6:18–21; 7:1–3, 7–10). This distinction was still there when God instructed the Hebrews in godly living (Lev. 11). Obviously, God had not changed his mind between Noah’s and Moses’ time. We find no biblical evidence that he has changed it since. We eat accordingly. However, since Seventh-day Adventists believe that dietary matters are the concern of the individual conscience, they are not matters of church discipline (cf. Questions on Doctrine, pp. 622–624).

8. Do Seventh-day Adventists regard evangelical believers not in their own ranks as legitimate objects of missionary and evangelistic endeavor?

Yes, they do, as a matter of sharing truth with fellow-believers in Christ. To believe something concerning God or one’s duty to God, and not to share it with others, for the quickening of conscience, for spiritual illumination, and ultimately that such persons may stand acceptably before God in the Judgment, would be a sin of neglect and worthy of reprehension (Ezek. 3:20, 21). We sometimes wonder therefore at Christians today who, unlike their spiritual forebears of a century ago, seem slow to preach the virtue and spiritual importance of such doctrines as immersion baptism at the age of accountability as evidence of the operation of God’s grace in the experience of a convert (Rom. 6:3–6) (cf. Questions on Doctrine, pp. 21–32, 179–202).

Paul Tillich’s doctrine of revelation must be treated in relation to his doctrine of God. Tillich’s God is not a supernatural God who existed before nature was, and who exists as its lawgiver; rather, the term “God” designates what concerns man ultimately (Systematic Theology, Vol. I, p. 211; except where otherwise indicated, page references refer to this volume).

Judged from the standpoint of traditional theism, Tillich is an atheist. “God is being itself, not a being” (p. 237). All statements with respect to God, other than that he is being-itself, are symbolic (p. 239). And the truth of a symbol is independent of our own experience, whether physical, psychological, or historical (p. 240).

The Art Of Symbol

Being-itself (God) can be spoken of symbolically as living (p. 241). But to say God is a “ ‘personal God’ does not mean that God is a person. It means that God is the ground of everything personal.… Ordinary theism has made God a heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and mankind. The protest of atheism against such a highest person is correct” (p. 245). Indeed, it is not even possible to ask whether God exists. For being itself is above existence (p. 237).

According to Tillich, man speaks of his ultimate concern in terms of his own being (p. 243). To speak of God as loving, omnipotent, omniscient, and as the Creator, as the Bible does, is to speak symbolically (pp. 272 f.). Creation and the Fall, described in the Word of God, do not refer to events, but rather are descriptions of the relation between God and the world (pp. 252 f.).

All such Christian symbols answer existential questions. God’s “word” is not limited to or identical with the Bible (p. 4). The concepts of theology are rooted in a direct experience of something ultimate in value. Experience is an inexhaustible source out of which new truths are continually taken. Thus, the theologian ought to be open to experience which might go beyond Christian experience. “He is not bound to a circle the center of which is the event of Jesus as the Christ” (p. 45). Every person and thing participates in being-itself, and is therefore a possible revelatory medium.

Dimension Of Mystery

Revelation discloses the ground of being, the true being behind things (p. 94). It is the manifestation of something hidden, a dimension of mystery which remains a mystery even in its disclosure (p. 110).

Apart from man’s reception of revelation as one’s ultimate concern there is no revelation. In revelation the mind goes beyond itself in ecstasy. Ecstasy includes an element of inspiration. But inspiration does not mediate otherwise unknown facts; it opens a “new dimension of understanding” in relation to our ultimate concern and the mystery of being (p. 114).

Revelation discloses mystery in miracle; it points to the mystery of being, expressing its relation to us (p. 117).

Revelation is the manifestation of the depth of reason and the ground of being. It points to the mystery of existence and to our ultimate concern. It is independent of what science and history say about the condition in which it appears … (p. 118).

Revelation does not convey “revealed words” (p. 123). The “Word of God” is a symbolic expression. Revelatory power is absent in propositions which give theoretical information about the past (p. 127).

The Role Of Jesus

Although the theologian is not bound to a circle, the center of which is Jesus as the Christ, Tillich appears to be inconsistent when he affirms that the permanent point of reference of all subsequent revelation is Jesus as the Christ. But the inconsistency is in appearance only. Tillich’s notion of final revelation is not dependent upon the Jesus revealed in the New Testament text. “Final revelation” has a speculative meaning for Tillich. For the original revelation has to be transformed and reinterpreted from time to time (p. 126). Jesus as the Christ, the New Being, is the final revelation.

The words of Jesus and the apostles point to this New Being; they make it visible through stories, legends, symbols, paradoxical descriptions, and theological interpretations. But none of these expressions of the experience of the final revelation is final and absolute in itself. They are all conditioned, relative, open to change and additions (p. 151).

The picture of Jesus as the Christ portrays a man who is the medium of final revelation. It discloses a person in complete possession of himself, because he is completely united with the ground of his being, and able to become transparent to the mystery he reveals. A revelation cannot be final unless it is able to negate itself without losing itself. Jesus is the “Son of God” because he met this criterion.

The symbol of the cross of Christ is superior to other religious symbols because Jesus sacrifices himself not to become “an idol,” another God besides God, a God into whom the disciples wanted to make him (The Christian Scholar, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3, p. 197). Jesus accepted the title “Christ” on the condition that he would die; “that means to deny the idolatrous tendency even with respect to himself.” Jesus is not the Christ in the literal sense of existing eternally with the Father, as the pre-existent “Son of God.” In the second chapter of Philippians, verse 6, Paul speaks of Jesus Christ as being equal with God. And in Colossians 1:16, participation in the work of creation is ascribed to Christ: “For by him are all things created.… And he is before all things and by him all things consist” … (vss. 16, 17). For Tillich, such language can have symbolic, but not literal meaning. “Jesus became the Christ by conquering the demonic forces which tried to make him demonic by tempting him to claim the ultimacy for his finite nature” (p. 132).

The clash between Tillich’s philosophy and the historic Christian faith is especially clear in Christology. By refusing allegedly to be the Christ in the biblical sense, Jesus becomes the Christ in Tillich’s sense. We are liberated from the authority of everything “finite” in Jesus—his traditions, world view, and personal piety. Jesus is the New Creature only insofar as his historical existence is negated. He is “New Being” to the degree that he is not the old, i.e., not finite, not historical. He is the Christ because he refused to be the Christ of Chalcedon; i.e., by refusing to be equal with God, he became the Christ.

To view Jesus himself as final, as orthodoxy does, is asserted to be demonic and idolatrous.

Jesus is the religious and theological object as the Christ and only as the Christ. And he is the Christ as the one who sacrifices what is merely “Jesus” in him. The decisive trait in his picture is the continuous self-surrender of Jesus who is Jesus to Jesus who is the Christ (p. 134).

The symbol “Son of God” means that Jesus brought people to “that in him which is greater than he and they” (p. 136). The acceptance of the cross implies that as a finite being, Jesus refused to impose himself on other finite beings. As Jesus of Nazareth he sacrificed himself to Jesus the Christ, and thus became the final revelation. The final revelation is universally valid in that Jesus stood in uninterrupted unity with the ground of his being and continuously sacrificed himself as Jesus to himself as Christ.

Triumph Of Relativity

Tillich accuses orthodoxy of failing to make past truth relevant to the present situation (p. 3). The “eternal truth” at the foundation of the Christian message lacks any permanent meaning. It must be reinterpreted for every new generation. Tillich presupposes without evidence that all expressions of truth are historically relative and changing.

The Christian faith affirms that God has revealed himself to man in a way that is clear and final. Jesus Christ is the final revelation in the biblical sense because God was in him reconciling the world unto himself. Christ’s sacrificial death and atonement is not subject to changing situation, but it is the unique event in history, in terms of which the entire changing course of human events has significance and meaning.

This affirmation does not mean that orthodoxy elevates something finite and transitory to something infinite and of eternal validity. It recognizes that we now see through a glass darkly. Our knowledge of God is not exhaustive and complete. We know in part. We know what has been revealed to us by God. And such knowledge is sufficient for our salvation. Tillich begs the question to assume that the propositions of historical Christianity lack validity.

Tillich assumes that it is possible to identify “God” with being-itself. But the term “being” is an abstraction derived from experience. And as such it cannot go beyond experience.

If knowledge of God is known from an analysis of “being” then the term “God” is as abstract and nebulous as “being.” To define God by adding “in itself” to the word “being” is to engage in verbal manipulations, without any more significance than defining the term “Pig-tig” to be a cross between a male pig and a female tiger.

Tillich’s employment of language is speculative; it does not arrive at the discovery of any nonverbal state of affairs. A chair, a table, the square root of five, the moon, and Charlie’s great aunt do not share a common quality, in that they participate in “being.” The only thing they have in common is that they can be thought about and spoken of. “Being,” as Tillich uses the term, is a meaningless hypostatization of individual subjectivity. The God of Scripture is a personal being, aware of man, a loving Father, not a philosophical construction.

The question of God cannot be answered by an analysis of “being.” The living God is not the result of an abstract ontological analysis. But the Christian faith depends upon the acceptance of biblical revelation as its norm.

If the term “Christian theology” is appropriate as a description of Tillich’s theology, then a new term is needed to describe a theology based upon the biblical writings as an authoritative source.

Tillich’s God is not a supernatural God, it is a meaningless abstraction. And it is not clear how even being-itself can be a nonsymbolic description of God, when the notion of “being” is simply an abstraction. For why does Tillich speak of being-itself and not of becoming-itself?

To identify revelation with the Bible is for Tillich one of the most serious errors of theology (p. 157). In our opinion, Tillich is in error when he holds that revelation is never separable from the act of receiving. For the Word of God is the objective norm of our faith. It was objectively given by God to man.

Tillich does not wish to hold that revelation is simply a psychological state. But the “ground of being” is discovered in psychological experience. And from an analysis of psychological experience it is not possible to get beyond one’s own experience. The “ground of being” is nothing but a projection of experience. It cannot exist in the usual sense of “exist,” but only in the sense that it concerns us ultimately.

For Tillich a person is a possible bearer of revelation because he can participate in being-itself. But the term “participate” is vague, for it does not refer to any concrete state of affairs. No change occurs in our experience, if we deny that a person participates in being-itself.

It is important to remember that Tillich’s notion of a symbol presupposes the notion of “participation,” but “participation” is itself a poetic metaphor. Tillich assumes that different levels of reality presupppose a different approach. We can grant that language has different levels and uses. But this admission does not imply that there are dimensions of reality corresponding to the levels of language. To speak of a depth dimension of reality, opened by religious symbols, and to speak of the ultimate power of being, is merely a speculative verbalization, which in principle is incapable of being described in terms of sense experience.

The Christian faith is destroyed in Tillich’s system by making the attributes of God projections of our own experience. Language is admittedly inadequate to express the nature of God in any exhaustive sense, but this does not imply that God is completely unknown. Tillich’s position is a form of religious skepticism. God as he really is, is a mystery, even in revelation. In fact, the notion that God is a personal, living, conscious being, aware of man, is symbolic and is absurd for Tillich, if understood in a literal sense. God is forever hidden. But if this is the case, why speak of God at all? Why speak of God symbolically as a person? Why not speak of him in mathematical terms, such as X2?

Tillich’s attempt to remove revealed knowledge from the possible criticism of science and history would remove revelation from the field of intelligible discourse. However, God has revealed himself to man in human events, within history. The Bible is the record of God’s dealings with man. It tells man what he is to believe concerning God, and what duties God requires of man. The supposed conflict between science and religion is not resolved by banishing religion to a mystical realm.

It is not meaningful to speak of God unless something is known of God. The term “God” when used in the biblical writings refers to a God who has revealed himself to man in nature and in the course of human events. And the objective side of this revelation, history-as-event, occurred, according to the account, independently of the reception it received. God, if he is to be known at all, can only be known if such revelation has occurred. That such revelation has occurred can in the final analysis never be demonstrated. The existence of a revealed God is a matter of faith and commitment. It cannot be proven scientifically, for scientific proof is limited to an analysis of human experience, beyond which it cannot go.

The Christian faith accepts the biblical writings as the Word of God by an act of faith. Such an act of faith is, however, not irrational. For the Bible refers to objective states of affairs, not simply to subjective emotional states. It does not abolish logical thought but suggests that man, in all his functions, including his ability to think logically, is a creature of the living God. And as a created being, man is limited in his reasoning to an examination of a created universe, so that God can in principle be known only insofar as he has disclosed himself to man.

Either the Bible presents God’s redemptive dealings with men, or the Christian faith lacks meaning and is pious nonsense.

Speculative Criterion

Tillich’s criterion of a final revelation, that it be able to negate itself without losing itself, is purely speculative. For what criterion can be offered for the acceptance of Tillich’s criterion?

Tillich’s construction of Jesus as the Christ is presented on speculative grounds, not on the basis of exegesis of the New Testament. The latter is interpreted by Tillich in terms of a criterion which is imposed on the New Testament. Tillich’s claim that Jesus accepted the title “Christ,” on the condition that he would die and thus deny the idolatrous tendency with respect to himself, overlooks the Gospel account of the events surrounding the death of Christ. There is absolutely nothing in the text to suggest that at his trial Jesus negated his historical existence. And it was just his claim to be equal with God that brought about his execution.

One may deny the validity and truth of the claim Jesus made, but the New Testament clearly indicates he made it. To interpret the New Testament in terms of modern existentialism is an unscholarly distortion of an historical document. To make Jesus the perfect existentialist, a person in complete possession of himself, and transparent to the mystery of being, is to interpret the past in the light of the present. To apply existentialist categories to the past, in such a way that historical texts are distorted, is to forget that the categories of existentialism are of recent origin. Such a procedure, if not “demonic,” is at least uncritical.

Tillich’s view of Jesus as the Christ is the very opposite of that presented by the New Testament, and it is achieved by rejecting, by means of an a priori criterion, the authority of everything finite in Jesus. What such elements include is known only to Tillich! The New Testament makes no such distinction.

David H. Freeman is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rhode Island. He is editor of Essays on Modern Thinkers to be published in the Fall by the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.

The modern era began with an intellectual rebirth among the peoples of the West who, for many centuries had been immersed in ignorance and superstition, instigated and reinforced by a tyrannical Christian hierarchy. We still feel the repercussions of that revival of learning. As never before, common man is exposed to the progress of knowledge and shares in the conquest of truth. Higher education for his children is no longer an idle dream. Enrollment in colleges and universities continues to spiral upward with more youth entering the ivy halls and crowded campuses each year. But not only is formal education acting as the medium of raising this general intellectual level today; the newspaper, the magazine, lower-priced literature, radio, television and the theater are alike reaching the public with an effectiveness heretofore unparalleled.

Now, in the light of these developments, Protestant orthodoxy stands faced with an intellectual challenge. And this fact is presenting two urgent questions: What is orthodoxy doing to meet this intellectual challenge? How ought orthodoxy to meet it?

More than a decade ago, many evangelical leaders became aware of the need for a renewal of conservative scholarship and higher intellectual standards within their ranks. This began a trend in contemporary orthodoxy which has steadily gained momentum. Today conservative spokesmen are in the front ranks of biblical and theological scholarship, and are creating reliable and authoritative literature being published not only by evangelical publishers, but well-known firms of long standing. Evangelicals who have won distinction in the fields of dogmatics, apologetics, ethics, biblical studies, philosophy, history and archeology are increasing. Colleges and especially theological seminaries in the orthodox tradition—Westminster, Calvin, Fuller, and Concordia (to mention a few), are fully recognized in academic circles as scholarly institutions with superior standards. The evangelical pulpit is also meeting the intellectual challenge and giving its message new impact.

It must be admitted that earlier in the twentieth century the prevailing winds of orthodoxy were not of this temper; nor has this intellectual rebirth yet enlisted universal enthusiastic support. Some time ago I attended a meeting of the friends and supporters of a metropolitan Bible institute, at which the president of the institution outlined an ambitious program for the school’s future development, one phase of which was academically oriented. Immediately after his remarks, a clergyman, representing a well-known evangelical tradition, expressed alarm at the academic proposals and passionately protested the growing tendency within orthodoxy to attain higher intellectual status. He did this simply on the basis of general principles, and among that assembly of clergy and laity, many supported him.

The incident reflects the mood and spirit of much that passed for orthodoxy several decades prior to the revival of which we now speak. Orthodoxy in general was beating a retreat from the intellectual scene. There were significant exceptions of course; not every college, seminary, and pulpit within the tradition had plunged into the dismal abyss of anti-intellectualism. Nevertheless, anti-intellectualism was the prevailing climate, and it was evidenced by a noticeable dearth of scholarly publications in most areas of theological and biblical disciplines. It was also evidenced in a decline in provocative and penetrating preaching, and a widespread uncritical acceptance of grossly inferior, deplorable music. Apart from appeals to a handful of eminent scholars like J. G. Machen, conservatives habitually took theological refuge in the masters of the past. Even to the present hour there are those who, rather than sharpen their wits to the combat of ideas themselves, prefer to resurrect their grandfathers, great grandfathers, and great, great grandfathers, and speed them to the front lines to challenge Barth, Brunner, Niebuhr, Tillich, and contemporary biblical critics. Happily such reactionary persons are no longer the foremost representatives of orthodoxy, and it is to be hoped that their kind will not long survive.

Anti-intellectualism grew out of two erroneous conceptions. On the one hand many conservatives, if not deliberately, then unwittingly, failed to perceive that truth, though absolute, is not static but dynamic. God’s revelation of eternal truth in his Word is addressed to man’s reason and has been cast in concrete, conceptual, verbal form. There is abundant witness in the Scriptures to the fact of revealed doctrines. We know that doctrines are not merely the vehicles of truth; they are themselves truth. Nevertheless, how are we to conclude that our conquest and understanding of this truth are complete? Hodge, Kuyper, Warfield, and Machen did not scale the last heights and thus leave to posterity the vain luxury of idleness. The Spirit of God is still at work to enlighten the mind; he merely bids us keep step with him.

On the other hand, conservatives were inclined to misinterpret the role of the intellect and its relation to the Christian gospel and life. They all too often overemphasized the emotional and volitional implications of the Gospel and repudiated, if not in principle then in practice, the doctrine of “the primacy of the intellect.” As Gordon Clark pointed out so well in his article “Faith and Reason” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Vol. I, issues 10 and 11), the biblical term “heart” has been given an almost exclusively emotional interpretation, inconsistent with scriptural usage. To underrate the intellect is neither good psychology nor good theology.

While orthodoxy weltered in this mire of anti-intellectualism, modernism preened its feathers, boasted its superior knowledge, and assumed an air of sophistication. Then with the force of an avalanche, charges of obscurantism and irrelevance descended upon orthodoxy and drove it into the intellectual revival we are having now. Sober-minded conservatives, therefore, became bent on vindicating and restoring the rightful respectability of their theological position and emancipating it from a terrible and vicious bias. To this point, they have succeeded, and their efforts merit the highest commendation.

Warning Of Peril

But this reaction is also fraught with peril. Orthodoxy will go too far in the opposite direction if intellectual respectability becomes an end in itself. In fact, orthodoxy could wind up in a cloister.

There is a lesson to be learned here from neo-orthodoxy which, in the opinion of many, is proving itself an arid intellectualism. The writer recollects his own strenuous tussle in seminary with the complicated lines of reasoning from leading exponents of the new theology. He has also listened to frequent complaints from students and pastors that their study of neo-orthodox literature leaves them with not the slightest idea of the authors’ meaning. Some even question whether the authors understand themselves. For this reason, if for no other, the new theology has failed to reach even the informed layman. Many a neo-orthodox preacher addresses himself to a congregation of “wholly other” convictions, and does so without creating a rift simply because the congregation cannot understand him. The curse or the blessing—depending on one’s viewpoint—of neo-orthodoxy has become its extreme intellectualism which cuts off understanding from the common man.

In their mad scramble to regain intellectual status, therefore, some orthodox scholars are beginning to travel this same dangerous road. As one reads the latest evangelical books in theology and related fields, he senses a calculated abstruseness on the part of some authors. One also meets the initial formulation of what may in time become an extensive esoteric vocabulary, or just plain suicide.

It is true that evangelicals are caught in the web of a difficult problem that is not of their making. Modern theological thought, as noted above, is exceedingly complex and employs a highly specialized, often ambiguous vocabulary and method of expression. Obviously, anyone who proposes to combat and wrestle effectively with modern theology has to meet it on its own terms. But this is no excuse for a deliberate counter obscurity of expression which at bottom is petty imitation.

There can be no doubt that orthodoxy ought to vindicate its title to intellectual esteem. To veer away from the intellectual challenge of today is to betray Jesus Christ. The New Testament evangelists supply indisputable evidence that in the days of his flesh Jesus appealed to intellectuals. In John, chapter 3, Nicodemus is designated “the teacher of Israel,” which suggests that he was a man of superior learning and ability. The scribes repeatedly joined the ranks of Jesus’ listeners, not only to accumulate legal evidence against him, but also because they found intellectual stimulus and inspiration in his teaching.

St. Paul was an intellectual giant. His epistles are ample proof of genuine competence. Had he been a man of lesser stature, he would not have attracted his Athenian audience on Mar’s Hill. The Church Fathers followed in the train of the Master and his chief apostle. And what shall we say of the Protestant Reformers and the orthodox spokesmen of the still more recent past? Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Edwards, Orr, Denney, Hodge, Kuyper, Warfield—these and scores of others were scholars of the first order.

But there is something else we cannot overlook. Beginning with our Lord and continuing down through the centuries—with the exception of the Dark Ages (and widespread ignorance was one reason for the darkness)—scholars of orthodoxy diligently sought rapport with the common man. They were not pedants. Their scholarship was not of the flamboyant kind. Their aim was to persuade men of the truth of their doctrine by use of rational arguments which could be understood, and thus their intellectual efforts were entirely subservient to the furtherance of the Gospel. This tradition, this and no other, is precisely the need of the hour.

The time has come for conservatives to re-examine both motives and objectives in regard to this renewal of intellectual concern. Without our knowing it, intellectualism per se could become the goal and driving spirit. If this happened, if all we wanted was to wave the banner of intellectuality, then we would be guilty of both treason and idolatry. As a preventative to this, we ought to remind ourselves that claiming the truth wherever we can find it, enlarging our own understanding of it, and communicating it to the man in the pew and the man on the street in intelligible terms is irrevocably our responsibility. And it is a large one.

This means, of course, that we have a corollary responsibility of raising the intellectual level of the evangelical laity which, in many instances, is still pitifully low. At the same time we engage in the thought tensions confronting us, pseudo Christian and non-Christian, we ought earnestly to seek simply to be understood by those in the many walks of life. This cannot be done without humility; humility is a prerequisite for Christian discipleship. “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” It was in those words that Jesus demanded humility of the arrogant disciples. He is still demanding it of his disciples today. If to preserve our dignity we ever capitulate to a barren pseudo intellectualism, our quest for greater relevance will issue in no relevance at all, and our quest for respectability will become utter contemptibility.

Alike To Thee

Lead us, O Father, through our shadowed years,

When life perplexed and perilous appears;

Direct our steps in paths we cannot see,

For light and darkness are alike to Thee.

Teach us the truths we are so slow to gain—

The good of grief, the high reward of pain;

Help us meet bravely earth’s adversity,

For light and darkness are alike to Thee.

When on our lives the final Shade shall fall,

May no doubts daunt us and no fears appall:

Life, death, for us are veiled with mystery,

But light and darkness are alike to Thee.

EFFIE SMITH ELY

Richard Allen Bodey is Minister of Third Presbyterian Church, North Tonawanda, New York. He holds the A.B. degree from Lafayette College and the B.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Books are his special interest; in his library of 2200 works are many volumes bearing the autographs of giants from past day such as Liddon, Stalker, and Alexander.

To you who know the Lord Jesus Christ, who have been awakened to the awfulness of sin and have felt the cleansing power of his blood, to you who have now found life, I bring this message: “For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?” (1 Pet. 4:17).

We note that the verse begins, “The time is come.” Many devout Christians feel that we are living in the last days. The conviction that “the time has come” seems particularly compelling just now. This feeling—that we may well be in the last times and the Lord will tarry no longer—strikes a responsive note in hearts.

Some are saying that the time has come for a great revival. Hyman Appelman has said that once in a hundred years the time seems ripe for a great awakening. This time of jubilee has come, he feels. And many others are seeing the beginnings of a great movement of commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. The time has come for a revival that will save us from atheism and materialism, and the terrible evils of our time.

Whether, of course, we are living in the closing days, or whether we are sharing in a movement that will shake our country and the world with revival, we do not assuredly know. But we do know that judgment has begun.

Empty Modernity

A symptom of this judgment is the current widespread interest in religion. People sing about thanking God “together on our knees,” not because they have suddenly repented and accepted Christ for what he is, but because the secular life they have known has been found wanting. Our culture has been judged. The judgment of God is upon our novels, our movies, our family life, our morals in general. Even our refinements, the richness of so-called “American culture,” have left a great emptiness in the hearts of men and women. In great America, rich America, educated America, people have found that the total meaning of their lives adds up to nothing. Editor of Fortune magazine, Russell Davenport, sensing the temper of our times, wrote:

O my country

It is nothing that we fear; the thought of nothing;

The sound of nothing in our hearts like the hideous scream

Of fire engines in the streets at midnight;

The belief in nothing.

From Culture To Christ

I was a product of the culture of our age. It seems as though it had done its worst upon me. In my shallowness and ignorance, I had drunk the heady draught of selfish conceit and grandiose dreams of success. Selfish success and nothing else dominated my life. I sailed through school with outspread sails for success.

Then the hour of judgment came. Did you ever compare the experience of great insight and awakening to a ride on the subway? You are hurtling through the dark, uncertain, unknown; suddenly you come into a station full of light. It was exactly that way with me. On a Friday afternoon at the 72nd Street express stop on the west side subway in New York City—suddenly, out of the darkness of the pit in which I had been trying to live—the train burst into the station’s blinding light.

As I stood there on the platform with the train pulling away, I saw in an instant the past and future in a true light. He beset me behind and before and placed his hand upon me! I felt the hand of God on my shoulder. I was overcome. What was success? What was this false sort of thinking that had been driving me? Where did it lead? Quick as a flash of light, as the vanishing train left its sparks flying from the third rail, I saw the emptiness and the nothingness of it—the horror of selfish conceit and of my striving for success.

Like thousands of others in our time, I turned away from the cultural ends in which I had been steeped. And there was no one to whom I could turn except Jesus Christ. I knew very little of him. But who else had deep answers? I cannot say I “waited patiently,” but I waited for the Lord, and he “inclined unto me and heard my cry; he brought me up out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.” I had felt blinded and confused, but that Friday night I took the first unforgettable step toward the most wonderful life one can live—a life with Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.

The Concealed Gospel

Judgment has begun. Our culture is under judgment as our country and other lands feel the blighting effects of nihilistic philosophies. But this verse from I Peter reminds us that “judgment must begin at the house of God.” First our culture, and second our church is under judgment.

I think of the church in which I grew up in a little village in Vermont to which I still have strong ties of love. There, boys like myself found no faith and hope. For it was a church, like so many others, that concealed the saving Gospel from its people.

Where were the people of God when liberalism began to gather power until it blew like a gale over New England? Those who had been “born again” were pushed aside and trampled down by the heavy boots of liberal doctrine. The Bible and its teachings were a subject for ridicule in countless colleges and universities, even in institutions which had been established through the sacrifices of God’s servants for the sole purpose of training preachers and teachers in the Word of God. The school I attended had as its seal an open Bible and underneath the words Terras Irradient. Many members of the faculty made sport of this seal. Not one professor was available to supply needy churches on a Sunday. No one believed that much in the Gospel.

Only Christ Can Save

Thousands of educated and respectable people are now living in spiritual paralysis because of infection by this liberal teaching years ago. More and more people comprehend that modern medicine cannot save us from ultimate death. The man on the street, and even more the man in the academic robe, knows that psychiatry cannot save a man from his sins. But men need to learn that only Jesus Christ, who gave his life a ransom for many, can save them.

The winds of liberalism are blown out and now the storm of neo-orthodoxy beats upon us. Few liberals have repented for those sterile days or asked forgiveness for having led men astray. Many liberals have slipped into various forms of neo-orthodoxy. I cannot be unsympathetic to this movement. While I was a student at Union Theological Seminary, it was neo-orthodoxy that gave me, a confused liberal, the Bible. I remember the day I first saw Karl Barth’s The Word of God and the Word of Man. We were so sick of humanistic notions, we longed for the Word of God.

I sat at the feet of Reinhold Niebuhr, for whom I have great respect and affection; and he delineated the sin and bankruptcy of man from history and social patterns. That we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God seemed a wicked understatement as we beheld the colossal sinfulness of modern society. As time went on, more and more thinkers began to grant that Niebuhr was reading history aright. Mussolini and Hitler had come and gone; men thought about the gas chambers, the mass murders; and they began to ask again “What is man?” This was the beginning of a turn toward orthodoxy.

But just as liberalism had misread history, neo-orthodoxy was reasoning entirely from history and the social scene. The neo-orthodox thinker was making the mistake of forgetting that the Word of God speaks to us, and that a doctrine is to be believed because it is according to Scripture.

Finding The Bible Anew

I believe that the grave danger of neo-orthodoxy is that it sounds to the common man like the old-time religion. As he draws nearer to it, he finds himself quite confused by its dialectic, its involved reasoning. The power of evangelism and the joy of salvation seem to be missing. For several years I have served on a committee which passes on students coming up for ordination. I will say that most of them have returned to orthodoxy. They know what the Gospel is—they know that man is a sinner and needs redemption through Jesus Christ. God has burst into sinful history and sent his Son to earth that through him man might be reconciled to God. Yet these ministerial candidates have been shaky about the Bible. Just what its place is they are uncertain. They have been led to the Gospel not through studying Scripture, but by the assertions of professors who have been led to Bible doctrines by the study of history. But the point I make here is that we cannot build an adequate faith on an interpretation of history, true as it may seem at the moment.

As for myself, I at long last came back to the Bible. God who loved the world would not leave himself without a witness. God being God communicated his will to man. And that communication is the Holy Bible, the absolute Word of God to us.

God’S Sweeping Judgment

Liberalism has obviously come under judgment. Every university man knows this today. Neo-orthodoxy in all its many forms stands under the judgment of God also. It depends too much on history and the interpretation of the social scene. It misleads the seeker, and does not build him up in the fullness of the stature of Christ. I want to pay honor to fundamentalism. The courage and saintliness of so many of its followers point to something we cannot pass over lightly. Yet fundamentalism too is under the judgment of God. There is a lack of repentance there. The fundamentalist often feels proudly that he is the custodian of the Scriptures, and that no man can gainsay his comments.

The danger of fundamentalism is that it does not see history aright. The fundamentalist is in danger of believing in the American dream of “upward and onward forever” for this great United States. He has had a tendency to stamp uncritically his approval upon modern capitalism, for instance. While I am a firm believer in capitalism, and believe that some form of it is implicit in the Scriptures, it must also come under the judgment of God. A popular blanket approval of any phase of American life has its dangers. I read a sermon once in which a Christian preacher sought to show that the Bible approved segregation. Fundamentalism, much as it deserves our praise for its courage in preserving the Gospel, must also be repentant and humble. It must not say with pride, “Thank God, I am not as these others are, liberals and neo-orthodox.”

The time has come that judgment must begin at the house of God. With love toward all men, we must unflinchingly maintain that the way of salvation is a strait and narrow way. Christ is the door and Christ is the way. Life is with Jesus Christ and there is only death without him.

The Issue Is Salvation

The issue at stake, as we think of our times, is salvation. It is not simply Communism or Capitalism; it is not simply Roman Catholicism or Protestantism. The Church passes from death to life because it is the body of Christ. Every church must be the church of the Saviour. And the mission of every true church is to spread the Gospel and help its people grow in it. I repeat that the issue is salvation—salvation through Jesus Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin, now and forever.

The time has come and it is a time of crisis. Neo-orthodoxy is right in speaking of it as a crisis. I am told the Chinese translate crisis into two words meaning dangerous opportunity. The time of dangerous opportunity has come to the Church. Judgment has begun and the Church of Christ must be repentant as it views the liberalism of the past, the neo-orthodoxy of today and the equally grave dangers that have existed in fundamentalism. The issue before us is very clear. It is salvation—salvation through Jesus Christ made known to us through God’s Holy Word.

Maurice O. Mahler is Pastor of First Church (Congregational) in Sterling, Massachusetts. He was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College in 1929, and received the B.M. cum laude from Union Theological Seminary, New York, in 1932. The church he now serves, said to be the largest rural congregation in New England, has 855 members in a community of 2500 population. Dating from 1742, First Church is a united Church (Baptist, Congregational and Unitarian).