Back to the Reformers

“Back to Luther and Calvin!” Many readers will, no doubt, recall this striking slogan with which Karl Barth began his amazing career as a militant theologian about forty years ago. Though still greatly influenced by theological humanism, neo-Kantian negativism, Kierkegaardian existentialism, Ragazian religious socialism and other anti-biblical trends of his day; and though still under the spell of Ritschl and Schleiermacher, he judged it necessary to skip the whole century of bankrupt theology that lay behind him and return to the writings of Luther and Calvin to gain a firm footing for his dialectical methodology. With his strong Calvinist background and his assiduous study of Luther, he found that to recover a theology worth listening to he had to re-examine the fundamentals of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation and utilize basic religious premises which had largely been overlooked by later European theologians.

Today, when Barth has passed the age of seventy and has virtually flooded the religious book market with his pronunciamentos, we may well gauge the result of his new theological research. His type of theology, accepted in its major premises by Brunner, Thurneysen, Gogarten and many other followers, has been termed, quite expressively, “neo-orthodoxy.” But the new orthodoxy of the dialectical school is agreeable neither to liberals nor to conservatives. It is not new since it goes back to Kierkegaard, nor is it orthodox in the sense of the Protestant Reformation. For his theological insights and guidelines Barth went back neither to Luther nor to Calvin; and much less so did Brunner, whose theological orientation has been rather toward Anglo-Saxon liberalism.

The Failure Of Neo-Orthodoxy

That does not mean that Barth has not evinced some paramount religious emphases which wholesomely affected modern theological thought. He applied the dialectical method with great skill to demonstrate the “wholly-otherness,” or transcendence of God over against the humanists’ conceited and overbearing deification of reason. At the same time he proved finite man’s total helplessness in the realm of the spiritual. God is in heaven and man on earth. That means that God is so far removed from man as heaven is removed from earth. Therefore, even the greatest intellectual titans can never storm heaven and dethrone God despite all their frantic endeavors. On the contrary, sinful man must humbly and penitently put his trust in the sovereign God, though he cannot comprehend the transcendent Lord. He must have faith even if that faith means for him a jump into a vacuum. In that sense Barth, in his dialectical way, emphasized the reality and necessity of divine grace.

Basis Of Impact

In a world lost in theological nihilism and religious despair, these three basic truths readily received a hearing. There was something positive about them and what is more, there was something distinctively Calvinist in them. With the help of these three Genevan fundamentals Barth built up a religious system in which the dialectic method was decisive, but in which also theology became a religious philosophy. Its very method brought about the fall of neo-orthodoxy into heterodoxy. It turned Barthian theologizing back again into the old rationalizing liberal channels of which the world long before had become weary. It took from it its alleged newness and made it old in the sense that it was essentially only a repetition, though in another form, of what Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Hermann, together with many others, had said before Barth. So also it turned Barthianism away from the orthodoxy of the Reformation, for it deprived Christendom of its message of the sola scriptura and the sola gratia. That may appear as a very severe indictment of neo-orthodoxy, and such indeed it is; nevertheless, it is true. Neo-orthodoxy, in the final analysis, has neither a sure, divine foundation on which the Christian believer may rest his faith, nor has it the infallible Biblical redemptive message on which the distressed penitent soul may firmly fix its hope of a sure salvation. Neo-orthodoxy ultimately has words only—learned words, unintelligible words, confusing words—with no clear and unmistakable meaning for those desiring assurance of salvation. In that sense Barthianism is a bit of theological Barnum.

Neo-Orthodoxy Has No Sola Scriptura

What the Reformers of the sixteenth century so earnestly contended for against the hopeless confusion of Romanism, was a firm divine foundation on which the believer might rest his faith. This they found in the Bible and only in the Bible. They discarded the Apocrypha as human writings, though Luther was ready to grant them the dignity of listing them as profitable reading for mature believers, which of course they are only in part. Luther also accepted the ancient church distinction of biblical homologumena and antilegomena, i.e., books universally acknowledged as of apostolic origin and such whose apostolic authorship was contested.

But both Wittenberg and Geneva attested with one accord that the canonical books of the Old and the New Testament are the divinely inspired Word of God and as such the objective divine truth and the divine infallible source and norm of faith and life. In this positive confession they followed the witness of Christ, his apostles and the post-apostolic Christian Church till the induration of Romanism at the Council of Trent and, in the Protestant area, till the blight of crass rationalism. Romanism added the Apocrypha and tradition to the biblical canon, while crass rationalism totally denied the divine inspiration and authority of the Scriptures. Both dethroned the Bible as the only divine and infallible source and norm of faith and life.

It Is Written

At the time when Christ, our divine Lord, was about his prophetic ministry, the Old Testament canon was complete, and that biblical canon was precisely the Old Testament which orthodox Jews and Christians use today, consisting of the Law and the Prophets, or to use the term employed in the synagogue, the Torah, the Nebiim, and the Ketubim. It is significant that both Christ and his chief Jewish opponents, the Pharisees, accepted the Old Testament Scriptures as God’s Word and, therefore, as divinely authoritative. In that sense our Lord quoted Gen. 1:27; 2:24 when, in Matt. 19:3ff., he rebuked the Pharisees because of their marital infidelity. Nor did these learned scribes contest these passages; they rather admitted them as fully valid to serve as proof texts. Even Satan, when tempting Jesus, submitted to the authoritative value of the Old Testament Scriptures which our Saviour quoted against him (Matt. 4:1ff). Precisely so, St. Paul quoted the Old Testament Scriptures as, for example, in his letter to the Galatians, where he cited them against the Judaizers in this defense of the sola fide. Nor did the Judaizers contest his Old Testament Scripture proof. They too accepted the Old Testament Scriptures as God’s infallible Word.

In the New Testament St. Paul quotes his own apostolic writings as “the commandment of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:37). In Ephesians 2:20 he places the writings of the New Testament apostles of Christ on the same high authoritative level as those of the divinely inspired prophets of the Old Testament (2 Tim. 3:16), just as does St. Peter in 1 Pet. 1:10–12. Thus from the time of Christ and his apostles till the Romanist defection from Scripture and the rationalistic repudiation of Scripture, the Christian Church has always regarded the canonical books of the Old and the New Testament as the Word of God, and so as the divinely established source and norm of faith and life. Just so today thousands of Christian believers esteem the sacred Scriptures as God’s inspired Word and the objective divine truth upon which believers in Christ may safely rest their faith. To every Christian believer, for example, John 3:16 is the divinely inspired Word of God, not in the sense of Barthianism nor in that of Modernism, but in that of the Bible’s own teaching and testimony. And just that was the biblical viewpoint of the Protestant Reformation.

Where Neo-Orthodoxy Fails

It is claimed for Barthianism that it takes seriously what is meant by the “Word of God.” This statement of E. L. Allen in his brief overview of Barthian theology, A Guide to the Thought of Karl Barth (p. 10), has had the support also of conservative writers. According to Allen, Barth believes that “the Bible is the record of what God thinks about men, not of what men have thought about God” (ibid.). But he adds: “This return to Calvinism is not a return to Fundamentalism. The Word of God teaches us through the Bible, but is not bound thereto. God is free to speak as, when, and to whom he wills” (p. 13). “In the Bible we have the witness of the apostles of Jesus Christ and also, though in a somewhat different sense, that of the prophets: this is always a human witness and as such is never infallible, but is always conditioned by the circumstances of the time” (p. 14). Those who have read Barth’s voluminous works must admit that these statements correctly present Barth’s view of the Word of God. In fact, they are understatements rather than overstatements. Barth has repeatedly and emphatically favored the “murderous” method of the destructive higher critics. Let them tear the sacred Scriptures to pieces as much as they like, the Bible still remains the Word of God, not indeed in the objective sense of traditional Christian theology, but in the subjective sense of dialectical theology, namely inasmuch as God speaks to an individual through the fallible word of man, either in the Scriptures or outside them.

Denial Of Objective Truth

When we ask how the fallible testimony of man can serve the believer as the Word of God, Barth’s reply is: “Through the fallible witness of man God speaks personally to us and claims us for his service” (p. 14). In C. E. Luthardt’s Kompendium der Dogmatik, the reviser and editor of the 13th edition, Dr. Robert Jelke, puts Barth’s view of the Word of God thus: “God’s word is his address to man (Gottes Wort ist das Angesprochenwerden des Menschen durch Gott). Jelke adds to this: “Barth’s definition deals alone with the formal aspect of God’s Word and totally excludes its content” (p. 53). This means that the fallible witness of the biblical writers becomes the Word of God to a person only when through it God impresses upon an individual his own special Word. And since God’s existential address is not limited to the Bible, he may approach a person through any other agency which he wishes to make for him the medium of his revelation. Barth thus removes from the Christian believer the Bible as the only objective divine truth and the sure foundation of his faith. Ultimately Barth’s theological system leads to an insecure subjectivism and so finally to the denial of all objective divine truth. Neo-orthodoxy does not have the sola scriptura of the Protestant Reformation, in spite of whatever it may declare to the contrary.

The Cry For Religious Certainty

This, then, is the first point at which neo-orthodoxy fails our despairing modern world, which cries out for religious certainty and full assurance of salvation. The Reformers of the sixteenth century declared the Holy Scriptures to be the inspired Word of God and so the objective divine truth. Of this divine truth, they held, the believer is made sure personally through the witness of the Holy Spirit. It has been said that while Luther taught that the Holy Spirit witnesses through the divine Word, Calvin’s claim was that he witnesses in connection with the divine Word. Ultimately both ascribed the certainty of salvation through faith in Christ to the Holy Spirit, working by or with the divine Word. Both accepted St. Paul’s words as true: “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. 10:17). Both accepted as divinely true also Christ’s promise: “The Spirit … will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).

It is therefore at this point that all who desire to help our truth-seeking world find certainty of salvation must go back to the Reformation. Let them preach the Word of God, as Holy Scripture sets it forth objectively and infallibly in its full truth, the divine Law for the knowledge of sin and the Gospel for the forgiveness of sin. Then they will assure our perishing world of the divine truth that is revealed in Christ Jesus for the salvation of sinners, for then the Holy Spirit will guide them into all truth. The searching soul, hungry for the divine truth and the assurance of his salvation, does not care what Schleiermacher thinks, or what Ritschl thinks, or what Fosdick thinks, or what Barth and Brunner think; he wants a surer foundation on which to rest his faith than the religious philosophy of men. By the guidance of the Holy Spirit he rests his faith only on the glorious Gospel promises of God as they are clearly stated in the divine, infallible sacred Scriptures, which are the inspired Word of God. Cornelius Van Til, after all, was right when he judged neo-orthodoxy to be a new form of liberalism, and he was supported in this view by Charles Clayton Morrison, as we shall show later. The dialectical theology of Karl Barth overthrows the sola scriptura of the Reformation as surely as does Modernism.

Neo-Orthodoxy Has No Sola Gratia

This proposition may be contested still more than the one that neo-orthodoxy has no sola scriptura. Barth, as has been said emphatically, has gone far to restore the doctrine of divine grace promulgated by the Protestant Reformation. In a way Barthianism has restored divine grace, but in the same breath it has also overthrown it; for it is the very essence of dialectical theologizing to say yes and no at the same time. By the paradox of yes and no the dialectic method seeks to establish the truth. But in theology one cannot say yes and no at the same time. Abelard tried it, and failed, and so all have failed who walked in his footsteps. The fact that Barth is unable to teach the sola gratia of the Protestant Reformation is clear from the fact that he does not accept the New Testament teaching of the Christ of the Scriptures. It is true that at various times he has shifted his emphases and modified his earlier pronouncements, but essentially the Barth of today is still the Barth of the Roemerbrief, for the fundamentals of the dialectic method have remained the same.

Vague On Atonement

In his book, The Doctrine of the Word of God, Barth makes the statement, “Jesus Christ is also the Rabbi of Nazareth, historically, so difficult to get information about, and when it is got, one whose activity is so easily a little commonplace alongside more than one founder of a religion and even alongside many representatives of his own religion” (p. 188). That Christ of Barth is certainly not the Christ of the Holy Scriptures who declared himself to be one with the Father, and the divine Saviour who laid down his life as a ransom for many. Again, when Barth speaks of Christ’s Atonement, his views are so vague and difficult to understand that Dr. Carl F. H. Henry (in The Protestant Dilemma) is justified in stating that “neo-supernaturalistic thought on the Atonement is a difficult study” (p. 159). Barth, for example, writes: “With the doctrine of the atonement we come to the real center … of dogmatics and church proclamation.… The Word of God and therefore God’s Son Jesus Christ as the Word of atonement is the sovereignty of God asserting itself all the more emphatically and gloriously against the opposition of man” (Dogmatics as a Function of the Teaching Church. 2. The Dogmatic Method, p. 882). The reader asks himself: What does that mean? Does it mean what St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:18–21? If so, why does he not say it as clearly as St. Paul has said it?

Brunner Goes Farther

Brunner goes much farther in repudiating the Christian doctrine of Atonement when in The Mediator he writes: “The atonement is not history. The atonement, the expiation of human guilt, the covering of sin through his sacrifice, is not anything which can be conceived from the viewpoint of history. This event does not belong to the historical plane.… It would be absurd to say: in the year 30 the atonement of the world took place” (p. 504). The fact that Brunner totally rejects the Christian doctrine of Atonement in its biblical historical sense, is proved also by his rejection of Christ’s Resurrection as an event in history. He writes in The Mediator: “Whosoever asserts that the New Testament gives us a definite consistent account of the Resurrection is either ignorant or unconscientious” (p. 577). But Brunner, after all, is quite in accord with Barth on this point who writes in The Resurrection of the Dead: “This tomb may prove to be definitely closed or an empty tomb; it is really a matter of indifference. What avails the tomb, proved to be this or that, at Jerusalem in the year A. D. 30?” (p. 135).

But by denying Christ’s Atonement and Resurrection in the historical sense of Scripture and the Christian tradition, Barth and Brunner are unable to teach the sola gratia, i.e., the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Christ, in the sense of the Protestant Reformation. Without the actual, historical, atoning death of Christ and his triumphant Resurrection there is no divine grace for sinners and no assurance of their eternal salvation. To one who compares neo-orthodoxy and its unintelligible, contradictory pronouncements with the clear and simple Gospel message of Holy Scripture, it appears as a blasphemous mockery of the precious Gospel of Christ. (To such as look for a brief and simple, yet reliable guide to neo-orthodoxy we recommend Charles E. Tulga’s The Case Against Neo-Orthodoxy.)

Back To The Reformation

Karl Barth has not returned to the Reformation, but, using fundamentals stressed by the Reformers, has elaborated them into a new form of liberalism or rather into a new form of liberal religious philosophy. Charles Clayton Morrison stressed this fact years ago when he wrote in Christian Century: “To identify this new theological movement as a revival of the orthodoxy of the traditional creeds represents a failure to discern its most inward characteristics. It is true that neo-orthodoxy comes out at numerous points where orthodoxy came out, but it reaches its goal by routes with which the old orthodoxy was quite unfamiliar.… Virtually all the outstanding exponents of neo-orthodoxy came to their positions by way of liberalism. They were liberals before they were neo-orthodox” (June 7, 1950).

Neo-orthodoxy, with its inherent liberalism and its manifest departure from the Christian doctrine of Scripture and God’s grace in Christ Jesus, has no redeeming message for a world seeking assurance of salvation. But it does teach Christendom an important lesson. Modernism has no solution for the penitent person who cries out, “What must I do to be saved?” It has rejected both the divine Christ and his divine Gospel in toto. But neither can a halfway measure like neo-orthodoxy satisfy the pitiful cry of a sin-weary world, because what is halfway for Christ is not for him, but against him.

The One Solution

The only help for the world in its worst predicament lies in the preaching of Christ and him crucified and risen, a stumbling block to the Jew and stupidity to the Greek, but to all who believe, God’s power and God’s wisdom. Religious systems built up by men are bound to fail. But the Christ of Calvary and the open grave will never fail those who are weary and heavy-laden. That explains the continued existence of the believing “communion of saints.” That explains also the preaching of the pure saving Gospel of Christ by thousands of loyal followers of our Lord at all times. That explains lastly the many conversions and gains for church membership wherever the Gospel is preached today as St. Paul preached it and as our Lord himself preached it: the simple joyous message of man’s redemption and salvation by the atoning Christ, with all its stumbling blocks and absurdities for conceited human reason, but also with all its divine power to convince multitudes of truth-hungry and salvation-seeking souls that it is God’s wisdom. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35).

J. Theodore Mueller is a Lutheran scholar who served Concordia Seminary (Missouri Lutheran) for a generation as Professor of Systematic Theology and Exegesis. He began lectures at Concordia in 1920 and now, in his 72nd year, continues on modified service.

- More from J. Theodore Mueller

Cover Story

America’s Need: A New Protestant Awakening

By A Former Jesuit Trainee

The 440th anniversary of that memorable day when Martin Luther first posted his theses on the door of the church at Wittenberg and launched the Protestant Reformation is about to be observed.

For me the Reformation occurred not on October 31, 1517, but on a day in 1936 when I could no longer justify the discrepancy between Holy Scripture, the moral pronouncements of the Roman Catholic church itself, and Catholic dogma as it was being taught to me in a Jesuit seminary.

On the advice of a Father Superior who felt that I was not “physically and mentally strong enough” to become a priest, I was expelled from that seminary just a year before I was to have taken the final vows of ordination. Like many another student priest, I did not immediately break completely and become a Protestant. For nine years I found myself wandering in a nether world, coming to disbelieve more and more of the doctrines I had been taught from birth as a Catholic, but appalled by the thought that I should become a complete rebel and actually join a Protestant church. It was not until I was in the military service and met a wonderful Protestant chaplain that I finally made the decision that I ought to accept Christ and not merely compromise about him.

Personal Reformation

This Baptist chaplain counseled with me before my departure on a dangerous combat mission in Germany. He had no idea I was a former student priest. He knew only that I was deeply troubled. He was astonished when he learned that I had attended Catholic parochial schools, graduated from a Catholic college and studied three years in a Jesuit seminary. Then he told me how he himself had come to find Christ one day at a revival meeting when he, like I, had not been inside a church for several years and had lost all sense of contact with God. Under his inspiration I accepted the rite of baptism and for me, as it had been for Martin Luther, the break was at last complete.

For the last 12 years I have been active as a Protestant layman and have found that solace of spirit, that communion with Christ for which I yearned as a boy, for which I was prepared to dedicate my whole life as a priest, but which I could not find in the authoritarian dogmas of a creed which worships church more than Christ.

I look upon the Reformation today somewhat differently than those of my fellow Protestants who were born into the creed of Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley and other great Reformers. I have had to buy my freedom of conscience at a bitter price. I have come to my position as a Protestant by deep personal conviction.

Not A Matter Of Hate

While I deplore some of the materialistic, worldly influences within the Roman Catholic church, detest the cynicism and opportunism of many of the clerical politicians of the Vatican, I am not anti-Catholic. After all, there is much that is good in the Catholic church, many dedicated and selfless priests, brothers and nuns. There comes before my eyes the vision of my own saintly Irish grandmother saying the prayers of her Rosary and lighting a candle before the image of Mary at our parish church. I know that God has enfolded her into the eternal keeping of his love. I only hope that she can understand now why her favorite grandson could not become a priest as she fervently wished.

She and thousands of good Catholic worshipers like her are seeking God in the only way they have been taught and no church which has so many kindly, consecrated souls within it can be a totally bad institution. So I cannot hate the Catholic church, though I do criticize those who have led her into the path of pride, worldliness and a maze of Mariology that obscures the ethical and spiritual teachings of Jesus Christ.

From my vantage point as a Catholic who has become a Protestant, there are many misgivings which I have concerning the Protestant churches in America in relation to the Catholic church. I hope that I may speak candidly of some of them.

Protestants are the inheritors of a great tradition. I wonder if we realize how hard our Protestant forefathers had to fight for religious freedom, how bitterly they suffered in the Thirty Years War in Europe, and how hard they worked here in the frontier outposts of America, solely for the right to escape the dictates of Popes who said there was only one way to worship God. Today American Protestants take that inheritance of religious freedom for granted. Many of our Roman Catholic citizens take religious freedom for granted just as much, not realizing what clerical dictatorship really means.

Originally, America was a Protestant nation. Its Roman Catholic minority was very small. Today this is no longer true. In the last generation the number of Roman Catholics has doubled in the United States. Catholic church members now outnumber Protestant church members in 12 of our 48 states. They are a substantial and vocal minority in most of the rest. Since Archbishop Cicgonani came here as Papal Delegate in 1933, the number of Catholic dioceses and bishops has more than doubled and enrollment in Catholic schools tripled in the United States.

Roman Catholic leaders believe they have Protestantism on the run in America. They are confident as they read that 62 per cent of the children born in Connecticut last year were baptized Roman Catholics, that by sheer weight of outbreeding, as well as by more than 100,000 Protestant conversions each year (mostly in marriages), they will within another two generations (60 years) outnumber Protestants in all the populous industrial states, and in 200 years have a majority in every state.

Catholic Power Politics Explicit

Once Roman Catholics become a majority in an area, the church reaches out, as it always has, for control of the political state in order that the state’s power may be used to further the interest of the church. This has always been done and Catholics are taught as a matter of dogma that it is the duty of the State not to defend religious liberty, but to suppress it and support the church, for the church is a divinely ordained institution. This does not represent any secret conspiracy. It is plainly and explicitly taught in books of Catholic doctrine which are available to any Protestant to read.

We should not hate Catholics because they want to exterminate Protestantism by whatever means they can find to attain this objective, for they are taught that all Protestantism is a heresy, abominable in the sight of God, dividing Christ’s household. Catholics believe it will be for the spiritual welfare of Protestants themselves if they are led back to the chair of Peter, there to submit themselves to the Papal authority.

Protestants have to face the unpleasant fact that this is what the Roman Catholic church teaches concerning them. The Catholic clergy, whatever be their profession of tolerance and brotherhood, have as their one objective the ultimate conquest of Protestantism so that nowhere in America will there be a single Protestant church.

Protestant Apprehension

I think Protestants want to evade this unpleasant truth. I think, frankly, that they are afraid of the Roman Catholic church. They feel a chill run down their spines when they read the statistics of the growing Catholic population in the United States, frown when they see the tremendous expansion of Catholic schools (which now enroll one child out of every eight receiving education in America), and get a frustrated feeling when they see a neighbor boy signing a premarital agreement forever surrendering the religious freedom of his children in order to marry an attractive Catholic girl. But they are afraid to do anything about it.

Protestants can see what is happening as the emissaries of the Roman pontiff gradually eat into this bastion of religious freedom and convert it into a citadel of Catholic strength.

This is exactly what is happening on the 440th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. What are Protestants going to do about it? Protestants can’t look to the past in America for the answer. Too many of the actions that Protestants have taken in the past make them ashamed today. That is one reason they are so reluctant to do anything, afraid that they will slip back into evil ways that they would prefer to forget.

I know that Protestants would not want to return to the days when a shower of bricks greeted my Irish forebears as they held a St. Patrick’s Day parade on the streets of an American city. They don’t want to go back to the days only too recent when the Ku Klux Klan burned as many crosses on Catholic lawns as in Negro sections. I don’t remember with any relish the time when I applied for summer employment in a New Jersey resort town and was required to state my religion. When I wrote “Catholic” I saw the frown on the personnel manager’s face. That was a predominantly Methodist resort and Catholic boys weren’t welcome.

Can Protestants Meet The Challenge?

Can Protestants meet the Catholic challenge in America without resorting to imbecilic outbursts of violent personal prejudice that are self-defeating? I hope they can and I hope that Protestants can come to see both the need of combatting Roman Catholicism in our free America and the proper manner in which that contest for the minds and loyalty of Americans ought to be conducted.

One thing is clear to me. Protestants are sooner or later either going to have to stand up for their religious beliefs, or see themselves go down to defeat before the machinations and power of Rome. They are losing the fight for the minds and souls of America’s future generations today. Overconfident because they have long been a powerful majority, our Protestant churches seem to feel so secure that to carry the ideological battle to their adversary would be beneath them. They are smug and self-satisfied. The Roman Catholic church isn’t, and that is the difference in this contest at the present moment. That is why Catholicism is making such enormous gains in America.

Jesuit Strategy

The Roman Catholic church, whatever may be its other faults, is never lacking in shrewdness or in good strategists. If I may say so with a little “old school pride,” the Jesuits are the sharpest generals in this struggle for America’s future. The Jesuits have urged the Catholic church in America to label every criticism of the Roman Catholic church as “bigotry.” They pretend that anyone who would exhort Protestants to conduct a campaign to convert Catholics—as Catholics spend millions through the Knights of Columbus Bureau of Information to convert Protestants—is trying to start a religious war. And when their sensibilities are offended, knowing how much Protestants want peace and brotherhood, the Jesuits deliberately stir up bitter religious animosity so that Protestants will be frightened and lay off.

In this manner the Roman Catholic church uses the interfaith movement in the United States as a powerful defense for its own campaign against Protestantism. I have heard a prominent Jesuit scholar (Father Koerner of John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio) defend before a Catholic audience participation of the church in interfaith organizations on the ground that it pulls the teeth of Protestant opposition to Catholic doctrine, while Catholic laymen can be “steeled” against any subversion of their own beliefs by proper schooling in the “eternal truths” of their faith.

“Tolerance” And Timidity

It is a tragedy that Protestant leaders are permitting the Roman Catholic church to use “tolerance” as a sham with which to mask their own unremitting campaign of propaganda against Protestantism. Yet the Catholic church does use it so skilfully that any Protestant who criticizes the Catholic church seems to be doing something dirty. I make an appeal to my fellow Protestants on behalf of thousands of Americans who, like myself, were born and raised in the Roman Catholic church but who find its doctrines of Mariology and papal idolatry repugnant to the Scriptures, to common sense and to all concepts of democratic freedom. There are more such Catholic laymen—and even priests—than Protestants could have any means of suspecting. Why are they forsaken? Why is their very existence ignored? Why—except for Protestant timidity?

For nine years after I broke with Rome no Protestant church or minister made a move toward me. There was no agency working among ex-Catholics to give me answers for questions that perplexed me. I was simply an “unchurched” man. There are millions of nominal Catholics listed on the parish baptismal rolls today who haven’t been to Mass for years and who are willing to say openly that they do not believe the doctrines of their church, particularly her claim to be the sole repository of all truth. But they are ignored, even shunned, by Protestantism.

Freedom Demands Price

I remember how, after my voluntary baptism during the closing days of World War II, I asked the Army to recognize my new religious status by issuing me a new dogtag that said “Prot” instead of “Cath” to indicate which chaplain I wanted in case of disability or death. I had quite a battle to get it and during the course of it the Roman Catholic chaplain of our division came to me belligerently and asked who had been “tampering” with my faith! When he found out the Protestant chaplain had baptized me, there was an immediate vigorous complaint to headquarters and the Baptist chaplain was called on the carpet by his superior (also a Protestant) who explained that the military chaplaincy was not the place to engage in proselytizing! He seemed to regard it as an offense against religious tolerance and brotherhood for a Catholic to be converted to Protestantism. Yet Catholic chaplains were baptizing Protestant boys left and right, particularly on the eve of battle when the St. Christopher medals were so comforting.

Martin Luther was not afraid of Catholic power. He knew the wrath of Rome would descend upon his head when he posted his theses. You simply have to face that violent wrath if you are going to cross the Vatican’s path. I had to face it when I made my own stand, knowing it meant expulsion from seminary, an end to a cherished career, humiliation and disgrace at home. It has meant economic discrimination and personal abuse, ruptured family relationships that may never heal. I paid a terrible price for my freedom, years out of my life, and I’m still hounded and harassed by those who feel that I am a betrayer because I have left the church I once vowed to serve. I know other Catholics who have done the same, other students at my seminary, even a respected monsignor who ultimately had all he could take of Rome’s cynical power politics. They, too, have made the personal sacrifice for freedom.

Time For New Offensive

When Luther rang the tocsin bell, thousands of disillusioned Catholic believers of his day rallied to him. They came out of the church by the thousands—nuns, priests, monks, lay people. Early Protestantism didn’t hesitate to say exactly where, when, and how they thought the Pope had erred in interpreting the Bible. They did not hesitate to condemn the Vatican’s amoral politics, and its greed for gold. Thousands of Catholics listened and followed the Protestant Reformers. More thousands would have, had not the church used the power of the state to threaten with death all heretics within Italy, Spain and other areas. Only ruthless use of the sword saved Rome.

The Roman Catholic church in free America ought to be challenged by Protestants to defend her dogmas, particularly her bigoted assertion that she alone is the true church of Christ. The type of bigotry which is taught in Catholic parochial schools should be castigated as a positive subversion of America’s heritage of freedom—which it is.

If the Roman Catholic church were compelled to engage in debate in the free forum of ideas, if her communicants were regularly presented with the Protestant side of issues as well as the Catholic, she would soon be on the defensive.

The Catholic church can and is through its opposition to birth control outbreeding Protestants. It indoctrinates its young people so that if they marry Protestants the latter must sign away all rights to the children. It can thereby—and is—increasing its numbers. But it cannot indefinitely hold the minds of its adherents if they are given freedom of choice.

Make Reformation Real

Freedom of religion simply doesn’t exist for the average Roman Catholic in America today. If you think it does, you should see the pressure the church brings to bear upon any members who leave its fold or try to question its teachings. Every Catholic child, it is insisted, must be educated in a Catholic school. It is massive indoctrination, a process of education designed to make America in the future a Catholic country, utterly submissive and obedient to Rome. Yet Protestants are contributing more and more of their own tax dollars to the parochial schools!

The Protestant Reformation is more than an historical event. It has been in my own life, and in the lives of thousands of Catholics like me, a vivid and present event. We have broken away from the dictatorship of Rome and its false doctrines, its purchased Masses and ritual prayers, in this generation and in this country. Unless the Reformation confronts her with a continuous challenge, Rome will win the contest of the centuries. She has already succeeded in containing Protestantism and narrowing its influence. She has succeeded in pulling its teeth so that its challenging doctrines no longer reach the ears of her faithful adherents. Now she is beginning the slow, inexorable task of conquering it and forcing it into isolated pockets for ultimate destruction.

Rome would lose adherents by the millions in free America if she had to defend her dogmas. Thousands who will never know anything but a sterile service before a high altar in a mystical long-dead foreign tongue will never come to know Christ. They will only come to fear a church which damns them to thousands of years in an imaginary but vividly-described purgatory. Their souls may be lost to Christ entirely because they will drift away from that church, rejecting her ridiculous holy waters, indulgences, sacred wooden images, and other medieval superstitions. No other door is open to these Americans. No evangelist is calling them. No organization tries to help them. For lapsed Catholics, no challenging alternative to agnosticism is offered.

Results Would Benefit All

The Reformation must be born anew in America. Protestants—not throwing bricks or burning crosses—but nailing theses to church doors, are needed today to combat the spread of Catholic totalitarianism in free America. If the Catholic church faced such an intellectual challenge it would be good for her. She would learn to rely less on force and more on logic. And as events which followed the Reformation in Europe showed, under pressure she would reform herself. The Catholic church no longer burns Protestants at the stake as she once did; no longer openly sells indulgences for gold; no longer has a corrupt Borgia as sovereign Pope. She has made considerable progress and, if confronted with a serious challenge, would make more adjustments. Millions of Catholics who would remain loyal to their church as well as other millions of nominal Catholics who would leave it for a warmer, more vivid faith would benefit from a new Reformation in America.

Do Protestants dare to defend their faith and reassert its truths in the face of the certain fury of Rome? Only if they have the kind of courage and conviction to do so will they be worthy of their heritage. Only if they join the battle for America’s future being forced upon them by Rome will they preserve their heritage for their descendants.

The writer of this article is a former Roman Catholic Jesuit trainee. Christianity Today is assured of his identity, respects his plea for anonymity: “The power of the Catholic church to exact retribution upon its opponents is so great that I dare not sign my name to this article, for the employer for whom I work has Catholic customers and would be bound to feel the pressure of economic reprisal. If he were to stick by me, it would cost him thousands of dollars.”

- More from By A Former Jesuit Trainee

Review of Current Religious Thought: October 14, 1957

W. Stanford Reid

Although reference has already been made in these columns to the report of the joint Church of Scotland and Church of England committee on “Relations between Anglican and Presbyterian Churches,” it might be well if one took a second look, particularly as it is now possible to gain a little indication of some of the reactions to the report. Moreover, a somewhat more detailed study of the report itself makes it possible to raise certain interesting, and probably important, points.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the report is that there is a tendency to take doctrinal agreement more or less for granted. In Appendix I there is reproduced the statement of agreement of doctrine upon which the Committee of Representatives had found themselves at one in 1934. This document, despite the changes in the committee’s personnel and the many changes in the theological climate of opinion since that day, apparently was regarded as being still acceptable to both groups. The real point at issue was that of the episcopacy. Or more concretely: how could episcopacy and presbytery be reconciled and amalgamated?

The report indicates that the committee feels that it has solved this problem which for the last three centuries has caused so much division and conflict between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. The suggestion is that the Presbyterians should have elected permanent bishops ordained by bishops of the Church of England and presiding over the presbyteries. At the same time the Episcopal churches should give the laity more place in the councils of their body, thus meeting the demands of the Presbyterians that the Church should be seen as a “communion of believers,” rather than an hierarchical organization. Although the present writer would hate to give the impression of being biased, he must confess that he feels that the Presbyterian representatives have surrendered most of their position.

In one sense, however, this is not the most important aspect of the report. It is, rather, those things which do not appear in the report that would seem to raise some of the biggest problems. For instance, there is the big question of the identity of the Church of England referred to in the report. Is it the Church of England of the Thirty-Nine Articles, or of Pusey, Keble and their Anglo-Catholic successors? When reference is made to the sacraments, are they the seven of Thomas Aquinas, or the two of the New Testament and the Protestant Reformation? The very fact that the Church of England representatives have insisted so strongly on the office of bishop being established in Presbyterian churches seems to indicate that it is the Puseyite tradition which is dominant in the negotiations.

It would seem, therefore, that although there is a basic statement of agreed doctrine, doctrine has not really been taken seriously in the preparation of this report. For instance the question of the differences between a fundamentally sacramental church and a Reformed church do not seem to have been adequately considered. This appears, for instance, when one finds that continual reference is made to the local clergyman of the Church of England as a “parish priest” (pp. 16, 17), while the Presbyterian teaching elder is called a “minister” (p. 15). This would seem to indicate that whether both churches have bishops and lay elders or not, the Presbyterians and Anglicans would still be in truth very far apart. In other words, the so-called unity and intercommunion which they would enjoy would be only a facade and not one of faith which would seem to be the only valid basis of outward and visible unity.

That this will be partly overcome by the conferring of Apostolic Succession on the Presbyterians through the ordination of bishops by the Anglican or Scottish Episcopal prelates would seem agreed. But the very admission that such an ordination is necessary raises for the Presbyterians many more questions than it settles. What about the ordination of all the other Presbyterian ministers? How about the validity of the Presbyterian sacraments, administered by non-episcopally ordained elders? What about much of the Church of Scotland’s law which is based upon the decisions of General Assemblies who specifically rejected the idea of episcopacy?

Most fundamental of all is the question of truth. From the statements of the report itself and also of some of its advocates, one receives the impression that unity is the most important aspect of the Church’s existence. Obedience to the teaching and example of the New Testament on this basis falls into a secondary place. Consequently, one finds in reading through this report that all arrangements for bringing about intercommunion give the impression of being compromises of principle for the sake of external unity. Whether it is right or not to have bishops or lay elders is not discussed on the basis of biblical authority, but on the ground of bringing about a uniformity which seems to be primarily a matter of expediency.

It is this attitude which is now apparently causing considerable misgivings in certain circles, particularly in Scotland. A number of ministers of the Church of Scotland have been pointing out that since bishops, according to the Presbyterian view, are not of the essence of the Church, they do not see that they are necessary for true intercommunion. They believe that such desirable relations may be brought about simply by stressing the unity of all those who truly trust in Christ as Saviour and Lord. True intercommunion is best able to grow out of this soil.

Many are also worried lest this report shall cause strife and conflict within the churches involved. Possibly it may. While this is to be regretted, history has shown that often out of such controversy has come forth a deepening and intensification of the Church’s self-consciousness, and a better understanding of its responsibility to Christ its Lord. It is, therefore, to be hoped that even out of such differences of opinion that Christ will bring forth in the Church a deeper understanding of the true meaning of Christian unity and a revived interest in the proclamation of his unsearchable riches.

• With this issue, Dr. W. Stanford Reid, Associate Professor of History, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, joins the list of regular contributors to “Current Religious Thought” for Volume II of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.—ED.

This review of live spiritual and moral issues debated in the secular and religious press of the day is prepared successively for CHRISTIANITY TODAY by four evangelical scholars: Professor W. Stanford Reid of Canada, Professor G. C. Berkouwer of the Netherlands, Professor John H. Gerstner of the United States and Dr. Philip E. Hughes of England.

- More from W. Stanford Reid

Books

Book Briefs: October 14, 1957

William Sanford LaSor

Valuable Auxiliary

An Introduction to the Apocrypha, by Bruce M. Metzger, New York: Oxford, 1957. 274 pp., $4.00.

With the publication of the Revised Standard Version Apocrypha on September 30, 1957, there will doubtless be a new interest in the Apocrypha, and many will probably be asking questions about these little-known writings. Professor Metzger of Princeton Theological Seminary has prepared this volume, which appears simultaneously with the RSV Apocrypha, to introduce such persons to the works which might be described as biblical but noncanonical.

Chapters I–XV present the individual apocryphal books. In each case, Metzger gives a brief introduction, then sketches the content of the book, and closes with a discussion of relevant questions or implications. The author’s approach is in line with his frank statement, that he “does not regard the apocryphal books as part of the Bible; at the same time, he is convinced that they contain certain moral and religious insights of permanent value” (p. viii). The reader will enjoy the lucid manner in which the author presents his material, and will particularly appreciate Metzger’s ability to lift certain details into unforgettable prominence. For example, concerning Tobit he says, “Almost every family relationship is touched upon with natural grace and affection.… Even the boy’s dog goes along with Tobias on his journey.…” (p. 37). Again, with reference to the latter portion of the Wisdom of Solomon, he says, “whoever was responsible for the last half of the book unfortunately kept on writing long after he had anything fresh or important to say” (p. 70). A few samples of the text are included, including the splendid tribute to the physician found in Ecclesiasticus 38:12–14 (p. 83), which might well be hung on the walls of waiting rooms of Christian doctors. Metzger’s translation of a portion of the story of Susanna (Dan. 13:55, 59) brings out the play on words contained in the original: “Under a clove tree … the Lord will cleave you.… Under a yew tree … the Lord will hew you” (p. 111).

The balance of the book presents valuable discussions of the Apocrypha and the New Testament (with interesting parallels printed in parallel columns), a brief history of the Apocrypha, and their pervasive influence (with quotations from English literature, lines from sacred music, and a list of great works of art based on scenes from the Apocrypha, not to mention the influence of the Apocrypha on the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus)! Appendices include an account of the translations of the Apocrypha into English and a discussion of New Testament Apocrypha.

Some will ask, “What interest can the Christian have in these books?” Approximately 400 years separate the Old Testament from the New Testament. God was not inactive in that time. The apostles were the children of their age, and the Holy Spirit did not ignore that fact. The neo-orthodox may ignore the historical, but the evangelical Christian dare not! Metzger shows, in a clear and convincing way, that the Apocrypha help us to understand the life of first-century Jews in Palestine in broadly cultural, sociological and theological respects (p. 154). He singles out for specific discussion the development of the doctrines of the Messiah, the after-life, and angels and demons. At this point the present reviewer wishes the discussion could have been expanded—for this is certainly an important, and not-too-often recognized, truth.

Four pages of carefully selected and annotated bibliography, plus an index, makes the book of service to those who want to follow the reading of it with more careful study. This reviewer recommends the book cordially, and thanks the author for his care in preparing it.

WILLIAM SANFORD LASOR

Understanding Ezekiel

Ezekiel, the Man and His Message, by H. L. Ellison. Paternoster Press, London, 1956. 144 pp. 10s.6d.

The common English cold compelled your reviewer, some time ago, to spend a day or two in bed, and he took the opportunity of reading through the book of the prophet Ezekiel “at a sitting.” While this exercise had the effect of clarifying certain aspects of the book, much still remained obscure and he felt like the Ethiopian eunuch when he said, somewhat plaintively, “how can I understand, except some man should guide me?” What Philip was to the Ethiopian, Ellison may well prove himself to be to the one who, seeking further guidance in the understanding of Ezekiel, avails himself of this helpful commentary by the author of Men spake from God. Mr. Ellison writes clearly and cogently and the reader is made aware of alternative viewpoints where these differ from his own.

There is no index but the book is carefully arranged and follows a normal sequence, so that there is no real difficulty in tracing references. After an introductory section the author deals with the book of Ezekiel paragraph by paragraph and brings out the significance of the contents, particularly for the prophet’s own time but also where possible for our present generation and for the events still future.

Particular problems are dealt with, such as the whereabouts of Ezekiel when he uttered the opening prophecies in chapters 4 to 24, the prophet’s dumbness and his use of strange symbolic actions, as also the significance of the “New Temple” prophecy in chapters 40ff. But he also treats of wider issues such as the nature of the prophetic office itself. His discussion on “false prophets” is especially striking. “False prophets,” he says, were not always vicious; they must have included “godly men who either wished themselves into the body of the prophets instead of awaiting God’s call, or having been truly called by God found it easier to compromise with men than to give God’s message in all its stark unattractiveness” (p. 53). That touches us all in some measure. There is another valuable section on conditional prophecy (pp. 102ff).

Other points mentioned are the self-consistency of Scripture, the biblical doctrine of man, Israel and the Church, to name only a few. But the book’s chief contribution is undoubtedly its illuminating exposition of the actual text of Ezekiel for which Mr. Ellison is admirably equipped.

L. E. H. STEPHENS-HODGE

English Psychologists

Christian Essays in Psychiatry, by Philip Mairet, Ed., Philosophical Library, New York. $4.50.

Ten English theologians, psychiatrists and psychologists have combined, under the editorship of Philip Mairet, in this series of brief essays on the values possible in a proper liaison between psychiatry and the Christian faith, without sufficiently clarifying the distinction between the various points of view which characterize the omnibus distinctions inhereing in “Christianity.”

Mr. Mairet’s situation in the field of Christian psychology, as convener of the contributing group, is not made sufficiently clear to give any weight to the choice of the contributers as representative of Britishers expert in the field. However, some of them seem to be so located that they must qualify to speak as experts in the British economy. Judged on its common-sense merits the material is full of practical suggestions and should be of value in stimulating further reading in psychiatry.

The contributors are Methodist, Anglican and Roman Catholic, and one is evidently not religiously active. The most provocative paper is that of Erastus Evans, Methodist superintendent active in promoting pastoral psychiatry. He writes on the relation between religious attitude and psychological insight in the successive periods of life. In this he makes use of Jung’s adaptation of the Trinity idea to show how Father, Son and Holy Spirit can be suggestive of concepts found in infancy, when the child is under parental control; maturity, when the individual finds himself as a person and asserts himself free from father dominance; the age of wisdom in the latter years, when the individual has insights, suggestive of the illumination of the Holy Spirit. This was the one essay which included a concept which the others “could not assimilate.”

Other essays include one on current concepts in psychiatry, the religious development of the individual, treating individuals as individuals in psychiatry, theological and psychological aspects in guilt. Eve Lewis, educational psychologist, has a most interesting essay on the development of children’s religious attitudes. This will give some idea of the scope of the volume.

An advantage for the general public is relative freedom from psychiatric nomenclature, so that the book is very readable. It is informative on basic psycho-religious concepts, and is not polemic. What the reader will obtain from reading this brief volume will depend upon his familiarity with the nomenclature of the psychologist and even more upon his insights. A thoughtful person can hardly put the book down without resolving to read more on the subject.

The book contains a good digest of the views of Adler, Freud, Jung and Kretschmer, and enough explanation of the essential varieties of mental illness as they affect the psychiatrist’s techniques is presented provocatively. The basic distinctions between guilt as conceived by the theologian and the usual approach of the psychiatrist is handled by a Roman Catholic with discernment. The book’s chief value is in stimulating further reading in the vast field and in nicely summating some basic psychiatric concepts.

WALTER VAIL WATSON

Religious-Social Interaction

Protestant and Catholic, Religious and Social Interaction in an Industrial Community, by Kenneth W. Underwood, Beacon, 1957. $6.00.

This pioneer work in its field is a detailed objective and scientific sociological study of the interaction of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches with each other and with political, economic, social and intellectual elements of culture in the daily life of an industrial community. The deep involvement of religious loyalties in the daily life of an urban culture and basic assumptions of these churches as to the nature of the church and society are described clearly.

This study grew out of the Roman Catholic opposition to a lecture on planned parenthood by Margaret Sanger in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1940 in the First Congregational Church. The lecture had to be held in a labor union hall because of the opposition and Protestant alarm over the success of the Roman Catholic Church in this instance prompted this study.

Underwood describes the incident in detail in the first part of the book in order to point up the importance of understanding the interaction of religion and life. The second part is devoted to a study of the role of the church in salvation, doctrines, worship, the authority of religious leadership, organization, money-raising techniques and methods of property-holding.

In each of these areas Protestant and Roman Catholic views are contrasted and their mutual interactions are set forth. A helpful appendix (pp. 386–389) charts the doctrinal differences of these bodies. The final section relates the influence of these churches in recreation, business, labor, politics, reform and ethnic groups in Holyoke which has in recent years become a dominant Roman Catholic community.

The author’s conclusions are less weighty than might have been expected in so objective and massive a study as this. Protestants, according to him, conceive the nature of community to be plurality and seek “vital diversity of religious and social groups” (p. 367), but the Roman Catholic Church views it in terms of acceptance of ecclesiastical authority in all areas of life even though it faces ethnic and class divisions within its own ranks.

Advanced degrees in journalism, sociology and theology have aided the author in keeping the book scientific and objective.

He has used only primary oral and written sources of information which he lists in a massive bibliography. The reader’s understanding is increased by full footnotes (which unfortunately are placed at the end of the book), an appendix on his methodology, helpful statistical tables and clear simple maps of Holyoke.

The book will appeal both to those interested in an exhaustive case study of sociology of religion and those who are interested in the practical problem of the relationship of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in a democratic society. Those represented in the latter group may find themselves in disagreement with the apparent inclusivism of the author’s conclusions.

EARLE E. CAIRNS

Symposium Of One

Christianity and World Issues, by T. B. Maston, Macmillan, New York, 1957. $5.00.

In this century Christianity, the church and individual Christians have plenty of world issues with which to occupy their minds. Those discussed in this book include the effects of modern divorce on the family and the race problems in our country, but more space is given to economics and war.

The author’s opinions on these world issues are not always clearly stated. He sketches various views and rarely argues in favor of any one. The method makes use of frequent quotations: so and so said this; somebody else said that. This indirect method is pursued still further. For example, a quotation from John C. Bennett is used to give us Niebuhr’s position (p. 24), and “Norman Pittenger suggests (!) that someone has remarked …” (p. 307). Eventually this dependence upon other author’s assertions becomes wearisome. Does Dr. Maston accept the sentiments he quotes? Sometimes he does not; much of the time, one cannot tell.

Although no conclusion is discernible with respect to the problem of divorce as it confronts ministers who are asked to marry divorced persons, and although the author assumes without argument that certain procedures relative to the race problem are advantageous, his views on economics, communism and war can somewhat be guessed from the turns of expression and the favorable or unfavorable connotations of words.

Apparently he wants the church to reject both communism and laissez-faire capitalism. Communism, however, seems to be condemned more for its methods than for its aims. One senses a strain of embarrassment that communistic brutality should have received such widespread publicity.

True, the author condemns godless materialism; but planned economy whether in Russia or in the U.S.A. is merely a matter of degree. Free enterprise and its opposite are merely matters of labels (p. 143).

In fact, Christianity is a source of communism because it has a messianic eschatology and because it practiced communism in Jerusalem (p. 155); but there is no historic relation between the two (p. 156); yet the roots of modern communism go back to Christian communism (p. 157).

There is no adverse criticism of communistic economics—no criticism of the labor theory of value, or the theory of surplus value, and not much of a defense of private property. “There may not be a great deal of difference between the ultimate goal or hope of the Christian and the communist for society” (p. 184).

Since communism is so close to Christianity in aim, though drastically different in method, it would be wrong to engage in war to rescue the captive nations. The author is generally pacifistic. “A major duty of Christians is to do everything possible to support and strengthen” the United Nations (p. 266); and he seems to entertain the hope of world peace by human efforts without messianic intervention.

These are bare assertions without argument; no attempt is made to base them on the Bible. “War accomplishes nothing” (p. 288); at least modern war, as distinguished from the American Revolution and the Civil War, settles little, if anything (p. 289). Can we not therefore conclude that it would have been better to allow Hitler to conquer the world?

The great defect of the book, and the probable cause of its frequent inconclusiveness, is that no firm foundation of argument is selected. The opinions are impressionistic. They are not founded on scriptural revelation for no clear notion of the role of the Bible emerges. Several times the author appeals to “the centrality of the cross,” but the phrase remains ambiguous. “Can any crucifixion [including Christ’s?] be identified with the cross? No … The cross is a symbol of self-denying, suffering, redemptive love.… It means the giving of oneself in the interest or on behalf of others”(p. 338).

The cross! But where is Christ?

GORDON H. CLARK

- More from William Sanford LaSor

Nae Marks 15 Years of Ecumenical Effort

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Marking a 15-year effort to frame an ecumenical movement on a creedal basis, National Association of Evangelicals observes NAE week, October 20–27. A fellowship and service organization, in a decade and a half the movement has gathered together scattered conservative groups, both denominations and churches, until it claims a membership of 2,000,000 and a service constituency of 10,000,000 evangelicals whose theological viewpoint is fundamental and conservative. Embraced in its cross section membership of conservative sympathies are groups ranging from Reformed Presbyterians, Free Will Baptists, Free Methodists and Wesleyan Methodists to Assemblies of God and Church of God, as well as several Mennonite, Friends and Pentecostal groups—altogether some 40 denominational bodies.

NAE leaders point out that their program has helped to give positive thrust and content to the evangelical center of American Protestantism; that it has helped to reverse the extreme fragmentation of the Protestant movement; that it has given the evangelical movement unity and voice it had lacked with the tendency of the Federal Council (later National Council of Churches) to liberal prospectives.

That their goal of a “united evangelicalism” is still far from achievement, NAE leaders readily admit. With 15 years’ pioneering and organizational effort behind, they disclose larger ambitions for the future, with a program of contact and enlistment of other religious and ecclesiastical bodies sharing the evangelical creedal viewpoint. To critics who complain that NAE represents a “least common denominator” in order to gather varying fundamentalist and evangelical groups into one basket, leaders exhibit their seven-point statement of faith, a requisite for NAE membership. (This includes belief in the Bible as the inspired, infallible, authoritative word of God; the eternal Trinity, the deity, virgin birth, sinlessness, miracles, vicarious and atoning death, the bodily resurrection, the ascension, and the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ; salvation by regeneration of the Holy Spirit, and the present ministry of the Holy Spirit; final resurrection and judgment; and the spiritual unity of all believers in Christ.)

Spiritual unity is cited as evidence of genuine ecumenical approach founded on the creedal statements given, rather than on the basis of mere organization. In criticism from both the fundamentalist right and the liberal left, NAE leaders find evidence that they have followed a balanced course, freeing the evangelical movement from the stigma of extreme fundamentalistic abuses, and guarding it from liberal and neo-orthodox wanderings.

In reaching its influential role in American church life, NAE has relied heavily upon various service commissions and affilated agencies, which serve a constituency much larger than official NAE membership. Besides national headquarters in Wheaton, Ill., the movement operates a public affairs office in Washington, D. C., a publications office in Cincinnati, Ohio, and seven regional offices throughout the country. Related organizations are National Association of Christian Schools, Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, National Religious Broadcasters, Inc., National Sunday School Association, Evangelical Youth, Inc., and commissions on educational institutions, evangelism and church extension, government chaplaincies, international relations, a laymen’s council, a purchasing agency, a women’s fellowship, world relief, and a spiritual life commission. All these efforts have used NAE influence to enlarge the evangelical center of the Protestant scene. Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (EFMA), for instance, formed in 1945, now claims to represent about 5,000 missionaries around the world, supplying numerous services. Other agencies, like those for radio and education, operate on the same active service principle.

Many of the 147 evangelical leaders who signed the first official call for an organizing conference at St. Louis in 1942 are still active in NAE leadership and its affiliated organizations, including Dr. Harold J. Ockenga of Park Street Church, Boston, first president. The presidency today is held by Paul P. Petticord, head of Western Evangelical Theological Seminary, Portland, Oregon.

Dr. George L. Ford, Executive Director of NAE, in a comment on the 15th anniversary’s ecumenical significance, had this to say:

“The NAE is a major contribution to true ecumenicity for it has brought together the conservative evangelical denominations, organizations and churches not attracted by other interchurch movements. By avoiding the extremes, the NAE provides a positive witness by demonstrating the spiritual unity of believers in Christ in line with Christ’s prayer, ‘That they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou has sent me and hast loved them, as Thou has loved me’ (John 17:23).

“The future of NAE lies in the strengthening of the positive spiritual witness of evangelicals in the world. This must include further expansion.… extension of service in other areas.… and encouragement of other truly evangelical denominations, churches and organizations to join in the spiritual witness.… NAE provides. The prospects for the work are now the brightest in the history of the organization.”

Churches in the NAE will mark Sunday, October 27, as NAE Sunday with special services and prayers.

Clean-Up Commission

First move in a nation-wide campaign against distribution and sale of pornographic literature has led in Washington, D. C., to formation of the Churchmen’s Commission for Decent Publications, supported from the outset by many denominational and interdenominational leaders.

Spurred to action by the multiplication of indecent and obscene publications, the commission caps a year’s preliminary effort by former Congressman O. K. Armstrong, prominent Baptist layman. Objectives are sixfold: Coordinating church, organizational and individual efforts to halt distribution and sale of indecent and obscene material; lifting standards of publication; encouraging literature expressive of the Judeo-Christian philosophy of sex morality; educating the public in the need for necessary federal, state and local laws; cooperating with local, state and national groups in law enforcement; assisting in the organization of effective regional groups.

Participants heard General Counsel Abe Goff of the U. S. Post Office department emphasize the importance of supportive community sentiment if postal authorities are to take effective injunctive action against “fake ‘art’ magazines and cheap ‘girlie’ magazines.” Goff pointed out that “while the main sale of such magazines is by newsstand, they acquire second class privileges (intended for educational and informational literature) for ‘an aura of respectibility.’ Mail carriers are then required at public expense to deliver corrupting material that most parents do not even want in their houses.”

Dr. Inman H. Douglass of the Christian Science Committee on Publications is national president. Others elected are Dr. A. C. Miller, of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, first vice president; Dr. Fred E. Reissig, director of the Washington, D. C., Council of Churches, second vice president; Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, secretary of affairs of National Association of Evangelicals, secretary; Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, treasurer. A national advisory council of 50 members is to be announced. Chairmen of standing committees are: membership, the Rev. Don Gill; research, the Rev. Ralph A. Cannon; legislation, Dr. O. K. Armstrong; public relations, Glenn D. Everett; finance, the Rev. Roger Burgess; community organization, the Rev. A. D. Zahnheiser.

Churchmen heard Mrs. C. R. Addington of the Women’s Club of Coral Gables tell how she successfully spearheaded a statewide effort for a law that “took 16 of the most objectionable magazines” off the Florida newsstands. “We had to overcome a natural reticence to identify ourselves with a task that sometimes had an indelicate and even unladylike aura,” she remarked, “but we found courage when we sensed that the sacredness of the home and of family life is at stake.”

Chaplain Wallace M. Hale, chief of the training division for Army chaplains, urged that cure as well as punishment be kept in view. “We must change the attitude of people and provide a new motivation and respect for moral law if we are really to lick the problem.” He noted “a more serious search for dependable absolutes, and somewhat less interest in the broad areas of personal freedom” in American life. “We must evolve a general code and principles that have the support of the citizenry, but we cannot stop there,” he said, “but must spell out the tested truths applicable to man’s personal righteousness.” Other speakers shared his hope that the commission’s social action effort not decline to a mere reliance upon legislation of morality.

People: Words And Events

Crusade Windup—Dr. Billy Graham and his team returned to the New York area for a series of suburban evangelistic rallies the week of Sept. 25 to October 1, with meetings also in New Jersey and Connecticut. On Reformation Sunday, Oct. 27, a great closing rally for the New York Crusade and the follow-up program will be held at the Polo Grounds. Dr. Graham will speak at the service at 3 p.m.

Far East Crusade—George Burnham, News Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, is in the Far East during October, as part of the World Vision team holding pastors’ conferences and evangelistic crusades in Java, Singapore, The Philippines, Formosa, Japan, and Korea. The Seoul Crusade closes on October 20. Members of the campaign team are Dr. Bob Pierce, Dr. Richard Halverson, Dr. Paul Rees, Bishop Alexander Theophilus of India, The Rev. Jose Yap and Bishop Sobrepena of the Philippines, Dr. F. Carlton Booth, and Norman Nelson.

Seminary Adjustment—Concordia Theological Seminary of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, opened the new academic year with approximately 550 students on campus. The liberal arts courses formerly taught at Concordia Seminary move this year to the new Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Thus, this year for the first time in its history, the seminary does not have an entering class. The revised curriculum will bring students to the seminary with a B.A. degree, and they will follow a four-year program (quarter system) of study, including one year of supervised practical work in a parish.

Spiritual Survey—A poll sponsored by the radio ministry of the North Syracuse Baptist Church, was conducted through the “Christ at Noon” exhibit at the New York State Fair. Motif of the booth was a huge question mark with the question, “Do You Have the Answer?” In response to the question, “Do you believe that there is a personal God?” 1763 replied yes, 81 no, 48 uncertain. To other questions, responses were: “Do you believe that the Bible is God’s message to man?”—1739 yes, 40 no, 29 uncertain. “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?” 1737 yes, 32 no, 37 uncertain. Do you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins, rose again, and lives to be your personal Lord and Saviour?”—1757 yes, 36 no, 56 uncertain. Do you believe that you will go to heaven when you die?”—1183 yes, 76 no, 584 uncertain.

Lutheran Membership—A total membership in the Lutheran Churches of the United States and Canada increased to 7,618,000 in 1956, according to the National Lutheran Council. This was an increase of 3.3 percent which has been about the average yearly gain for the last ten years. The Lutherans represent the third largest Protestant denominational group in America, exceeded only by Baptists and Methodists. Largest single body of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, now numbering 2,152,000.

Accrediting Post—The Rev. Jared F. Gerig, president of the Missionary Church Association, has been named president of Fort Wayne Bible College, effective January 1, 1958, when he will succeed Dr. S. A. Witmer. Dr. Witmer will become executive secretary of the Accrediting Association of Bible Institutes and Bible Colleges.

Christian School Growth—Some 37,000 pupils are now enrolled in 137 day schools affiliated with the National Union of Christian Schools, it was reported at the group’s annual convention. John A. Vander Ark, director of the union, said the schools, sponsored chiefly by members of the Christian Reformed Church, are growing at the rate of 2,000 students a year. Ten new schools were developed each year during the last three years.

Baptist Brotherhood—More than 6,000 Baptist laymen from 40 states met recently in Oklahoma City at the First National Conference of Southern Baptist Men. The three-day conclave featured addresses and discussions on the theme, “Free Men Through the Ages.”

Wesley Hymn Sing—Hymn festivals to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Charles Wesley’s birth are being planned by Methodist churches throughout the country in December, as part of a worldwide Charles Wesley celebration, sponsored by the World Methodist Council. Charles was one of the greatest hymn writers in history and his brother John Wesley was the founder of Methodism.

Artist Honored

Warner Sallman, Chicago artist whose “Head of Christ” and other religious paintings are known the world over, was honored at a dinner in Washington on October 3, when he was presented the Upper Room award for world Christian fellowship. The award cited Sallman’s artistic leadership in “helping bridge the gap between denominations and bringing them closer in Christian fellowship.”

We Quote:

JOSEPH SITTLER

Professor, Federated Theological Faculty, University of Chicago

Enquiry into the nature of Christian worship of God has, particularly in North America, got to operate in a sphere of discourse already occupied. The name of the occupant, in very many of our congregations, is the psychology of worship. This strange roomer got into and established himself in the living room of church practice in roughly the following way: that people do worship God is an observable fact; and every fact is permeable to psychological enquiry. Psychology does not operate from hand to mouth; it has either open or unavowed presuppositions about the structure and dynamics of the psyche. If, then, in worship people are in some way or other in search of a relationship to the ineffable there must be ways which lubricate and ways which hinder this search. The human animal is influenced by setting, accompaniment, symbols, silence, the gravity of statement and response, the solidarity-producing impact of solemn music, etc. So it has happened that experts in worship have arisen among us. All assume that the purpose of public worship is to create a mood; and he is the most admirable as the leader of worship who has mastered finesse in the mood-setting devices made available by the application of psychological categories. Thence has flowed that considerable and melancholy river of counsel whereby one may learn how to organize an assault upon the cognitive and critical faculties of the mind, how to anesthetize into easy access the non-verbalized but dependable anxieties that roam about in the solitary and collective unconscious, and how to conduct a brain-washing under the presumed banner of the Holy Ghost.

That this is what worship means in thousands of congregations is certainly true; it is equally true that the Scriptures know nothing about such ideas. Where we are enjoined to be still and know that God is God, the presupposition is not that stillness is good and speech is bad—but rather that God is prior to man and all God-man relationships are out of joint if that is not acknowledged.—In an address on “The Shape of the Church’s Response in Worship,” North American Conference on Faith and Order, Sept. 6, 1957.

WALTER G. MUELDER

Dean, Boston University School of Theology

Another group of problems have to do with bureaucracy, or, as some prefer to say, the administrative top. The role of bureaucracy in churches is analogous to that in all institutions. Church bureaucrats dominate ecumenical discussions. Bureaucracy maximizes vocational security and promotes technical efficiency. Tenure, pensions, incremental salaries, regularized procedure for promotion are related to leadership control. Control, continuity, administrative discretion and rational order make for institutional efficiency. However, bureaucracy tends to separate the average member, the so-called layman, from the expert who holds the position of legitimate administrative authority.… [especially] when the ecclesiastical bureaucrat is also an ordained clergyman. Ecumenicity, the bureaucrat may forget, is a function of the whole church—not of its clerical and administrative top alone.

Though bureaucracy makes for rational efficiency and institutional security, it also tends to develop certain dysfunctions, such as: blindness to needed change; trained incapacity to sense new needs; inflexibility in applying skills and resources to changing conditions … etc. These dysfunctions are no respecters of denominational polities and apply to boards and agencies as well as to fundamental church structure.

The consequence of these dysfunctions is that the discipline once designed to assist efficiency becomes an intrinsic value, and loyalty to ultimate ideals on the part of subordinates is measured by obedience to superiors in the hierarchy of the institution. Bureaucracy thus breeds overconformity.—In an address on “Institutionalism in Relation to Unity and Disunity” at the World Council of Churches’ North American Faith and Order Conference.

Ministers Hear Graham

Fifteen hundred twenty-five New York ministers and friends gathered at 8:30 a.m. on September 24 to hear Billy Graham assess the New York Campaign. Optimism and gratitude pervaded the atmosphere as ministers greeted one another in New York’s largest ballroom, taxing its faciilties, interspersing their remarks with praise to the Lord for the great victory won.

The speakers’ table was occupied by the Graham team and the members of the Protestant Council of New York. Dr. Jesse M. Bader, for 27 years Secretary of the Department of Evangelism for the Federal Council of Churches, gave a ringing challenge to the ministers and recognized the two divisions of the campaign: First, the Crusade as held in Madison Square Garden; second, the personal visitation campaign scheduled October 20 to 27 in at least a thousand communities by teams of laymen under the direction of ministers from a thousand cooperating churches.

Dr. Bader declared that evangelism is an imperative, not an elective of the Church. He admonished that what Christ made primary the Church must not make secondary. His address gave ringing affirmation of the biblical program and basis for evangelism and a challenging appeal for participation. The personal calling campaign is to have the same purpose as the public Crusade, namely to win men to Jesus Christ, to reach out further, and to bring men to commitment to Christ. Dr. Bader declared that this could not be done unless the ministers were thoroughly committed to it. The ministers are the key men in the churches. If they are evangelistic, the people will be evangelistic. Hence, the success or failure of this undertaking rests with the ministers.

Preparation must be made for this campaign by sermons from the pulpit, prayer meetings of the people, advertising, gathering a prospect list, selecting workers, and beaming the whole church program to visitation evangelism. Thirty-five selected men representing different denominations will be assigned to as many districts. These selected men will meet with the ministers of each district from Monday until Friday, from 10:30 a.m. until 12:00 daily. They will spark the program and bring information which the pastors are to bring to their own people each night at the supper meeting before calling commences. Ministers were assured that if this is successful in New York it will be added to the Graham program of evangelism in every city the team visits.

Roger Hull, general chairman of the campaign, spoke briefly his appreciation of his privileged place of leadership, voicing thanksgiving to God. Beverly Shea, in his inimitable way, sang “I Know a Name.” Then Billy Graham spoke.

Dr. Graham expressed appreciation for all who came to this morning meeting, for their faithfulness, their energy expended and their cooperation. He pointed out that it was not properly called a Billy Graham campaign, for thousands participated by prayer, giving counseling, attending and advertising the meetings. Billy paid tribute to Dan Potter, Secretary of the Protestant Council, for unflagging faithfulness and enthusiasm, to all cooperating organizations, and to the unusual and sustained coop eration of the churches.

Graham then launched into his major address. He spoke of things that he had learned in the campaign.

The power of prayer. He acknowledged records of organized prayer meetings in 109 countries throughout the world. Persons like Madame Chiang Kai-shek organized prayer meetings sustained during the entire campaign. On Formosa all-night prayer meetings were held. On the farthest mission fields missionaries and native Christians were praying. He paid particular tribute to Mrs. Norman Vincent Peale who organized the prayer meetings among the women in New York City.

The power of faith. Graham paid tribute to the faith of members of the executive committees such as Ralph Nesbitt, John Sutherland Bonnell, John Wimbish, Erling C. Olsen and others. Their faith went beyond his and was justified in the results.

The power and authority of the Scriptures. He emphasized that the source of power in his preaching was a return to the Book which in his hand became as a flame of fire or as a hammer, according to the words of Jeremiah. Many people were converted by verses of Scripture which stuck in their minds after all else was forgotten. Writing their testimony they told of the power of the Scripture.

The influence of the Holy Spirit, who was there in a demonstration of power to convict, to reprove and to convert.

The power of Christ to change lives. Here Graham quoted numerous illustrations which were given to him from the testimonies received by individuals who were converted. Most effective of all was the influence of the television as a result of which over a million letters came in containing requests from hundreds of thousands of people for spiritual help. Some pastors had additions to their membership immediately after the television programs and others reported definite conversions.

Next, he emphasized that the harvest is ripe in New York City. Now is the time to reap for if we fail to reap at this moment, we may never get another opportunity. The tide of revival moves in and out and the tide is in just now in New York City. If the pastors utilize this, they hold in their hands the key to peace in the world. Ministers simply cannot go back to the same way of life. They have been shaken out of the old ruts and must not get back in them again.

Lastly, Graham emphasized that any large movement such as this Crusade would necessarily have its critics. Then he dealt individually with the criticisms which had come, none of which he treated as personal. He explained the necessity for statistics and great expenditures. He showed that 18 per cent of those responding with decisions had not been identified with any church and 30 per cent to 40 per cent were of people who did not attend church regularly. Graham also pointed out that it is not the province of an evangelist to deal with all the deep and profound problems related to Christianity. He humbly confessed that probably all would not agree with his theology, and that in some areas he might not be right, but that he stood upon the Bible.

H.J.O.

Goal For 1958

A goal of 475,000 converts for 1958 and a day of commitment to soul wining were announced by Dr. Leonard Sanderson, Secretary of Evangelism for the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The day of commitment will be Sunday, January 5, 1958. At that time members of 30,384 churches will be asked to sign cards pledging a personal attempt “to win non-Christians to Christ during the year.”

Hawaiian Lad

“Awaken ye islands of the far away sea!”

This prayer of a young Hawaiian who lived over 140 years ago was the theme of the annual meeting in Hilo of the 113 Congregational Christian Churches of the Territory of Hawaii.

Henry Opukahaia was remembered and honored as the lad who was responsible for the beginning of the mission story in Hawaii. In 1808, Opukahaia sailed for America. Here he was converted to Christianity. He died in 1818 in Cornwall, Conn., but not before he had impressed upon the officials of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions his people’s need.

After being commissioned in the famous Park Street Church of Boston, the first little band of missionaries sailed for Hawaii in 1819.

A highlight of the program this year was a pilgrimage to Opukahaia’s birthplace for the dedication of a memorial chapel.

An editorial in the Hilo-Tribune Herald entitled Tribute to Opukahaia said … he was instrumental in bequeathing to the islands a new and perpetual life, one that is constantly being marked by people of all races in a peaceful Hawaii.” The annual meeting also marked the 100th anniversary of the sailing of the Morning Star, first missionary ship to arrive in the islands to the south of the Hawaiian chain, the Micronesian Islands. In true New Testament fashion, the islanders of Hawaii, after hearing of Christ and his love went to the southern islands as missionaries.

Today, a new Morning Star carries Christian workers between the islands. This is the seventh one since the Micronesians first were told of Christ. The ship now in service is skippered by Miss Eleanor Wilson, an ABCFM missionary. Part of her support comes from the same historic Park Street Church in Boston.

The Hawaiian Evangelical Association of Congregational Christian Churches announced plans of a $1.5 million project for next year which will involve new buildings for the denomination’s headquarters. Plans call for a memorial building with a 600-seat auditorium, headquarters offices and offices for rent.

The session closed with the annual Festival of Choirs in which groups from the churches across the territory presented the great music for which the Hawaiian church is known. In 1958 the meeting will be held on Kauai Island.

Germany

Baptists In Germany

The first civilian American Baptist church in Germany has been organized at Kaiserlautern, with the Rev. Donald Scott McAlpine, formerly of New York and Washington, D. C., as pastor. Members of four U. S. Baptist conventions are presented in the membership, and services are in English.

New Zealand

Union Of Churches

A joint standing committee in New Zealand has issued a report in which the vote of four church groups favors the “principle” of union.

In the major body, the Presbyterian Church (76,005 members) voted three to one in favor of union, but one-third of the total membership did not vote.

The total and union vote percentage were heavier in other churches. In the Methodist church (28,679 members) 92 per cent of those voting favored union. The affirmative vote among Congregational churches and the Associated Churches of Christ were 88 and 94 per cent, respectively.

The matter now will go to the annual assemblies or conferences, meeting later in the year, to decide what steps, if any, should be taken as a result of the preliminary voting.

—R.S.M.

Theology

Bible Text of the Month: Isaiah 53:5

J. Gresham Machen

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).

If there is any one passage in the Old Testament which seems to the Christian heart to be a prophecy of the redeeming work of Christ, it is the matchless fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. We read it today, often even in preference to New Testament passages, as setting forth the atonement which our Lord made for the sins of others upon the cross. Never, says the simple Christian, was there a prophecy more gloriously plain.

Because of its clear-cut statement of the substitutionary atonement, it is a verse that is dear to every devout Christian heart. It begins with a glorious disjunction. The prophet has just set forth the erroneous view which men had held of the Servant. Now, however, he gives the real reason for the Servant’s suffering, “but he …” We, so the thought may be paraphrased, thought that God had smitten him because of his sins, but the real reason why he was smitten is found in the fact that he was wounded for our transgressions.

Our Transgressions

And it was all for our iniquities and for our transgressions. What else, we ask, can these words mean than that he suffered vicariously? Not merely with, but for others? By no exegesis is it possible to escape this conclusion. And there is nothing in the conclusion that need surprise us.

DAVID BARON

The reason for the Servant’s sufferings was, “our transgressions.” More is suggested now than sympathetic identification with other’s sorrows. This is an actual bearing of the consequences of sins which he had not committed, and that not merely as an innocent man may be overwhelmed by the flood of evil which has been let loose by others’ sins to sweep over the earth. The blow that wounds him is struck directly and solely at him. He is not entangled in a widespread calamity, but is the only victim. It is presupposed that all transgression leads to wounds and bruises; but the transgressions are done by us, and the wounds and bruises fall on him. Can the idea of vicarious sufferings be more plainly set forth?

ALEXANDER MACLAREN

He suffered the punishment of sin, but it was “the just in the room of the unjust.” This is the only principle which can harmonize the sufferings and death of the immaculately innocent, the absolutely perfect, incarnate Son of God, with the divine wisdom, righteousness, and benignity. It converts what appears the most unaccountable of all things—a piece of folly, injustice, and cruelty, on the part of the all-wise, the infinite holy, the infinitely benignant Jehovah—into the most glorious of all displays of his unsearchable wisdom, his eternal righteousness, and his exceedingly rich grace.

JOHN BROWN

Vicarious Suffering

There were no stronger expressions to be found in the language, to denote a violent and painful death. As min, with the passive, does not answer to the Greek hupo, but to apo, the meaning is not that it was our sins and iniquities that had pierced him through like swords, and crushed him like heavy burdens, but that he was pierced and crushed on account of our sins and iniquities. It was not his own sins and iniquities, but ours, which he had taken upon himself, that he might make atonement for them in our stead, that were the cause of his having to suffer so cruel and painful a death.

FRANZ DELITZSCH

The intensity of the Servant’s sufferings is brought home to our hearts by the accumulation of epithets. He was wounded as one who is pierced by a sharp sword; bruised as one who is stoned to death; beaten and with livid weals on his flesh. A background of unnamed persecutors is dimly seen. The description moves altogether in the region of physical violence, and that violence is more than a symbol.

ALEXANDER MACLAREN

Completeness And Intensity

This verse is a wonderfully complete representation of the sufferings of Jehovah’s righteous servant. It represents them as violent, severe, fatal, numerous, diversified, penal, vicarious, expiatory, saving, and reconciling. The great truth contained in it may be thus stated: the numerous, varied, violent, severe, fatal sufferings of the righteous servant of the Lord, were the endurance of those evils in which God expresses his displeasure at sin, in the room of those who had merited them; and were intended, and have been found effectual, for the expiation of guilt and the obtaining of salvation.

JOHN BROWN

There is no pardon for unexpiated sin; there is no expiation of sin, but in the Cross of Christ; and no saving virtue can come forth from that cross to the unbeliever. He who rejects Christ’s sacrifice must answer for his own sin. God marks his iniquity; he will make exaction for it; and who can stand where the incarnate Son stood? Who can bear what he bore? Be warned ere it be too late. You can neither merit the divine favor, nor bear the divine wrath.

JOHN BROWN

Our Peace

The chastisement of peace is not only that which tends to peace, but that by which peace is procured directly. It is not, to use the words of an extreme and zealous rationalist, a chastisement morally salutary for us, nor one which merely contributes to our safety, but, according to the parallelism, one which has accomplished our salvation, and in this way, that it was inflicted not on us but on him, so that we came off safe and uninjured. The application of the phrase to Christ, without express quotation, is of frequent occurrence in the New Testament (See Eph. 2:14–17; Col. 1:20, 21; Heb. 13:20).

J. A. ALEXANDER

Righteousness And Mercy

The forgiveness of sins is a question of righteousness as truly as of mercy. If God cannot forgive in righteousness, then he cannot forgive at all. If he were to forgive simply because he is compassionate, or because (being sovereign) he so wills it, or out of mere good nature, he would remove the very ground on which my conscience plants itself in all its moral operations. It behooves that the glory of his character and the rectitude of his government should suffer no eclipse, but, on the contrary, be demonstrated. But now light is thrown on the case—though still deep mystery remains—when it is said, “The chastisement of our peace was upon him.” Through his suffering for others, they obtain peace in the sense of reconcilement to God.

CULROSS

The spectacle of the Cross alienates many persons from Christ, when they consider what is presented to their eyes, and do not observe the object to be accomplished. But all offense is removed when we know that by his death our sins have been expiated, and salvation has been obtained for us.

JOHN CALVIN

- More from J. Gresham Machen

Eutychus and His Kin: October 14, 1957

Marshall E. Bartholomew

CONGRATULATIONS!

Parish activity is booming this fall—the Cooperative Community Canvass (COCOCAN), the Rally Day bonfire at the Cloverleaf Chapel, Dr. Ivy’s new allegorical play to be produced by the All Souls’ Players of Deepwell Heights. I was about to describe this seasonal color for your readers when I remembered that your magazine has now been appearing for a full year.

Congratulations are therefore in order. Naturally I went to my all-occasion box of greeting cards. (The girl across the street sells them.) Unfortunately, only two cards of congratulation were left. One featured a stork, the other showed two blissful fish captioned: “You are the ideal couple …” Inside the card this sentiment was concluded: “because there are two of you.”

Neither of these seemed appropriate, and I fell to musing about greeting cards in general. They are symptoms of the mass mind and the advertising era. A few thoughtful sentences of greeting can have the personal warmth of a smile and a handclasp. But isn’t it frightening to have our most personal wishes mass produced? Rather like wearing a plastic false face with the smile of a Hollywood star built in. Of course the cards are more clever than the greeting we could devise, but who can bear the wit who only quotes jokes?

Once greeting cards were all lace, frills, flowers and sentiment. Now, matching a more sourish mood, they are turning to zany wisecracks. Laughs … but no joy, greetings as thin and insincere as the smile of a hostess calling everybody “darling.”

There is another world of greeting in the Bible. Our Lord greeted not with a wish, but with a blessing. “Be of good cheer; it is I,” was his salutation in the roar of the tempest. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” So he said goodbye.

We who are Christ’s must remember to greet each other in the joy and blessing of his name. That is how I would salute you. (P.S.—When I remember some of your editorials, I would even like to add a holy kiss.)

EUTYCHUS

THE GRAHAM IMPACT

Your article is the most fair and the most comprehensive I have seen.… Thanks for your advancement of sanity in Christianity.

The Presbyterian Church

Seneca Castle, N. Y.

Thank you for your fine article on Billy Graham’s impact.…

Greensburg, Pa.

Was it Billy Graham’s impact … or the impact of the Holy Spirit …? After all, isn’t Billy just another of God’s servants?…

Dover, Ohio

Certainly many of the “liberal” persuasion have shown their willingness to accept the witness of Graham and others. But I am sure that they as well as myself would not accept the “success” of the Graham Crusade as the basis for authoritative efforts to exclude from Christian fellowship all who did not accept Graham’s theology in toto.…

Pentwater Methodist Church

Pentwater, Mich.

What is “biblical theology”? “biblical evangelism?”

Is Graham’s doctrinal emphasis the only brand that belongs to the historic Christian churches? Is it wholly true that “semi-unitarianism … is not expressive of genuine Christianity at all”?… If you are so certain that Graham’s “five points” are fundamental, and that we who … put a different interpretation on these points are lost … you are divisive.… “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” is still the fundamental requirement.… Paul said nothing about the virgin birth, and his interpretation of the resurrection is not literal.…

First Congregational Church

Chesterfield, Mass.

In connection with the Evanston meeting of the World Council of Churches I attended the Festival of Faith, the largest religious gathering in U. S. history. I won’t say how many. In fact, as a Christian, it makes me feel uneasy even to be comparative, to say nothing of superlative.

Come to think of it, the Roman Church soon thereafter, and in the same place (Soldiers Field, Chicago), held the largest religious gathering in U. S. history.

Come to read of it, the Graham Crusade in Yankee Stadium was (according to your newsman in “The Stadium Story,” Aug. 19) the largest religious gathering in U. S. history. But as a matter of record it was smaller than the World Council meeting. Which was smaller than Cardinal Stritch’s meeting.

Who started all this comparative and superlative business? The devil (whether you spell him or it with “D” or “d”). “When they … compare themselves …, they are without understanding.” (2 Cor. 10:12) Let the world have the statistics, by its own guesses. But God withhold the Church and its agencies from “giving out” the often inaccurate and always deceptive numbers!

The Community Church

Morton, Ill.

• Yankee Stadium (with many thousands outside as well) was probably the largest evangelistic meeting in U. S. history. We agree that the Church’s proper business is something superior to “this comparative and superlative business.” But we doubt that the Devil (large “D” except when he lulls theologians to sleep) was happy about the Stadium rally.—ED.

GOD AND THE ATOM

It was a “Christian” nation which actually used the bombs. It is we who have exploded the most test bombs. So we take the lead in frightfulness, in fear of the possible aiding of communism. We betray the Prince of Peace by putting our reliance on frightfulness …

St. Paul’s Evangelical and Reformed Church

Evansville, Ind.

It is possible for our scientists to detect within a few hours, or days at the most, when atomic weapons have been tested anywhere in the world.… Dr. Walter Selove, chairman of the Radiation Hazards Committee of the Federation of American Scientists, has predicted 50,000 cases of bone cancer or leukemia because of tests conducted so far. When you condemn the World Council of Churches for suggesting that tests be foregone for a trial period, your careful avoidance of reference to the above is obvious. Here is no unrealistic pacificism, such as most first century Christians were probably “guilty” of. The obvious implication is that we would forego tests only if other nations do the same. If we discover that they are not cooperating—and probably some sort of pledge would be made beforehand—we can simply resume the tests.…

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

Bridgewater, Conn.

Perhaps … yours is the Judeo-Christian rather than the Christian view, and has not therefore arrived at the knowledge that you cannot win for Christ those you have slaughtered.…

Quaker Cove

Anacortes, Wash.

We must protest these tests—or find that hell has room for us all.…

Sutherland, Neb.

Your editorial on “Christ and the Atom Bomb” … has cured me from fear and the tendency to seek physical escape.…

Pasadena, Calif.

ANGLICANS AND ORDERS

There are a couple of misapprehensions in Mr. Hughes’ article on the English Anglican-Presbyterian negotiations (July 22) which ought to be set straight:

The fact that the “39 Articles of Religion” do not so much as mention …” episcopacy, is no test of the importance of this doctrine in the Anglican pattern. The 39 Articles are a series of pronouncements upon certain religious questions; they are not, and never have been intended to be, a comprehensive statement of Anglican faith. The “Preface to the Ordinal,” which does make clear the Anglican doctrine of episcopacy, is fully as binding on Episcopalians as the 39 Articles.

It is unfair to represent open communion as the traditional Anglican practice and closed communion as a new thing. The subject has always been a controversial one in the Anglican Church, and both sides can cite a long list of precedents from the past.

The Lord’s Table in the Anglican churches is fenced against unbelievers and notorious evil livers. The Prayer Book gives authority for this, and it is not a dead letter; I have had to use this Rubric now and then, though I don’t much enjoy doing it, naturally.

It seems to me that Protestants are usually unfair when they discuss union matters with Anglicans. I don’t think the unfairness is conscious on their part. But Mr. Hughes seems perfectly willing to say, “Let the episcopate give up its claims, and then we can have mutual recognition.” In other words, “Let the Anglicans espouse the Protestant position.” Yes, if we did that, unity would be easy enough to attain—but what concessions is Mr. Hughes prepared to make? I’m an Anglo-Catholic of at least four generations—perhaps more—and while I’m interested in church unity, I’m not willing to become a Presbyterian to get it.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Milwaukee, Wis.

The bias Mr. Hughes holds towards Anglo-Catholics is unjustified. By and large I have found Anglo-Catholics on this side of the Atlantic more sympathetic with the approach of CHRISTIANITY TODAY than are “liberal-evangelicals” in the American Church. The statement (July 22 issue, page 39), “considerable numbers of ministers with no more than Presbyterian orders were admitted to full ministry in the Church of England without being required to submit to episcopal re-ordination” cannot be unchallenged.

Cathedral of All Saints

Albany, New York

The … statement … is just what, I believe, Winston Churchill called, a terminological inexactitude. Would Mr. Hughes be able to give further details as to when and where this extraordinary event took place?

Holy Trinity Rectory

Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

Mr. Hughes has marred what started out to be a good article by his slurs at Anglo-Catholicism.… Lest the writer think I am an Anglo-Catholic, let me remind him that I am not but I do believe in fairness and his accusation deserved to be rebuked.

St. James Episcopal Church

Independence, Iowa

Mr. Hughes has done the report rather a disservice by his failure to grasp its essential message and spirit beyond his first paragraph. It is easy to use such a document as a springboard to air one’s own views, but that was not the stated purpose of his article.… For Mr. Hughes to label everything Anglican that may be unappealing to American Protestant ears as “Anglo-Catholic” is surely a shot fired very wide of the mark.

St. John’s Rectory

Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y.

As some American Episcopalian brethren have questioned the correctness of what I wrote, I very willingly now offer a brief substantiation:

In the first place, that episcopal ordination is not to be regarded as essential is shown by no less an Anglican authority than Richard Hooker, who acknowledged that “there may be sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination without a bishop (Ecclesiastical Polity, VII, xiv, 11). Referring to this in his Preface to Hooker, John Keble admits that “nearly up to the time when he (Hooker) wrote numbers had been admitted to the Church in England with no better than Presbyterian ordination.”

But this practice continued also after Hooker’s time. Thus in 1650 Bishop Cosin wrote concerning ministers who had received Presbyterian orders in the French Reformed churches: “If at any time a minister so ordained in these French churches came to incorporate himself in ours, and to receive a public charge and cure of souls among us in the Church of England (as I have known some of them to have done so of late, and can instance many other before my time), our bishops did not re-ordain him before they admitted him to his charge, as they must have done if his former ordination in France had been void. Nor did our laws require more of him than to declare his public consent to the religion received amongst us, and to subscribe the Articles established” (Letter to Mr. Cordel). This is a particularly clear statement of the situation as it existed in England up to the middle of the seventeenth century by one who was himself a bishop of the Church of England. It will be noted that he speaks of many with Presbyterian orders only having been admitted, without episcopal re-ordination, to a public charge and cure of souls in the Church of England.

In Hooker’s own day there was the noteworthy case of Whittingham, who was Dean of Durham for sixteen years, and who was offered the choice of either an archbishopric or a bishopric when the sees of York and Durham were both vacant at the same time—and yet the only orders of this man who was regarded as fit to hold such high office in the Church were Presbyterian orders received in Geneva.

Another case was that of Morison, a Scottish Presbyterian, whom Archbishop Grindal, declaring him to have been ordained according to “the laudable form and rite of the Reformed Church of Scotland,” licensed in 1582 “to celebrate the divine offices and minister the Sacraments throughout the whole Province of Canterbury (Strype: Life of Grindal).

These citations are sufficient to demonstrate that the fathers of the Church of England, though themselves strongly convinced of the value of episcopacy, did not interpret the formularies of their church along narrow and exclusive lines; nor did they regard the Presbyterian orders of other Reformed churches as invalid, realizing as they did that in their origins episcopacy and presbyterianism are not different, as St. Jerome pointed out long since.

Personally, I certainly have no fundamental objection to the proposal of the report in question for the institution of presiding “Bishops-in-presbytery”; but I cannot view with approval the declaration that apart from episcopacy full communion will be impossible, “even if otherwise agreement had been reached as to doctrine and to practice.” It seems, however, that at this point I and some of my fellow-Episcopalians must agree to differ.

Lest there should be any misunderstanding concerning the scope of my comments, perhaps I should emphasize that, since they related to a report which was the outcome of conversations between representatives of churches in the British Isles, my field of reference did not extend to churches in other parts of the world.

London, England

PRESERVING THE BALANCES

I am certainly not interested in your new magazine. It was not needed in the Christian world—there are enough compromises already.

Sharon, Pa.

It is so prosaically orthodox as to be dull reading. It is one of the dullest papers I have ever tried to read.…

Linden Heights Methodist

Columbus, Ohio

You are far too conservative and narrow for me … and do not bring any fresh helpful insights to one’s thinking.…

Holt, Mich.

Some of your articles have been helpful. But I do not like your slant on the Bible.… The tendency today is for commitment to some form of external authority.… A liberal is a person with a mind open to receive truth from any source.…

Baltimore, Md.

Anti-intellectualism, anti-internationalism, bibilical literalism, rugged individualism, all smell the same to me.…

Fairview Baptist Church

Cleveland, O.

… Splendid reading and a real tonic in days when the emphasis on things that really matter seems to have gone.

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Helston, Cornwall, England

The articles are readable; editorials challenging, news timely, book reviews enlightening and the “Review of Current Religious Thought” especially true.…

Monmouth, Ill.

Your magazine is excellent. I enjoy, and profit from, every issue.

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Monroe, Ga.

Leaves little to be desired as far as scholarship, evangelical fervor and a Christ-centered approach to contemporary problems is concerned.…

Stanley Presbyterian Church

Stanley, N. C.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is excellent; it is of great value to a busy pastor … The publication exalts our Risen Lord …

Central Baptist Church

Palmyra, N. J.

I have found each number most informative and inspiring in content …

United Church of Canada

Woodville, Ontario

We need such a magazine as yours to keep us aware of our problems and of our sure hope.

First Congregational Church

St. Petersburg, Fla.

This magazine is great. May it be used of God to help to turn the tide today. Greenville, S. C.

It was the Easter issue that finally persuaded me. Thank you for waiting so long.…

First Presbyterian Church

New Vernon, N. J.

- More from Marshall E. Bartholomew

Ideas

Declaration of Principles

The Editors

I. We believe in God, self sufficient and sovereign, versus all atheism, whether expressed in materialism, naturalism, or positivism.

II. We believe the Bible is the authoritative disclosure of God’s word and purpose and thus is the rule of faith and life, versus all relative authority of variant religious and ethical systems.

III. We believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the only mediator between God and man, our Saviour and Lord, versus all views of Jesus as only an ethical example, a martyr, a teacher, or a demiurge.

IV. We believe man created in God’s image is moral, intelligent and free, of unique dignity and potentiality for good or evil, versus all views of man as a product of materialistic evolution.

V. We believe in the Church as essentially spiritual, providing worship of God, proclaiming the Gospel of salvation for men’s souls, giving ethical guidance in life, versus all conceptions and uses of the Church as merely a social organization, an agency of political propaganda, or of lobbying, or of Class interests.

VI. We believe that society is most Christian in which free, moral men rule themselves according to the laws of God inscribed in nature, conscience and Scripture, versus all human propensity to resort to legislative direction of worship, work, speech, ballot and property.

VII. We believe that Christian Faith (theology) and the freedoms of man are interdependent, versus all divorce of modern culture from Christian theology resulting in the substitution of legislative control and direction of individuals for use of moral and spiritual impulsions.

VIII. We believe that these concepts must be re-established in the minds and convictions of the masses by a movement of grassroots education if a free and Christian America is to be attained. The key to this educational task is the Protestant minister and the purpose of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is to assist him in the achievement of these ideals.

Christianity Today Marks First Anniversary

Perhaps no religious magazine has addressed itself to American theology at so crucial a time as CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Secular alternatives to Christianity are in increasing collapse; religious alternatives to the gospel are threadbare; opportunity for vigorous evangelical affirmation, application and advance is unique.

To its readers, CHRISTIANITY TODAY voices deep appreciation. The first year’s distribution to 160,000 readers has garnered a magnificent charter subscription list. This reflects confidence in this magazine’s competence to represent evangelical convictions with spiritual insight and challenge. Nothing would so hearten the Editors at this renewal period as prompt response by our family of readers.

During its initial year CHRISTIANITY TODAY shows growth in advertising space, as well as in subscriberships. Alongside large denominational magazines CHRISTIANITY TODAY has attracted an impressive amount of advertising from firms that recognize its unprecedented access to virtually the entire Protestant ministry of all denominations as well as many lay leaders in the United States and Canada. Advertising policy seeks new clients beyond the usual circle of religious advertisers but is always committed to the goal of “culturally constructive advertising” only.

In its first year, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S most dramatic gains are not quantitative, however. Rather, they represent qualitative progress for the evangelical Protestant witness. Evangelical Christianity now may claim a supra-denominational magazine that unites conservative Christian scholars in all denominations everywhere into a shared attestation of the great biblical verities. While this undergirding of biblical evangelism and biblical theology has burrowed into churches around the world, it has also gained significant interest among seminary students grappling with contemporary theological perspectives. Inclusion of CHRISTIANITY TODAY in the annual index of significant religious periodicals prepared by the American Theological Library Association will provide ready and permanent reference to an unusual accumulation of authoritative writing in many areas.

From the outset the magazine has featured world religious news coverage from an evangelical perspective. CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S news editor supplied weekly reports of the spectacular evangelistic achievements in Madison Square Garden not only to readers of this magazine but also to hundreds of city editors across the land. During the year ahead, as events may warrant, an additional feature of the news section will be photographic coverage. More interpretative reporting of the major denominational and interdenominational conventions and assemblies is also expected.

The month of October has come to be known as Church Press Month. President Eisenhower comments that “guided by the truth which sets men free, the various periodicals of the Church have a splendid opportunity to emphasize their story of faith and good work across the land.” The foremost purpose of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is encouraging Protestantism’s fullest evangelization of a lost world. The magazine, therefore, occupies a strategic position. Committed to the presentation of the Christian gospel as relevant for both individual and social needs, CHRISTIANITY TODAY may well be the fulcrum in the seesaw of contemporary Christian enterprise.

Decade Of Promise For The Laity

The fresh concern to define the responsibility of both ministers and laymen in biblical terms is one of the hopeful signs of the times. The ministry is being challenged anew to evangelistic effort, and to preaching of the whole counsel of God; the laity are being called anew to a profounder grasp of the meaning of discipleship.

In addition to his ministerial office, the minister shares with the layman in the wider office of believer. Many ministers are realizing anew that they belong primarily to the succession of Peter and Andrew as fishers of men. Yet the minister’s very gift for preaching, and the peculiar work of his divine calling, often cuts him off from effective personal access to his neighbors.

Today there is a happy recovery of the many New Testament passages stressing the faith and effort of lay workers in the Early Church. The Roman Catholic church by its Christopher movement seeks to overcome the gulf between priest and layman created by its repudiation of the biblical doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, and it is placing new emphasis on lay visitation. In Protestant circles, the role of lay activity in the Reformation is being reconsidered. The aggressive work of the Lutheran Laymen’s League is widely known. The Christian Reformed Church, marking its centennial in America, looks hopefully to increased lay activity as its key to expansion in its second century. This very day thousands of Presbyterian laymen are gathered in Miami to hear Evangelist Billy Graham and others call the Council of Presbyterian Men to fuller dedication to Christian priorities.

The pressures of Communism, secularism and materialism make this decade an opportune time for lay activity. If ever the Christian movement stood in need of monuments to lay vision and enterprise, it is in this decade. This is indeed a kairos, an opportune time, for an increase of lay concern, interest and devotion to the cause of Christ. The profound Protestant emphasis on the universal priesthood of believers must not only narrow the gap between clergy and laity, but it must also, if soundly interpreted, call every layman to justify his daily vocation as a sacred ministry.

There are heartening signs that lay activity is increasing in scope and intensifying in zeal. Prayer groups and counsellors rallied by the Graham evangelistic campaigns represent mainly a lay effort. Some churches have introduced courses in lay evangelism. Others are realizing anew that the Church, in its Sunday School and youth societies, possesses a framework for the confrontation of unbelievers. The meetings of the Church are not simply an engagement with God; they are also an engagement with the world, an opportunity of calling the unchurched into theological conversation and of sharing Christian realities with one’s neighbor.

Mobilization of the laity holds certain perils. Christian workers can be mobilized for inexpedient and even for wrong ends in the very course of lay activity.

One danger is the organization of laymen whose personal experience of faith in Christ remains in doubt. In his book The Face of My Parish, the Scottish churchman, Tom Allan, one of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S correspondents, reminds us that “Christian action which does not emerge out of a personal faith is a contradiction in terms.”

Another peril is an exaggerated stress on techniques. A rash of religious books is appearing with chapters on lay evangelism, and some of these are good. Techniques are valuable, but love of neighbor is the one indispensable factor in the Christian lay outreach. The motive is less dispensable than the method. One who is burdened for a neighbor can bungle, but one skilled in techniques yet lacking in love can repel.

Still another peril is a neglect of the task and message deserving in lay activity, leading the unsaved to Christ. The Great Commission is the supreme mandate for lay effort. The churches follow a sure instinct when they first mobilize their laymen for evangelism. Multitudes in the churches today were led to Christ through the efforts of believing friends and relatives. To lead another soul to Christ is the heart, even if not the height, of lay responsibility. If the churches are to gain new vigor in our decade, the layman must become skilled in the art of seizing opportunities for effective evangelism in his own local community.

There is a further danger, however. Like the others, it stresses the responsible role of the pulpit in interpreting Christian duty to laity. The danger of neglecting the larger obligations of lay witness in the social order—in the realms of marriage and the home, of labor and economics, of politics and the state, of culture and the arts—must be met. The evangelical pulpit must keep the traffic of lay duty moving in larger dimensions than lay witness by proper stress on Christian vocation. The problems of Christian conscience in politics, business and culture must be confronted if the Christian message is to make inroads in the centers of contemporary secularism and materialism.

If we are to have a strategic renewal of Christian conviction this decade must become the decade of the laity. But the pulpit bears an awesome responsibility in proclaiming the indispensability of personal experience of Christ, the priority of evangelism, and the duty of Christian citizenship.

- More from The Editors

Theology

The Dreadful Reality of Satan

L. Nelson Bell

Recently Professor Emile Cailliet of Princeton Theological Seminary wrote: “Experienced students of Christianity have pointed out that among Satan’s accomplishments the neatest of them all is that of persuading so many people that he does not exist.”

Truly the Devil has put over a fast one when he makes man either ignore or deny that he is the unceasingly active enemy of souls; the one who would constantly accuse us before God, telling him of our sins; the one who goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour; the one who in Job is pictured walking up and down in the earth plotting man’s downfall; the one who wields great power in the earth and whose works are on every hand for all to see and whose activities are recounted in every morning and evening newspaper.

The Apostle Paul wrote a sharp letter to the Christians in Corinth because of flagrant sin which they had permitted to go unrebuked in their midst. Subsequently he wrote a second letter, taking note of their corrective action and then strongly admonished them to show Christian love toward the one who had repented lest Satan should use this to get advantage of them. Then Paul wrote: “For we are not ignorant of his devices.”

Both battles and wars have been lost because the enemy was underestimated or because faulty intelligence led to the wrong evaluation of his strategy.

Christians are in grave danger of waging losing battles because they are ignorant of Satan and his devices and in some circles today it is even popular to discount him entirely and deny his existence as a personality and relegate him to the realm of an evil influence only.

With the actuality of Satan himself there is also involved the mystery of evil itself. We all know that sin exists, we see its effects on every hand and we feel its urge in our own hearts and lives. The full implications of sin may be summed up in the statement that it is either a failure to conform to God’s law or a transgression of that law. And the Bible teaches that we all are sinners—by inheritance, by choice and by practice.

The Bible tells of Satan’s first intrusion into human history. He raised a question as to the truthfulness of God’s Word and then instigated a three-fold temptation involving the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, and man capitulated.

When Christ, the Second Adam, came he too was confronted by Satan with the same basic temptations, the eternally significant difference being that our Lord overcame the Devil by use of the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.

But Satan has never ceased in his work of luring men into the paths of sin. He attacks where we are weakest and his cunning is beyond human understanding.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Christians in Ephesus, gives us a clear picture of what we are up against. He tells us that Satan is neither flesh nor blood, that our warfare is “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places”. He then tells us that our one hope is to accept and use the armor God provides, taking also the shield of faith (movable against attacks from any quarter) and in our hand the one offensive weapon against which Satan cannot stand—the Holy Scriptures.

In the book of Zechariah Satan is pictured standing at the right hand of Joshuah the high priest to resist him and of his being rebuked by the Lord. (Zech. 3:1, 2). Again and again the Scriptures tell of his pernicious activities.… And he has never stopped.

What folly to ignore him! What a victory for him when his name is used in jest and in cursing and when “hell” and “damn” identify one’s conversation with Hell itself!

Not only does the Old Testament make recurring references to Satan but the same is true in the New. While his origin is clothed in mystery his ultimate end is told in the Revelation and this was made certain on the Cross of Calvary.

Cunning as he is Satan is not omniscient. He inspired Judas to betray his Lord and used men to denounce him, betray justice and crucify him and in so doing he insured his own ultimate destruction.

Today he tempts you and me to think and say and do things contrary to the will of God. Wherever the Gospel is preached he is there to snatch the seed from unwary hearts. Within the Church he scatters the tares of unbelief and sows the seeds of error where they grow side by side with the wheat. The wheat of true faith, and the tares of Satan’s planting will be separated by God’s holy angels at the end of time.

This enemy with whom we have to deal is not a repulsive character with horns and forked tail but often affects the guise of an angel of light. When clothed in the attractive habiliments of culture, wisdom and ethical righteousness, he can well deceive the most wary. He knows our own personal weaknesses and attacks at the most vulnerable spot and at the time our resistance may be at its lowest. Little wonder that man, in his own wisdom and by his own strength, is no match for this arch enemy of righteousness.

Only through spiritual blindness does man ignore the enemy with whom he has daily contact. His characterizations in the Scripture should alert us for he is spoken of as “accuser”, “adversary”, “enemy”, “father of lies”, “murderer”, “the power of darkness”, “the prince of this world”, “the power of the air”, “ruler of the darkness of this world”, “the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience”, “tempter”, “god of this world”, “unclean spirit”, and “wicked one”.

Little wonder that our Lord when he revealed himself to Paul on the Damascus Road explained to the astonished man that his mission to his generation was to “open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Acts 26:18). Unregenerate man is held captive by the Devil and his works are on every hand for us to see. John bluntly tells us: “… the whole world is in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).

This is a frightening picture and the complacency of men can only be explained in terms used by Paul: “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world [Satan] hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Cor. 4:3, 4).

Faced with such facts what can man do? It is here that the glory of the Gospel is manifested; for in Christ we have deliverance from the power of Satan and victory over him.

When we recognize the Enemy for who and what he is, and the One who gives us victory over him, we have left the kingdom of darkness for the kingdom of light, the realm of death for the realm of eternal life.

L. NELSON BELL

- More from L. Nelson Bell

Cover Story

Christ’s Kingship over History

James S. Stewart

The whole future of the missionary enterprise is linked with, and depends on a right understanding of, the question of the relation of Jesus Christ to the historical process. Our missionary attitude will be largely conditioned by the answers we give to such questions as these: What did Jesus mean by the Kingdom of God, and what is its place in the context of secular history? Is Jesus King only of the Church, or is he King of the world as well? Is his Kingship real now, or potential in the future? Is there a new missionary urgency in the dangers of our contemporary situation? What is the ultimate goal of missions? Is it victory for Christ within the historical process, or is it victory beyond the consummation when history has ceased to be? Is it the gradual spread of the Gospel until the nations are at the feet of Jesus and the whole earth is Christianized? Or is it an apocalyptic act of God shattering time, abolishing history and bringing in eternity?

Lordship Of Christ

I suggest that the one satisfactory approach to these immensely important questions is along the line of the New Testament proclamation of the Lordship of Christ. All cramped and narrow notions of missionary motivation—all the planning and the strategy which are aimed simply at the rescuing of individual souls out of the clutches of the historical process and the corruption of the world—are far behind the insight of the New Testament Church when it fashioned its first creed in two words, like two sudden thrilling notes of a trumpet: Kyrios Jesus, Jesus is Lord.

It is upon God’s mighty acts at the Cross and the Resurrection that Christ’s Kingship stands for ever. When Pilate wrote upon the Cross “This is the King,” he had unconsciously expressed the divine determinate decree. “He reigns from the tree.” This is the Gospel. It is not that we are sent out into the world to “make Christ King.” How could it be that, when God has made him King already and given him the Name which is above every name? It is not that our missionary task is to cooperate with Jesus in seeking to establish the Kingdom, as though we were to prepare the way for its coming or work for its inauguration at some future day. How could it be that, when from every page of the Gospels the words and works of Jesus cry aloud that in him the Kingdom has broken through and is now in the midst? It may indeed be a hidden Kingdom, with a King incognito, a mystery veiled from the eyes of sinful men and therefore unacknowledged.

Concealed as yet this honour lies,

By this dark world unknown,—

A world that knew not when He came,

Even God’s eternal Son.

Nevertheless, he has taken hold upon history, and he is history’s Lord.

Whenever we speak of an historical incarnation and of an objective atonement, we are asserting that God’s mighty act in Christ has changed the human scene decisively and for ever even for those who do not believe on him and who refuse to recognize his claim. The very earth which God has given to the sons of men has been different since the days when it was trodden by the feet of the one true Son of Man; and every human life, whether Christian or not, is affected by the cosmic battle fought out to a finish at Calvary between Jesus and the powers of darkness. In this sense he is King, not only of the Church, but of the universe itself.

Command And Motive

Now there is all the difference in the world between going out on mission with the motive of helping Christ to become King, and going out because the King has sent you. If the dominical command were a summons to the Church to conduct a world-wide propaganda for Christ’s enthronement, to dedicate its maximum resources to a herculean effort to bring his Kingdom in upon earth, it would indeed be a paralyzing hopeless task. Sometimes the Church has in fact thought of its mission in those terms—and then the exhilaration has vanished from its spirit and the light has gone out of its face. Even today it is a not unfamiliar presentation of the missionary challenge. But basically it is quite alien to the New Testament. This was not the theology of missions on which the apostles launched out in that great age which saw the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. This would have been a frail makeshift raft, unfit for such a precarious voyage. What carried them through was the sure Word of God that the kingly rule of heaven had broken right into history in Christ; that this Jesus was the royal dominion of God incarnate; and that the Lordship of Christ extended not merely to a group of disciples but to the nations of the earth, not to a few religious people but to all mankind, not to the Church alone but to the universe. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

If the missionaries proclaimed this truth with passionate conviction, it was because not flesh and blood but God himself had revealed it to them in the death and resurrection of his Son. And today it is no rhetorical wishful thinking but hard concrete fact we are expressing when we say:

His Kingdom cannot fail;

He rules o’er earth and heaven;

The keys of death and hell

Are to our Jesus given.

Now here we encounter one of the fundamental principles of a missionary theology. It is this—that behind the imperative lies an indicative. The Church must act, because God has acted already. The missionary cries, “Necessity is laid upon me: woe is me if I preach not the Gospel,” because of certain historic unique unrepeatable events which have given him a Gospel to preach. The love of Christ constrains its ambassadors to suffer in history, because by that love history is already redeemed. The command “Go ye into all the world” has behind it the urge and drive of that stupendous affirmation, “All power has been given to me in heaven and earth.” The dynamic of the Church’s unaccomplished task is the accomplished deed of God. Underneath the urgent imperative there rests, firm as a rock, the eternal indicative.

James S. Stewart is Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology in the University of Edinburgh, and is one of Scotland’s most distinguished preachers. This article is an abridgment of the chapter “Christ the King” from his recent book, Thine Is the Kingdom, used by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons.

- More from James S. Stewart

The kingdom of God is near.

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The Failure Of Neo-Orthodoxy

Basis Of Impact

Neo-Orthodoxy Has No Sola Scriptura

It Is Written

Where Neo-Orthodoxy Fails

Denial Of Objective Truth

The Cry For Religious Certainty

Neo-Orthodoxy Has No Sola Gratia

Vague On Atonement

Brunner Goes Farther

Back To The Reformation

The One Solution

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Personal Reformation

Not A Matter Of Hate

Catholic Power Politics Explicit

Protestant Apprehension

Can Protestants Meet The Challenge?

Jesuit Strategy

“Tolerance” And Timidity

Freedom Demands Price

Time For New Offensive

Make Reformation Real

Results Would Benefit All

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Valuable Auxiliary

Understanding Ezekiel

English Psychologists

Religious-Social Interaction

Symposium Of One

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Clean-Up Commission

People: Words And Events

Artist Honored

We Quote:

Ministers Hear Graham

Goal For 1958

Hawaiian Lad

Germany

Baptists In Germany

New Zealand

Union Of Churches

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Our Transgressions

Vicarious Suffering

Completeness And Intensity

Our Peace

Righteousness And Mercy

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Christianity Today Marks First Anniversary

Decade Of Promise For The Laity

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Lordship Of Christ

Command And Motive

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