Even if pulpits have been taken from the center of many sanctuaries within recent years, preaching is still holy business. Luther was not incorrect in calling it sacramental. Theologians Barth and Farmer, among others, have rightly urged a high view of this holy task.

Not because in preaching we have a chance to moralize a bit. Not because in it we can serve our peanut philosophies, half-baked or well. It is not these things that make preaching holy business. But it is a task cut off from other kinds of work because in it we confront sinful men with Jesus Christ. Daniel Jenkins goes so far as to say, “No sermon is ultimately possible which does not start from what God has done for his people in Christ” (Tradition, Freedom, and the Spirit, Westminster, 1951). We confront them, for one thing, with that deed done for us at Bethlehem.

A highly-favored virgin is selected for unending honor. Isaiah had said it would be so, and it is. She conceives by the Holy Ghost and gives birth to Jesus the Christ.

Nels Ferre thinks the account strange and offers a possible substitute story of his own—one in which there is no mystery, no miracle, not even a moral element. Brunner also quite denies the account in order to make room, as he says, for believing in the Incarnation by faith.

Yet in this way, through birth by a virgin, God entered into our humanity. By this means he got a footing on the hard earth by which to lift us out of sin. A heartbeat away—no more than that. That is how near the God of the Incarnation is to men. No other religion makes such a claim as this—that God was born into our world, a man among men; that he is even now touched by the agony of our infirmities.

At Pentecost, Peter established this “enmanment” before going on to tell of the death and Resurrection. And so did Stephen soon afterwards; and Paul, on numerous occasions.

One might not want to call this “the central affirmation of Christianity” as H. H. Farmer does. For one might not wish so to disjoin it from the death and Resurrection. For the same reason, one might not want to say with John S. Whale that Christianity is “a religion that finds its living heart in an Incarnation” (Christian Doctrine, Macmillan, 1942, p. 21). But it is certainly a central element of the kerygma. And it is appealing to men who feel distanced from God by reason of their sins and who have the jitters in this hydrogen era. Perhaps twentieth-century men are not so different from first-century men as Bultmann thinks. The common people hear Graham gladly; and that evangelist’s message is not a “demythologized” version of the apostolic preaching, but that kind of preaching in its first-century simplicity and power. But there is more.

The Death Of Christ

There they are, three of them. Not one, but three. Three men leave Pilate’s palace bearing crosses, trekking their last road. They are en route to a skull-like knoll outside a Jerusalem gate. Numbered with two transgressors, our Master submits himself to public shame along the holy streets.

It has been a strange trial. Our Lord’s accusers and his judges have been the same persons. An officer, during the proceedings, has been allowed to strike Jesus. Messengers, scurrying from home to home in the darkness, have got the Sanhedrinists into a night session, contrary to their rules, and that body has made its decision against Jesus when a sleeping populace could not become aroused.

Jesus was to die, but the holy Sanhedrin could not make such sentence. So they pressured Pilate to do it for them. Pilate had finally produced Jesus, robed, thorn-crowned and beaten bloody, before the murderous mob and let them go on with their sin. Those who had thirsted for his death had triumphed. And Jesus made his way to Golgotha and died for us.

O what wonder—what sweet wonder! Love without limit; mercy without measure; suffering without stint. Pile them all on there—words like propitiation, sin offering, sacrifice, ransom, free gift. And then put on some more—like obedience, surrender, sorrow, affliction. Still you cannot describe it; you are only hinting at its strength with the weakness of words.

Always some have wagged their heads, unable to see it. A man reveals God—how can it be? One dies for all—instead of all! Redemption is provided! The law of karma they could see, but not lawless forgiveness. Works they could figure out, but not grace. A bloody religion, that’s all, with a murder at its middle. To the Jews a stumbling block and to the wise ones foolishness. O the offense, the scandal of it all!

But wait! Its secret does get out. Young and old do believe. Even if it opposes what a rationalist would figure out, it is true after all. The blind do see and the lame walk. Sinners are transfigured. And God puts a glory in their souls, a song in their hearts, a word of witness on their tongues, and a map—a world map—in their hands. They fan out in every direction, to every part. For they cannot but speak of something so utterly real to them.

Such as this is a scoop, sure enough. It is big news and must be told—front page, headline, byline and all. Our listeners hear from Moscow and London and Washington through men appointed for that work. Come Sunday they need to hear—they must hear—from Calvary. But there is more. Much more.

Hope had grown corpse-cold for the apostles. Bewildered, disillusioned, morbid in memories—it was the end. What was left for them? Fishing, perhaps; certainly chagrin. Had not their Lord been crucified on a Roman cross and buried?

Entombed and sealed in, with a heavy stone rolled against the door and an armed guard sitting about, Jesus had had a seeming checkmate. Yet he vacated that tomb and became the perennial contemporary.

The Resurrection Theme

To a man the New Testament writers believed he had risen. Of that event James Stewart writes, “This was indeed the very core of the apostolic kerygma.… It was the theme of every Christian sermon; it was the master motive of every act of Christian evangelism; and not one line of the New Testament was written … apart from the conviction that he of whom these things were written had conquered death and was alive forever” (A Faith to Proclaim, pp. 104, 105).

Had he not appeared to the Marys and Salome? to those two disheartened ones along the country road there; to the eleven; to above five hundred; and later to Saul, man-eating tiger from Tarsus? Certainly he had. And many blessed ones on through history’s jaunts have believed, not having “seen” in that same way. The Sadducees have had no continuing citadel!

It means something to them, too. He indwells them. And they take assurance with what they find in Hosea: “O death, I will be thy plagues.…” (13:14). Because he lives, they will live also—abundantly here, and aboundingly there.

The Resurrection packed the Incarnation and the death chock-full with continuing meaning. It is integral to the whole redemptional scheme. So with that footing in history and with the smashing by men bent on sin, this enlivening has to be told. “Go … tell …” was the commission to those first women witnesses. Surely that is the word also to the Christ announcers in our time.

Nothing Less Than Gospel

A now tottering liberalism taught that man is inherently good, a god writ small—that there is nothing wrong with him that “a little bicarbonate of soda wouldn’t take care of” (Bulkley, Christian Century, Nov. 21, 1956). Walter Rauschenbusch took that sort of view in his earlier works, but made a distinct change by 1917 in his lectures at Yale, A Theology for the Social Gospel.

Others too, such as Karl Barth, have made an about-face, so that now most will agree with Edwin Lewis that there is a radical disharmony at man’s center. It is true that the new doctrines of man’s sinfulness are in modern dress. For example, many join with Reinhold Niebuhr in denying that the Fall was historical. Yet it all means that modern man is facing up to his sinfulness—to the built-in kind and the kind you obtain later. To us who preach it means that we can never simply moralize any more, for that might further entrench sinners in their smugness. It will take no less than the preaching of the Gospel of Christ, “which is the power of God unto salvation to every one who believes.”

J. Kenneth Grider is Associate Professor of Theology at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City. He has held pastorates in Missouri, New Jersey and New York, has taught at Pasadena College and at Hurlet Nazarene College, Glasgow, and studied at Trinity College, where he received his Ph.D.

Uncle Will had died. He lived across the street. On Sunday afternoon the whole family went over to see him while we had our good clothes on. He looked natural, everybody said. But when I finally got next to the casket and stood on tiptoe to look in through the polished glass, I thought he looked a little stiff. You see, I was a child, and death is not natural to a child. It is artificial, unreal. But grownups think differently than children and have always tried to make death look natural.

Life After Death

The ancient Egyptian Pharaohs planned it carefully: furniture, reading material, dishes, food, even servants. Treat the dead man naturally. There is a life after death, and it is much more enjoyable to spend it in leisure with a full house, if you can afford it.

The classic Greek thinker did not make much over dying. It happens to everybody sooner or later; your time comes and you go. Accept it stoically, like Socrates who, though his friends cried, took the hemlock with poise and drank it down slowly, unruffled. He knew that he had an immortal soul that would shortly fly away from the prison of carnal flesh to the Elysian fields and philosophic serenity.

The Romans preferred a little ceremony to the matter, a little pomp and circumstance by the burial. They burned the dead man and disinfected his house for sanitary reasons; but they put flowers on his tomb every year. The important thing about dying was to die well. Die like a man, a noble Roman worthy of his country.

The African heathen viewed the dead with mixed feelings. They were afraid the dead man’s spirit would come back to haunt the living, and at the same time they wistfully desired to make use of his supernatural powers. So they made a fetish of his remains in order to give his spirit peace, and they made wailing a tabu and hoped for the best.

All these different outlooks at death and the dying presuppose the same thing, simply that death is a natural transition from life before death to another life after death. It is a look at death that the Roman Catholic church has tried to Christianize. When you die, oh man, there is a long, long trail up purgatory mountain ahead of you. Hope now that the living left behind will light a candle and say a prayer for you to lighten your weary trek through the wastes of time.

Life Instead Of Death

The biblical look at death makes a radical break with this line of thought. The New Testament does not believe in a life after death: it teaches life instead of death. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will not die but have life, everlasting life! The early Christians simply took it at face value. They believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and were certain that they would not die. To partake of Christ’s body in the Eucharist strengthened their belief. But soon they were surprised. Christians died too; at least it looked exactly like death. One congregation was perturbed and wrote Paul about it. Paul wrote back, saying no, Christians do not die; they are only sleeping. Some of the early Christians could not swallow that line, and left. Others held on desperately: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will not die but live! They believed, and listened to Paul who was trying to wean them away from the habit of thought of a general kind of life after death. To Paul the issue was: life or death.

Jesus saw it that way too. There was death in the world and he had to replace it with life. Death was the greatest enemy of man, the payment for sin, the boundary of a man’s timed existence. Every man is living on borrowed time; death has the power to cut it off, and when your time is up, you are politely and irrevocably finished. Jesus knew that if a man died he became nothing, that the whole man died and that the whole man was finished, eternally.

But Jesus lived through it. Christ came back out of nothing. Only a man who was God could do it. By doing it he paid for sin once and for all, and took away Death’s license to do business. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will not die but live!

The respectable thing to do nowadays when somebody dies is to call the undertaker, and the minister. The minister and undertaker work hand in hand. What follows is just so much secular sentimentality. Something becomes secular when you lose sight of the Christian meaning at the center and start paying attention to details out on the periphery. Once away from the center you lose focus, and details out on the periphery loom up large and very important. Sentimentality is false feeling and selfish love. When somebody dies nowadays a lot of nonsense is carried on in the name of respectability, often simply secular sentimentality.

First, the remains are professionally arranged and made presentable for a showing. Then the pagan rituals are softened down and civilized into a memorial service, maybe at the funeral parlor. Notices begin in Latin, that dead language—In Memoriam—to give it style, the sound of tradition and decorum. Finally, the survivors bear up under the shock and strain, and wear black. The women cry more or less; close relatives come to pay their last respects; and distant friends say it with flowers. It is a sad, artificial affair.

It is a sad artificial affair because it is sub-Christian and even non-Christian! A Christian knows that a dead man is no longer a man, a dead body is no longer a body: it is a corpse. What is left over is not the temple of the Holy Spirit but a corpse, and the care undertaken to show it off is misplaced tenderness and wasted money, a blatant mockery to the man who was. Jesus would say curtly: let the dead bury the dead.

A Christian knows further that a memorial service, if it is a memorial service, is pointless. How can a service held to the memory of a man fail to degenerate into eulogy or empty appropriatenesses? Eulogy gives superficial edification, and so much of memorial memory is the looking back of Lot’s wife, a gentle kind of idolatry. When all are gathered together at the grave to do honor to the dead man, an angel of the Lord should appear: why do you stand here looking down? He is not here; he is risen!

Finally, a Christian knows it is human to weep when a loved one leaves; it is human to be sincerely sad when a loved one goes away. But, those sorrowing must take seriously the comfort of the Resurrection. Too much of grief is often deep down an understandable but selfish love; you miss the security father gave, you miss the pleasure and help the wife gave, you miss the love and laughter the child gave, you feel sorry for yourself and distractedly do as if you are sorry for the resurrected one. Tears are actually out of place when a man dies—unless he is an unsaved one. Then you may cry! Cry your heart out, cry in chorus, cry until the heavens can hear you! For the terrible tragedy is only just begun with the bizarre funeral procession, and the cries of the loved ones left behind is a poor consolation to the lonely dead man crying himself, weeping and gnashing his teeth for all eternity.

Once upon a time Jesus went to a funeral. He was late, but the people were still crying. Martha ran out to meet him, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” Jesus said, Your brother shall rise again. Martha knew her catechism well, “Yes, Lord, I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day, but.…” No, Martha, said Jesus: I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes on me stays alive even if he “dies”; every living person who believes on me shall never die! Do you believe this? Martha edged away to go get Mary who understood the Lord’s talk better: “Yes, Lord,” she said evasively, “I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God.” With that she turned impulsively, left Jesus standing there, and ran to get her sister, Mary, a little frightenedly. Jesus stood still and watched her run.

Mary was in the house with her friends and mourners crying together. Martha slipped in and whispered, “The Teacher is here and wants to talk to you.” Mary got up quickly and went out. The Jews who were trying to console her followed dutifully, supposing that she was going to go to the grave to weep there. When Mary saw Jesus she fell down at his feet and reproached him sorrowfully, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw Mary, whom he loved, sobbing at his feet, and the crowd of mourning Jews around her weeping and wailing, Jesus became indignant and said, Where did you put him? “Come, Lord, we will show you,” and the wailing procession wound its way slowly out to the graveyard, a black huddled group of sobbing women.

Jesus was provoked, vexed by this display. At the same time an unutterable sadness fell over him; it was such a pitiful picture, so human, so earthbound, so stupidly closed to genuine comfort. Here was the Resurrection before their eyes and they could not see it; he had said it clearly: I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes on me does not die but has everlasting life. They had ears to hear and couldn’t hear; all they could do was cry. How could you get through to such people, how could you get through and change such unbelief, people so trapped in their traditional customs? Even Mary whom he loved was in the first row weeping. It was too much for Jesus. He wept.

That impressed the Jews. They got paid for crying; they wept on demand and knew how difficult it was to work yourself up into tears. Their practiced eye had never seen anything like Jesus’ crying before. How he must have loved Lazarus, they said, Look at him cry! Their professional admiration only added insult to the irritation. They mistook divine frustration to preach Life for a technically perfected tribute to death. Jesus was thoroughly exasperated. Roll away the stone! he said. “But, Lord,” protested Martha, “it stinks in there.” Roll away the stone! commanded Jesus impatiently: Didn’t I tell you, Martha, that if you believed you would see the glory of God! They rolled away the stone and Jesus prayed: Sorry, Father, that I was angry and impatient and said ahead of time that your glory would be shown off here; not for my glory but for your glory I said it, to try to teach these people here that you have sent me as Lord of the Resurrection. Then Jesus said aloud: “Lazarus, come out.” And Lazarus came out, and the crowd was astounded and even afraid. Don’t stand there, said Jesus; unbind him.

It is 20 centuries ago that Jesus spelled out the meaning of the Resurrection letter by letter, but the Holy Spirit still has trouble breathing it into our everyday look at death and manner of dying. The trouble is we generally think merely chronologically the way the unbelievers do, one thing after another. The Bible talks chronologically too, but it does not speak only that way. It speaks eschatologically, too, one thing instead of another. When Jesus Christ said “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes on me shall not die but have everlasting life,” he did not mean later. He meant now, yes or no. Theologians may debate about a soul-sleep and an in-between period and split hairs about a natural-spiritual-and-eternal death, but the Word of God is more than theology. The Word of God has a simple message and speaks directly to the heart of a man on the street: if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you will not die but live!

I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Resurrection, and know I cannot die. When I shall go to sleep I will not want those who are still awake to cry, to mourn my sleeping—because I am alive, not dead! One thing is certain: the Christian who takes the Resurrection seriously dare not view death in the usual burdensome way, because by default he then falls in line with the prevailing secular sentimentality. Those first women of long ago who took precious linen, costly ointment, and tenderly laid the corpse of Jesus in the grave may be excused. The idea of the Resurrection was new, so strange, so incomprehensible: life instead of death! But after twenty centuries of the Holy Spirit’s working in the Church of the resurrected Christ, who can find an excuse? The Christian does not die and should not carry on as if he were dead or were ceremoniously burying another dead Christian. The sentimental world may find unfeeling the behavior dominated by the Resurrection; but David was living close to the Lord when he paid his respects to his infant son, that is, prayed to God for his infant son while he was alive, and when the son fell asleep David stopped praying, washed his face and went back to work. What the sentimental world finds unfeeling is the Word of the resurrecting Lord: I am the resurrection and the life; let the dead bury the dead.

When grownups today pay special attention to dying and keep trying to make death look natural, they are busy at a morbid kind of make-believe. To know that death really is make-believe, and to behave accordingly: this is the gracious wisdom of a child, a child in the Kingdom of the Resurrected Lord.

Calvin Seerveld holds the B.A. degree from Calvin College, the M.A. from University of Michigan, and is presently pursuing philosophy studies at Free University, Amsterdam.

The Canadian philosopher Ztir, in his Wisdom’s Folly, discerningly classifies prejudice as a “disease of the mind,” and appends this further observation: “Prejudice is the life-blood, the spark, the very heart and core that keeps alive an inflammatory spirit and enriches a malignant intellectualism.” Any one who concerns himself with the true aspects and characteristics of prejudice must endorse this classic description. Prejudice may become so firmly rooted, so crystallized in the life as to ludicrously warp man’s mental concepts, thus rendering him incapable of harmoniously functioning in the community. An insular prejudice may produce a psychoneurotic individualism, and a general prejudice may produce an eccentric behavior pattern in society. A false ideal, an abstract idea, an oblique dogmatism may be the basis for individual or community prejudice.

Emotional And Irrational

Prejudice may develop along two major lines, emotional and irrational. The former frequently has its roots anchored and grounded in economic poverty and social injustices, while the latter is the result of deliberate and indiscriminate irrationalism. Many people are hedged about by some form of emotional or irrational prejudice, or both. In a sense, they cease to be individuals, and become but moving echoes and spectral reflections of surrounding circumstances or dominating powers.

God in his creative wisdom made man an ambivalent creature. That is, man is so constructed mentally as to be capable of both hatred and love. Every mortal is able to love. Every mortal is also able to hate. Aggressive prejudice eventually solidifies into morbid hate. The will, that majestic faculty governing man’s behavior, is the pivot upon which rotates the choice of prejudice or love. If the will has been sanctified by God and circumscribed by divine love, then degradation into prejudice and hate becomes impossible. If the human will is influenced and controlled by the caprice and the carnal nature of man, then inordinate prejudice and violent hate follow in natural sequence as the logical fruits of the sensual vine.

Deserving Of Censure

Among the eccentric behavior patterns that make up the catalogue of erratic human dispositions, none is so deserving of censure as is prejudice. Prejudice is an effective block to mental and spiritual development. Certainly no emotional indulgence is so effective to the self-destructiveness of the inner soul. Prejudice may properly be classed as a disease of the mind, producing a vintage of inner and outer frustrations and distortions. The fruits of prejudice are too numerous and well-known to warrant detailed enumeration here. Sufficient to acknowledge that the river of intolerance and hate, like a searing flow of lava, criss-crossing its way across the plains of human existence and tragically spilling its swirling contents into society, has its source and power in prejudice. Greed, war, discrimination, anti-Semitism, frustrations, and neurotic dispositions—in short, the whole of human sin has its roots and foliage infested by the pernicious rot of prejudice.

Webster defines prejudice as “preconceived judgment,” “judgment without adequate grounds,” “an opinion adverse to anything without just grounds.” Prejudice may even be defined “adverse disposition.”

Against Better Judgment

Millions of people are caught in the irritating cynicism of this neurotic indulgence. Like a malignant cancer, prejudice distorts the mental life and colors it with opaque thought patterns. Prejudice in full growth may so put the mind into a lethargic state that facts and even eternal truths become but glaring irrelevancies. The ears hear, but the mind is unable to discern. The full impact is lost because the mind is walled in by prejudice blocks. Frequently prejudice so overpowers the mental faculty of man that he moves within the framework of an illusionary world, blind to the world’s realities and an obstruction to its progress. Man’s sense of direction is thus impaired, causing him to move and act emotionally and irrationally. Indeed, prejudice so stirs the inner passions and baser motives of man as to lead him to acts of violence and indiscretion, against his better judgment.

Prejudice knows no boundary lines. It runs the gamut of religion, science, philosophy; in fact, it is present in all areas of intellectual contact. Russians and Americans, British and Japanese, African and Chinese alike fall into this eccentric neuromental pattern. Prejudice is present in every strata of society, even in the gilt-edged halls of intellectual aristocracy. Business and industry, trade and commerce, university and grade school alike deal with it. These themselves often become centers of prejudice propagation. No sphere of unregenerate society is free from the weight and imposition of prejudice.

The Religious Zone

Possibly in no field is the exhibition of prejudice more clearly discernible and its effects more disastrous than in the field of religion. Paradoxically, ours is an age of conspicuous enlightenment on the one hand, but on the other, astonishing religious prejudice. Men and women stalk our land, spiritually impoverished, religiously illiterate, like living specters, in mental bondage to some religious prejudice. A multiplicity of reasons, ranging from the wholly insignificant to the sublime and the absurd, are advanced as justifications for clinging to prejudices. Many have built about them an iron wall of prejudice, a curtain of separation, fully as effective as the Russian curtain and more disastrous in its eternal effects. All this for no other reason than that it suits a warped ego and embellishes what eventually becomes a cultivated dullness.

The Christian world is saturated with men and women whose religious prejudices cannot permit them the God-given freedom of opening the Holy Book, thus making connection with the vitalizing power of Jesus Christ and his law of divine love. Pharisaically and sanctimoniously, many avoid contact with spiritual and mental freedom lest it crack the wall of separation. These, like Peter of old, in effect look upon a large segment of humanity as “Gentile” and “unclean.”

Loss Of Spiritual Vitality

Religious prejudice may be traced through the history of the Church. The early Christian Church lost a vast treasure house of spiritual vitalization because of its early anti-Judaistic prejudice, whereas Judaism today stands spiritually naked and stripped of rich gems of Christian spirit and Christian truth because of her prejudicial rejection of Christianity. Religious prejudice has robbed both Judaism and Christianity of rich mutual God-given truths. Attempts at making up these deficiencies have produced for Judaism and Christianity a crust of traditions, ceremonies, and religious apologetics, all carrying the earmarks of carnal man.

Kings and pontiffs have been laid to rest, spiritually and intellectually impoverished because of the high wall of prejudicial separation. Scholars have been laid to rest, blunted and stifled in their intellectual pursuits because prejudice separated them from great wells of spiritual and intellectual depths. Men and women through long centuries have been leveled to the dust, seeking ways and means to circumvent organized prejudice. The annals of mankind are replete with the records of multitudes who have groped along the avenues of life, as it were, living a blind life within the brain, inwardly strangled in spirit, because of religious prejudice. Only eternity will reveal the horror of human dullness, self-inflicted, with which the human race has contended because of prejudice. Certain it is that the master deceiver, Satan, has no more effective weapon against enlightenment and spiritual progress than the thick walls of prejudice. Religious prejudice, like a huge iron gate, must be unlocked from within.

Race Prejudice Is Ugly

Another area of human contact that provides a rich source of morbid pleasure is the area of race prejudice. Race prejudice is as old as the human race. There never has been a time in which mankind was not guilty of some form of race discrimination and color prejudice. Thus the ancient Egyptians looked upon their contemporary nations as inferior and worthy only of cruel subjugation. The haughty Greeks, puffed up with their intellectual greatness, goaded by their scholastic genius, looked upon all contemporary peoples through the eye of prejudice, and saw their surrounding nations only as rude and barbarous. The Romans looked upon all other nations with contempt and disdain, worthy only of annihilation. It was a day of supernationalism, a time of Roman ego. It was a time of prejudiced racism. So severe were the implications of race and society prejudice that millions of their fellow Roman citizens never rose above the level of animalism, sold and bartered in the public auctions.

A Continuing Evil

Race prejudice has not lost its appeal through the centuries. Champions of race prejudice, super-racism, Aryanism, Nietzscheism, survival of the fittest, abound to this day. The nations of the world fought a bloody war to eliminate two major twentieth-century champions of super-racism. The one sought to build up a Gothic-German empire. In his prejudiced drive for a super race, Hitler determined to stock his “new earth” with only the “select.” And Mussolini, a beguiled and prejudiced Caesar, was, at the hour of his death, permitted to see the world “right side up” from his “upside down” view. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini rose above race prejudice.

Race prejudice has produced violent wars, insurrections, civil and religious crusades, tragedies and horrors almost beyond human grasp and human description. Thus the Roman emperors with fiendish glee watched the slaughter of men, women, and children in gladiatorial contests in the old Roman Coliseum. The stench of the dead and dying frequently made the huge stadium unfit for use for weeks. In contemporary history we have seen the same unbalanced mentality at work building up a super race by annihilating millions in the ghettos and gas chambers of Europe. Race prejudice is fundamentally a question of distorted nationalism, embellished with specious arguments. Can a genuine Christian be a hater of any race?

Prejudice And Human Dignity

Prejudice is degeneracy. Even one hundred years ago the world could not afford the eccentric pleasure of religious and race prejudice, much less today. Through trade, commerce, international thinking and living, the human race has moved into such close confines that religious and race prejudice is suicide and global catastrophy. Arab and Jew, Russian and German, Japanese and American, white and colored should seek the adoption of every conciliatory spirit to make not merely co-existence possible, but co-living a reality. Fifty years ago leaders in a big world could afford to act like little men, but today’s hour of international close proximity calls for big men in a small world.

Prejudice, like a many-membered octopus, is today strangling and laying waste. Prejudice is silently alive, lurking in full strength. In the totality of its effect upon the human race, prejudice is more devastating than either the A-bomb or the H-bomb. Communism, political and religious totalitarianism, inordinate nationalism, all have their roots and source in prejudice. Prejudice, like carbon monoxide, stifles from within.

Dying With One’S Biases

Millions have died within the cloistered walls and cells of prejudice. These have drawn the curtain of narrowness about them and suffocated. Great attempts have been made through the centuries, by force, legislation, dogmatics, to eradicate prejudice and hatred from the human neurotic dispositions … yet none of these avenues of human guidance have been as successful in the unshackling of men’s minds as has been the simple action of Christ’s love upon the soul and mind. The mind, the citadel of human rationalism, can be gloriously enriched with the crowning joys of Christian culture, love, peace, kindness and brotherhood, so that prejudice will find no soil for root or propagation.

The dignity of man must be preserved, but it can be preserved only by the recognition of the true value of the human soul. A look at Jesus Christ, our Lord in all his beauty and simplicity, his character adorned with the characteristics of love and graciousness, the absence of emotional and irrational prejudices—can by contrast reflect man’s shortcomings and sinfulness.

O. J. Ritz is a Canadian who distinguished himself in business. In 1933 he was converted to the Seventh-day Adventist faith, and attended the Seventh-day Adventist Seminary in Washington, D. C., receiving the M.A. degree. He has held pastorates in Toronto, Montreal, and New Haven, Connecticut.

(Part II will appear in the next issue)

In recent months the question, “Are Seventh-day Adventists evangelical?” has been troubling many Christians. This question has been accentuated by many articles on both sides.

The recent publication of an important volume by the Seventh-day Adventist leaders gives the discussion added significance (Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine, a commentary on questions addressed to the movement).

Among The Cults

For many years SDA has been labeled a cult. Conservative Christians, particularly, have said hard things about the group and its doctrines. But this situation is changing. Some voices now lifted in defense of SDA are from theologically conservative ranks. Walter Martin, in several recent magazine articles (expected soon to be expanded into book form) comes to the defense of SDA, declassifying it from the list of false religions, and approving it, for the most part, as evangelical. One of the leading SDA writers, LeRoy E. Froom, asserts in Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge that the Adventists “do not regard themselves as just another sect, but as continuators of the arrested Reformation, and in the spiritual line of the apostolic faith and the Protestant dissentients.”

While an exhaustive examination of SDA teachings must now take cognizance of contemporary literature as well as that of the past, certain preliminary observations should be made in approaching the question whether SDA is entitled to evangelical approval or acceptance.

The SDA book, Questions on Doctrine, does not disclose the names of its authors. They remain anonymous. It is admitted that the authors cannot and do not speak with authority, since “official” statements come only from the General Conference in quadrennial session. At present the movement’s only official statement appears in the Church Manual and is entitled “Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists.”

A second fact must be stated. Opponents of SDA have not only written harshly about the group in the past, but they have accused SDA of deliberate falsehood and intentional deception. This writer assumes that the men who have prepared the new SDA materials are sincere and honest in the provision of answers to questions about their beliefs.

Rejection Of Modernism

During correspondence with some leaders in this movement, the writer was asked a significant question. It is this: “Why are we Adventists, who believe the Bible to be the very Word of God, and [here he appends all of the basic doctrines of the faith]—why, I ask, should we be classified by many as a ‘non-Christian cult,’ while prominent modernists who openly deny every evangelical truth that we, with all sound Christians, hold dear, are treated as Christians, and often classified as ‘orthodox’ in common parlance? I confess I cannot fathom or follow such reasoning.”

The answer to this question is twofold. First, it is unfair to classify SDA with Christian Science or Jehovah’s Witnesses. There is a great gulf which separates the former from the latter. Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witnesses deny most of the basic tenets of the Christian faith. They deny the true deity of Christ, his atoning work on Calvary, the virgin birth, and so forth. Their errors are gross and obvious. The term “cult” properly belongs to these and other groups like them. Secondly, we observe that the question now at stake is not whether modernists can be called Christians (that is worthy of discussion in itself) but whether SDA can be labeled evangelical or orthodox. And the last question can be determined only by a careful examination of the announced doctrines of the group.

The Doctrinal Conflict

SDA admits that it espouses certain teachings that evangelicals normally reject. For example, SDA teaches conditional immortality, annihilation of the wicked dead, soul sleep and foot washing. In the opinion of this writer, the term “evangelical” is not to be bestowed on the basis of acceptance or rejection of such concepts. A man can be a genuine believer who believes in soul sleep, providing at the same time he accepts the truths essential to salvation.

However, there are some SDA teachings with which evangelicals must disagree strongly. Thus, Mrs. Ellen G. White, the movement’s key founding figure, chief prophetess and authentic teacher, states that Satan originated the doctrine of eternal torment. Now, it is one thing to reject the doctrine of eternal torment and to conclude that those who embrace it do so in error. It is quite another matter to claim that Satan is author of the doctrine, which leaves evangelicals who find a biblical basis for belief in eternal torment with the impression that Mrs. White is blaspheming the voice of the Holy Spirit in Scripture.

The problem of semantics complicates any evaluation. As the index to her writings confirms, Mrs. White leads one to believe that at Christ’s coming the sins of God’s people are to be placed on Satan. Does this mean, as critics assert, that Satan becomes man’s sin-bearer? If it was not the intention of Mrs. White to make Satan man’s sin-bearer, her framing of language is all the more unfortunate.

Role Of Ellen G. White

Moreover, decision as to SDA’s evangelical status is further complicated by the movement’s attitude toward the writings of Mrs. White. This attitude differs from that of scholars who highly regard the writings of Augustine, Calvin, Luther, and so forth. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever written a book aiming to show that Calvin or Luther was always correct doctrinally and in personal life and ethics. Yet a prominent Adventist, Francis Nichol, wrote the volume, Ellen G. White and Her Critics, to demonstrate the immaculate nature of Mrs. White’s teaching and life, defending her not only against all charges of plagiarism, lying, and breaking her word, but against doctrinal vagaries. I know of no SDA literature that hints that Mrs. White was ever wrong. This has led, and can only lead, to the notion that there is an intrinsic affinity between her writings and those of the Bible. This attitude toward the writings of Mrs. White corresponds in some measure to the regard with which other movements hold the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and Joseph Smith. Even in Questions on Doctrine one reads that her words are accepted as “inspired counsels from the Lord,” and while they are not equated with Scripture per se, one sees in the framing of the words the suggestion that Mrs. White was inerrant. Evangelicals normally reserve inerrancy for the Word of God alone, and extend this neither to Calvin nor Mrs. White! Contemporary evangelicals who interrogated SDA could profitably have phrased their inquiries about Mrs. White’s writings to get an answer to this question: “Did Mrs. White err at any point theologically or in ethical and personal life, or was she inerrant in all of her teachings, pronouncements and ethics?” SDA says that the test of Mrs. White’s writings is the Word of God itself, but then they conclude that her writings harmonize with the Scriptures and thus they appear to possess a native inerrancy. No one will say this about Calvin, Luther, or any other Protestant leaders.

SDA claims its teachings are based upon the Bible. But an examination of its “Fundamental Beliefs” published in the volume Questions on Doctrine reveals some interesting exceptions. “Fundamental Beliefs” contain 22 propositions, beginning with a statement on the Scriptures and the Trinity, then moving through the gamut of theology. In each instance the biblical passages are listed at the end of each statement showing the grounds on which their convictions are founded. Without biblical backing, however, are statements 13, 14 and 15. These deal with one of the touchiest segments of SDA teaching—the 70 weeks and 2300 years and the cleansing of the sanctuary. The date 1844, which involves the 2300 years, and the cleansing of the sanctuary are pivotal to SDA faith. Destroy these and certain conclusions are self-evident. There would then be no adequate basis for the existence of SDA. But there are no definite statements in the Bible which support the views of SDA at this point. Their conclusions are derived from the teachings of Mrs. White, in turn, are the result of her interpretation of the Bible. Even this consideration, complex as it is, does not determine whether SDA is evangelical.

One acid test marks off Reformation theology from both sacramental theology and all other viewpoints. This has to do with soteriology. Framed another way it answers the question “How is a man saved?” Sacramental theology differs from Reformed theology in the sense that baptism becomes essential to salvation. This is true in Romanism. Unbaptized babies do not go to heaven, according to Romanism; they go to infant limbo. Romanism also teaches that salvation is the result of faith plus works. Reformed theology says salvation is by faith alone. One of the charges consistently leveled at SDA is that it teaches salvation by grace plus works. It is the charge of legalism. This charge relates both to the Sabbath question, deliberately unmentioned up to this point, and to the keeping of the other commandments. If SDA is involved in the Galatian error against which Paul wrote, then it is not evangelical. If, on the other hand, the charge of legalism is more academic and formal than real, then perhaps SDA will fall within the minimal orbit of evangelicalism. Is this charge of legalism one of language and semantics, or does it touch the structure of reality and mark off SDA from evangelicalism? To this question we shall address ourselves in the second installment of this article.

Since Seventh-day Adventism was formally organized in 1863, the movement has attracted a world membership approaching the million mark. Their Sabbath schools have a membership of more than a million. The question of the movement’s status as a cult or a legitimate evangelical manifestation is now in wide debate. Some related issues are covered in this article by Harold Lindsell, Dean of the Faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary, a church historian who has long appraised the cults.

In Weymouth’s translation of Acts 25:19 we find “They quarreled with him about … one Jesus who had died, but—so Paul persistently maintained—is now alive.” Christians even before Paul’s day “persistently maintained” that Jesus is alive. The Christian church would not have begun had it not been for this assurance. Kenneth S. Latourette, a first rank historian, says, “It was the conviction of the resurrection of Jesus which lifted his followers out of the despair into which his death had cast them and which led to the perpetuation of the movement begun by him. But for their profound belief that the crucified had risen from the dead and that they had seen him and talked with him, the death of Jesus and even Jesus himself would probably have been all but forgotten (History of Expansion of Christianity, Harper, New York, 1937, Vol. I, p. 59).

Person And Event

The New Testament scholar C. H. Dodd writes, “The resurrection remains an event within history, though we may not be able to state precisely what happened.… The assumption that the whole course of Christian history is a massive pyramid balanced upon the apex of some trivial occurrence is surely a less probable one than that the whole event, the occurrence plus the meaning inherent in it, did actually occupy a place in history at least comparable with that which the New Testament assigns to it” (History and the Gospels, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1938, pp. 108 f.).

But to consider, what sort of person is this testimony to the Resurrection about? In the first century there were those who believed that Nero would return to life and resume his demonic activities. In the Middle Ages it was thought that Frederick Barbarossa would awaken in a cave to lead his people in time of stress. Yet, of all of the sons of men in history, was there anyone whose life remotely approached that of Jesus of Nazareth’s as being worthy of a resurrection? The New Testament scholar John Knox says, “It was not the fact that a man had risen from the dead but that a particular man had done so which launched the Christian movement.… The character of Jesus was its deeper cause” (The Man Christ Jesus, pp. 13 f.).

Biblical Teaching

When we are investigating ancient historical documents, we ask, “Are they trustworthy, accurate, and in sufficient number?” There are over four thousand manuscripts or major parts of manuscripts of the New Testament! We have two complete New Testaments from the middle of the fourth century. There is a fragment of the Gospel of John that New Testament scholars date as early as 117 A.D. This is within 25 years of the time that Gospel was written, if we assume a date for it late in the first century.

Paul of Tarsus gives us the earliest written testimony to the Resurrection. He was a persecutor of the Christians who, of course, became an ardent follower of Christ. Perhaps the most brilliant intellect of the first century, he was a theologically trained Jewish monotheist who became utterly convinced that Jesus was God’s Messiah raised from the dead by the Eternal and alive forevermore. The physical suffering Paul later bore for this testimony is extraordinary. He tells us that five times he received 39 lashes, three times was he beaten with rods, once stoned, and three times shipwrecked. The fact of the Resurrection is the heart of a letter written by Paul to the Corinthian Church not more than 25 years after the event. This letter is admitted by all scholars, even the most radical, to be an authentic letter of the Apostle.

All four of the Gospels have extended accounts of the Resurrection. Mark, the earliest Gospel, was certainly written within 40 years of the life of our Lord. John, usually considered the latest Gospel, was composed within 65 years of that time. We find the Resurrection a part and parcel of every one of the New Testament books. No other books have been studied with such minute and scholarly care, and their substantial accuracy has long since been assured. The Dead Sea Scrolls also corroborate the type of life and faith we find described in the writings of the New Testament.

The records themselves bear every evidence of genuineness. The artlessness and simplicity of the four accounts argue strongly for the reality of their content. They agree in broad outline and yet there are a number of minor difficulties in the Gospels that preclude collusion on the part of the writers. The story could not have been fabricated in order to prove a philosophical doctrine of the Resurrection, for in such a hypothetical fabrication we would not have been told that some “did not believe.” Jesus would have been made to appear to other than his disciples. Mary would have recognized Jesus at once in the garden. The two disciples on the way to Emmaus would not have been described as so slow of heart to believe.

The Resurrection story is in keeping with our knowledge of the characters involved. Mary Magdalene, who had wept as she anointed the feet of Jesus, weeps as she stands by the empty tomb. Peter and John run to the tomb to verify the story of the women. John outruns his older companion, but John the spiritual hesitates to go into the tomb. When the impetuous Peter lumbers up he barges right in. Later as the disciples were fishing on the Lake of Galilee it is the spiritually-minded John who recognizes Jesus on the shore.

One of the most remarkable details that establishes the action as in keeping with the characters is the record telling that the napkin wrapped about the head of Jesus was found in a place by itself (John 20:7). Here we find Jesus in complete character with what we know of him. He is the master of every situation from the wedding at Cana to the trial before Pilate. On that first Easter morning when the spirit reanimated his body, Jesus was not perturbed in the least. He carefully folded the cloth in a place by itself. This is what we would expect Jesus to do. Lord of the tempest, he was Lord also of the grave.

Eyewitnesses And Contemporaries

An historian always takes into account the type of man who records the events. More reliance, for instance, is placed upon statements of Tacitus than those of Josephus. But in connection with the resurrection of Jesus, we have eyewitnesses and contemporaries of the event. Eleven disciples plus some women actually saw the risen Lord under circumstances which give every evidence of genuineness. Paul claims to have seen him and refers to more than 500 others who likewise had seen him, half of whom were alive at the time Paul wrote (1 Cor. 15:6–8).

Every one of these witnesses were men who loved the truth passionately. Honest to the core, they could not have perpetrated a “pious fraud.” Jesus rightly said that a tree brings forth fruit after its kind. It would have been psychologically impossible for the disoiples to have invented the account of the Resurrection. Robertson Nicoll said long ago, “Christianity as a moral phenomenon could not have been built on rottenness.” Conclusive testimony on this question comes from the Jewish scholar, Joseph Klausner: “It is impossible to suppose that there was any conscious deception: the nineteen hundred years’ faith of millions is not founded on deception. There can be no question but that some of the ardent Galileans saw their Lord and Messiah in a vision” (Jesus of Nazareth, p. 359).

Hallucination Theory

In endeavoring to account for the disciples’ insistence upon having seen the risen Lord, some have tried to claim that they had had hallucinations. It is well to remember that the disciples themselves did not at first believe in the Resurrection. Psychology teaches that hallucinations are the product of previous brain states. Of this E. Y. Mullins wrote, “But there were no brain states produced by previous experience to furnish the contents of this extraordinary hallucination. Resurrection appearances were not a staple of Jewish history. Jerusalem was the last place in which the morbid imagination of a woman could convert a large group of cowardly men into moral heroes.” For those who maintain that it was psychological, that it happened in the minds of early Christians and of Paul as a sort of intensification of their memory of Jesus, we can comment: you could not say this of Paul, for he probably had not known Jesus in the flesh. There is a shallowness of psychologism about this view.

People who have hallucinations, dream dreams and see visions, keep on having them. Jesus appeared at least 10 times through a period of 40 days and then the appearances ceased as abruptly as they had begun. Hallucinations never come to over 500 people at one time, and men who are subject to hallucinations never become moral heroes. The effect of the resurrection of Jesus in transformed lives was continuous, and most of these early witnesses went to their deaths for proclaiming this truth.

Denial Of Death

Before there could have been any resurrection of course, there must have been a death. A clever writer once tried to prove that Jesus had not actually died, that he had fainted and that the dampness of the tomb had resuscitated him. But what does the record say? When his side was pierced with the spear, blood and water came out. Medical men tell us that this condition probably came from a ruptured heart, the blood filling the pericardium and then separating into plasma and the heavier red corpuscles. Roman soldiers were familiar with death; they knew when a man was dead, and they reported the death of Jesus to Pontius Pilate.

Long ago this “swoon theory” was completely discounted by Strauss, himself an unbeliever in the Resurrection, when he said, “It is impossible that a being who had stolen half dead out of the sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, without bandaging, strengthening and indulgence, and who still at last yielded to his sufferings, could have given his disciples the impression that he was a conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of life—an impression which lay at the bottom of their future ministry. Such a resuscitation could only have weakened the impression which he had made upon them in life and in death; at the most could only have given it an elegiac voice, but could have by no possibility changed their sorrow into enthusiasm, have elevated their reverence into worship.”

Spirit Manifestation

There are those today who do not believe that life returned to the physical body of Jesus. According to their view it was the spirit of Jesus that convinced the disciples that he was alive and lives today. Now, although we must minimize in no way the spiritual nature of the Resurrection, we are aware that a spiritual or psychical resurrection is not sufficient to account for the facts given in the record. If there occurred no “physical” resurrection, what became of the body of Jesus? “Physical,” of course, is not a fully accurate term in this connection for it carries no connotation of what Paul refers to as a “spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44), which is certainly what Jesus possessed in his resurrection appearances. But “physical” is nevertheless used here because it best defends the reality of the resurrection body of our Lord. There can be no doubt about the fact of the empty tomb. It was a specific new tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. If there had been confusion about tombs, Joseph would have had to settle the matter to his own satisfaction. Pilate, the Roman soldiers, and the Jewish enemies of Jesus knew in which tomb he had been buried.

But we ask again, what could have become of the body of Jesus had there been no resurrection? It was certainly to the interest of the Jews that they produce the body, for that would have put an end to the preaching of the Resurrection. It was to the interest of the Romans to produce the body also, because they were legally involved. And the disciples desired to have the body because, according to their custom, they wished to anoint it. If they had removed it, they would have taken the grave clothes (John 20:6, 7). Being honest as well as good men, it is certain that they could never have believed in the Resurrection had any of them had the slightest idea as to the location of the body.

Thus, according to the record of Scripture, Jesus’ body was resurrected, and was not only one that could perform certain physical functions such as eating (Luke 24:43), preparing food (John 21:9 f.) and teaching (Luke 24:27 f.), but a body marvelously changed, that could pass through closed doors at will. Karl Barth, in the forefront of leading contemporary theologians, points out that in all other stories of resurrections death has never been transcended. It has merely been postponed. But in the resurrection of Christ, a new form of life appears. The risen Christ is clearly independent of space. He appears behind closed doors. He vanishes at will. He is independent of time. And seemingly his presence can be both on the road to Emmaus and with Peter. But he is not spirit apart from body. Jesus says: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39). The disciples touch him. He eats before them. The existence of his real body is just as certain as any other, and yet in its new form it is impossible for us to describe the nature of it (Holmes Ralston, A Conservative Looks to Barth and Brunner, Cokesbury, Nashville, 1933, p. 34). Here are the words of Barth: “We must not transmute the resurrection into a spiritual event. We must listen to it and let it tell us the story how there was an empty grave (italics ours), that new life beyond death did become visible” (Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949, p. 123).

When you begin to employ rationalistic explanations for the event, you run into dead-ends for each. If there was a physical resuscitation as with Lazarus, then there must be a tomb somewhere with the body of Jesus put there after a few more weeks or years of life. Oscar Cullmann calls the resurrection of Christ a new creation, “The Christian doctrine of the resurrection is the calling into new life by the power of God. The doctrine of the resurrection connects it with sin. Death comes as a result of sin. Death can be conquered only as sin is atoned.… Death as such is the enemy of God. God is life … the resurrection of the body is a new act of creation … (italics ours) it is tied to the whole act of redemption. Christ’s body was the first resurrection body” (Harvard Ingersoll Lecture, April 26, 1955).

Fact And Event

Finally, in our consideration we must remember that the Resurrection was an event as well as fact. By event we mean that all the factors in the history of God’s dealing with Israel culminated in the wondrous birth, life, teaching, miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus, and that the founding of the Church came about through faith that the totality of these experiences did establish him as the long-promised Messiah, the Saviour of the world.

Albert Outler of Yale tells us, “The Gospel’s declaration of man’s redemption still stands or falls with the Christian conviction of the reality of the Resurrection as event rather than myth.” To quote John Knox again, “The resurrection is as truly a part of the event as the event itself.… Just as memory had an objective occasion in Jesus so memory had an objective fact in the resurrection.… The resurrection undoubtedly occurred.… The resurrection is a mighty sign of the entire event—it represented a unique act of God designed for our salvation” (Harvard Lecture, April, 1947).

A crowning proof of the Resurrection is the amazing change that was wrought in the disciples themselves. One day they had been hopeless, “Let us go that we may die with him.” Another day they had been cowardly, “And they all forsook him and fled.” Even Peter, who had vehemently avowed his loyalty, had later denied Jesus with oaths and curses. But after the Resurrection these same men became fearless and bold and brave. Except for the fact and event of the Resurrection, no adequate psychological cause can account for the change in Peter that transformed him in six weeks from a craven, cursing, denying fisherman to a bold protagonist saying to the religious leaders of Jerusalem, “Ye have taken (Jesus) and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God hath raised up.…”

The continuing proof of Christ’s resurrection is, of course, in what happens to the lives of those who have believed, and believe today, that God did not allow his Holy One to see corruption but raised him from the dead through his own power and majesty. He continually raises us from the death of sin into the life of righteousness, and gives us assurance that we too shall some day rise to live forever with him. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. And the risen Christ, the Son of God, sitting at God’s right hand, evermore saves to this end.

Hillyer H. Straton is Pastor of First Baptist Church of Malden, Mass. Born in Waco, Texas, son of Dr. John Roach Straton, he attended Mercer, Columbia, and Harvard, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Andover-Newton Theological School. His next book will be A Guide to the Parables of Jesus.

“There is no possibility of demonstrating the existence of God … there can be no way of proving that the existence of a god, such as the God of Christianity, is even probable … no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance … all utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical … to say that there is something imperceptible inside a man, which is his soul or his real self, and that it goes on living after he is dead, is to make a metaphysical assertion which has no more factual content than the assertion that there is a transcendent god … unless (the theist) can formulate his ‘knowledge’ in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we may be sure that he is deceiving himself.” Such are some of the statements made by Professor A. J. Ayer in his celebrated book Language, Truth, and Logic (which was first published in 1936 (second, revised, edition, 1946). If the contemporary linguistic philosophy, also known as logical positivism, of which Professor Ayer is so dynamic an advocate, is right, then it is folly for Christians to talk about God.

A vigorous criticism of the position propounded by Professor Ayer and others has now appeared with the publication of Dr. E. L. Mascall’s latest book entitled Words and Images (Longmans, 12s.6d.). Dr. Mascall complains of Professor Ayer that, “having made the apparently innocent and plausible assertion that all meaningful assertions must have some reference to experience, he then goes on to limit the meaning of experience in the narrowest and most arbitrary way to the experience of the bodily senses.” It is contended by Dr. Mascall that “the fundamental criterion of meaningfulness is not “sense-verifiability but intelligibility” and that “the intellect does not only reason, but also apprehends,” in fact that its function is contemplative as well as logical, and that “it is the neglect of this twofold functioning of the human mind that has so drastically impoverished the mental life of the modern world and has produced the glacial and spectral character of much modern philosophy.” The world of the linguistic empiricists is, he charges, “a world in which depth has been sacrificed to clarity, and in which nothing has any inside, a world in which there are no questions left to answer, not because they have all been answered but because they have been condemned as being no questions at all.”

The driving force behind this modern philosophical movement is discerned by Dr. Mascall as “an over-anxious determination to avoid the possibility of error even at the expense of a quite ruthless impoverishment of the range of human knowledge.” Over against this he sets “another ideal of knowledge as involving commitment, contemplation and penetration beneath the phenomenal level,” and in this we believe him to be undoubtedly right. The logical positivist must not complain if he is caught in his own net. If he dismissed all theological, ethical and metaphysical statements as meaningless and nonsensical because they fail to meet his requirements of verification, he must also renounce the concept of logic itself, for this too is something which is not demonstrable through the medium of sense-perception. And how, in accordance with his own principles, can he find a place for the imagination, the emotions and the dreams of men?

What, moreover, does he say about the amazing developments of modern nuclear physics, which is constructed upon a foundation, not of sensible phenomena, but of theoretical probability? “If,” says Dr. Mascall, “we try to interpret the statements of relativity or the quantum theory as statements about the world of sensible phenomena we shall be driven from one nightmare to another and shall finally abandon the task in despair. And then, if we believe that the world of sensible phenomena is the real world, we shall say that scientific statements are not about the real world at all. If, however, we believe that the real world is an intelligible world with a structure different from that of sensible phenomena, we shall see the statements of relativity and quantum theory as expressions of the kind of intelligibility that the real world has.” Dr. Mascall’s thesis is, in brief, that “it is of the essence of reality to be not sensible but intelligible.” With his insistence on the importance of intelligibility we are, of course, in agreement; but we question his wisdom in suggesting (if we have understood him aright) that the real world is something other than the world of sensible phenomena. We would prefer to say that the latter is an aspect, and only one aspect, of the former, and that the information it imparts, though fragmentary and imperfect, is still not lacking in validity.

Dr. Mascall very properly points out that while our knowledge of the physical world no less than our knowledge of God is partial knowledge, and frequently knowledge that is not free from inaccuracy, it is still knowledge. He views the world as “essentially mysterious and yet not entirely alien from us, a world into which we can penetrate in part and which we can know in part.” The point he makes is that “in order to penetrate the phenomenal skin of the perceptual world, in order to grasp either physical objects or human persons or the God who is the creator and sustainer of both, we must learn to contemplate them with humility and wonder and not merely to record their sensible qualities and analyse their relationships.”

In logical positivism we are confronted with what is but a modern version of the age-old arrogance of man, finite and sinful, desiring to make himself the measure of things, the centre of reality, and the judge of what is and what is not possible. The weakness of Dr. Mascall’s rejoinder is his failure to oppose this philosophy with a clear and consistent biblical doctrine of man in relation to God his Creator. The Christian position, if it is true, means that man is dependent on God not merely for his being but for his knowledge also.

It is an integral truth of Christianity that the realm of nature by which he is surrounded and to which he belongs constantly declares to man the glory of God, and that the invisible reality of the eternal power and godhead of the Creator is clearly to be grasped by way of the sensible entities of our universe. The Christian must further insist that man, being formed in the image of God and himself being a part of the created whole, knows himself instinctively and by his very constitution to be God’s creature; but that man in his sin suppresses the truth in unrighteousness and, though knowing God, fails to glorify him as God, exchanges the truth of God for a lie, and worships and serves the creature rather than the Creator. The scriptural diagnosis of the condition of man and its implications is essential to the task of a truly Christian apologetics.

New York Crusade

God in the Garden, by Curtis Mitchell, Doubleday, 1957. 195 pp., $2.50.

This is an immediate, on-the-scene report of the biggest mass evangelism drive in Christian history, and it has the swift, crackling flavor of good journalism. No doubt time will bring further light to bear on the 1957 phenomenon of Billy Graham and his New York crusade, but for the present, this book ably tells the story, in its many facets, as it happened.

Mr. Mitchell, a polished feature writer for the American Weekly, has done a fine job of pulling together all the varied strands of the vast undertaking, and weaving them into a smooth, vivid pattern.

He roves over the whole complex anatomy of the campaign, its planning, participants, proceedings, its colorful sidelights, its partisans and critics and the response of press and public. A personal diary of Mr. Graham himself provides some of the most unusual, revealing passages in the volume. Excerpts from the diary are sprinkled throughout, showing Mr. Graham’s feelings as the effort progressed.

For instance, before the crusade began, Mr. Graham, at his rural mountaintop home in North Carolina, wrote wistfully that he wished the Lord would just let him stay there the rest of his life and never go to New York. “All the forces of hell will probably be turned on us,” he wrote. He lamented the “concentration of publicity around my name … This gaze on me and our team must be shifted to the person of Christ … God will not share his glory …”

The evangelist also tells how at first, when his work was lampooned or denounced by others, he was “tempted once or twice to lash back. But then scores of scriptures began to echo in my ears … Gradually the spirit of God shed abroad in my heart an everwhelming love for these brethren … I have thanked God a thousand times … that he gave me the grace … never to answer back.”

In the book, Mr. Mitchell does not attempt any settled appraisal of the crusade, or long-range conclusions. But he clearly points it up to a spiritual manifestation of unprecedented proportions in our time.

The author himself carefully stays in the background, relying on statements and actions of others, and brisk, graphic description to give the picture.

As a result, and as in most writing about contemporary events, the book is heavily laded with quotations from newspapers and individuals, and with portions of letters from unnamed persons who made “decisions for Christ.”

The volume begins with a rapid-fire, stacatto recitation of the crusade’s record-setting statistical scope, then moves into detailed accounts of its varied aspects.

A short biography of Graham himself is also given … his uneasiness prior to the crusade; the complex organizational preparations, the widespread prelude of prayer, the opening, the “team” members, the volunteers, the broadcasts, the special meetings in Times Square and elsewhere and the crusade’s unslacking pace.

Mr. Mitchell provides some nice vignettes of Graham as he moves through the whole process, at news conferences, on radio and TV shows, in telephone calls, at luncheons, meetings and in public and in private.

One of the best chapters is devoted to a Graham sermon on the spiritual chemistry of conversion.

GEO. W. CORNELL

The Sovereign God

The Five Points of Calvinism, Sovereign Grace Book Club, Evansville, Indiana, 1957. $3.95.

Among the writers whose works appear in this book are two Presbyterians, two Baptists, one Reformed, and one Congregationalist minister. The first major section presents a general discussion of the famous “five points” which distinguish Calvin’s distinctive doctrines from those of the rival system, Arminianism: Total Inability, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible, Efficacious Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints.

The first major section is from the pen of Horatius Bonar, a Scottish Presbyterian minister and hymn writer. Andrew Fuller (1754–1815), a Baptist minister in England, treats the doctrine of Total Depravity. The discussion of Unconditional Election is from the works of John Calvin (1509–1564). John Gill (1697–1771), a learned Baptist minister, discusses Limited Atonement. Thomas Godwin (1600–1679), ranked as “among the top three Puritans,” writes on Irresistible Grace. And Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), the only American included, writes on Perseverance of the Saints. In conclusion there is a long sermon by Thomas Goodwin, on Christian Patience, based on James 1:1–5.

All of the writers set forth the sovereignty of God and the total dependence of man on God for salvation. There is no pretense at being able to solve all the difficulties that arise as this relates to the free agency of man. It is acknowledged that here we see through a glass darkly. But there is coming a day of light and harmony when all will be made plain. Until that time we hold both truths, acknowledging that God is sovereign and that man is free and responsible within the limits of his nature.

In the matter of salvation it is maintained that God’s will comes first, and that his work of regeneration is the cause for the sinner’s becoming willing. In regard to free agency it is pointed out that while Christ was to be born in Bethlehem, that did not make any less voluntary the coming of Joseph and Mary to that town. Likewise, it was certain that Judas would betray Christ for thirty pieces of silver, as had been predicted long before; but that did not lessen the guilt of Judas or make his act any the less free. To say that the Holy Spirit is doing all he can to convert a sinner, but that he is unable to do so, is to make the creature mightier than the Creator and so able to withstand, or even to overcome, omnipotence.

In the Calvinistic system the doctrine of limited atonement is the one most often and most violently rejected by opponents. It is here pointed out, however, that if Christ died for the sins of all men so that the punishment for their sin was inflicted upon him, then all men must be set free from the penalty of sin because punishment cannot be inflicted twice, once on the surety and again on the sinner. If one man pays another’s debt, it is unjust for the creditor to exact payment again from the debtor. Ultimately the alternative is this: Christ died for certain ones, his people, and they are effectively saved; or he died for all men but his sacrifice is not efficacious to save any, but must be supplemented by faith and good works on the part of man. The atonement of Christ is therefore set forth in this book as a specific work which made the salvation of his people certain, rather than as a general work which made the salvation of all men possible but uncertain.

When we read the old Puritans we do not expect to find light, airy discussions of popular themes. This book is no exception. The style is heavy and requires close attention. It therefore will be more useful in the hands of ministers and theologians than in those of the average reader. But anyone who gives it the time and attention that it deserves will find it rewarding. In all cases the treatment is based on Scripture as the final and authoritative Word of God.

LORAINE BOETTNER

Psychotherapy

My Inward Journey by Lorraine Picker, Westminster Press, 1957. 187 pp., $3.00.

This is the autobiographical account of a girl who had crippling asthma from an early age. She writes graphically of the unsuccessful efforts to control the illness through her childhood and adolescent years. After unsuccessful and frustrating efforts to gain relief by medical treatment, she is encouraged by an understanding physician to undergo psychotherapy. As insight into her emotional entanglements develops over a three-year period, the asthma disappears. Still aware of neurotic tensions, she submits to psychoanalysis. My Inward Journey is the story of the unraveling of childhood memories and experiences, the reconstructions of the analyst and the interpretations that the author eventually accepted to explain her maladjustment. The story is intense, absorbing, well written.

The author’s account of her struggles gives a vivid view of futile medical effort against a psychogenic illness. Her story provides a first-hand account of psychotherapy in action. Psychoanalysis leads, as Freudian procedure always does, straight to the Oedipal conflict and female envy of the male.

Many readers will find elements of their own problems reflected in these pages, and some may gain helpful insights directly or be encouraged to seek psychotherapeutic assistance. The optimism toward psychotherapy aroused by this story should be tempered by two considerations. The first is that psychotherapy has its failures, too, but patients seldom write books about them. The second is that religion apparently played no significant role in the author’s life. While some Christians may benefit by psychotherapy, even Freud noted that religion is a good protection against neurosis. If the author had embraced the Christian faith with as much open-mindedness as psychoanalysis, would there have been any “inward journey?” Was this trip really necessary?

ORVILLE S. WALTERS, M. D.

Human Interest

Autobiography of George L. Robinson, by George L. Robinson, Baker, 1957. $2.50.

For many years Dr. George L. Robinson taught the eternal truths of the Bible to young men preparing for the ministry. He is especially remembered for his professorship at McCormick Theological Seminary. He lived a long and influential life, and his family persuaded him to record the story of his life in autobiographical form. Throughout this volume the author shows us God’s guiding hand in his life through all these years.

The reader will find in the book a number of interesting observations. For example in the chapter in which the author tells of his student days at Princeton Theological Seminary he wrote that in the second year, the first volume of Driver’s Dictionary of the Bible appeared. He said the faculty lost no time in denouncing it as unorthodox. It was contemporaneous with the three years that the trial of Dr. C. A. Briggs was taking place, which ended in his condemnation by the General Assembly in 1893. Dr. Robinson comments, “Their successors today would think long before denouncing it. Today Princeton is teaching the chief claims which Briggs advocated: that Moses did not write all that is ascribed to him in the Pentateuch, nor Isaiah all of the book ascribed to him. My own views were the traditional ones and still are.”

The latter section of this book shows one how to grow old gracefully and make the latter years of life count. These memoranda should be of interest especially to Dr. Robinson’s many students and also of help to those who like autobiographical material. The volume is crammed full of human interest. The author’s smooth-flowing style and delightful sense of humor adds to the readability of this autobiography.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

A Washington, D. C., clergyman stepped up to one of the nation’s most influential Unitarian pulpits last month and publicly renounced Christianity.

Said the Rev. Ralph W. Stutzman, acting minister of All Souls Church:

“I had to rethink my position.… My personal beliefs now exclude the possibility of my being a Christian.”

Thus with disarming candor he gave added saliency to the continuing theist-humanist division in the house of Unitarianism.

Only last May, at the urging of the American Unitarian Association, the denominational magazine changed its name from The Christian Register to The Unitarian Register, pointing out that this meant no change in editorial policy. That considerable reaction followed, particularly in New England, is attributed by Mr. Stutzman to the extreme social consciousness of that area, “where the loss of the Christian veneer seemed to be a loss of social stature.”

The Unitarian Drift

To note the drift in Unitarian thought, one need only turn from Pastor Stutzman’s doubt of the Fatherhood of God, because of its being couched “in such anthropomorphic terminology,” to that eminent American representative of Unitarianism, William Ellery Channing. For him the Christian revelation could not be reduced beyond two articles of faith: the Fatherhood of God and the immortality of the soul. There was revelation. And there was a view of Christ long forgotten among modern Unitarians. The immortality of the soul was evidenced by the physical resurrection of Jesus, the greatest of his miracles. Take away the miracles and you take away Channing’s Christ. Along with his spotless character and matchless teaching, Jesus was considered to be supernatural in his acts, if not in his person.

But here Channing wavered. Christ was a pre-existent rational creature who had taken on human flesh. He was neither truly man nor truly God, but more like an embodied angel. This crude halfway house of an ill-defined Arianism could not hope to halt the ferment that Channing, with others, had begun.

Anthropologically, emphasis fell more on the infinite possibilities of man than on the glory of Christ, and the doctrine of sin was never properly grasped. Regeneration was largely reformulated in terms of education.

With the role of the Saviour thus undercut, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s denial of the authority of Christ and of the reality of special revelation was an easy step. Then Theodore Parker could proclaim the miracles of Christ to be myths and Christianity to be one of many natural religions, its truths to be known intuitively.

The Parker mode of rationalism largely carried the day, but certain Unitarian tensions continue to this hour. On one hand we see Unitarians paradoxically belonging to the Greater Philadelphia Council of Churches, which “requires” member churches to “accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.” On the other hand there is Mr. Stutzman calling upon true Unitarians “to be honest enough to let go of our claim upon Christianity. This growing issue within Unitarianism is important because truth is important.” His rather uncertain call is for “a continual acceptance of emerging truths; on the growing edge of God’s evolutionary insights … knowing that if all else is wrong, our way of openness must be right!”

Rejecting Kierkegaard’s Leap

The Rev. Mr. Stutzman confessed that it is “painful” for one to outgrow his spiritual heritage, much as for the child to outgrow his conception of Santa Claus. He posits Kierkegaard’s definition of Christianity as the determinative one, involving the offense of the God-man’s death. “The challenge of the leap of faith” is quite clear, but “I refuse to leap.” “I concluded that Kierkegaard was right in claiming that to believe the doctrine of the Christian Church one had to sacrifice his mind.”

Former Evangelical United Brethren minister Stutzman not only bows out from Christianity because of hostility to the doctrine of the Incarnation, but he is unwilling to accept the “human Jesus” as a model, asserting the unworthiness of the celibate ideal and mistakes and contradictions in the teachings ascribed to Jesus. If Christianity be further watered down to mean that one is simply to follow the high ideals Jesus apparently lived by, such as kindness and compassion, then “any good Jew is … a Christian by that definition.”

Theism Goes Naturalistic

To the writer the young minister declared that he is “basically agnostic,” holding a “naturalistic theism.” His convictions are divided between “operating on a theistic level” in some areas and on a “humanistic level” at other times. Both traditions are represented in his congregation, which up to this point seems to stand unanimously in favor of the minister’s latest pronouncement.

Thus the debate goes on, but in an almost purely speculative vein. Unitarian lack of missionary zeal is patent, but why spend large sums of money carrying abroad a message that may be radically different tomorrow?

Unitarians historically have shown greater enthusiasm for attacking orthodoxy than for presenting a positive formulation of beliefs. They currently contemplate merger with the Universalist Church which belies its name by omitting all creedal reference to a future life but rather seeks to spread God’s love within a chronologically limitless evolutionary setting.

Jesus Christ The Divider

It is heart-rending to behold the historical procession of Ebionites, Alogi, dynamic Monarchians, Arians, Socinians, along with contemporary Unitarians, Universalists, Modernists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, echoing their lamentable denial of Godhead to Jesus Christ. Though sometimes learned in biblical literature, they give evidence that twenty centuries after Jesus’ trial before Annas and Caiaphas, the central divide of the Christian religion remains the deity of the Son of God.

F.F.

Masters Of Deceit

Try as he did, Karl Marx could not avoid embracing a religion. From his very repudiation of all gods there emerged “a secular religion with its own roster of gods.”

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover devotes a 12-page chapter to “Communism: A False Religion” in Masters of Deceit, “the story of Communism in America and how to fight it” (Holt, 1958, $5.00). The book was released March 10, four days before the 75th anniversary of the death of Marx.

An erroneous assumption that he had escaped religion was not the least of the fallacies in the thinking of Marx. Hoover’s 39-year study of Communism, begun when he was aide to the attorney general in 1919, has enabled him to knock props of logic from under many a Marxist tenet. Hoover’s compilation of facts enables his reader to sense many contradictions within the communistic philosophic framework.

Dialectical materialism would do away with capitalism as an alleged exploitation of man by man, the inference being that exploitation is bad. Yet the Communist Party in the United States, according to Hoover, “is today engaged in a systematic program to infiltrate American religious groups,” to exploit organizations of persons. The infiltration reduces to its own form of exploitation of man by man, the very thing Communism purports to eliminate. That communists try to “use” Christian organizations further discloses another weakness in their philosophy.

True communists have no qualms whatever about committing wrong to advance their cause. (Would they resort to immorality if their position were strong?) Communists assert that they do have morality of a particular type. Hoover quotes Lenin, “We repudiate all morality that is taken outside of human, class concepts.… We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle.…” In other words, anything goes, as long as it’s for the party.

Great concern over Communism, even the extensive printing of books, would hardly be necessary had not so many Americans been duped by its claims. Says Hoover, “When the Communist Party was at its peak in the United States it was stronger in numbers than the Soviet Party was at the time it seized power in Russia.” According to the FBI chief, these are among communist objectives within religious groups: To gain “respectability,” to provide an opportunity for the subtle dissemination of communist propaganda, to make contact with youth, to exploit the churches in the party’s day-to-day agitational program, to enlarge the area of party contacts, to influence clergymen.

“A dedicated clergyman,” Hoover states, “being a man of God, is a mortal enemy of Communism. But if he can, by conversion, influence, or trickery, be made to support the communist program once or a few times or many times, the party gains. If, for example, a clergyman can be persuaded to serve as sponsor or officer of a communist front, to issue a testimonial or to sign a clemency petition for a communist ‘victim of persecution,’ his personal prestige lends weight to the cause.”

Hoover’s note of caution to ministers might be taken to imply that a number of clergymen already have fallen victims to communist trickery.

The atheistic attributes of Communism are only too evident. Hoover says “the most basic of all communist comments about religion is the statement of Karl Marx that religion is ‘the opium of the people.’ ” William Z. Foster, former national chairman of the United States Communist Party, is quoted as having described religion as “historically inevitable” but now made obsolete by science.

Hoover adds:

“This communist teaching glosses over the fact that science never has given an ‘irrefutable’ explanation of ultimate reality, neither materialistic nor any other kind.”

Communists nevertheless have a form of respect for the Church, at least in terms of recognition as a formidable enemy. Hoover again quotes Foster: “… the Church is one of the basic forces now fighting to preserve obsolete capitalism and its reactionary ruling classes, in the face of advancing democracy and socialism.” Communists cannot sanction churches because their philosophy “cannot permit man to give his allegiance to a supreme authority higher than party authority.”

This is not to say that party members make the religious question a well-advertised issue. On the contrary, followers are told to play down or conceal the Marxist religious position. States the author:

“The party’s aim, in addition to that of exploiting the Church, is to neutralize religion as an effective counterweapon. At present virtually nothing is being said in open party propaganda that is anti-religious.… When tactically expedient, the communists even liken themselves to the early Christian martyrs suffering persecution for attempting to aid mankind.”

(Roman Catholic Archbishop Richard J. Cushing of Boston reported having received an advance copy of Masters of Deceit with a handwritten inscription, signed by Hoover, to “His Excellency … whose magnificent fight against Communism inspired the writing of this book.” Hoover is a Presbyterian and a Mason. He has attended Notre Dame, St. John’s, Oklahoma Baptist and Georgetown universities, as well as Seton Hall and Holy Cross colleges.)

South America

Roman Hostility

On successive Sundays in February (1) a bomb damaged a home in which an American missionary was sleeping, and (2) a military mayor ordered the closing of a Presbyterian school after a week of newly-instituted classes. The hostile hand of Catholicism in Colombia had prevailed again.

“The Senorita Janet Troyer is stubborn and rebellious,” blared the loudspeaker on the little Catholic church of Supia. Miss Troyer, a Wisconsin native representing the Gospel Missionary Union of Kansas City, was seeking to establish new evangelical witness in a community which had heard the Gospel only intermittently for 25 years. The Rev. Ramon Hoyos, parish priest, made it clear that she was not wanted. Forced from one home, the missionary found refuge with a woman who was sympathetic despite threats of persecution.

Ironically, it was through the disparaging blare of the loudspeaker that the Senora Raquel Arias heard of Miss Troyer’s distress. Neighbors’ attitudes toward the two women grew more hostile. They were refused a water supply. Then they heard rumors that three men had offered themselves to Father Hoyos to attack the home.

Mrs. Arias, the missionary and a little girl were sleeping when the blast ripped the pre-dawn calm. The dynamite bomb had been planted just five feet from Miss Troyer’s bed. The doorway was wrecked, plaster was loosened, pictures and mirrors were shattered, but the occupants escaped injury.

The debris was cleared away in time to hold Sunday School that day. Several newcomers helped to swell the attendance. Persons returning from mass quoted the priest as saying that now it was up to the people: Should they try fire or resort to more dynamite?

A week later in the neighboring province of Tolima, Mayor Major Lopez ordered the closing of Colegio Americana in Villarrica. The Presbyterian school was founded in 1934 by Mrs. Viola Warner Ruiz, but unsettled political conditions precluded continual operation. Classes resumed Feb. 10 upon fulfillment of government requirements. According to the Rev. Lorentz D. Emery of Schenectady, New York, who directed a reorganization of the school, the Villarrica parish priest spearheaded the drive to close it. The closing left 91 children without educational facilities because Villarrica’s inadequate school system prohibits Protestants.

Americans having been involved in both the bombing and the school closing, the United States Embassy in Bogota brought the incidents to the attention of the Colombia Foreign Office and asked for an investigation.

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, public affairs secretary of the National Association of Evangelicals, says that his files contain “more than 700 documented cases of persecution” of Protestants in Colombia.”

Last October, the Rev. John E. Kelly, Bureau of Information director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, branded newspaper reports of Colombian persecution “one-sided.” Father Kelly made the charge in messages to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the American Newspaper Publishers Association and Sigma Delta Chi, journalistic fraternity. The NAE subsequently asked all three organizations to see for themselves and opened their Washington files.

Far East

Film Controversy

Actress Ingrid Bergman is to play the leading role in a Twentieth-Century Fox production depicting the story of an English missionary. The movie will be filmed on Formosa.

“Inn of Eight Happinesses” is based on the life of Miss Gladys Aylward, who worked on the China mainland before settling in Formosa.

The decision to star Miss Bergman has been protested widely, but Miss Aylward, now an advisor to the film studio, approves:

“We’re setting people to praying all over that Miss Bergman may be converted as a result of being in the film.”

The Far East News Service reported that President Chiang Kai Shek has made provision for 5,000 Nationalist Chinese soldiers to participate in the making of the film.

Europe

Reformed Congress

Invitations to the 1958 International Reformed Congress have been sent by the Executive Committee of the Synod of the Reformed Churches of Alsace and Lorraine. The International Association for Reformed Faith and Action will sponsor the Congress July 22–30 at Strasbourg, France, a city rich in its associations with the Reformation and its leaders.

The theme of the conference will be, “How to Confess our Reformed Faith,” and speakers will include writers and church leaders from England, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany and the United States. Delegates are expected from many countries of the world.

Among the public lectures will be the following: “The Reformed Faith and the Modern Concept of Man,” by Dr. G. C. Berkouwer, of Amsterdam; “Witness by Word and Deed,” by the Rev. Pierre Ch. Marcel, of St. Germain-en-Laye, France; “Witness in and Through the Church,” by Dr. P. Jacobs, of Munster, Germany; “Confessors of the Reformed Faith,” by Dr. Jean Cadier, of Montpellier, France; “Witness in and Through the Family,” by Dr. Gwyn Walters, of Wales; and “Christian Witness in the World of Industry,” by H. J. Bonda, of Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Others participating in the program will be Dr. Philip E. Hughes, of London, and Dr. Ned B. Stonehouse, of Philadelphia.

Secretary in charge of plans for the Congress is the Rev. Pierre Courthial, 11 Avenue du Colonel Bonnet, Paris 16.

Day Of Prayer

Evangelical churches of Spain observed Sunday, March 2, as a Day of Special Intercession for legal means to obtain civil marriages for Spanish evangelicals.

Spanish Baptist leaders who cooperated in the observance said a governmental decree “seemed to provide a legal basis for the civil marriage of Spanish evangelical Christians,” but that applicants were being asked for impossible “proofs of non-Catholicity.”

Africa

Congo Withdraws

The Congo Protestant Council voted to withdraw from the International Missionary Council. The vote was 39 to 9 with three abstentions.

“It was gratifying,” said one observer, “to see that the large majority of the missions in the Congo were more concerned about maintaining unity locally than about external affiliations. Among them were several missions whose supporting churches are fully cooperating in the World Council of Churches and its affiliates.”

The council’s action was believed to be the first such since IMC constituents voted “in principle” to merge with the WCC.

Worth Quoting

“One man can last thirty years on radio, but one man does well to last thirty minutes on television”—Mrs. Betty Ross West, Supervisor of Public Affairs and Education for the National Broadcasting Co., in Chicago.

“We are living in what is sometimes called an ecumenical age.… There can and ought to be unity. By unity I mean a unity of spirit. I do not mean organic union. I agree with a Methodist bishop who said that if all the churches were to be merged into one denomination, he for one, would vote against it—even if they were all to become Meethodists. Our country, he said, couldn’t stand it.… He went on to ask: ‘Is there any country where Protestantism is as vital as it is in Canada and the United States? Compare it,’ he said, ‘to countries where there is a state church.…’ The attempt, someone said, to modify the diverse branches of the Christian Church until they form but one organ is like trying to find the lowest common multiple of eye, ear, hand and mouth. It cannot be done; and if it could, the result would not be a living body, the agent for the doing of God’s wise and loving will.”—Dr. C. Howard Bentall, president of the Baptist Federation of Canada, in an address before the Federation Council at Edmonton, Alberta.

“The paramount task of our time is to fight materialism in all its multitudinous forms. The ogre of materialism can be slain only by reviving men’s faith in God. Spreading the Gospel and reading that Book of books, the Bible, constitute a means especially conducive to attaining this end.”—Chancellor Adenauer of West Germany, a Roman Catholic.

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Two young women learned that the “best” literature in the nation’s capital is readily available to them, even though they are ministers’ daughters.

On a special research project for CHRISTIANITY TODAY, they found easy access to the magazine stocks of three newsstands in downtown Washington. One of the girls is the daughter of a Dutch Reformed minister, the other the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman.

Within three blocks of the White House, they were able to buy:

—The May issue of Hush-Hush, which features “the inside story of the nude model who pinch-hit for Princess Meg.”

—The April issue of Ace, which includes the story of “a voluptuous wench.”

—The spring edition of Sunbathing Review, with more than 85 pictures of nude women and children. One series of photographs portrays the activities of two teen-aged girls in a California nudist camp.

—The March edition of Night and Day, carrying several advertisements that offer by return mail pictures of women posed to order.

—Three undated publications, all of which have pictorial sequences of nude women. In one publication, the sequence is in full color and runs next to a fictional description of brothels in Algiers. Another depicts an “actress model” in her bath and performing “the neatest trick of all … (bra-ing that 38-caliber bosom).”

The magazines were purchased two days after “Sex and Smut on the Newsstands” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Vol. II, No. 10, Feb. 17, 1958) was incorporated into the Congressional Record (Vol. 104, No. 125, Feb. 19, 1958) by Democratic Representative John Dowdy of Texas.

The first newsstand, just around the corner from New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, was crowded with men. One of the inquiring young women pointed to a group of magazines and inquired of a clerk, “Are these the best sellers?”

“They’re the best read,” the clerk replied.

The question was repeated. This time the clerk answered:

“Let’s just say they’re the best.”

At a second stand, this one across the street from the Treasury Building, magazines were stacked on boxes on the sidewalk. Only at one of the three stands did a clerk show any misgivings about selling indiscriminately to a nattily-dressed young woman. The elderly man behind the counter “didn’t know whether she would want to buy that type of magazine.” He sold it anyway.

A CHRISTIANITY TODAY reporter also discovered that indiscrimination extended to Sunday sales policies among literature sellers of the Washington area. The last Sunday in February he found available in a drugstore within sight of the White House such pocket novels as Peyton Place, Deer Park and Erskine Caldwell’s Place Called Estherville.

The first Sunday in March, he visited a newsstand along a main thoroughfare in suburban Arlington, Virginia. The proprietor was counting change when the visitor picked up a copy of Sir Knight (Vol. I, No. 1, undated) and asked, “Is this a good one?”

“Uh-huh,” answered the proprietor.

“Is it the best one?”

“It’s as good as they come.”

Here are introductory “greetings” from Sir Knight:

“Here, in his first appearance, is the Collector’s Edition of Sir Knight, a brand-new, adult man’s magagazine [sic] dedicated solely to fostering the proposition that every male with corpuscles pink and surging in his veins has the right to pursue all the happiness he can grasp for himself in this time of external tensions and uncertainty.

“The single constant in the constantly changing world of today, is the enchanting biological relationship that has existed between men and women since long before the dawn of known history.” Sir Knight embarked on its maiden voyage containing such themes as “Outhouse Art,” “Four-bill Date,” “First Night” and “Hollywood Heat.”

Lack of discrimination is even more evident among pornography peddlers of the mail-order variety. Mailing of obscene matter to teen-agers is currently of chief concern to post office inspectors. Here is an excerpt from an advertisement (found in the possession of a minor) for slides and movies of nudes: “The censors say we have blown the lid off and may have stepped out of bounds. Because of this situation, it may become necessary to destroy our negatives. We, therefore, urge you to order immediately.…

“Because of the torrid quality of this merchandise, it may become necessary at no extra cost to you to ship your order by means other than the United States Post Office.… After you have placed your order, please destroy this letter.”

The following is taken from another advertisement that gives the appearance of being a hand-written note signed by a model:

“I know exactly what you want (all of you men are alike), and I’m one of the few gals you’ll find who enjoys pleasing you all the way.”

Legal Counteraction

Legislation to crack down on the spread of lewd reading material is under consideration both in the Senate and in the House. Hearings on one such bill were scheduled for this month.

A spokesman for the Churchmen’s Commission for Decent Publications reported a wave of indignation among ministers over the recent lack of restraint in publishing. He said that in two weeks following the date of publication of “Sex and Smut on the Newsstands” the commission received more than 200 inquiries, many from clergymen who stated a desire to take action through local ministerial groups.

A Roman Catholic priest has suggested that Communists are behind the rash of indecent publications and objectionable comics. The Rev. Joseph P. Lamanna of Delhi, New York, said the association has been brought to light in the testimony of former Communists before closed Congressional hearings.

Editorial Apology

The publisher of a Vermont newspaper apologized for having run an advertisement for the film “Peyton Place” in a Sunday edition.

William Loeb added in a signed front-page editorial:

“One of the terrible things in these days is the filth that passes for literature. For weeks Peyton Place stood at the head of the best seller list of the United States. Such writings have always existed but generally they were confined to scribblings on bathroom walls.”

Publisher Loeb, a Protestant, said the money charged for the ad would be donated to the diocesan office of the Legion of Decency, which makes moral evaluations of current films for the guidance of Roman Catholics.

Catholics In The News

The beginning of March found Catholic leaders in headlines throughout the world in a variety of developments:

FLORENCE, Italy—Bishop Pietro Fiordelli was convicted of defaming a couple married civilly. The husband in the case is an ex-communist who renounced Roman Catholicism and now professes to be an atheist.

VATICAN CITY—Pope Pius XII named Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago, to the newly-created office of Pro-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, then suspended the nineteenth anniversary celebration of his own coronation as head of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope, who was 82 March 2, was reported grief-stricken over Bishop Fiordelli’s conviction.

VATICAN CITY—Vatican Radio reported that the Holy See has officially recognized the new United Arab Republic.

HAVANA, Cuba—Roman Catholic leaders appealed for President Fulgencio Batista to form a national union government to include some of his opponents. Batista rejected the appeal and sources close to him were reported to have accused the church officials of “direct, glaring intervention in Cuban political affairs.”

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina—President-elect Arturo Frondizi paid a courtesy call on Coadjutor Archbishop Fermin Lafitte, encouraging Catholic hopes for fair treatment from the 49-year-old lawyer swept into office with votes from communists and Peronists.

NEW YORK—Fordham University, a Roman Catholic institution, acquired a two-block plot of land from the city at marked-down prices. Court appeals claiming the transaction illegal still are pending.

Salesman Of A Sort

Evangelist Billy Graham received the “Salesman of the Year” award from the Sales Executive Club of New York. The citation honored him for “selling religion to millions of people throughout the world.”

Graham is scheduled to deliver an address at the National Association of Evangelicals convention in Chicago April 14–18. His eight-week San Francisco crusade opens April 27.

The evangelist said total decisions in Latin American rallies numbered 20,700.

More Rsv Rights

Starting in 1962, at least four publishing firms besides Thomas Nelson and Sons of New York will be authorized to print the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

The National Council of Churches’ Division of Christian Education, owner of the RSV copyright, announced the names of the new publishers at its annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.

Thomas Nelson and Sons have exclusive RSV publishing rights until 1962. At that time the rights will also be distributed to William Collins and Sons of New York, A. J. Holman Company of Philadelphia, Oxford University Press of New York, and World Publishing Company of Cleveland. A contract is being negotiated with a fifth publisher, Harper and Brothers of New York.

It was reported that nearly 6,000,000 copies of the RSV Bible have been sold since 1952, plus an additional 3,500,000 copies of the RSV New Testament.

Hour Of Sharing

Overseas relief agencies are making a special appeal for funds to help the needy.

Last week Protestants observed “One Great Hour of Sharing,” with offerings in many churches going toward relief work.

More than 100,000,000 needy persons abroad received help during 1957 from religious relief agencies. Food, clothing, medicine and tools were sent to ease suffering.

A “United Jewish Appeal Rescue Fund” also is conducting a relief campaign.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Methodist Bishop Frederick Deland Leete, 91, in St. Petersburg, Florida; Dr. H. Crawford Walters, 69-year-old former president of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain, in Eastbourne, Sussex.

Appointments: The Rev. Alex E. Dandar, as field director of the Religion and Labor Foundation; Dr. Walter W. Leibrecht as director of the Evanston Institute for Ecumenical Studies; the Rev. Arnold A. Dallimore as editor of the Canadian Fellowship Baptist.

Publication: The first complete and unabridged edition of The Works of John Wesley to be released in nearly 100 years, by the Zondervan Publishing House, starting in May.

Resignation: After 20 years as pastor of the First Covenant Church of Minneapolis, Dr. Paul S. Rees, to return to evangelistic work.

Results: Of a 10-day Methodist evangelistic crusade in Cuba, 2,357 persons enrolled in training classes for church membership.

Fire: At Montreat College, Presbyterian school for girls in North Carolina, caused $250,000 damage, no injuries. Merchants and townspeople freely replenished girls’ personal effects.

Matriculation: At Georgetown University, the Rev. Paul Adenauer, son of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Adenauer, 35, is a Roman Catholic priest studying American small business.

Service: Commemorating 200th anniversary of the death of Jonathan Edwards, held at First Church of Christ in Northampton, Massachusetts, March 9. Edwards served as pastor of the historic Congregational church for 23 years.

Trend To The Modern

Church buildings of contemporary design have won all except one of fourteen awards bestowed by the Church Architectural Guild of America.

This year’s winners in the annual competition sponsored by the guild were announced at the National Conference on Church Architecture held last month in Detroit. The conference, also annual, is co-sponsored by the guild and the National Council of Churches’ Department of Church Building.

The delegates to the conference heard a warning from Dr. George M. Gibson of McCormick Theological Seminary, who said that a church building “may be well planned as a work of geometry and well built as a fabric, yet through ill-considered furnishings, symbolism and decoration may falsify the message of the church.”

Many of the new churches built during the last 30 years are “virtually denying in their architecture what they are saying in their doctrine,” Gibson said.

Meanwhile, Architectural Forum magazine predicted that church construction will soar for the next ten years. The magazine predicted that United States churchgoers will spend $920,000,000 in 1958 on new religious edifices, a gain of 6 per cent over last year’s record.

Ncc Commitments

Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, president of the National Council of Churches, called for stepped-up non-military aid to help disperse the misery which “hangs like a fog” over Africa and Asia.

The Religious News Service reported that Dahlberg spoke on behalf of the Council in calling upon major political parties to “rise above party alignments and provide for the basic needs of our own people and the world’s people” through mutual aid programs.

Dahlberg made his remarks to a Conference on the Foreign Aspects of U. S. National Security, sponsored by the International Advisory Board in Washington.

In New York, a resolution supporting non-military mutual aid programs and reciprocal foreign trade agreements was passed unanimously by the NCC’s 250-member policy-making General Board.

Action For Peace

The presidents of the American and Southern Baptist conventions say they will propose the establishment of committees to further the cause of world peace.

Democratic Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas plans to introduce the idea for a peace committee when the Southern Baptist Convention meets in Houston, Texas, May 20–23. Dr. Clarence W. Cranford is to draft a similar proposal to submit to the American Baptist convention at Cincinnati, June 12–17.

The function of the committees would be to set up a world-wide prayer chain and a suggestion program. Missionaries would help implement the program to pray for peace while soliciting suggestions from various peoples as to how peace can be achieved.

Representative Hays and Dr. Cranford also have announced plans to visit Moscow Baptists next month if they can obtain Soviet approval. Hays said he did not hope to preach in the First Baptist Church of Moscow, but added, “I’ll testify if they want me to.”

THE E-BOMB

Pundits, statesmen and educators have commandeered the little moons as space platforms to lecture us about the scientific revolution. Survival now demands mind-power more than manpower. Only through education, say the educators, can we keep up with the Jonesevitches.

Publicity-minded pedagogues call it the E-bomb. It surely has a critical mass in our metropolitan schools. Is it clear how it helps to have the thing go off? Are the radioactive kids jiving in the new gym part of the fallout? The gang warlord who made his switchblade in the school shop is not well-educated, but would the E-bomb still be a dud if he learned to make a missile?

Even the “vision of greatness” as a neutral educational morality is not promising if the gang known as “The Egyptian Kings” happens to be most attracted to the greatness of Nero, Napoleon, or Nietzsche.

It is no solution, however, for evangelicals to throw rocks through the window walls of progressive education. Our stained glass windows are also vulnerable, especially those of abandoned churches in gangland. Courageous school teachers face young mobsters deserted by the churches in this flight to the suburbs.

A major breakthrough in Christian education is overdue: from the hour-a-week Sunday School (where no saint is more secure than Miss Fixture, whose practiced ineptitude has alienated generations of teen-agers) to a program of Christian nurture joining home and church in a curriculum to remove biblical illiteracy and train servants of Christ.

The Gospel once illumined all higher education in America. Another revival is needed—of Christian colleges, primary and secondary schools. The positive accomplishment of Christ-centered education can show the sweep and relevance of God’s Word. We have a margin of luxury our fathers never knew. Do we have their vision? Even an atomic age cannot match the dynamis of Pentecost!

WORLD GOVERNMENT

Commander Lippincott’s article on “World Government and Christianity” (Feb. 3 issue) should be read by all supporters of the U.N.; then they should read Paul Blanshard’s “Protestant Freedom” in the Christian Herald. Then they might attempt to swallow the Bahai idea of world federalism. Then read the history of the tower of Babel. Then study the history of governments in relation to the Chief Corner Stone which builders did and still reject.…

Monmouth, Ill.

Not only do I think Mr. Lippincott has an improper evaluation of our present United Nations, but his feeling that our lack of majority in the world as Christians means we are not to trust anyone else is also unChristian.… He states that the 800,000,000 Communists (the amount of real Communists I doubt) are all militant atheists. Did he read your article of a copy or two ago concerning the church in Russia? Secondly concerning the 700,000,000 Moslems that they are all anti-Christian. Mr. Lippincott cannot find facts to substantiate his statements. Emanuel Evangelical

United Brethren Church

Huntingburg, Indiana

Does that man know anything about Bible prophecy? It does not look like it.

Berkeley, Calif.

You and the author are to be commended for bringing to your readers some pertinent (but less favorable) aspects, of what, has in the eyes of many, become something of a “sacred cow.”

Lakehurst, N. J.

In the midst of the continuing hue and cry about World Government, Mr. Lippincott’s article seems like a good dose of calming and thought-producing medicine.

There is still another area in which we also need some such kind of medicine! And that is the issue of Church-State relations!…

My reason for raising this question is this: unless the apathetic attitude of the voting public is aroused, we are going to awaken quite soon, to the fact that the “wall of separation” has been quietly removed … not tom down … not demolished … but just quietly picked up and set aside, much in the same manner as some of our other solid American distinctions have been museumed!

The Methodist Church

Chicora, Pa.

UNCERTAIN TRUMPETERS

In recent years I have been considerably disturbed by the uncertainty displayed by some young men and women seeking to be taken under care of Presbytery in view of full-time Christian service, all fine young folks having high ideals and purpose. It would be unreasonable and unfair to expect these candidates to know the answer to some of the perplexing questions voiced by theologians, yet it would seem that there are certain truths, revealed in the Scriptures, upon which there should be no doubts. I refer to the Person of Christ, his sinless life, atoning death, bodily resurrection, ascension, and coming again to reign. Should our Presbyteries ordain any such young people before they have planted the feet of their faith on solid ground? Should we send forth trumpeters whose trumpets have an uncertain sound?

Madison, Wis.

UN AND CHRISTIANITY

If UN gets the power, for which it is striving, and which Christian leadership in our country seems determined to give it, Christianity, much less Protestant Christianity, won’t have a chance, not even a hope.…

Christian Freedom Foundation President

New York City

ICCC MISSIONS

In reference to … “The Drive for IMCWCC Merger” (Sept. 30 issue) I want to convey to you … that in addition to the organizations of mission agencies which you list … there is in existence, The Associated Missions of the ICCC, otherwise alphabetically known as TAM.… The approximate number of missionaries involved … is one thousand and the finances passing through these mission agencies will approximate not less than one million five hundred thousand dollars.…

The Associated Missions has and will continue to take a clear-cut stand with reference to these issues which involve separation from apostasy and refusal to co-operate with the false teaching of modern religious liberalism as represented by both the World Council and IMC.

Associated Missions of ICCC

Cleveland, Ohio

RECESSION POSSIBILITIES

Ministers should be reminded of the tremendous opportunities that a “recession” and “layoffs” afford. It is true that “materially” it is not good, but we dare not overlook … other aspects.

Christian men … affected by layoffs need guidance.… They need to be guided to profitable use of the time that they find on their hands. The reading of the Bible and good books should be encouraged, along with prayer. Also now is the opportunity for the church to utilize this time needed for calling!… It is also a time of “change” when [people] may be more “fluid” and pliable—more receptive to the Gospel or an invitation to hear it.…

Wellington, Ohio

HILLBILLIES AND POETS

Concerning the “Gospel on the Radio.” Sometimes it appears as if the gospel is only for hillbillies and the like.… The hillbillies need saving, but so do Doctors, Lawyers, Professors, Senators, Actors, Authors, Philosophers and Poets.

Alexandria, Va.

GOOD HOPE

CHRISTIANITY TODAY … is one of the most hopeful indications of evangelical life in American Christianity.

Gordon Divinity School

Beverly Farms, Mass.

The fact that extreme Fundamentalists scourge you as being a liar, and extreme Neo’s and Liberals likewise condemn you should be a source of inspiration to you, in that this must be the result of the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Maywood, Ill.

Why not endeavor to be neither ‘Fundamental or Modernistic’ but Christian?… I thank God for Fosdick (Social Reformer) and Graham (Evangelist) both God’s men of our day.

Methodist Church

Grant Park, Ill.

I regard it as a MUST for every minister and Bible student who is willing to remain open and receptive to all the light and strength that better means and methods of Bible study can bring.

Dallas, Texas