No Common Field

Fundamentalism and the Church, by Gabriel Hebert, Westminster, 1957. $3.00.

This book has been receiving considerable publicity and it is difficult to understand why. It is not a great book in any sense of the word. It is interestingly written, but badly constructed. It contributes nothing new to some old problems and rarely meets directly and concisely the problems which it raises within its own thesis. The book is probably receiving its acclaim for one of three reasons: first, the subject of the book, including the word “Fundamentalism,” is an advertisement in this day when the book itself proves that the issues between Fundamentalism and Modernism are far from dead; second, the liberals are delighted to have someone take up the cudgels against the fundamentalists; third, the fundamentalists having been rubbed raw at various points, receive this book with considerable sensitivity.

Such comment immediately raises the question of what the author means and what any of us mean when we use the term “Fundamentalism.” There are “fundies,” “fighting fundies,” “conservatives,” “evangelicals,” “the orthodox,” and those who wish to remain “true to the main features of the Reformed tradition.” Hebert is very clear in pointing out how the word “Fundamentalism” arose, and he is clear in listing the “fundamentals” which lead to the term “Fundamentalism.” From that point on, however, he never really meets Fundamentalism on the basis of his own definition. Therefore, each man in reading this book, if he feels himself to be in the conservative tradition, is moved to raise the question whether Hebert is talking about him at all. This sort of thing is particularly striking as Hebert discusses the whole question of the inspiration of Scripture. When he talks about bibliolatry I am forced to conclude that I know no one who practices such. When he talks about “mechanical dictation,” I know of no one who holds such a view. Yet this sort of thing goes on and on, a constant criticism of those who hold to verbal inspiration: that they practice bibliolatry or that they believe in some view of mechanical dictation. I think Hebert is quite right in bringing up the whole question of inspiration as central to the discussion of Fundamentalism and the Church, but his book makes no contribution to the discussion.

Throughout the book the author gets off into unnecessary and unfortunate excurses. On pages 26 and 27 he is working on a problem between the I.V.F. and the S.C.M.; the controversy reflects largely the Australian context and is probably not applicable most places in this country. In any case, it is a discussion of the old problem of the individual versus the social gospel, and is really the sort of thing one would expect to find in a tract. Beginning on page 103 he gives almost 14 pages to a digest of a book by Bo Giertz. These 14 pages are one-tenth of the printed matter of Hebert’s book. The material from Bo Giertz is interesting and valuable, but entirely too long for illustration, and what Hebert is illustrating is not clear.

It is hard to discover the public whom Hebert is addressing. So much of the book seems to be naive in terms of the real issues at stake and the arguments on both sides that are available are well known to all the disputants. Is he saying that all our arguments would disappear and we would have real unity if we would cease making issues out of what we believe to be fundamentals? That is impossible. Take a statement like this on page 14: “all controversy between Christians needs to start from the unity which God has made.…” Is it not more exact to say that all controversy between Christians needs to start from a deep concern for God’s truth or God’s glory? We all agree that God’s truth will be one truth, but I think we all need to agree also that until we have that truth there must be controversy. We cannot get rid of the problem of the serious difficulties among men by pretending that the difficulties are not there or by pretending that they do not matter. Hebert makes this plain enough when he begins to talk about the Church, particularly from the Anglican viewpoint in the latter part of his book.

Some of his criticisms of the fundamentalists need to be taken to heart, particularly his well-founded criticism that the fundamentalists are slow to recognize the social and sociological implications of their own salvation. He points up also at least the implication that someone soon needs to make clear what fundamentalists believe about the inspiration of Scripture. That this sort of thing has been done by men like Warfield does not mean that this position is being publicized today. If the fundamentalists are so strenuous in their support of verbal inspiration or verbal inerrancy, then someone modern, scholarly and conservative needs to write the book which can be a kind of “Q.E.D.” on the whole problem. Hebert has brought to our attention also that many of the Fundamentalist movements, particularly among college students—Inter-Varsity, Young Life, etc.—have given no serious thought to ecclesiology. Most of them are movements in independency.

One concludes from this book that in this controversy two different teams are playing on two different fields with slightly different sets of rules. Once in a while one team lobs a ball to the other field and hits someone in the head. This brings immediate reaction, but nothing is settled. Perhaps in the new ground swell of the conservative tradition in our day it will be possible for both teams some day soon now to play on the same field with the same rules, and settle some old scores.

ADDISON H. LEITCH

Life Of Augustine

Son of Tears by Henry W. Coray, Putnam, New York, 1957. $3.95.

This is a novel based on the storm-swept life of St. Augustine, who in himself forms a fascinating chapter in the history of the Christian church.

Mr. Coray states his purpose: “I began to read the works of St. Augustine.… Then I gradually developed the conviction that I had to bring him again to life. I found that the outline of his early years lies half buried in his Confessions. Son of Tears seeks to interpret one of the great minds as well as one of the most complex characters in history.”

This statement contains the seeds of many of the novel’s difficulties: Mr. Coray has attempted too much. Explanations of Manichean, Donatistic, and Pelagian heresies, along with other historical data and interpretation of Augustine’s writings all constitute too much burden for the novel. Furthermore, the fact that the author tries to cover his subject’s entire lifetime almost compels him to tell us rather than show us Augustine’s feelings. Of the death of Augustine’s son we are told, “A raging fever sapped Adeodatus’ strength. He lapsed into a coma. On the thirty-fourth day of the illness, while his father and a few of the monks looked on, brokenhearted, he breathed away his life. Augustine groped his way to his chamber to pray, the hot tears coursing down his cheeks.”

We can accept these perfunctory statements as facts, but we cannot very well empathize with the emotions. This spells failure to the project of bringing Augustine fully to life again.

Along this same line, Mr. Coray falls into a habit, all too prevalent in Christian novels, of explaining too much. One is reminded of Charles Lamb’s letter to William Wordsworth: “An intelligent reader finds a sort of insult in being told: I will teach you how to think upon this subject.… Very different from Robinson Crusoe, The Vicar of Wakefield, Roderick Random, and other beautiful bare narratives. There is implied an unwritten compact between author and reader: I will tell you a story, and I suppose you will understand it.”

Quotations from the Confessions at climactic points throughout the novel tend to destroy any artistic illusion which had been built up, and lowers the suspense by reminding us that all will be well in the end. Quotations would, of course, be very much in order in an interpretative literary biography, but they seem injurious to the novel. (Perhaps, after all, Mr. Coray simply chose the wrong medium.)

But the novel is honest on the subject of Augustine’s youthful sin, and thus avoids the very common and lamentable practice of whitewashing Christian biography to an impossible extent. There is immense intrinsic interest shown in the turbulent life of Augustine, with his passionate love for truth, for the lovely Melanie, and finally for the church. Such a life could hardly fail to command attention. It does not fail to do so in Son of Tears.

VIRGINIA RAMEY MOLLENKOTT

Lesson Commentaries

Douglass Sunday School Lessons, by Earl L. Douglass, Macmillan, 1957. 482 pp., $2.95. Tarbell’s Teachers’ Guide, by Frank S. Mead, Revell, 1957. 383 pp., $2.75.

Rozell’s Complete Lessons, by Ray Rozell, Rozell & Co., Owensboro, Ky., 1957. 342 pp., $2.95.

These commentaries are based on the International Sunday School Lessons, the International Bible Lessons for Christian Teaching, and on the Home Daily Bible Readings, copyrighted by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ and the International Council of Religious Education.

Three well-known teachers’ guides on the International Sunday School Lessons are considered in this review. Recent estimates by Sunday school authorities indicate that 60 per cent of the Sunday Schools throughout the United States are still using the International Lessons for some classes in the local Sunday Schools. No wonder, then, that writers on the International Bible Lessons continue to work assiduously every year on the preparation of teachers’ guides.

All three volumes offer a vast amount of information concerning the three topics for the year. Twenty-six weeks are given to “New Testament Teachings about the Church.” The third quarter is given to “Principles of Social Justice.” The last quarter is devoted to lessons on “The Life of Christ.”

First impressions count. This is where the format and type used in printing make a difference. Rozell has the edge on pleasing format. The layout in his volume is simple and easy to follow. Each lesson has a box entitled, “For the Teacher Only,” Rozell makes it easy, then, for the teacher to think quickly about the needs of the pupil, the aims of the lesson and a suggested approach to the lesson.

Douglass and Mead, however, have both included daily Bible readings and audio-visual resources which Rozell has omitted.

The teacher who is looking for a simple outline of the content will probably enjoy Rozell’s volume. For the teacher who wants to enrich and support the lessons with visual aids and illustrative material, he will find extensive resources in Douglass’ volume. In addition to lessons that throw light on the Biblical text, Douglass offers resources of visual aid materials for the temperance emphasis throughout the year’s work. Mead includes a list of addresses of producers whose material is used in the listing of audio-visual materials.

Douglass and Mead have used the King James Authorized Version, while Rozell has chosen to develop the lesson based on the Revised Standard Version text.

All three authors aim at taking the biblical text and making it relevant to contemporary life. Mead gives special help in adapting the lesson for intermediates and seniors in the local Sunday School. Douglass has the most helpful development of the lesson following a lesson plan. However, he does not go into a strict exposition of the text itself, but draws from the portion of Scripture and brings a great deal of material to bear on the contemporary needs as they are relevant to the universal principles of Scripture. Rozell does not provide any topics or questions for discussion. Douglass orients his questions and topics for discussion around the biblical text; whereas Mead seemingly is more concerned with contemporary problems and social issues in the use of suggested questions and topics of discussion for the teacher.

Douglass is more provocative as he develops his ideas. He attempts to inject the problem situation and then uses the biblical resources to solve the problem. Mead, on the other hand, tends to use many quotations from a variety of sources, and in that way throw some light upon the lesson outline. Rozell has more of a running comment on the ideas that are found in the biblical text; there are numerous helpful statements but not much illustrative material.

All three authors offer more than the average Sunday School teacher will use in the Sunday School hour. The best procedure, of course, would be to have all three volumes on one’s desk and gather the best for the teaching of the lesson.

If the reviewer could choose only one, he would prefer Douglass’ development of the lessons.

MILFORD SHOLUND

Peloubet’s Select Notes, by Wilbur M. Smith, Editor, Wilde, 1957. 455 pp., $2.95.

Since a day in October of 1924 when a synodical executive suggested that he supplement his meager library with some copies of Peloubet’s Notes, the present reviewer has consistently used and appreciated the successive volumes of this series. Under the able editorship of Dr. Smith, this commentary on the International Bible Lessons has become an indispensable tool for evangelical pastors and teachers. Having an acquaintance with and an access to expository literature second to none, the editor has again furnished the church with a veritable storehouse of biblical truth, of which only a fraction may be utilized during any class period. Christian workers who begin to use these Notes will continue using them over the years and thereby build up a valuable library of Christian literature to aid them, not only in their future teaching, but in preparing devotional talks and Gospel messages. This will yield a great dividend of spiritual blessing, both to the teachers and those to whom they minister. The book is printed in clear type and expertly indexed.

ERIC EDWIN PAULSON

That religious thought which may be described as distinctly Reformed is not marking time is shown by the marked revival of interest in Reformed literature, both classical and modern, and also by the formation in recent years of the International Association for Reformed Faith and Action. The story of this latter venture is well worth recounting. In 1952 a small group of young and youngish men from half-a-dozen different countries met at the Free University of Amsterdam in order to discuss the situation of the Reformed faith in our world today and to lay plans for the strengthening of the Reformed cause in this generation. One tangible outcome of their deliberations was the decision to hold an international Reformed congress in the summer of the following year, and this congress was duly organized and convened at Montpellier in the South of France in July, 1953. Lectures and discussions centered around the theme: “The Secularization of the Modern World—the Reformed Answer.” Those attending this congress represented nationalities from every quarter of the world—Europe, Near and Far East, Africa, America—and the proceedings were conducted in three languages: English, French and German. At this same congress the organizing group presented a draft scheme for the formation of an international organization, and this scheme was accepted in principle by the members present and a provisional executive committee appointed for the further elaboration of the project.

Two years later a second international congress was held at Detmold in Central Germany. At this gathering, even more widely representative than the former, it was formally resolved to found an international organization, and a constitution which the committee had prepared was discussed and approved. It was agreed that the organization should be named The International Association for Reformed Faith and Action—the emphasis being placed not merely on belief but also on progressive activity. This is made plain in the statement of the Doctrinal Basis and Purpose of the Association as incorporated in the Constitution, as follows:

Doctrinal Basis:

The Association proclaims the sovereignty of God, revealed in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, over the world and thus over every department of human activity.

In accordance with the historic Reformed confessions of faith the Association submits unconditionally to the authority of Holy Scripture as the Word of God, thereby recognizing it as the sole standard of reformation in this and every age of the Church.

The Association accepts, as being consonant with Holy Scripture, the ecumenical symbols of the ancient Church, namely the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed.

Thus the Association asserts that it is in true succession in faith and doctrine from the Apostles, through the ancient Church, and down through the Reformers to the present day.

It is the confident hope of the Association that God will grant to the Church of this age the gifts of the Holy Spirit in order that, in obedience to Holy Scripture, it may respond to the needs of this age, as our fathers in the faith responded to the needs of their age.

Purpose:

The purpose of the Association is to promote God-centered living through faith in Jesus Christ.

To this end the Association regards as its special task

a) the strengthening and advancement of the Reformed cause throughout the world;

b) the encouragement of fellowship between Reformed Christians in every land;

c) the facilitation of the interchange of Reformed thought and experience.

National or regional branches have already come into existence in such varied and widely spread countries as the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, North America, South Africa, Australia, Japan and Korea, and plans are afoot for the formation of more branches of this kind through which the work of the International Association can the more easily be set forward. That the aims of the Association are increasingly being put into practice appears also from the fact that an ambitious literature program is now being carried out, included in which is the provision of financial and other aid for the composition, translation or republication of Reformed writings, especially in languages in which there is as yet a deficiency of such literature, e.g., Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Korean. The Association’s sights are also trained on countries behind the Iron Curtain and on South America. Money has been lent to the Societe Calviniste de France so that the grand scheme for a completely new edition of Calvin’s Institutes and commentaries in modern French may be brought to fruition.

As the result of a visit by the undersigned to Portugal in the Spring of 1956 a national branch was formed in that country; and a year later Professor Jean Cadier of Montpellier gave a series of lectures in Lisbon at the invitation of the Portuguese branch. At the present moment Professor Gerson Meyer of the Carcavelos Seminary (Portugal) is in Brazil, his native land, endeavoring to promote the work of the International Association there, and a similar object is being pursued by the Rev. Hisashi Ariga in Japan and Professor Raden Soedarmo in Indonesia. The formation of a Belgian branch has been encouraged by visits and lectures by Professor Cadier, Dr. Andre Schlemmer, and Pastor Pierre Marcel of France and Dr. Jan Dengerink (the International Secretary) of the Netherlands.

And so the work goes on and increases—not, of course, without its very real problems and difficulties, but to the great delight and thankfulness of those few who met together in Amsterdam six years ago, having no resources other than their faith and their vision. The time-honoured motto Soli Deo Gloria expresses both their praise for the past and their ambition for the future.

The next international congress is to be held, God willing, in the historic city of Strasbourg, France, from the 22nd to the 30th of July this year. The theme of the congress will be: “How to Confess our Reformed Faith.” A distinguished international team of speakers will deal with subjects such as “The Reformed Faith and the Modern Concept of Man,” “Witness by Word and Deed,” “Witness in and through the Church,” “Witness in and through the Family,” and “Christian Witness in the World of Industry”; and each day time will be allotted for open discussion of these subjects and for Bible study in groups. By these means it is hoped to make a relevant and genuinely scriptural contribution to the religious thought of our day.

Through 30 or more years of air wave communication, I have never heard any commentator speak of the Church as a world power. In an earth shaken by the fear of atomic destruction, commentators today refer only to two sources of restraint upon potential war-minded aggressors: massive military might, and the United Nations. However necessary fearful military equipment may be, it is at best but a negative restraint upon the passions of potential dictators. It cannot transform a warmonger into a lover of peace. The United Nations is a useful public forum for the focus of world opinion. But again it is fundamentally an organization of external pressure. Its range of influence is on the circumference of life. It seeks to shift the balance of nations by outer compulsion. It lacks power to deal with inner motives. Only the Church dares to claim it can change a man’s heart, and wash away lust, greed, hate and fear. Yet, in the affairs of nations, the Church is ignored.

New Power For A New Day

Now, one cannot ignore a hurricane. A sidewalk cannot ignore the root beneath it which by persistent growth eventually splits the concrete pavement in two. Peter, the fisherman disciple of Jesus Christ, was not ignored. The mind and heart of St. Paul could not be ignored. Peter and Paul had access to the source of life like that growing in a twig on a hillside that cracks in twain a granite rock. Equipped with holy boldness, their private prayers and public speech were spiritual hurricanes of faith and love that crumbled the strongest resistance. Slowly but surely, they and the early disciples took over an ancient empire. What life-giving power has the Church lost that it cannot duplicate that experience today? Were the Church to have this same spiritual power in our atomic age, it could not be ignored!

Thirty odd years in pastoral work makes this problem mine. If the Church has failed, it has been my failure. In retrospect, I would like to examine the Church from the standpoint of personal observation and experience. In the two churches where I have served a major part of my ministry, I received into church membership perhaps 1200 individuals. I now realize that they fall into three groups.

The first group are those who lack a living experience of Jesus Christ. I received them into church membership, but as far as knowing who Jesus Christ was and what he had done for them, they were still in spiritual darkness. If that was true, how dared I welcome them into full church membership?

I am speaking now from hindsight, the backward look, as I try honestly to assess my action and their condition. So far as I can now determine I was blinded to the full reality of what I was doing. In the natural life these men, women and young people were normally kindly, goodhearted folks in their daily fellowship. They were helpful to one another in time of physical distress or financial need. When they were asked if they believed in Jesus Christ, their reply was correct. They said, “Yes, I believe in Jesus Christ.” They were not dishonest people who deliberately affirmed what they did not believe. If anyone then had challenged the veracity of their affirmation about Jesus Christ, they would have been deeply hurt. They did believe in Jesus Christ. But I see now that it was a mental belief, an intellectual statement about Jesus, rather than a living experience of passionate love for Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord.

Facing The Fact Of Failure

If I try to excuse myself at this date by saying what I have said in the past, “They gave the right answers,” I know now that I would be hiding behind an evasion. When I face my Lord in heaven about my personal responsibility for the destiny of their souls, he will rightly and justly say to me, “In those dealings with souls for whom I died, I never knew you.”

Why, then, do I say this, when my part in their living relation to Jesus Christ is beyond repair? First of all, I say it because I believe it is true. Furthermore, if in spiritual blindness and irresponsibility, I failed those who were entrusted to my spiritual care, it may be that other ministers have had or are facing similar experiences. If this is one reason why the Church lacks power for its Master when the fate of a world hangs in the balance—to face the truth of failure with penitence and renewed faith may help open the channels of God’s grace to a new and greater flow of his power in this hour of world need.

I see plainly now that I welcomed into church membership people who from the world’s standpoint were goodhearted, generous folk, but who had not yet been born into the spiritual plane of life where Jesus Christ dwells continually. To receive them under those circumstances was deception on my part, however blindly I acted. I did them grievous spiritual harm.

Life From Outside

In my own boyhood, at the age of fifteen, I had a living experience of Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord that revolutionized my life and became the foundation for every good thing that came to me thereafter. The Holy Spirit entered into my spirit, led me into a life of daily prayer and opened to me a love of Scripture that every blinding experience since has never been able to destroy. Yet, in those days of youth, I didn’t understand what was happening to me. Nor did anyone ever make it fully clear to me. A clear understanding of the development of my spiritual life could have made me far more useful to my Lord.

Now no one disputes the facts of physical birth. No one denies the self-evident fact that a germ of life from one human body must invade another body and two forms of life merge into one to produce physical conception. Unfortunately it has not been made as clear in the teaching of the church that entrance into the spiritual plane of life requires the same process—an invasion of the human spirit by divine life outside the human spirit—the living Spirit of Jesus Christ entering the human spirit in a union that brings regeneration, and birth from above, a second birth, even as physical conception makes possible generation, or our first birth as human beings.

All nature confirms this process. Every seed has been born once by the self-evident fact of its physical presence. When planted in the earth and the life outside the seed breaks through the decayed, dying, protective shell, to merge into union with the life inside the shell, the seed has had a second birth, a new birth, a “born again” experience. The seed has now entered that marvelous plane of harvest abundance where one seed becomes multiplied a thousandfold.

Truly for the seed, this is life from “above,” a plane of existence the seed could never have known if it had not been buried in the earth in the death experience for the outer shell or “self” life of the seed.

The first step for spiritual power in the Church is a membership made up of people who have actually been born into the spiritual plane where Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord, abides. How can a person know anything about the physical world until he is born into it? How can anyone know anything about the spiritual world until they are born into it?

The Dawn Of Daylight

The second group among the church members I received were those with a lack of the life-giving expression of Jesus Christ. They were born into the spiritual plane of fellowship with Jesus Christ. But birth into either the physical or spiritual realm, was only at the infant stage. It was only the dawn of spiritual daylight. Spiritually, this salvation experience is only the cradle or Bethlehem stage.

Physical infancy is a lovely thing if it is only a passing stage on the road to physical maturity. However, passing years that leave a human being as physically helpless as a babe is very sad. It is an even sadder experience to see promising spiritual infants who never mature into the developed capacity for a life-giving expression of Jesus Christ. It is a double tragedy for a pastor to look back through the years of his own spiritual blindness and realize his failure to nourish these individuals with an eternal destiny until they have grown beyond the need of constantly being rocked in the cradle of spiritual infancy by maturer spiritual hands. It is my personal failure, which I wish again frankly to confess, that I have shared in a Church that lacks power in an atomic age. My failure to help guide those children of God into the New Testament experience of spiritual maturity can be another area where my Lord can say to me, “In this area of soul need, I never knew you.”

The second step for spiritual power in the Church today is strong, wise nourishment for those who have been genuinely regenerated through penitence and faith, and who now through that second birth live in the spiritual plane where Jesus Christ always dwells.

The Expansive Life

The third group in the members I received into the Church were those leading a life of expansion for Jesus Christ. They were the ones who by God’s grace were soundly born into the Kingdom of God and grew beyond spiritual infancy to a measurable life of Christian maturity. They became spiritual disciples of Jesus Christ. They reached the point of Christian usefulness to their Lord. The Lord saved them. But he made me responsible for a ministry of the Word that eventually made disciples of them. His command was, “Go, make disciples.…”

An editor once wrote me that he was more interested in people having the experience of “salvation in Christ” than he was in seeing people have “success in Christ.” My own share in keeping people in the cradle stage through failure in nourishing them to spiritual maturity, makes it necessary for me to bear a part of the responsibility for the lack of power in the Church today. Altogether too many “saved” people in our churches never make it to the disciple stage of useful spiritual maturity. As one who can see his failure in pastoral responsibility, I know I cannot dodge my Lord’s solemn judgment.

There were many activities in my churches that no one would label harmful, save for the fact that although they were generally accepted parts of church machinery, they had nothing whatever to do with my Lord’s command, “Go, make disciples.” Even in those moments of my higher vision as a Christian, it was far too easy for me as Henry Ward Beecher used to say, “To pray cream and live skim milk.”

Resurrection Power

The “unborn” lives in my churches exercised no spiritual power. The “undernourished” ones who were only in the cradle stage, were only then at the beginning point where they could be led by careful guidance into the stage of usefulness to their Lord—discipleship. Only the undaunted lives of spiritual maturity in the Church exercised New Testament resurrection power.

These were the ones who clearly understood who Jesus Christ is and what he has done for them on the Cross. They were the disciples who, on the basis of the redemption of Jesus Christ, clearly recognized and joyously acknowledged his absolute sovereignty over their lives, and who witnessed to his absolute Deity. They knew they no longer belonged to themselves. They had been bought with a price. They had given up all right to themselves. With St. Paul, they affirmed, “I (the self man) die daily,” abiding in death to self at the Cross with Jesus Christ in order that they might abide in his risen life, the power of his Resurrection.

I know now why the Church lacks power today. I know where I have failed my Lord. I know that he is the Lord of the harvest and that my obedience is to him alone who wills to bring in his Kingdom his way, not mine. I know that I love and serve a Saviour and Lord who has all power in heaven and earth, whose promises are unfailing, whose love is infinite and who still commands and empowers me by his Holy Spirit to, “Go, make disciples.” My trust and obedience determines the flow of RESURRECTION POWER in and through his Church.

Carlos Greenleaf Fuller holds the A.B. degree from Colgate University, B.D. from Union Theological Seminary (New York City), and M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University. He served Featherbed Lane Presbyterian Church, of New York City for 16 years, and then First Presbyterian Church of East Rochester, N.Y. for 13 years. A prolific writer, he has written some 60 articles for religious publications.

The outstanding fact about twentieth-century unbelief is that it is organized and massive.

Before the beginning of the century there were, of course, skeptics who voiced their unbelief as individuals in and through their philosophical or critical works, poems, essays, and novels. Up to 1870 religious works and sermons were among the “best-sellers,” but by 1900 they had dropped nearly to the bottom of the lists. During that thirty years, novels with a religious or moral purpose had displaced them.

By 1898 rationalistic writings had gained sufficient hold to make possible the founding of the “Rationalistic Press Association” in London, from which, year by year, cheap reprints of scientific, “positivist” and skeptical works poured forth, attacking the Bible and theology and the Church from the standpoint of scientific materialism, evolutionary agnosticism, and evolutionary ethics and sociology.

Unleashing Of Unbelief

Unbelief was not yet “organized” unbelief. It was, however, being so organized, particularly in Germany, in support of the ambition of a grandiose Germanic world state. Bernhardt’s Germany and the Next War, for example, had as its fundamental premise that “war is a biological necessity,” which the writer had arrived at on naturalistic, evolutionary grounds. “Nature was deemed to be red in tooth and claw.” The “struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest” were natural phenomena, and “fittest” meant “most forceful.” Thus, Bismarck’s “Blood and Iron” theory was justified on naturalistic grounds, and the doctrine “Might is Right” was widely preached and practiced.

The war of 1914–18 undoubtedly stemmed directly from this root, and the world at large should have learned a lesson, but it failed to do so despite the 12 million precious lives that holocaust extinguished. Even before the Armistice was signed Lenin, with, be it observed, the help of Germany, was busy organizing the foreboding Russian Revolution of 1917. The basis of that Revolution was “unbelief,” and it just as patently was of the same naturalism that lay behind the German bid for world power. It was, of course, Marxist through and through—a materialistic interpretation of history, with progress to be achieved by class war. Its objective was a Communist world state, professedly egalitarian, but in fact a robotian enslavement of the common man by the brutally strong and animal-istically cunning. Tsarist tyranny was replaced by the tyranny of even worse ruthless brute force. If Nature was “red in tooth and claw,” the new Russian despots showed that man could easily beat her record in murderous blood baths, cruelty and viciousness.

This same basic creed took another turn in Italy in 1922 (Mussolini) and in Germany in 1933 (Hitler), which in 1939 plunged the whole world into World War II. Again murder and destruction stalked abroad and ended in the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But while Fascism and Nazism hated Communism, they nevertheless invoked its aid against the democracies. Stalin, tongue in cheek, gave aid, which ended in a stricken Poland and an enslaved Eastern Europe. When these later turned on Stalin, the Russian Bear was, strangely enough, upheld by the democracies.

The democracies thought they had won the war. Doubtless they had, but Russia annexed territory all around, seized power and is now the most extensive force—if not the mightiest—in the world. Based on what? Complete unbelief. No God, no spirit in man, no moral or spiritual values, no freedom, no compassion, no semblance of shame, no sense of sin or evil. Russian Communism, thrusting its tentacles into every part of the globe—to Egypt and the Arab world, to China and the Asian world—is unbelief, massive, organized, Satanic.

Complete Secularization

This is the unbelief of the twentieth century, different from the unbelief of any previous age. An American writer has said that “for perhaps the first time in history we are confronted with complete secularization of the opinions, emotions and practices of mankind.” He was writing a judgment of the democracies in particular. He would have used a stronger word than “secular” to describe the Russian communistic menace. He might have said the complete “animalization” of the opinions, emotions and the practices of people, for at bottom it is dehumanization. He might have said that this “unbelief” is the organized embodiment of hell itself: anti-God, anti-Christ and man, anti-moral values—Lucifer let loose.

For Christians there can be no “peaceful co-existence” with such a creed. God and the Devil cannot possibly be at peace. Nor can there be any compromise. It is war—war to the death. But Russian Communism is “organized” as a powerful state—a state that means business and has no scruples as to how it achieves its end.

Amiel’s prophecy of 1856 is coming true in 1956. “What terrible masters,” he wrote, “would the Russians be if ever the might of their rule should spread over the southern countries! A polar despotism of tyranny such as the world has not yet known, silent as darkness, keen as ice, unfeeling as bronze, a slavery without compensation, or relief; this is what they would bring.” The truth of that warning is evident today as the Russian Bear’s paw reaches out far beyond the southern countries—to Egypt and the Arab world. That paw has already grabbed China and much of the Asian world, and its claws are even in the Americas and beyond the Southern Cross.

We know, of course, that the almighty Russian communistic world state opposing itself to Almighty God cannot win. In the end it will destroy itself. “God is not mocked.” But meanwhile it can devastate and destroy and enslave. It can bring in George Orwell’s “1984”; it can repeat on a much larger scale Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Vast masses of mankind are fearfully aware of this—the Western democracies especially.

Towers Of Babel

But what do we find among these powers? A clear understanding diagnosis of the situation? Indeed no. Rather, we find them building, out of their own proud self-sufficiency and for their own self-glory, materialistic, God-defiant Towers of Babel. They erected a “Tower” called the League of Nations after the First World War. It ended in “Babel.” After the Second World War they erected the United Nations. Is that becoming “Babel” as well?

Why did the League of Nations fail? It failed because it did not abjure “unbelief.” If the United Nations fails it will be from the same cause: lack of faith in God. How can men be united in spirit and truth if there is not worship of God in spirit and in truth—if men do not believe in God?

Is it not the same with the other “isms”—Socialism, Humanism? What hope have these against Communism if men are building them upon the same major premise—whose name is Naturalism? Communism is, after all, devilishly logical—if there is no God and no spirit in man. Are not all our “isms” contradictions in terms if Nature is all—if materialism is the real—if secularism is our master? Is it possible to deduce “Liberty—Equality—Fraternity,” from a godless nature, or a godless world of men? Nay, it is impossible.

But this means abjuring our own “unbelief.” It means shedding our anthropocentrism, our self-sufficiency and self-glory. It means recognizing our utter dependence. It means rehabilitating the Bible’s major premises: “In the beginning God created,” and “God made man in his own image,” “God breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” It means reading the Garden of Eden story with spiritual insight and understanding; not with mockery as an ancient tale, but as revelation. Therein is unfolded the wrongheadedness and pride of man; he imagined he knew better than God. And that imagination, so man’s history shows, has ever been the forerunner of calamity; it is shouting this today louder than ever in man’s history. Man does not and cannot know better than God. It is only fantastic, conceited, self-centered unbelief that makes him follow that ignis fatuus which is today the match that (unless there is a very radical change in the spirit of society) will explode the H-bomb.

Changing The Social Spirit

Radical change in the spirit of society! But how is this to be brought about? Is politics equal to the task? If so, which brand? Have not we in this century pretty well tried them all, and fruitlessly, from Fascism to Communism, and all the brands in between these extremes, which literally stand back to back and scream different slogans concocted in the factory of Naturalism? Can economics do it? Even the economics of the welfare state? Can scientific materialism and its offspring, materialistic Socialism, change the spirit of society when it does not even behave in the spirit of man? Can technical education perform this miracle of change? Look again at Russia, which probably has more technicians than even the United States; are they changing the spirit of Russian society? Recent events in Hungary give an appalling answer.

One is neither blind to the importance of these activities, nor does one wish to disparage their service to mankind in their proper sphere. But it is obvious nonsense to think that they can, by their collectivism and environmentalism and this-worldism, change the spirit of society. Jeremiah long ago asserted in the name of God, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?” A greater than Jeremiah pronounced a similar judgment: “From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these things come from within, and defile the man” (Mark 7:21ff.). The world today is thus pinpointed. The Lord Jesus said to Nicodemus: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again” (John 3:5ff.).

The Wisdom Of Christ

We err sadly if we value the wisdom of either science, or politics, or economics, or even education, more than the wisdom of Christ. For in the light of his wisdom they all turn out to be plain foolishness. And yet it is to just such foolishness that modern unbelief is leading us. Neither social nor ecclesiastic externalism can change the spirit of society, for neither of these can change the heart of man. It is only as the heart of individual man is changed by the Eternal Spirit himself that the spirit of the twentieth-century world can be changed. Only as each man “believeth” can he be “saved.” It is “believers” the world needs—obedient, dependent believers, personal believers—in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Word of God, the Light of the world, the Saviour, the Regenerator of men, the Way to God, the Truth of God, the Life of God. Neither dictatorship nor democracy can save the world from disaster. Only Christ can do that through ordinary men and women like you and me who humbly cry, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”

All of which is, admittedly, old-fashioned. Yes, as old-fashioned as the New Testament and “the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). The Gospel which Paul declared in pagan Rome was “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth” (Rom. 1:16). Why not do as St. Augustine did, “open and read” for yourself, and let the Word himself speak to you? You want peace. Why not listen to the “Prince of Peace”? Can anyone be a surer guide than “the Son of God”?

J. H. Ward has held pastoral posts in the Church of England for 47 years. He holds the B.A. and M.A. degrees from Cambridge University, and served from 1914 to 1919 as Director of Religious and Educational Work for the Y.M.C.A. in England. Now in his 79th year, his present parish in Ongar, Essex, is 30 square miles in area. He is a frequent contributor to church periodicals on current spiritual concerns.

The Busy Man

My life has been too much on little spires,my heart intent on second-rate desires;my soul has struck its spark too much to lightthe chaff and tinder-stuff of petty fires;while God’s great beacon, patient in the night,has waited for the torch to make it bright.

TERENCE Y. MULLINS

Two hundred years ago at Princeton, the ministry of Jonathan Edwards ended (March 22, 1758) in untimely death. He was and is considered to be one of the outstanding minds of American history. He stands out as a philosopher, theologian, man of letters, and revivalist. His reputation has been maligned for many years because of false judgment against a certain sermon and a particular emphasis in preaching. The time has come to revalue Jonathan Edwards and his ministry in the light of the eighteenth century, the Great Awakening, and our present age. During his lifetime (1703–1758) he lived and labored under the eye of the divine Taskmaster. The several lives of Edwards give the details of his life of dedication and devotion.

New knowledge about Edwards indicates that he was primarily a pastoral preacher who did the work of an evangelist. Puritan in life and ideal, he followed well defined models of Puritan homiletics and hermeneutics. Study filled most of the day, and a well-disciplined mind was lighted by the Holy Spirit for his ministry.

Election And Decision

The manuscripts at Yale and Andover throw new light upon his inner convictions and the emphases he made in preaching. These suggest that in Edwards there is a paradox. How was it that he, a Calvinist convinced of the sovereignty of God, could at the same time act as a persuasive Arminianist in storming the will of man and urging man to press in to the Kingdom of God? This is most enlightening, especially as we are witnessing in our day a revival of preaching closely akin to this. Modern evangelism raises afresh the question concerning the stress in preaching which brings people to repentance and faith.

Is there any difference between revival preaching and evangelistic preaching? Are we too ready to assume that what is evangelistic is also revivalist? Do not the Scriptures make a distinction here? Men advertise that revival services will be held at a Church, but attendance on the preaching would indicate that here is no revival but simply evangelistic preaching. Evangelistic preaching has its place and is the reaching out of the church through the evangelist or the pastor to win the lost for Christ. But revival is the renewal of spiritual life, the revitalizing of lives grown careless and cold in spirit. Evangelism is primarily to those without the church, but revival is for those within the church. True, when church people and Christians are revived in spirit there is an outflow of love and compassion through evangelism to those without.

Sinners And God’s Anger

All this can be seen in the life of Edwards. His pastoral ministry was for a congregation primarily, but he also ministered to communities and people without. The Great Awakening found him in the midst of revival. He was used of God in reaching multitudes, yet he never ceased to be the pastor who reached his congregation. When revival came to his own church in Northampton, it did not come with “hell-fire” preaching as many imagine. The facts are these:

One Sunday he preached on “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” What happened? Nothing! That morning the good people listened with respect and agreement. After the service they stood outside the church and talked about the weather, births and deaths, crops and other domestic interests, including no doubt the finer points of that long sermon. But no one is on record as having been convicted and converted. Three months later, at Enfield, Edwards was asked to preach to the gathering of the district church people, and he took from the sermon barrel (or was it his saddlebag?) the manuscript of this sermon. A study of the manuscript at Yale shows how he worked over it and altered selected words and phrases. The revised manuscript then was used as the basis of the sermon which that day found the people “in great expectancy” (B. Trumbull, History of Connecticut, II, p. 112). The Holy Spirit brought conviction of sin, and people were moved to cry out and seek repentance and salvation. Revival broke out that day and spread across a wide area. It was the same sermon in essence which Edwards had used in his regular pastoral ministry, a token that the Spirit blows where he wills.

The question is asked—when did Edwards witness revival among his own congregation? The evidence is that he was not preaching imprecatory sermons, but delivering a series of expository sermons based on 1 Corinthians 13. The stress on love moved his own people, and again we see how the Spirit blows where he wills.

In the light of these experiences, let us not make the mistake today of demanding that God will send revival to his people or reach the lost through evangelism by any one method or by any one kind of preaching. In the book of The Acts we trace the regularity of the irregular. God is sovereign, as Edwards believed, and he acts in ways not stereotyped or fixed in ruts.

Edwards was neither a hireling nor a middleman in his conception of the ministry. He was a voice for God. While God was pleased to reach men in diverse ways, Edwards said it pleased God most of all “to call his saints in all his proper person, but in practice, preferring to employ his ambassadors and conforming his grace to the process of cause and effect.” It was the accepted belief of the Puritan that “whatsoever any faithful minister shall speak out of the Word, that is also the voice of Christ.”

Aiming For A Verdict

Edwards knew that he was an instrument of God. He based his preaching on a view of life in which God was all-sovereign. He revitalized conventional religion with this truth. He believed in redemption for the individual and the sermon as the agency of conversion. Others stressed ritual and sacrament in a day of declension and barrenness. He restored the sermon to its primacy in worship, and application in a sermon was usually more than mere exposition! He emphasized one idea, and then looked for salvation of the hearer.

Man’s sinfulness or depravity was stressed to show man’s inability to save himself. God’s sovereignty was central to show how man is shut up to God’s grace alone. It was Edwards’ testimony that he found “no discourses more remarkably blessed than those in which the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty with regard to the salvation of sinners was insisted on.” Stressing God’s grace in “Narrative of Surprising Conversions” and the sermon on “A Divine and Supernatural Light” he witnessed that “those that are under conviction will enquire earnestly what they shall do to be saved, and diligently use the appointed means of grace.”

In aim, Edwards appealed to the emotions by self-interest. He believed that unless a man was moved by some affection, he was by nature inactive. His defense of the Great Awakening supposed that the element of fear loomed largely in his imprecatory sermons, but the appeal to self-blessedness was always found in sermons dealing with heaven and the joys of salvation.

Then again he aimed to awaken the conscience for a verdict. The evangelist in Edwards appealed for a response. “I have not only endeavored to awaken you, that you might be moved with fear, but I have used my utmost endeavor to win you.”

The Paradox Of Preaching

We may summarize the paradox of Edwards’ preaching by stating his own aim: “the unconverted are guilty and deserve the punishment awaiting them; this punishment is given by an infinite God in his justice; and the only hope of escape is by the gift of salvation which cannot be won by man’s effort, but if anyone is violent he may press into the kingdom.”

In our day of man’s failure and fear of world doom, we may learn from Edwards. There is place for “hell-fire” sermons and the preaching of judgment in the right spirit but not in a cold manner. Conversion is a reality for the sinner and “whosoever may come.” John Wesley in the same day as Edwards had no stress on philosophy or a doctrine of the will comparable to Edwards’, but he also preached evangelistically, and multitudes were found in the valley of decision.

God honored and used both Edwards and Wesley. Calvinist and Arminian, philosopher and scholar, revivalist and evangelist, each had his place in God’s plan. Edwards’ paradox, from which we learn, lay in the predetermined sovereign will of God which knows man’s end, but allows his servant to preach as a means of urging people to press into the Kingdom of God.

Both evangelist and revivalist must unite to affirm that there is no final opposition between divine sovereignty and human free will. God is sovereign and man is free. God the Father works out his redemptive purpose and his Kingdom is sure.

Ralph G. Turnbull is pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington. A native of Scotland, he holds the M.A. degree from University of Edinburgh, B.D. from United College, Manitoba University, Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Whitworth College. His Jonathan Edwards the Preacher is to be published in March.

Preacher In The Red

A FRIEND IN NEED

I was completing my first funeral service in my first congregation on the plains of Kansas. The words of committal for a dear, aged mother had been spoken and a prayer following concluded the grave-side service. Unexpectedly, one of the sons of the family approached me and asked me to thank those who had been of help to the family during their bereavement. This is what the nervous and frustrated young preacher announced, “In name of the mourning family I want to thank all the neighbors and friends who have made this funeral possible.”—The Rev. FRANK DEJONG, Home Missionary, Christian Reformed Church, Bellflower, Calif.

Not long ago I heard the titular head of a large missionary organization say that medical aid was the “bait” by which his group hoped to catch men and give them the Gospel. Some of his hearers protested, but one of them, a doctor, immediately came to the speaker’s defense: “Of course it is right to use bait. Jesus used plenty of it, both in his words and in his miracles.” But did he?

There is no doubt that the Christian Church has often used bait. Everyone knows the sorrowful story of the rice Christians of China, the free meals and lodging offered in a score of missions on skidrow, the lurid advertisements which have featured the dramatic conversions of former gangsters, wiretappers, communists, and convicts. The other day I saw the words “air-conditioned” sending forth a particularly fervent appeal in red letters from the bulletin board of a church in the deep South. We are all familiar with the appeal of spectacular buildings, magnificent music, special programs, and daring sermon subjects.

Spiritual Resources

Leonard M. Outerbridge in his Lost Churches of China says: “Seldom has the church dared to trust its cause solely to its innate character and its own spiritual resources and message.” And Walter Lippmann has reminded us in his Preface to Morals that if men had the “certainty which once made God and his plan as real as the lamppost,” and were sure “that they were going to meet God when they go to church … there would be no complaint whatever about church attendance. The most worldly would be in the front pews, and preachers would not have to resort to desperate expedients to attract an audience.”

Whatever may have been the policy of his followers in using bait, did Jesus use it? Can one honestly point to anything he ever did or said which shows that he looked upon the practice with favor, or used it himself?

Immediately there come to mind his words: “As ye go, preach, saying, the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves, for the workman is worthy of his meat” (Matt. 10:7–10). The simplest interpretation of these instructions is that Jesus’ followers were not to use bait. Healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, raising the dead, and casting out devils were to be the fruitage of their work. These were to be the consequences which followed the preaching of the Gospel. In no case were they to be dangled before the sick and needy as bait for the purpose of gathering an audience to hear the Word!

As far as I can discover, there is no instance recorded in Holy Writ where any of the earliest Christians did otherwise. Not once do we read of any of the Apostles first rallying a crowd around a “wonder” like a magician or a medicine-man at a carnival, and then preaching the Gospel.

In not using bait, the earliest Christians were not only following the instructions of our Lord, but his own example. What were miracles to men were not miracles to him. They were merely his work. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17).

Bait Disguises The Gospel

The feeding of the five thousand was not bait. It came as a total surprise to Jesus’ audience, even to his closest followers. When some of them would have had it as bait, he rebuked their misrepresentation of it: “Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled” (John 6:26). The “bait” had already degenerated into its grosser, lustful components, as mere bait always does, for it is chiefly of the flesh. “Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you” (John 6:27).

Bait is for those who would catch men as game, and must needs disguise the hooks bent for their capture. The Gospel is not for man’s enslavement, but for his liberation. When purely preached it will spread everywhere of its own essence, which is the power of God. If the acceptance of the Gospel depends upon the bait that is used, our cause is lost, and men will be taken by another Gospel. For in the art of manufacturing baits, baits having great allure, even with miracles and wonders, we are no match for the enemy.

If we find that we have to use bait in order for the Gospel which we preach to be heard and effective, maybe Walter Lippmann is right. Maybe our preaching still has the form of the old Gospel, but has lost its power. If so, help lies not in the use of bait, but in a recovery of the power of God.

The Rev. David W. Baker is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., and holds the Th.B. degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. He also holds the M.D. degree from University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and is currently practicing Christian counseling in the Philadelphia Presbytery, where he does interim preaching, and lectures in Psychology at the Temple University School of Theology.

Four hundred years ago this year there took place in England one of those events which may genuinely be described as crucial for the whole development of the Western world, not only in the sphere of religion but also in that of ethical, political and social movement. In itself, the event was quite ordinary and simple, and not altogether unexpected. It consisted in the death of an aging, lonely, disappointed and embittered lady. But this lady happened to be the Queen of England, the wife of Philip of Spain, and the leader of the Counter-Reformation in her kingdom. Her name was Mary Tudor.

She had been through unfortunate experiences prior to her accession. Her mother was the ill-fated Katherine of Aragon, who had first been married to the elder son of Henry VII, and then became the first of the many brides of Henry VIII. Mary was her only child to survive infancy, and the failure to produce a male heir was one of the reasons for the unsavory affair which touched off the Reformation in England. Mary herself grew up under the shadow of her mother’s ill-treatment and a prey to the fickle moods of her father. For a time, when the king’s marriage with Katherine was pronounced null and void, she was even declared illegitimate and excluded from succession to the throne. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that she later identified the Reformation with a great wrong, and regarded those who espoused it as mistaken at the very best, if not irreligious and hypocritical.

Mary was not unkindly treated during the reign of Edward VI, and was given her rightful position as next in succession should Edward die without any children of his own. Her religious convictions were respected, although Reformers like Ridley made futile efforts to bring her to an appreciation of evangelical truth. But the experiences through which she had passed, and the influence of her advisers, made her quite impervious to their appeals and unswerving in her conviction that England must be brought back to the papal fold. The precarious health of Edward made the position of the Reformers a very uneasy one during the years of their apparent success, and the selfish and unscrupulous policy of the real ruler in Edward’s minority, the Duke of Northumberland, did little to commend the cause of reform to the mass of the people.

When Edward died in 1553, the new reign commenced with high hopes. Even Protestants had not supported the attempt of Northumberland to secure the throne for Jane Grey, whom he had conveniently married to his own son. And encouraged by Mary’s vague promises of respect for religious convictions, most of them rallied to the legitimate heir, and were only too glad to throw off the yoke of the exacting Northumberland. Mary had in fact a great chance. She could hardly be expected to approve or actively foster the cause of Reformation. But at least she could grant a period of conciliation or concession when matters could be thoroughly and honestly sifted and some form of settlement quietly reached.

No Concession To Protestants

However, in practice, this was hardly to be expected, and the leading Reformers were well aware that they must seek safety in exile or face the possibility of imprisonment and even death. Mary’s character and policy were already fixed for her. The bringing back of Reginald Pole as Archbishop, the election of a new Parliament carefully picked from sympathizers and finally the Spanish marriage committed her to a way of reaction which very quickly became a way of intolerant suppression. One by one the various measures of reform were repealed, Mary’s only failure being in the matter of monastic properties which even the most “Catholic” of beneficiaries refused to restore. The instigators of the Reformation, from bishops on the one hand to humble artisans and even expectant mothers on the other, were committed to prison, and in many cases to flames. Nor was the policy of religious reaction and intolerance matched by progress in the economic or foreign fields. At home, conditions were perhaps even more wretched than they had been under Edward, while abroad England as junior partner with Spain had seldom stood so low in the estimation of other nations.

Perhaps the main question in the minds of Protestants and others during the brief reign of Mary was whether she would have an heir and thus ensure a “Catholic” succession in place of Elizabeth. On many occasions there were rumors that an heir was expected, and once the bells were even rung for his or her supposed birth. The likely source of these rumors was that Mary was suffering from an internal growth from which she finally died, but we can imagine the state of suspense for the country when so many issues were poised in the balance, and no one could tell how the decision would fall.

God Can Work The Improbable

No study is ultimately more futile than that of the possibilities of history. For after all, one of the great interests of history under the guiding providence of God is that even the most probable things do not happen. Yet it is tempting to consider what might not have happened if Mary had really had a healthy successor. Even politically the consequences could have been momentous. England might have been enslaved for many years to Spanish policy, and never have become the seafaring, mercantile and colonizing power which it did under Elizabeth. In these circumstances, there might well have been no development of the dominions or even the United States in their modern form; no emergence of the democratic institutions which these nations have in common; no vigorous development of commerce and industry; no flourishing of independent education; no literature and culture so obviously informed by Protestant convictions and principles. Religiously, of course, the results might have been even more awful to contemplate. Protestantism might well have been finally excluded from England, and in this case the Scottish Reformation would probably have been impossible, the Netherlands might well have succumbed to Catholicism, there would have been no Pilgrim Fathers to spread evangelical truth to the new world, and all the enterprises in which Britain and America especially have been so gloriously identified, whether in the form of religious awakening, missionary expansion or social reform, might never have eventuated. Indeed, it is not impossible that Spain might have maintained its influence far longer than was the case, and ultimately have been the real colonizer of North as well as South America and other parts of the globe. So much of the future depended upon the life or death of Mary Tudor.

The lessons of history are more instructive than its probabilities. And from the situation at the close of the reign of Mary, four simple lessons are to be learned which may stand us in good stead in similar circumstances. The first is obviously the value of a steadfast witness even when the cause seems hopeless. The martyrs who died at the stake did not die in vain. Indeed, they perhaps commended the Gospel in a way in which it had never been commended to the common people by previous reforms. At the very least, it aroused a hatred for the bigotry (however sincere) which could carry through such remorseless persecution, and a respect for simple folk and learned churchmen who cared enough about scriptural truth to be prepared to die for it.

The Lesson Of Restoration

But not all the Reformers were called to die. Some of them sought refuge in exile, not merely for their own safety, but to be ready for a possible restoration. Some Roman Catholic writers have been prepared to see in the exile almost a deliberate and well-considered plan for the possible future. Whether this was consciously the case or not, the fact remains that from the exile there came back to England on Mary’s death an able body of mostly younger leaders able to take up where their fathers had been broken off. We must not despise those who flee when they are persecuted. Some are called to suffer; some to preach elsewhere and at the right moment to return. Even in the most desperate case, prudent measures can rightly be taken for the turn which God may see fit to bring. Preparation for the future may also be an act of faith and obedience.

One of the less fortunate aspects of the exile was that it saw the beginning, or rather the intensification, of discord and division among the English Protestants, with all that this was to mean in the form of later Puritan and Independent controversies. At this point there is a third lesson of warning. Times of weakness and apparent defeat are often times when there is a particular temptation to disagreement. But the call of God in such times is surely to close the ranks, to face the common enemy, to concentrate on the essentials and to work together a step at a time for the basic cause. How much happier might not the ultimate settlement have been, and how much stronger the evangelical cause in England, if the exiles and their successors had overcome at once the kind of division which became such a scandal at Frankfort!

Finally, there is the simple but supreme lesson of the divine overruling of history. This need not be labored. It is so obviously true at so many points that while man proposes, it is not man, whether he be emperor, pope or politician, but God himself who disposes. This has been particularly at the climaxes of history, and most of all when out of apparent disaster God brings a glorious victory like the triumph of Protestantism in England. This is the ultimate challenge to faith in the death of Mary Tudor.

Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Ph.D., D.Litt., is rector of St. Thomas’ English Episcopal Church in Edinburgh, Scotland. Educated in the University of Edinburgh, he is author of books on history and religion and contributor to numerous periodicals. He was Vice Principal of Tyndale Hall, Bristol, from 1946–54.

Revival is a return to God, and a return to God is a return to his Word. Throughout the whole span of the history of revivals this can be seen repeated in the remarkable turning of men to the Holy Scriptures. That which they had lauded as authority they discarded in favor of the Bible. Revival in every epoch has retold the story of the use of Holy Writ in restoring vitality to the Church.

Probably the greatest attestation to this in the Protestant era is found in the initial movement that made the western world Protestant. It was because the leaders of his period—Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and others—focused attention upon the Bible that revival was realized. The beginnings of the Reformation were the fruits of their efforts and the result of their pleas for a pure faith springing from the dictates of God’s Word. They recognized that the Church had previously been encumbered with volumes of literature which only obstructed the clear meaning of the Book of Books. Hence they deemed it reasonable that Scripture should take first place in the thinking and reading of the people. It was when this was emphasized that the peoples of Europe felt a strange but real power of moral uplift surging throughout the continent. This was the whole aim of the Reformers and the primary drive that motivated their zeal and teaching.

Source Of Renewed Life

What they advocated they practiced themselves. They were students of the Scriptures. The whole of Europe followed their example when the Bible was placed in the vernacular of the people. Men and women of all classes gladly became students of the Word of God with them. As the Bible was deeply, sincerely and prayerfully pondered, it quietly and unerringly did its divine work in cottage and mansion. In every country multitudes were awakened out of their sleep of spiritual death, convicted and converted to God. Converts were characterized as a saintly group, possessed by a supernatural power, for through them eternity was sensed, heaven’s atmosphere felt, and the unmistakable awe of God’s majesty realized. They lived listening to the Word of God and doing its precepts. This was indeed revival, the true portrait of vital spiritual quickening that is Christ-centered.

Motivated Wesleys, Edwards

A similar pattern was in evidence in the outpouring of God’s Spirit through the Wesleys during the eighteenth century. The whole basis of early Methodism was the Scriptures. John Wesley said in 1738 that he and his colleagues “resolved to be Bible-Christians at all events; and, wherever they went, to preach with all their might plain, old Bible Christianity” (Jackson’s Works of Wesley, Vol. VIII, p. 349). Whatever effect the revival had was the result of the soul-passion of this man. He cried, “I have thought I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God: Just hovering over the great gulf; till, a few moments hence I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing—the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way; For this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri. Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men, I sit down alone: Only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his book; for this end, to find the way to heaven. Is there a doubt concerning the meaning of the thing I read? Does anything appear dark or intricate? I lift up my heart to the Father of Lights: ‘Lord, is it not thy word, If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God? Thou givest liberally, and upbraidest not. Thou hast said, if any be willing to do thy will, he shall know. I am willing to do, let me know thy will.’ I then search after and consider parallel passages of Scripture, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. I meditate thereon with all the attention and earnestness of which my mind is capable. If any doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God; and then the writings whereby, being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach” (ibid., Vol. V, pp. 3–4).

Proclaiming The Word

Nothing less was the heart-concern of every man whom the Lord chose as his instrument for bringing about revival. In each instance it was the proclaiming of Holy Writ that brought about a God-consciousness and a sense of eternal verities in the midst of society. Jonathan Edwards, the mouthpiece of the Great Awakening, scrupulously applied himself to the same task of being a student of the Bible and then proclaiming what he had imbibed. One of his resolutions (which he read over once a week) states, “Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly, and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same” (Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. I, p. 4). An extract from his diary confirms this desire; he says on Tuesday, August 13, 1723, some years before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in abundance, “I find it would be very much to my advantage to be thoroughly acquainted with the Scriptures. When I am reading doctrinal books, or books of controversy, I can proceed with abundantly more confidence; can see upon what foundation I stand” (ibid., p. 11). He relied upon Holy Writ because he believed it recorded God’s thinking and spoke his message to men’s hearts. “In the Bible,” he wrote, “we not only have those warnings which are given by inspiration of the prophets, but we have God’s own words, which he spake as it were by his own mouth. In the Old Testament is his voice out of the midst of the fire and the darkness, from mount Sinai; and in the New Testament, we have God speaking to us, as dwelling among us. He came down from heaven, and instructed us in a familiar manner for a long while; and we have his instructions recorded in our Bibles” (ibid., Vol. VI, p. 333).

This was the fountain that brought new life to early American Christianity. Here is the spring of that power that revivified the dying church and cleansed it of the corruption that polluted its entire ministry. A new day dawned in the history of the United States when the infant nation again grasped and accepted the truth of God’s Word. Under the biblical preaching of Edwards the country mended its ways, received stamina and grew to become a leader in international affairs. When the church was revived the nation lived a vital life.

Also On Mission Field

What wrought revival blessing in long established Christian countries also produced the same results in heathen lands. Young mission churches in pagan surroundings experienced the impact of God’s Spirit upon their work when they emphasized scriptural teaching and Bible reading. A spiritual refreshing of unusual proportions came their way when they placed the Word of God centrally in their lives as the primary avenue through which God was permitted to speak to them his message. After many years of fruitless labor, revival came to Ongole, India, because of this very fact. John E. Clough, principal instrument in that movement, later reported, “The missionaries and native preachers are doing, we have reason to believe, a good work. Thousands of village schools are taught by Christian men and women; hundreds of colporteurs, with Bible in hand, travel from village to village, and offer the word of God, and evangelical and other tracts, for a nominal price to all who will buy; while hundreds of other zealous men, as catechists or lay-preachers, go everywhere preaching Jesus” (From Darkness to Light, p. 280).

Again the secret of success in bringing strength to a weak church, spirituality to carnal Christians, and the voice of God to deaf ears was in stressing the Bible as the Lord’s message. When constant systematic study of the Word was restored, Christians were so blessed that heaven met earth through them, heathendom was affected and thousands found salvation in the true and living God.

Modern Experience

The modern era bears testimony to the same truth. In the twentieth century there have been many notable revivals, and Holy Scripture has been shown to be the foundation of them all. One of the most extraordinary took place in Wales. Here Evan Roberts was the channel God used. He made the Bible his first concern. A contemporary biographer of his wrote in 1906, at the height of the movement, “His great book, both during the years before he became a church member and after, was the Bible. It has continued to this day to be his delight. This is proved by his extensive knowledge of the Old and New Testament by heart” (Phillips, D.M., Evan Roberts, p. 53). Whether at work or in leisure he was absorbed in the Word of God. “It will be interesting to see him at work in the smithy. Scarcely a minute passes by that he is not singing or repeating Bible verses and other good things” (ibid., p. 46). Upon leaving his place of employment he does not waste his time in gaiety, but in his home he “sits before the fire with the Bible in his hands, and reads on for hours. Losing himself completely in it, he is deaf to the chatter and clatter of the house” (ibid., p. 47). Small wonder when he became God’s man in Wales he was able to bring to that land God’s message, the sense of heaven’s presence and the touch of the Eternal. Later through his biblical preaching as a revivalist he bore in upon his hearers with telling conviction the Word of God, the “quick and powerful, and sharper than two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). As “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” the Lord used his message through his servant to speak to the people. In turn the Welsh population found God to be merciful, loving and ready to forgive.

Individual Confrontation

In every revival, individuals through personal studious and methodical contact with the Bible have seen themselves as they really are before God. Hence, each one after seeing Jehovah laments with Job, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” With intense meditation upon the Word, every revivalist has a similar experience with Isaiah. He “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims; each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke” (Isa. 6:1–4). Upon such a sight he exclaims, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts” (Isa. 6:5).

Such a revelation motivates the viewer to revival activity by first rectifying his own life and then appealing to his fellows to do likewise. This was the commission of Jesus Christ to Simon Peter; the apostle had just seen the power of God demonstrated by the Saviour, and in astonishment he “fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). However, the Lord immediately responded with spiritual quickening when he “said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men” (Luke 5:10). Peter was thereby declared a revivalist. Divine energy was his when he humbled himself before the sinless One. It is the sight of the sovereign Lord in all of his matchless purity and glory as revealed in the Scriptures that stirs men and brings them to themselves in contrition. Only when sin is acknowledged and forsaken does revival begin. When this is accomplished in backsliding Christian lives, revival has begun. The impact will be felt among believers who under the dynamic of the Holy Spirit turn to God.

Spirit-Directed Drive

As this is an individual matter, revival must of necessity be an independent movement fostered by God. This peak experience of spiritual blessing comes to the Christian when he meets the Lord and in that meeting he is aware only of him. Stripped of all pretence and superficiality, a Christian is in the ultimate analysis alone before his God. Out on the vast expanse of eternity that has no horizon, lacking support of environment and circumstances, he is in a condition of forsakeness apart from the consciousness that the King of Eternity is near. An unbeliever may describe such an encounter with the Lord as something phenomenal, but for one regenerated by the Spirit of God and acquainted with the Lord, it is geunine. Christians assert they know the Lord of Glory from experience. He may not be seen or grasped by human hands, but nevertheless he is as real as hands and feet and closer than breathing.

Being sensitive of such presence of God crushes one into the dust to nothingness. Knowing he is being quietly observed and read, and being certain he is under the scrutiny of God’s eye, the Christian has no other alternative but to admit his utter sinfulness and to allow the cleansing blood of Christ to make him clean and every whit whole. At that moment the Holy Spirit, who has directed this work, reoccupies the heart as sovereign and controls its every area. This is personal revival which issues in a community-wide experience. Is not this the essence of what the prophets and the apostles knew and realized in their own generation?

Broader Implication

Revival always has the broader implication, although it still possesses the traits of the personalistic contact of being subordinate only to the Lord. Whatever influence revival has, it is at the behest of God. This is noted in its corporate action in the Church. In this society of called-out ones, regenerated by the Spirit of Jehovah, the benediction of revival is shared by everyone. Each member does not realize this blessing to the same degree, but all have received some evidence of God’s grace. Each one has not the same capacity to receive spiritual power, but all know something of the outpouring of the Spirit of the Lord when he manifests himself to the Church. Under the sway of the Spirit’s brooding, the assembly unitedly rises to a new level of devotion to its Master and its members consecrate themselves severally and as one with greater purpose to propagate his truth as revealed in his Word.

Revival in its practical application brings the Christian and the Church to concert-pitch spiritually. Due to this it must be free and autonomous, for its actions are dictated by a consuming passion to obey God rather than men. No obstacle can hinder and no blockade can stop men under the direction of revival fervor. Reiteration of this is noted throughout history and can be seen in every revival. Always this has been the aspiration of the Church, even though it has been held captive at times by worldliness. It has constantly endeavored to seek God and his will through his Word, for to be in the center of his will is to be in the place of revival. This is ascertained only in God’s Word. Thus to repeat, revival is a return to God, and a return to God is a return to his Word.

Ernest V. Liddle is a native of Northern Ireland, studied at Edinburgh University and the College of the Free Church of Scotland. He holds degrees from Asbury Theological Seminary and Northern Baptist Seminary; has been a preacher for the Methodist church in Ireland and the Free Church of Scotland, held Methodist pastorates in the U.S., became a Baptist in 1956 and is now on the staff of the Watchman Examiner, New York.

The recent North American Conference on Faith and Order at Oberlin brought together in “historic harmony” representatives of most major Protestant bodies. Theologians of many denominations found themselves in remarkable agreement as to essentials, especially the Person and Work of Christ.

Cause For Concern

Some observers, however, have pondered the results of the conference with apprehension. To these there is cause for concern in the spectacle of Oberlin’s “unity.” They are not alarmed by the possibility that men of divergent views may find it possible to achieve unanimity. They are, however, alarmed by the far-reaching implications of the fact that men of widely separated faiths could find it so easy to achieve unanimity.

It may be—one observer mused—that Oberlin demonstrated as a fact what we have long suspected: not that our denominations have come closer together but that some of our theologians have discovered that they can agree and at one and the same time profess loyalty to traditions that clearly disagree.

We seem to be entering a new era, one in which the old issues that once divided us no longer tend to keep us apart, not because they have been resolved, but because they have paled into relative insignificance in the face of new issues more important. The old walls of separation apparently are crumbling … from lack of attention. Not that we no longer care about the difference between Congregationalism and episcopacy, but rather that we are confronted by the urgency of issues about which we care more.

At Oberlin it was demonstrated, not that lines of demarcation have disappeared in Christendom, but that new lines of demarcation are being drawn crossing denominational boundaries, dividing men of like faiths and uniting men of unlike faiths. Oberlin did not bring Presbyterians and Episcopalians together against Methodists. Oberlin brought some Presbyterians and some Episcopalians together, while other Presbyterians and Episcopalians stayed home and took a dim view of the whole proceedings. And some Methodists shouted amen to the brethren at Oberlin while others shouted amen to the brethren who stayed home. The significance of this realignment is the most important thing in Christendom today.

Most significant of all about the new realignment is the fact that everybody is now saying the same thing: “We must turn to the living Christ for an adequate theology for our day.”

We no longer live in a time when differences in affirmations of faith divided men who called themselves Christians. We are entering an era in which all men may conceivably make the same affirmation of faith, but with meanings that are poles apart. Today men are finding it possible to swear allegiance to the “living Christ” from the standpoint of a faith far removed from that of other men who with equal fervor also swear allegiance to the “living Christ.” And this fact is causing upheavals in the Christian world.

Evidence of the above exists in abundance.

New Alignments

Witness some of the alliances that have recently been consummated, or defeated. The United Church of South India brought together widely separated concepts of theology and polity. The Fellowship of Fundamentalist Churches has also brought together widely separated concepts of theology and polity: churches that immerse have exchanged ministers with churches that sprinkle. But no one in his right mind would predict unanimity should the Bishop of the Church of South India sit down in conference with the President of the Fellowship of Fundamentalist Churches.

Not long ago in the United States, Presbyterians of the North and Presbyterians of the South failed to unite despite their common heritage and an active promotional campaign. But only the careless student concluded that the major issues were sectionalism and racism. For the Presbyterians of the North have many congregations in the South and the Presbyterians of the South are beginning actively to consider enlarging their boundaries and reaching out into the North and the West. No. The issues defeating the union were theological—and among brethren who hold to the same Westminster standards.

Once upon a time the doctrine of Predestination separated Presbyterians from their Methodist brethren. Today you can hear Presbyterian professors of theology denying that man’s will is captive or his depravity total, while Methodist professors here and there affirm fervently their belief that God has more to do with the steps man takes unto salvation than man.

Language No Longer Meaningful

Neither Christ nor Calvary can any longer be held to be the ground or basis of Christian unity. Today you must know what Christ and which Calvary. Neo-orthodoxy has taken the last significant step back into full theological agreement with the historic Gospel by affirming that the liberal Jesus must be replaced with the living Christ. But Neo-orthodoxy says, in the next breath, that it does not mean the Christ of 17th Century orthodoxy. The issue, then, is not whether Christ will be the only answer, but whether you mean this or that when you affirm that Christ is the only answer.

The issue is not whether the Bible will be held to be the Word of God, for all are earnestly affirming the modern validity of that historic terminology. The issue is rather what is meant when you say that the Bible is the Word of God.

The problem of unity is not what to do with believers who remain at odds with other believers over the historical Jesus, but what to do when Unbelief proclaims the Lordship of the living Christ.

No greater time of danger has come upon the Christian Church than the present. For today Faith cannot be distinguished from Doubt by the language it uses or the confession it makes. Unbelief once kept itself aloof from the household of faith. Today it wants to come into the house, take a place at the table and crawl into bed with the children … without becoming a member of the family.

This is the situation which has driven Christians of every faith to a re-alignment of their loyalties. A new evangelical ecumenism is rising to meet the vapid ecumenism of radical theology.

Distinctions Must Be Preserved

Unfortunately the new alignments are taking place against a background of increasing suspicion and mistrust. Very likely this may not be avoided. When opposing armies become hard to tell apart by the uniform they wear, increasing alertness is indicated. There comes a time when some “shibboleth” may be the only way to distinguish a man of Ephraim from a friend. Thus, instead of fading into disuse, such tests as the so-called five points of fundamentalism may loom in increasing importance. But even here the possibility of confusion remains. Not long ago a prominent clergyman wrote that he believed the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. But not—he carefully said—in a physical sense.

Recently I heard, in a sermon delivered by a famous minister, a word which illustrated the urgency of the crisis facing the Church today. This man is considered one of the more evangelical preachers of my own denomination. He was preaching on Christian family life and he was rooting the origin of the Christian concern for the family in the Old Testament experiences of the people of God. He painted a vivid picture of Moses’ awful responsibility in the wilderness and he spoke of the laws which were given at Sinai. In the course of his sermon he said, with a sweep of his hand:

“There was Moses, sitting on the mountain, with that vast encampment of people spread out below him, patiently chipping into the rock the commandments which he felt that God was speaking to his heart.…”

I felt numb. The preacher passed over to the New Testament and concluded with warm words about the living Christ. But what can “living Christ” mean to a man who stumbles at the thought that God actually met Moses on the mountain?

G. Aiken Taylor is Minister of First Presbyterian Church, Alexandria, Louisiana. A Calvin scholar, he holds the Ph.D. degree from Duke University. He is author of A Sober Faith and St. Luke’s Life of Jesus, and numerous magazine articles.

We Quote:

PAUL WOLFE

Minister, Brick Presbyterian Church, New York City

The Churches of the Reformation do not officially deny the right of private judgment, but in practice they are approaching the Roman position and affirming that the Church has authority over social and political problems.

Where once they stood for liberty of conscience, these Free Churches today are stressing “group thinking” and the “collective mind”. Pronouncements and resolutions on social and political problems, purporting to represent the “group mind” of the Church, are used to compel the individual Christian to conform. Sometimes we are told that these pronouncements carry “authority” to compel the individual Christian to conform.

The pronouncements are on all manner of subjects. Is it foreign affairs? The government of the United States is told how to conduct its diplomacy. Christians are told what they should think about the United Nations. Is it domestic politics? The individual Church member is told whether he can approve Federal appropriations for education or Federal appropriations for housing; he is told what should be his attitude toward public schools and private schools. A short time ago one of our Church bodies had before it a resolution to tell the President of the United States when he should speak and what he should say in his speech. There is hardly a meeting of a Church body in which some representative of an “action committee” does not bring in a resolution and ask that “the prophetic voice of the Church be heard on (whatever he considers) the social and political crisis of this hour.” The Free Christian Churches in the name of group action are asserting authority over almost everything except religion.

There are a number of things to be said about this. The first is that it is a tragic thing that our Free Churches learn so little from the past. One of the sad days for Protestant Christianity was the day when the Churches made Prohibition the major Christian issue of the hour. In their prophetic capacity they wrote Prohibition into the legislation and the Constitution of the country. And the result? After fifteen years of experiment, Prohibition was withdrawn, one hundred years of progress in temperance was lost, alcohol was given a secure place in American social life.

The second thing to be said is that these pronouncements are not the voice of the Church. If they were the voice of the Church, they would have to be debated in every Session, in every Board of Deacons, in every congregation, debated back and forth until they actually expressed the judgment of the responsible courts of the Church. This, however, is not what happens. The pronouncements represent the political maneuvering of a hard core of committee-entrenched individuals who use a majority vote of a council to promote their social prejudices. These persons work at this task year in and year out. Some of them are part of the paid secretariat of the Church. Delegates and Commissioners to Church bodies rotate, but these permanent office holders are there year after year writing their “prophetic” resolutions.

Another thing to be said is that such action is not prophetic action. Prophecy does not count noses or operate through majority votes. The prophets of the Old Testament were lonely men. Amos, the Prophet of social justice, asked that he be not called a prophet. He did not want his name associated with the schools of mass prophecy. The same was true of Jeremiah. The men who were defeating righteousness were the organized prophets who set their truth in place of God’s Truth. The true Prophet said—I stand here alone and I speak alone because God commanded me to speak.

But the final critic of these pronouncements is Church law. The words of our Confession in regard to Synods and Councils are: “All synods or councils since the Apostles’ times … may err and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice.” “Synods and councils are to handle or conclude nothing but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth.”

One can understand the Pope of Rome claiming authority over social and political problems; he does not believe in the right of private judgment. What is tragic is to have the churches that do believe in religious liberty attempting to play Pope to their own people.

We should remember that the law of our Free Churches still protects the right of private judgment. Our councils and assemblies, being made up of all kinds of men with varying capacities for judgment, probably will continue to be the victims of political pressures. You should know, however, that these pronouncements carry no authority and you are not obligated to obey them.…

I remind you that the right of private judgment is a solemn responsibility exercised under God.

Frequently our Roman brethren speak as though the Reformation stood for religious laissez faire, meaning religious anarchy. They assume that the right of private judgment means that one may think what he wishes and worship as he pleases.

To assert this is to indicate complete ignorance of the teaching of the Reformers. In his statement on the freedom of the Christian man, Luther pointed out that the individual Christian is at one and the same time the most free and the most bound of all men; he is free from the authority of men, but he is bound by the revelation of the Bible and the truth of God’s Word. He is bound by the voice of God speaking to his own conscience.

Our Confession of Faith teaches a similar doctrine: “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to His Word.” The Christian is free. He does not stand in intellectual or moral bondage to any man, to any council, Presbytery, hierarchy or priesthood. Nevertheless the Scriptures are to be studied and the will of God is to be obeyed. The Christian stands responsible before the most august court of all, the court of the Living God. “He is constantly referred beyond the Church to the Lord of the Church and summoned, as a free man, to make his solemn answer to the rightful Lord of his life.” When Martin Luther set the Western world free from the commandments of men he bound it to the Law of God.

There is a scene in Luther’s life which no liberty loving Christian should ever forget. A lone man, isolated and seemingly forsaken, stood before the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and representatives of the Roman Church. On a table before them were the man’s writings. Had he written them? He had. The writings had been condemned by the Roman Church: Did he still believe what he had written? He did. He knew the penalty for heresy? He did. Would he retract and recant? The man paused before he answered and then spoke in measured word. “I cannot submit my faith either to the Pope or to the councils because they have frequently erred and contradicted each other. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by clear reasoning, since my conscience is thus bound by the Word of God, I cannot and will not retract; for it is unsafe and injurious to act against one’s conscience. Here I stand; I can do no other. May God help me. Amen!”

“Amen” and “Amen” and yet again, “Amen”. And let all of the Church courts, councils, presbyteries and assemblies of our Free Churches re-echo that Amen. In such sturdy independence is the foundation of political and religious liberty. To attempt to substitute for such independence the servile group mind and the standardized social thinking of our time is, in the words of the late General Smuts of South Africa, “the greatest human menace” to religious, and all other liberties.—In a sermon on “Reaffirming the Reformation.”

Many bonuses accrue to the Christian. Some—a constant source of comfort, hope, guidance and help in Christian living—of others, we seem often unaware.

But God has made one promise to his children so staggering in its implications that few of us have begun to live in the light of its fullness. In Romans 8:28 we read: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

This is not a generalized statement as some think. Someone may say that it means “everything will work out well, regardless of circumstances.” But it means nothing of the kind. It is a promise given specifically to those who love God, who are his children—a promise which is specifically and exclusively given to Christians.

Another striking fact is that it is an unqualified affirmation. Paul says that we know this. One of the characteristics of a life separated from God is uncertainty, groping and frustration. The world is restless and many are afraid because they have never found a certainty on which to base their hopes. But here we have a flat statement of fact, something which can be accepted in faith and demonstrated in practice.

Furthermore there can be no question raised of taking a verse of Scripture out of context. This particular promise rests squarely in the center of some of the most glorious truths revealed in the Bible. Paul has just affirmed that it is the Holy Spirit who helps us to pray, that he prays for us according to the will of God. And immediately following this glorious promise of all things working out for the good of those who love him we are confronted with God’s complete foreknowledge, without which such a promise would be meaningless. The chapter ends with a statement of the impossibility of our being separated from the love of Christ whether by earthly circumstances, or unearthly ones—not even death itself.

Because of that which God is promising his own, and because of the limitless possibilities which he is here setting before believers, we will find it of infinite profit to examine the promise and plumb its implications.

Remembering that this has to do solely with those who are God’s children we begin with the amazing statement that “all things” work together for good.

Not only does God know that which will take place in our lives, but in his infinite wisdom and love, he so orders events and their effects on us that regardless of how adverse they may seem to us, or to others, they are all actually for our good.

Job, no stranger to the rough vicissitudes of life, said: “Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” Trouble and sorrow are an inevitable part of life. To the unbeliever such experiences only accentuate the hopelessness of a life outside of Christ. To the Christian God uses these same hardships for his own glory and the strengthening of our faith. The Apostle Paul states the Christian perspective when he says: “We glory in tribulations: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost … given unto us.”

It is the clarifying promise that trials do work out for our good which enables us to see them in the light of God’s grace.

Human experience runs the entire gamut of trouble, sorrow, sickness, material needs, physical dangers and the problems of human relationships which can be so trying. And yet, we are assured that any and all of these experiences are combining to work out for our good.

How can this be possible? There is but one explanation. Once we have committed our hearts and lives to God through faith in his Son we are no longer our own; we have been bought with an infinite price and we are the objects of God’s loving care. This side of eternity no man can fully understand all that is involved but we can all grasp this fact: our lives are in the hands of the One who sees the past, the present and the future. We are in the care of the One for whom there are no limitations of time, space or circumstances.

There is nothing more calculated to demonstrate God’s omniscience and omnipresence than the realization that at any given instant God knows and sees all men everywhere and is fully aware of their circumstances and conditions. Men and events change within seconds but this does not change his knowledge. Furthermore, God has known about all men in all ages and this knowledge reaches forward into that which we call eternity of which God has been and will always be the sovereign ruler.

Only the sovereign God could make such a promise and only the sovereign God could fulfil such a promise. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says: “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”

God’s ability to make good on his promise is not open to question. His willingness to make such a promise is a token of his infinite love and mercy to redeemed sinners.

What of the practical implications of such a promise? Can we grasp the fact that every possible contingency of life for the Christian is ordered and supervised for our specific good? We may accept it in theory but when we appropriate it as a glorious fact it becomes an unending source of joy and comfort.

This is not fatalism, but the very opposite, for while fatalism is a doctrine of occurrences necessitated by the nature of things, or a fixed and inevitable decree, our destiny is in the hands of a loving Father. This means that circumstances which to the non-Christian could be completely disastrous are, for the Christian, a source of blessing.

When the Children of Israel went out from Egypt they were soon followed by the armies of Pharoah bent on retrieving their slaves. But God intervened and that night he interposed a cloud between Israel and their pursuers. The Bible says: “And it was a cloud and darkness to them (the Egyptians), but it gave light by night to these (Israel).” The same cloud which was a hindrance to the one was a blessing to the other. So it is with Christians today. We are in the hands of one who knows the end from the beginning and one who in love and mercy is ordering the affairs and circumstances of our lives so that all shall work together for our ultimate good.

Boys choosing sides for a game may toss a coin and say: “Heads I win, tails you lose.” But Christians can say with the fullest assurance: “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

And it is God who has promised his children that all things are actually working out for their good. This should completely change our attitude to life.