The words “righteous,” “righteously,” “righteousness” and “righteousnesses” appear in the Bible about six hundred times, their opposites such as “unrighteous” and “unrighteousness” also appearing a number of times.

A term so largely in use indicates its importance in God’s message to us. Just what does it mean?

In the broad sense it means being right in conduct and attitude while in the theological sense it means being accepted in God’s sight and on God’s terms. From the Bible it is obvious that sin is the antithesis of righteousness. Our Lord’s coming into this world, and the Gospel message which has resulted from his redemptive work, centers on the fact of the sinfulness of man and the righteousness of God which is made available to man in and through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, says: “For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3).

Paul was speaking of his own nation, Israel. But he is also speaking to a worldwide situation having to do with men of all races and of all generations. Within the human heart there is an almost universal sense of need. This is expressed in multitudes of ways but the Bible makes it plain that man cannot make himself righteous by anything he does. It is God offering man the righteousness of his Son that is the supreme evidence of his love, his concern and his mercy.

Within the Bible there are repeated incidents of men employing their own devices to make themselves acceptable in God’s sight. Adam and Eve are pictured making aprons of fig leaves to cover their shame. Cain made an offering much more esthetic than the slain lamb of Abel his brother. But God accepted the latter because it was offered in obedience to his command while at the same time he rejected Cain’s offering because it was a rejection of the divine plan. The writer to the Hebrews says: “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous” (Hebrews 11:4).

Unregenerate man hates to admit that he is a sinner. Isaiah’s affirmation that “we are all as an unclean thing, and our righteousnesses as filthy rags,” is hard to take. We greatly prefer to believe that we are pretty good folks after all and that there lies within us the power to reform and make ourselves righteous. “Bootstrap religion,” as it is aptly called, appeals to the pride of man but it is as effective as our attempts to overcome gravity by the power of our wills or muscles.

The whole concept of righteousness, as revealed in the Bible, is entirely different from that of the world. As J. B. Phillips has translated the proposition so aptly, it is not a matter of achieving but of believing. It is not a matter of doing but of accepting that which has been done for us. In Romans 1:16, 17, we read: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth … For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith.”

That divine righteousness is a matter of imputation is also abundantly clear. In II Corinthians we read: “Him (Jesus) who knew no sin, he (God) made to be sin in our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

The Chinese character for righteousness is remarkable in its composition. It is made up of the character “wo” which means “me,” the personal pronoun, and the character “yang,” indicating a lamb. When this character representing a sheep or lamb, is placed above the character representing the personal pronoun it immediately becomes “I,” which means righteousness. No one knows how this happened back in the antiquity of Chinese hieroglyphics, but the fact remains that according to that character (and also according to the Scriptures), when God looks down from above and sees the Lamb of God over me I am then righteous in his sight.

Many years ago a prominent young banker in a large northern city was noted for his profligate habits. With it all he was desperately disgusted but he was unable to overcome when the various temptations came. One day, walking down the street he saw a large poster which read:

“The wages of sin is death.” Because of this message he made a herculean effort at self-reformation, gave up his heavy drinking and gambling and renounced many of his former companions of both sexes.

One day he noticed this same poster again but this time he read all of the message. True, it did say that the wages of sin is death, but it did not end there and these words burned into his mind and heart: “But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Only then did he realize that righteousness was not a matter of reformation but the receiving of a gift from God through his Son, Jesus Christ.

It is the ignorance of God’s righteousness which is a barrier to millions around the world and it is the preaching of the Gospel, which proclaims the righteousness of Christ as a free gift from God which turns men from their own ways to God’s ways. Man may say that he can save himself but God tells him that by the works of the law shall no man be justified and points us to Christ, of whom it is affirmed: “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.”

To become righteous in God’s sight requires an act of supreme humility, a willingness to recognize that Christ can do something for us which we cannot do for ourselves. All of this is involved in conversion: awareness of sins, repentance for them, confession of them and turning to Christ for forgiveness, cleansing and trusting in him for salvation.

The Bible tells us: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

The robe of the believer’s righteousness has been woven by Christ. The perfect obedience rendered by the Son of Man is placed to the account of those who have faith in him. The believer’s sole desire is to “be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:9).

Let us never forget: Righteousness is not a matter of achieving, but rather of receiving.

L. NELSON BELL

James Denney was incontestably right: our churches need pastors who are both theologians and evangelists, men who know theology and who at the same time have the pastoral spirit and the evangelistic burden. For no minister of the Gospel can be abidingly effective unless he obeys the Pauline exhortation: “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

Yet how can a hard-pushed preacher possibly continue to engage in the study of theology? First, he has no money to buy books except occasionally a dog-eared volume from a second-hand dealer or a selection by some club or other. Think of the rising cost of living. Think of the sheer necessity of purchasing a new Ford annually if a clergyman is to hold his head high in Suburbia. Think of the miscroscopic salary that many churches pay. No! Books are a luxury that must be ruthlessly pared from the parsonage budget.

Second, what conscientious servant of Jesus Christ has time to study theology? Consider his exhaustive responsibilities. He must oversee the complicated activities of a fellowship which has wheels within wheels, and he must keep those wheels lubricated—and sometimes placate the bigger ones! He must direct a program of education which stretches from the cradle to the grave. He must spearhead the evangelistic outreach of his people. He must promote and sustain an intelligent concern for the missionary enterprise. He must participate in counseling situations that would tax the combined resources of King Solomon, Sigmund Freud, and William Menninger. He must raise enough money to support this whole structure without abandoning his role as a man of serene faith who eschews mundane realities. He must all the while be a model husband, a devoted father, and a responsible citizen. Oh, yes, and incidentally he must preach several times a week, and his sermons must be interesting and edifying so that his members not only grow in grace but grow in knowledge and thus are able to apply Christian principles to the problems of industry, sex, war, justice, race, and what not. All of these things make a burden heavy enough to crush a spiritual Hercules.

Is Theology Superfluous?

Is it realistic, then, to urge that ministers add to their work load the straw of theological study? Remember the camel’s back. Consider too that the study of theology is really of very little value after college and seminary have been left behind. If a man buries himself in his books, he will neglect his primary duties as the shepherd of the flock. And, worse still, he may unthinkingly begin to soar above the heads of his poor congregation, talking in unintelligible and profitless gobbledygook. Or perhaps his devotion to Jesus Christ will slowly evaporate, his evangelistic passion burn low. No, the serious study of theology has definite drawbacks. It is a danger, a danger likely to breed carnal conceit, a danger to be studiously avoided!

Furthermore, the study of theology is a superfluity. In order to be a pastoral success in this lush epic of American history, a man does not need theology. He needs the knack of winning friends and influencing people. He needs a course in personality development so that he may radiate a Norman Vincent Peale kind of dynamic magnetism. He needs administrative know-how. He needs skill in organizing a Sunday School. He needs an inexhaustible supply of snappy subjects and stirring stories. He needs glibness in dispensing streamlined advice. Yes, these are the tools that he needs rather than familiarity with theology, whether classical or modern. Churches are not especially interested in spirituality. They are looking for efficiency, drive, and sparkle. And Hodge, Strong or Barth can contribute nothing of that nature. In short, the serious systematic study of theology is alike impossible and unnecessary.

These objections are undeniably formidable. But perhaps a few qualifications are in order. Certainly a man needs to be adequately equipped in the fields of administration, publicity, counseling, and homiletics. Certainly our churches desperately require the leadership of first-rate pastors rather than the services of tenth-rate Hebraists who may rashly rush into an exegetical thicket where even a Gesenius might fear to tread. Certainly we must avoid pedantry and irrelevant erudition. Nevertheless, in obedience to our Lord we are under obligation to make our minds servants of Christian love; and that act of spiritual obedience necessitates a measure of intellectual discipline. To be specific, it necessitates the serious systematic study of theology.

You see, we are confronted by the antithetical perils of an overemphasis and an underemphasis on scholarship in the ministry. And the peril of underemphasis is by far the more prevalent and menacing. In our evangelical circles today we have succumbed to a disease which seems to be afflicting the whole of American life: that disease is anti-intellectualism, the contaminating dread of the egghead. That is why we fall ready victims to doctrinal vagaries and excesses. That is why we can seize upon one detail of eschatological chronology, the time of the rapture, and let it assume bizarre proportions. That is why our sermons lack depth and power. That is why our evangelism is frothy, sloganistic, and shallow. That is why we are failing to make any significant impact upon the entrenched forces of liberalism. God may be doing so in our day, but we are not lending him any particularly effective help. That is why we are frustrated and bewildered as we confront our world with its conflicting ideologies, its communism, naturalism, secularism, Roman Catholicism, existentialism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, and other philosophies which by the dozen are competing for the allegiance of human minds and hearts. And that is why evangelicalism has been dismissed by many intelligent people and by huge masses in the Orient and Africa as a dead option.

A Primary Responsibility

Ignoring all of this, however, we must keep on insisting that the serious study of theology is a primary responsibility of a pastor no matter how crowded his schedule may be. Why so? Suppose we counter that question with this question: what is the ultimate, last-ditch purpose of our ministry, the objective of all the administration, all the educational program, all the counseling, all the evangelism, all the preaching, all the outreach in missionary enterprise and social action? What is it all for anyway? How is it relevant to life in the twentieth century or indeed to life in any century? Let Paul Tillich and Immanuel Kant explain.

Now Paul Tillich, whose writings are not the kind of thing one reads for relaxation unless he is trying to conquer insomnia, constructs his interpretation of man and the universe by what he calls the method of correlation. Philosophy, he says, raises certain problems, issues which spring inescapably from the very structure of human experience, and theology furnishes the solutions to those problems. Accordingly, the task of Christian thinkers—and the pastor certainly belongs in that category—is to correlate the disclosures of revelation with the persistent inquiries which haunt our minds. This method of correlation is a principle of tremendous range and value. We can and must jettison much of the speculative superstructure which Tillich builds upon this foundation, but we can unhesitatingly utilize the foundation itself. For existence confronts our people with agonizing questions, regardless of how unphilosophical our people may ordinarily be.

Here we are in a vast cosmos which seems to be utterly inscrutable and heartless. Indeed, sometimes it seems to be mindless as well. Here we are then, instinctively longing to preserve our lives yet knowing that we are doomed to death. Here we are then, environed by mystery; we are in the darkness, and yet like Alfred Lord Tennyson we are praying for light. We wonder with an insatiable wonder, and in our bewilderment what is it about which we wonder? Immanuel Kant summed up the matter succinctly. “What may I know?” We wonder about that. “What may I hope?” “What ought I to do?” “What is man?” We wonder about these. And in this revolutionary age, as in every age, it is the preacher’s ultimate responsibility to correlate the revealed answers of the Bible with the questions which haunt the minds of people hurled unasked out of nothingness into being.

A Holy Privilege

It is the preacher’s task to show that the Gospel of Jesus Christ meets with amazing adequacy the total predicament of his congregation in a world where every security is threatened and where the profound anxiety of man can be overcome only by a profound message concerning God. It is thus the preacher’s holy privilege to bring man into a redeeming experience of the grace and power of Jesus Christ who alone can meet our deepest need. And never forget that it is the preacher’s supreme joy in the discharge of his pastoral duties, not only to give man information about God, which of course must be correct and gripping, but to bring man into continual encounter with God by proclaiming the re-creative Word under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

But to do this as he ought to do it the preacher must study persistently. He must steadily grow in knowledge, for to genuinely grow in the knowledge of God is to grow in the grace of God. The pastor must correlate divine revelation with human predicament. And in order to do this he must read the theological classics of days gone by, and he must also listen to the theological conversation of our day. Very few of us are equipped to join in that conversation, but we can listen in. Hence the pastor must listen to what is being said by the resurgent evangelicalism of which Carl Henry and Bernard Ramm are typical. He must listen to what is being said by dispensational biblicism of which Chafer and Walvoord are representative. He must listen to what is being said by Dutch Calvinism of which Berkouwer and Dooyeweerd are champions. He must listen to what is being said by neo-orthodoxy—if there is any such identifiable animal in the theological zoo—of which Karl Barth and Emil Brunner are the embattled antagonists. He must listen to what is being said by irenic Anglicanism of which William Temple and Allen Richardson are authentic prophets. He must listen to what is being said by American liberalism of which Harry Emerson Fosdick is still the shining symbol. He must listen to what is being said by religious naturalism of which Henry Nelson Wieman is a distinguished torchbearer. Most emphatically he will not concur with everything he hears. He cannot! Certainly he will have staunch convictions and justified prejudices. But just as certainly, and precisely because of his convictions and prejudices, he will listen with attention and care.

For The Gospel’S Defense

He will listen, for one thing, in order to be set for the defense of the Gospel. Too much of the evangelical criticism of contemporary theology has been intemperate, uninformed, and distorted. And this has been especially so in some cases when criticism has been made from the pulpit. Instead of being rigidly objective (and objectivity is the strongest basis for devastating criticism), it has frequently been hysterical and badly deficient, calculated to score a polemical victory even though the cause of honesty and graciousness may have suffered a blistering defeat. Thus the pastor must listen to what is being said in order that his appraisal of deviants from orthodoxy may be accurate and well-grounded.

But that is not all. We evangelicals must listen in order to learn. Everything that we hear must be evaluated with caution and conscientiousness in the light of the cherished and changeless criteria which generations of devout scholars have drawn from God’s self-revelation recorded in the Old and New Testaments. Much that we hear from some quarters can at once be discarded as worthless. But again and again as we listen we will come to realize that God by his common grace has been operative in the thinking of men who share neither our understanding of divine truth nor our experience of him who is the truth. Again and again we may be compelled to remember Jehovah’s word to pagan Cyrus, “I girded thee although thou hast not known me” (Isa. 45:5). In short, the pastor must critically evaluate and judiciously appropriate, profiting by the insights of some theologians who, while by no means evangelical, have nevertheless wrestled strenuously with the existential and intellectual problems which confront ourselves and our people.

A Divinely Assigned Task

The gist of this plea is simple. As pastors we have a divinely assigned task. Essentially our task is to correlate the revelation of God with the problems and needs of the people whom we serve. That job, however, cannot be done as it ought to be done—and must be done—unless we become acquainted with the whole range of theological reflection, whether classical or modern—whether, in some significant instances, heterodox! In our revolutionary day a pastor must speak with authority and clarity. He must bear in mind the fervent exhortation of the Marine commander to the chaplain as a detachment of men were preparing to invade a South Sea island during the Second World War. “For God’s sake, padre, if you have anything to say, say it now.” We evangelicals do have something to say, the only message which can meet man’s need. May we say it, then, and say it with the authority and clarity which spring from the serious and systematic study of theology.

We Quote:

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

Secretary of State

Our nation was founded as an experiment in human liberty. Its institutions reflected the belief of our founders that men had their origin and destiny in God; that they were endowed by him with certain inalienable rights and had duties prescribed by moral law; and that human institutions ought primarily to help men develop their God-given possibilities. We believed that if we built on that spiritual foundation we would be showing men everywhere the way to a better and more abundant life.

We realized that vision. There developed here an area of spiritual, intellectual and economic vigor, the like of which the world had never seen. It was no exclusive preserve; indeed world mission was a central theme. Millions were welcomed from other lands, to share equally the opportunities of the founders and their heirs. Through missionary activities, the establishment of schools and colleges and through travel, American ideals were carried throughout the world. We gave aid and comfort to those elsewhere who sought to follow in our way and to develop societies of greater freedom.

Material things were added unto us. Our political institutions worked. That was because they rested upon what George Washington said were the “indispensable supports” of representative government, that is morality and religion. And, he added, it could not be assumed that morality would long prevail without religion.

Our people enjoyed an extraordinary degree of personal liberty. That was because the individuals making up our society generally accepted, voluntarily, the moral law and the self-discipline, self-restraint and duty to fellow-man that the moral law enjoins.…

I hear it asserted today that the qualities that made America honored and judged great throughout the world no longer have an adequate appeal and that we must invent something new in order to compete with Soviet dictatorship and its materialism.

My first reaction is that faith is not something put on, taken off or changed merely to please others.

My second reaction is to challenge the correctness of the assertion. It may be that, partly through our own faults and partly through communist publicizing of our faults, the image of America has become distorted in much of the world. Our individual freedom is made to appear as individual license and a casting aside of those restraints that moral law enjoins and that every society needs.

Sales talk based on the number of automobiles, radios and telephones owned by our people fails to win converts, for that is the language of the materialists.

Our capitalistic form of society is made to appear as one devoid of social responsibility.

I do not believe that human nature throughout the world has greatly changed from what it was when “the great American experiment” in freedom caught the imagination of men everywhere. I am afraid that the fault, if any, may be here at home in that we ourselves have lost track of the close connection between our faith and our works and that we attempt to justify our society and to make it appealing without regard to the spiritual concepts which underlie it and make it work. So many material things have been added unto us that what originally were secondary by-products now seem to rank as primary. And if material things are to be made primary, then it is logical to have a materialistic creed that justifies this primacy.—In an address to the Military Chaplains Association on April 22, 1958.

ALEXANDER MILLER

Associate Professor of Religion, Stanford University

In the present confrontation with Soviet Communism the Christian citizen will be concerned with the issue at all four levels—power, politics, economics and faith: but he will be more aware than the generality of men that the issue could be won on one level and lost on another, and he will be wary of turning what is certainly in part an issue of faith into an all-out religious war, as if Christianity were domesticated in the West.—In an address on “Christianity and Communism: Two Faiths in Conflict” at the University of Chicago Conference on “Religion Faces the Atomic Age,” Feb., 1958.

Vernon Grounds is President of the Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado, where he served as Dean from 1951–1956. He holds the A.B. degree from Rutgers University, B.D. from Faith Theological Seminary, Ph.D. from Drew University, and D.D. from Wheaton College. He has written The Reason for Our Hope and many magazine articles. His special interests are in psychology and counseling.

The subject of the final punishment of reprobates is fraught with inexpressible sadness. Some who are moved no doubt by a generous impulse, have sought to eliminate it altogether by holding to a belief of the ultimate salvation of all rational creatures (Universalism). Others have attempted to relax the torments of the damned by limiting their duration or by urging the view that reprobates vanish into nonexistence (conditionalism or annihilationism). Still others feel that the whole topic is in bad taste and that it is wise to pass it under silence altogether.

Yet on this theme the Bible speaks very plainly, and what the Bible says the evangelical believer unhesitatingly accepts and proclaims.

The Nature Of Hell

On this topic the Scriptures use various forms of language, destined no doubt to convey a cumulative impression.

1. Separation from God. “Depart from me” (Matt. 7:23; 25:41), “these shall go away” (Matt. 25:46), and cast him out (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30; Luke 13:28), “outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30), “without are the dogs” etc. (Rev. 22:15), far “from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power” (2 Thess. 1:9)—all these phrases describe separation from God. In the same way in which life can be described as the knowledge, presence and fellowship of God (John 17:3), death and hell can be summed up as separation from him by whom we were created, for whose service we were made, and outside of whom there is nothing for man but utter futility and hopeless frustration.

2. Destruction and death (2 Thess. 1:9; Matt. 10:28; Rev. 20:14). This form of language does not so much imply in Scripture cessation of existence as complete deprivation of some element essential to normal existence. Physical death does not mean that body or soul vanishes away, but rather that an abnormal sepation takes place which severs their natural relationship until God’s appointed time. Spiritual death, or “the second death” (Rev. 20:14; 21:8), does not mean that the soul or personality lapses into non-being, but rather that it is ultimately and finally deprived of that presence of God and fellowship with him which is the chief end of man and the essential condition of worthwhile existence. To be bereft of it is to perish (John 3:16), to be reduced to utter insignificance, to sink into abysmal futility. Even everyday language can illustrate this: an automobile is adjudged a total wreck not only when its constituent parts are melted or vanished, but also when they have been so damaged and distorted that the car has become completely unserviceable. Some such conception is perhaps latent in the word Gehenna (Matt. 5:22; 10:28; 18:9; 23:33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47), the refuse heap of Jerusalem, where rubbish was burned.

3. Fire. Fire is most beneficial to man when kept under control and at a safe distance; otherwise it may develop as a terrible scourge. As a recent writer puts it:

Its touch is so sharp as to afford, in itself, a shield against its own destructive effects. At the moment of assault, it is as though a whole series of alarm bells jangled furiously in every part of our nervous system, even before the mind has fully grasped what is taking place. It is pain that can neither be ignored nor forgotten, like many of the lesser things that trouble us, because of its imperious and urgent claim upon the attention. And it is in such suffering as this that the lost must live, and forever (Walter Jewell, The Fact of Hell, p. 13).

In scriptural language, no other descriptive terms have been used as commonly as fire: “the devouring fire … everlasting burnings” (Isa. 33:14), fire unquenchable (Isa. 66:24; Mark 9:43–48; Luke 3:17), “everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41), “the lake of fire” (Rev. 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15; 21:8), “he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone” (Rev. 14:10). The story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31), although descriptive of the intermediate state between death and the final resurrection, is also significant here (cf. v. 24, see also Matt. 5:22; 13:42, 50; 18:8, 9; 2 Thess. 1:8; Jude 7, 23). From the frequency of this form of language, many have concluded that fire of a physical kind burns the resurrected body of the reprobates. While this is not strictly impossible, it appears unlikely to us for the following reasons: a. the idea of a physical fire is in conflict with some other scriptural expressions descriptive of hell (outer darkness, etc.); b. it seems ill-suited to resurrected bodies insofar as we may know them; c. the imagery of fire in a vivid form is used with reference to the rich man, who was presumably disembodied (Luke 16:19–31); d. fire is prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41; Rev. 20:10, etc.) who are probably incorporeal beings. The spiritual fire, however, which consumes and sears the soul is probably more terrifying and excruciating than physical burning.

4. Darkness. “Outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12; 24:13; 25:30), “everlasting chains under darkness” (Jude 6), “the blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 13). Since God is light and the source of every light, it is not surprising that separation from him implies the night of the soul.

5. The bottomless pit. This expression, found only in Revelation (9:1, 2, 11), may also refer to hell. It indicates a condition where all footing has been lost and where the soul sinks endlessly away from God.

6. The worm that dies not (Isa. 66:24; Matt. 24:46, 48). This may well refer to the gnawing pains of self-inflicted misery eating away at the vitals of the soul.

7. Anguish, torment (Rom. 2:9; Luke 16:23–28; Rev. 14:10, 11; 20:10). These emphasize the conscious suffering of the damned. So does the word punishment (kolasis) used by Jesus (Matt. 25:46) as well as the passages where our Lord speaks of weeping, wailing, or gnashing of teeth (Matt. 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28).

8. A final form of biblical language may be noted in those verses which speak of the damned as being under the wrath of God (Jer. 17:4; John 3:36; Rom. 2:5, 8; 9:22; Heb. 10:27; Rev. 14:10), or subject to everlasting contempt (Dan. 12:2). Those who are in this condition are lost (Mark 8:26; Luke 9:25) and damned (John 5:29; 2 Peter 3:7).

When all these terms are taken together, in spite of their remarkable sobriety, their cumulative effect is more pungent than the luxurious imagination of a literary genius like Dante. In fact, both the variety and the restraint in expression suggest that there is a depth of sadness in the misery of the lost which our minds are unable to plumb in this life. In the presence of this biblical restraint, it is unfortunate that many unwarranted and unworthy conceptions are commonly received. For instance, that the reprobates will be actively tormented by demons in hell, and that there are even pictures which represent the devil and his cohorts armed with huge pitchforks and finding great delight in plunging men and women into boiling cauldrons find no support whatever in Scripture. These are ideas due probably to the unfortunate influence of Moslem thought or uninspired Jewish speculation.

The testimony of Scripture is very plain that the terrors of hell are endless. This appears from the fact that frequently the adjective everlasting (ordinarily aionios in Greek) is used: “everlasting chains” (Jude 6), “everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2), everlasting destruction (1 Thess. 1:9), everlasting fire or burnings (Isa. 33:14; Matt. 18:8; 25:41; Jude 7), “everlasting punishment” (Matt. 25:46). Furthermore, the expression for ever, or even for ever and ever, is repeatedly found (Jer. 17:4; Rev. 14:11; 19:3; 20:10). Now it has been suggested that the word aionios means “of the ages” and does not imply eternity. But this interpretation appears very precarious, for the Bible mentions only two ages—the present age, limited by individual death or by the coming of Jesus Christ, and the age to come, for which it never assigns any limit. In fact, among some 66 occurrences of aionios in the New Testament, some 51 cases apply to the eternal felicity of the redeemed, where it is conceded by all that no limitation of time applies. It is very unlikely that the same term, when used of the lost, should be understood to admit of such limitation, especially since both are sometimes found together in the same immediate context (Matt. 25:46).

Further evidence along the same line may be derived from the expressions, fire unquenchable (Isa. 66:24; Matt. 3:12; Luke 3:17) or “that never shall be quenched” (Mark 9:43, 45), the worm that dieth not (Isa. 66:24; Mark 9:44, 46, 48), “the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36).

In the presence of such evidence, it is not surprising to find that the overwhelming majority in Christendom has understood the Bible to teach the doctrine of endless conscious punishment.

Alternative Views

There has been, however, almost in all ages since Origen a fringe of Christians advocating universal salvation. But apart from the evidence thus far adduced in the present article, they face immense difficulties with the passages relating to the unpardonable sin (Matt. 12:32; Heb. 6:4–6; 1 John 5:16, 17), with the “impassable gulf” mentioned in Luke 16:26, with the statement of Jesus “Whither I go, ye cannot come” (John 8:21), with his remark about Judas—“It had been good for that man if he had not been born” (Matt. 26:24), not to speak of the constant note of Scripture that this life’s decisions have everlasting and irrevocable consequences. In spite of its good intentions, Universalism cuts the heart of the urgency of the Gospel and of the missionary task of the Church.

Conditional immortality or annihilationism may be viewed as less dangerous, although here also considerable exegetical difficulties arise, as the summary review of the biblical data given above may well indicate.

But, it is urged, the doctrine of endless conscious punishment is in conflict with God’s justice, love and wisdom:

1. With his justice, because it would not be equitable to punish a finite fault with an infinite penalty. To such an objection we reply with Anselm of Canterbury, “You have not yet considered the true gravity of sin.” While sin is committed by finite beings in the course of a life limited in time, it is an offense against the infinite God. It is a part of the terror of hell that there will be no repentance there, but a continued obdurate rebellion against God, endlessly worthy of his wrath.

2. With his love, because a God of love could never permit any of his creatures to remain in a state of endless suffering. But the love of God expresses itself supremely towards the elect, not towards the reprobates, who have rejected his laws and his love. Furthermore, we cannot forget that it is those who have transmitted to us the most impressive revelation of God’s love who also speak most about hell. The New Testament has much more to say about it than the Old, John in the book of Revelation says much more than the other New Testament writers, and our Lord Jesus Christ speaks of it by far the most of all!

3. With his wisdom, for it would be unwise of God to allow a dark comer to subsist eternally in his universe. Here, confessedly, we deal with a difficult problem, and it is only a slight alleviation to note that hell may well be a comparatively insignificant place in the total orb of God’s eternal order. It is difficult for us to perceive rationally the wisdom of God in permitting sin at all. But if we have such a problem with the origin of sin, why should we expect to have a ready answer in regard to its destiny?

Somehow the practice has been rather common, even among evangelicals, to speak lightly and in jest concerning the sufferings of hell. On the part of those who do not believe the biblical doctrine, this may perhaps be excused, although it is surely not in good taste. But those who do believe in hell should certainly refrain at all times from joking about the misery of the lost, a subject which cannot be humorous in the slightest degree to Christians with a heart, and which should bring tears to our eyes rather than smiles to our faces.

Admittedly, the doctrine of hell is the darkest subject on the pages of Scripture, but it provides the necessary background to an understanding of the true gravity of sin, of the magnitude of the human soul, of the depth of Christ’s redeeming work, of the power of divine grace which plucks man out of the abyss like firebrands, of the urgency of the Gospel call, and of the supreme importance of the ministry of preaching and of missions. It is an integral and vital element of our Christian faith.

Roger Nicole holds the M.A. degree from the Sorbonne (Paris), Th.D. from Gordon Divinity School, and is a candidate for the Ph.D. at Harvard Divinity School. He is Professor of Theology at Gordon Divinity School in New England, and former President of Evangelical Theological Society.

Here is your assignment for next Sunday. Write a paragraph entitled, I saw. Make it prose or poetry or both. Do not write what you think or feel; put down only what you see, for your imagination, you know, is joined to your eyes.

Now, before I tell you of the material that came to me the next week from our group of villagers and church people, let me give a little of the background of the experiment.

From the pulpit of my church, I had announced one morning a special class to study “Basic Ideas of Calvinism.” The class was to be held for a period of nine weeks at the end of which some kind of exam would be given. Of course, an “exam” frightened many; but surprisingly enough, several were willing to accept the challenge on being assured that the study would be worth their time and effort and not be above their heads. Where would we meet? There being no suitable place in the church building, we agreed to hold our class in the basement of the manse.

On the morning of the first session, 27 appeared, a rather evenly mixed group of men and women, each a little apprehensive as to what to expect. I opened the class by reading the beautiful passage of Isaiah 40. Then we turned to the study at hand and carefully proceeded to trace and discard the more popular and inadequate notions of Calvinistic belief. After a while we began to see in it a God-sized religion, the very thing we needed in our age. We discovered that the sovereign decrees of God included all the free acts of men and were thus the only answer to fatalism. “Let God be God” was the word in every realm—truth, science, art, and morality.

God And Creation

We learned, too, of God’s immensity, how he is everywhere present in the whole of his being (not thinned out as some might define omnipresence), and how “Coram Deo” meant that man stands each moment before the face of almighty God. Man cannot hide from the omnipresent God.

Next came the concept of creation, the fact that all things reveal God, and “all reality is revelational” (this was from Dr. Van Til). Could we see God in nature? Yes and no. Nature reveals God, but only as clothing blown against the body of man.

Our wonder increased as we remembered that man was to think God’s thoughts after him. These thoughts could be followed in nature, in political philosophy, in international affairs, in science, education, culture and the arts, music, plumbing, child problems and human relationships of many kinds. In truth, we could say that Newton calculating the heavenly bodies, a truck driver performing his job well, and a man climbing the hill called Calvary were, in each case thinking God’s thoughts after him. But for the most part, we were reminded that our minds could only function on these things like geiger counters—they could register when approaching a thought of God’s, but never fully grasp it nor hold on to it. This was especially true, some said, when listening to great music.

God And Culture

We went on to a discussion of Christianity and culture. With Richard Niebuhr we found that Christ was not the product of culture, as the liberals have thought; nor was Christ outside culture as Rome has taught; nor was Christ against culture as some fundamentalists have insisted; rather the Son of God was a transformer of culture. And by “culture” we were not talking of “polish” or “sophistication”—the art of holding a teacup and the like.

The culture we knew in our particular area, for instance, was agriculture, so we started there. Agriculture meant the cultivation of fields, the acquiring from them the total, latent potential. But culture in regard to refinement of tastes also demanded the same sort of treatment.

But what did Christianity have to do with the “arts,” specifically? Now we were in deep water. A few folks dropped from the group at this point. We read a little of Wordsworth, “Pied Beauty” by Hopkins and “Go Down Death” by James Weldon Johnson, and after reading these, we were bent on more. That God should choose to reveal himself in poetry as well as prose gave us a fresh appreciation of the Bible. We reread the Sermon on the Mount and found it rhythmic like the waves of the ocean. The prophecies of Amos, the herdsman, came to us in words of haunting beauty, and the words of Isaiah rolled forth in rich musical sound. Even Moses in the law had his own majestic cadence. Beauties in the Bible of which we had never dreamed were revealed. But what was beauty anyway? Looking in Aquinas we pulled out the threefold definition: “unity, proportion, and gloritas.” That third word we could not define, but everybody claimed he knew what it was. Gloritas in anything was the glory of God appearing in wondrously mysterious fashion. And we also found that we were to believe in the beauty of holiness—this did not mean, of course, a holiness of beauty, nor a worship of art for its own sake.

The Gift Of Poetry

Still, we had not touched upon man’s imagination. Here was a new trail to blaze. We found that few writers had speculated upon the human creative gifts, those God-given powers of forming images of truths not fully present to the senses. We came to realize that souls must pass beyond the understanding derived merely from demonstration, or go unsatisfied; that the wider and deeper harmonies and stimuli come from imagination. God does not always present truth in propositional form. The prophets of old had been men whose imagination and vision mirrored the truth. The poetic imagery of David in the “green pastures,” the overflowing cup, the “valley of the shadow,” and others proved this.

But a word of caution! Imagination was not merely fancy or daydreaming. Its purpose was rather to serve a man’s convictions, and hold a healthy lens to his eyes. It could be a film on which eye objects were registered; and the more sensitive film was, the richer one’s life became. There was no need, then, to go on a journey to find the wonderful. Every square inch of the universe shouted with glory. One had only to stand still and behold it.

Challenge And Response

“So,” I said to the group at the close of one of these sessions, “write on what you see. And when I read your work next Sunday, what you have observed may be a startling revelation to us all.”

Something happened in our people that week, something that will be a part of their lives forever. I should repeat, my class of adults were very ordinary people. Some had gone through high school, and some had not; a few had gone a little beyond, but it did not matter. Men and women totally unused to writing struggled to describe and put into order some of the things they saw. And the result was, they found themselves creating from the most common of objects thoughts that were new and wonderful.

For instance, one farmer, looking at two dead birds lying upon a sink drain board, marveled at the design of their feathers and the way in which the soft colors were reflected in the light. It was winter and a housewife, who had hung out her wash after snowfall, saw in a new way the difference between God’s whiteness and man’s. Another wrote of her walk to church, and of the snow that fell on her sleeve in hexagon designs. She headed her paragraph “God’s Design.” And a truck-driver told of arriving home to find his wife fairly excited over a tree in the back yard holding new-fallen snow in “its upreaching arms.”

To be sure, each paper showed struggle. There was nothing of genius, perfection, or polish about any of them. But they did show, indeed, a genuine freshness of vision and understanding.

The experiment was a revelation. Permit just one illustration of a paragraph written by a plumber:

Winter’S Night

I watched the powdery snow fall from out the black vault of night into the streetlight’s peaked arch;

I saw the slotted shadow of the picket fence lie over the deepening snow;

I saw dead dry weeds stand stiffly in the shadow, historians of last year’s negligence, prophets of another June;

I saw the sentinel trees with their empty arms outstretched;

I saw light and dark, silhouettes and shadow,

houses with dark roofs merged into night,

flat snow-powdered roofs ready for baker’s dough.

A barren willow with snow encrusted limbs became a giant fountain spray from out my ermine lawn.

Preacher In The Red

GETTING THE BIRD

I had just started my sermon when a bird flew the length of the church. A few minutes later it flew back again. I proceeded only to have the bird repeat the performance. At last it decided that it would not stay still even for a few minutes. Up and down the church it flew and I had to stop. I saw it flutter to a tall window and I called out to a man sitting nearby: “Mr. H … that window opens.” He got up, opened it and the bird flew out. I tried to pick up the threads of my sermon and brought it to a conclusion. Then I announced the last hymn, “Pleasant are Thy Courts Above.” I did not dare look at the congregation as we sang the second verse:—

“Happy birds that sing and fly

Round thy altars, O Most High.”

—The Rev. PETER TADMAN, Saint Andrew’s Church, Sidcup, Kent, England.

Robert K. Churchill is Pastor of Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Cedar Grove, Wisconsin. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Westminster Theological Seminary, he pursued further studies at Marquette University and Berkeley Divinity School. He is a Westminster Seminary trustee.

The Church of Jesus Christ is in the world for a divine and blessed purpose. The Lord himself stated this purpose in the words, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” The divine purpose and function of the Church on earth is to bring Christ to people and people to Christ. The Lord builds his Kingdom through those in his Kingdom. His Church is extended by those who are the Church. Always the Lord depends upon his people to be “laborers together with him” in making known the “good tidings of great joy.”

We may speak of immediate and ultimate objectives of evangelism. The ultimate objective must always be the new birth of which the Saviour spoke to Nicodemus when he said, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” This purpose is variously stated in the Scriptures. It means bringing the unconverted, regardless of age or race or condition in life, into a blessed relation with their God and Saviour. No one is born a Christian. We become God’s people by the divine miracle of regeneration. The Christian’s final objective in all his missionary activities will always be to labor together with God in saving people from hell and for heaven. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16).

Great and incomparable are the benefits and blessings that come to mankind through the missionary activities of God’s people and through the sanctifying work of the Holy Ghost. In this manner sinful man, dead in trespasses and sin, is made spiritually alive, brought to a living, active, saving faith in Christ, absolved from all guilt and sin, and is clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ. Thus, he has bestowed upon him the peace of God which passeth understanding, is enabled to live godly and to be rich in good works, is given victory over self, Satan, death and hell, and made an heir of life eternal in the mansions of the Father. Great is our salvation!

Individual Approach Essential

The accomplishment of these ultimate and glorious ends involves intermediate steps. The individual to be won for Christ must be encountered. Biblical evangelism is retail, not wholesale, work. People must be brought face to face with their sin and lost condition, with the Christ who redeemed them, and with the great issues of life, death, and eternity. A study of the person-to-person evangelism recorded in the Gospels and the Acts is both instructive and rewarding (outstanding examples are John 1:43–51; 3; 4; Acts 8:26–40 and 16:25–40).

In a general way those living without Christ and without hope in this world may be divided into two groups: the self-righteous and indifferent, and those troubled and disturbed. In meeting the needs of the first group, the immediate objective must be to create in people a sense of guilt, to arouse them from false security, to bring them to agonize in face of the Law, and then in love and concern, to bring them to faith in Christ the Saviour from sin. Until the individual knows his lost condition, he will not be interested in the divine remedy. Those troubled by a sense of guilt must, in the second group, be assured and comforted with the unconditional Gospel promise that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin.

An understanding knowledge of the individual and a correct diagnosis of his religious thinking and spiritual condition are essential. These requirements are attained by careful observation and, in many cases, patient and sympathetic listening. Of equal importance is the wisdom of “rightly dividing the word of truth,” and of knowing when and how to apply Law and Gospel.

The Old as well as the New Testament portrays the Lord’s deep concern for the salvation of all mankind. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16). “The Lord is … not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). This same genuine passion for souls characterizes the apostles. Peter and John said, “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” Paul, so deeply concerned for his mission and responsibility, exclaims, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” The loveless indifference of Cain, expressed with the question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is entirely foreign to all Christian thinking and conduct.

This attitude of concern for the lost is basic in true biblical evangelism. It is an awareness of one’s obligation and duty as an ambassador of the King of kings. It makes and keeps Christians, both laity and clergy, sensitive to and conscious of their purpose in this world and of their high calling in Christ Jesus. In this concern the apostle Paul said, “Woe unto me, if I preach not the gospel of Christ.”

The Pastor As Shepherd

A study of the New Testament reveals the strategic importance of the local congregation in the whole structure of the Church, particularly in the work of evangelism. And the God-ordained, God-given leader is always the pastor. The pastor of the congregation is a keeper and shepherd of the souls already in the Church. “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseer, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). And he is also the God-chosen leader in the congregation’s mission and evangelism work. To be such requires a true shepherd heart. First, he himself must be a winner of souls. Secondly, he must lead, train and equip his parishioners in true biblical evangelism.

The Christian pastor will give this twofold mission his constant attention and prayerful devotion. His position and responsibility has no parallel. In the faithful discharge of it he will often be afflicted with a feeling of inadequacy. But the Saviour’s promise to his ambassadors still stands, “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me … (Acts 1:8).

In serving his Lord and his Church as a winner of souls, the Christian pastor has the apostle Paul as his great example. Paul’s supreme purpose was that he “might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). The apostle’s farewell address to the congregation at Ephesus, recorded in Acts 20:17–38, reveals how self-sacrificingly he labored in the accomplishment of his evangelism purpose.

The pastor who would be successful in bringing people into the kingdom of God must himself know what it means to be saved by the grace of God. And he will be very conscious of his unique and high calling in Christ Jesus, he will love Christ and will have a compassion for souls. His knowledge that he is but an instrument of the Holy Spirit will give him strength, patience and humility. In public and in private he will speak convincingly and with clarity of the Christ of the Scriptures. He will seek to lead people to an understanding of salvation by divine grace through faith in Christ. He will make personal calls, and thereby build the Kingdom “house to house.” And still, he will guard against cold professionalism, for “where professionalism reigns spirituality wanes.” Finally, he will pray for himself as he thinks of his great responsibility and the apostle’s words “who is sufficient unto these things?”; and he will pray for those whom he is to lead to Christ and into heaven.

The pastor’s daily schedule of work should allow time for personal soul winning. The larger the congregation, the less time there will be for seeking out those “not yet in the fold.” But if he devotes the morning hours to necessary study, and the afternoons and some evenings to making calls, he will, in addition to the visits among his parishioners, have time to make mission calls. The most profitable and necessary visits are with the husbands and fathers, and he will find many doors open to him. Personal soul winning is one of the richest experiences of the Christian ministry, and the pastor will learn to know people and develop a sympathetic understanding of problems and creeds.

The Pastor As Leader

The other important function of the pastor as leader in biblical evangelism is to enlist his congregation in this service of God. Ephesians 4:12 makes the outfitting, the equipping, the guiding and teaching of people for the work of evangelism an important function of the ministry. The hands of God’s people receive from God that they might dispense to the world. This follows the Saviour’s own pattern. When the Lord had added Philip to his disciples, Philip went to Nathanael and said, “We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John 1:45). The apostle Paul was not only an ardent winner of souls himself; he constantly enlisted and trained those whom he brought to Christ to witness for Christ.

The missionary potential in the apostolic age was in the whole church. Also today it is in the whole congregation, both clergy and laity. It has well been said that the Church is “off center” when the pastor does it all, and it is “off center” when the people do it all.

In Acts and in the Epistles, we find the pattern for Christian evangelism. A part of that pattern is the important place of the local church in the spreading of the Gospel. “New Testament local churches were nerve centers of evangelism, and in this respect constitute a pattern for local churches” (Whitesell, Basic New Testament Evangelism, p. 133).

To the local congregations of Christians have the mysteries of God and means of grace, by Word and sacrament, been entrusted. These means are to be faithfully employed for the saving of people and the edification of the saints. A general church body, synod, district, commission and board can make plans, develop programs, and pass resolutions—all of which may be necessary and important. But God’s kingdom is extended only in the measure in which pastors and people of local congregations separately and together evangelize. The local parish is the front line where those who are faithful wage and win the spiritual battle.

The greatest missionary responsibility and opportunity in our country is where there are Christian congregations with a well-equipped physical plant surrounded with people who are unchurched or who are in churches but not in a blessed relationship with Christ. All too often congregations fail to reach people in the number and measure in which they could and should be reached and brought under the sanctifying influence of the Gospel. A congregation functions best as a divine agency in the building of God’s kingdom when on Sundays and on weekdays, through clergy and laity, the unconverted are confronted with the convicting power of the law of God, with the faith-generating power of the Gospel, and with the great issues of God’s plan of salvation. Where an effective evangelism program on the congregational level is developed and energetically pursued, many of the problems that have a tendency to plague the church and disrupt its effectiveness will disappear.

Program And Aims

As long as Christian congregations are within easy reach of people who are not affiliated with a Christian church and of people who are affiliated with a church but are not in a state of grace, the congregation has a mission field and is in need of an evangelism program.

Such a program should bring information, instruction and inspiration to the members of the church. Christian people need to be kept informed and aware of their soul-winning responsibilities and opportunities. The part of the program designed to reach the unsaved and unconverted must be definite. Various methods and organizational procedures may be developed and followed, but these should be the definite aims:

1. Contact—People must be individually and personally contacted by the members of the family of God.

2. Concentration—By this we mean, “staying with it.” It takes more than one or two efforts to bring in an individual. The teaching of biblical evangelism is an on-going process. It takes time to learn to walk with God. Christians should not become impatient, but clearly, repeatedly and humbly testify and speak the great truth of God’s plan of salvation.

3. Conversion—The great objective of all mission activity and personal evangelism must always be conversion and sanctification of the sinner. “This is the will of God, even your sanctification” (1 Thess. 4:3).

4. Conservation—Soul keeping is an essential part of soul winning. Integration and assimilation of people into the family of God is essential for the development of Christian faith and life. Having brought people under the influence of the Gospel, the church must keep them under the sanctifying power of the means of grace.

A congregational evangelism program with these four essentials will occupy a high priority in the work of the church. Individual members, officers, committees, and organizations can move in one direction. The one great purpose of the whole congregation is the reaching out to immortal souls, purchased and redeemed by the blood of Christ, to make them heirs of life eternal. Christians, laity and clergy, are “laborers together with God.” A congregation that has a biblical evangelism program, has a program that works. Its next concern is simply to work the program.

When an individual knows Christ as his Saviour, knows the nature and purpose of the means of grace, and has become convinced that the doctrines of the Church are in full accord with the Word of God, he should be encouraged to confess his faith and be received into fellowship with the Church. The one essential book for the teaching of religion is the Bible, and it is of utmost importance that the holy truths therein be presented with warmth, with Christian conviction and faith, in terms and phrases which people understand, and related to the needs of man in this life and to his eternal salvation.

The establishment of new congregations is an important part of the Church’s mission and expansion program. The mobility of the American people (30 million change their addresses each year), the growing population, the development of urban and suburban communities, and the many areas and communities which are still under-churched make necessary the establishment of congregations. The church must be where the people are. Where people move and live, the church must follow. And every time a new Christian congregation is born, the whole Church of God should rejoice. Generally too few, rather than too many, congregations are ever established.

In pursuing their high calling as witnesses for Christ, God’s people will pray much and often. They will pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit, for wisdom, and patience and grace. They will pray for one another in the performance of their evangelism responsibilities and privileges. They will pray for individual souls to be brought to Christ.

Arthur H. Haake is Chairman of the Board for Home Missions of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, of which Board he has been a member the last eight years. He is a graduate of Concordia Seminary, served as Pastor in British Columbia from 1930–1941, and in California since 1943 pastoring the West Portal Lutheran Church, San Francisco. The present article is an abridgment of a chapter of a new book on Pastoral Theology to be published by Concordia, St. Louis.

(Part II will appear in the next issue)

No theme is more worthy than the Word, whether the Incarnate Word or the Inspired Word. And surely renewed interest in special revelation is timely and necessary for our befuddled world of thought and action. We are all aware that in this century speculative idealism has passed its prime, naturalism has gained ascendancy, and Communism incorporates into modern history a world-life view resolutely anti-supernatural. It is indeed the good providence of God that we are once again permitted, even forced to, the biblical heritage of Western culture.

Emil Brunner has said, and I think rightly, that “the fate of the Bible is the fate of Christianity.” When we interpret such expressions, we are all concerned to avoid both understatements and overstatements of the significance of the Bible. How shall we properly relate the Bible to divine revelation? This question continues to be a fundamental issue in modern theology. Karl Barth, for example, in The Doctrine of the Word of God, speaks of doing the Bible “a poor honor” by identifying revelation with the Book. On the other hand, evangelical Protestantism believes that despite the new emphasis on the Bible as “witness” to special revelation neither Barth nor Brunner nor neo-orthodox theologians generally honor Scripture as they ought. Meantime evangelicals are charged with exaggerating the role of the Bible—with making it a “paper Pope,” with worshipping it, with allowing it to crowd out the authority of God, the authority of Jesus Christ. What shall we think and say of these matters?

We dare allow only one final authority in the Christian life. We dare acknowledge the authority of no other god than the living God who made heaven and earth and man in his image. We dare acknowledge only the authority of the living God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, the authority of the living God who regenerates and reigns in the life of believers by the Holy Spirit (“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” 1 Cor. 12:3, RSV). Must we not also acknowledge the living God, incarnate in Jesus Christ, renewing believers by the Holy Spirit, as the authoritative source of sacred Scripture, the divine rule of faith and practice (All scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable … that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, 2 Tim. 3:16)? To affirm the authority of Scripture neither undermines nor threatens the living God as final authority in the believer’s life; but rather, like the recognition that the Spirit regenerates and rules, and that Jesus of Nazareth is Saviour and Lord, it guarantees the removal of illegitimate aspirants or pretenders to his authority.

Thrust Of Neo-Orthodoxy

To exhibit the divergent views I shall present the basic issue from two sides, noting first, that the neo-orthodox rival view fails to do justice to the status of the Bible as revelation; and second, that the evangelical view honors the revelation-status of the Bible.

The main premises of the neo-orthodox view of the Bible, as I see them, are (1) the Bible is the indispensable witness to special redemptive revelation; (2) no identity exists between the Bible, in its written form of words and sentences, and special revelation; (3) the Bible is the instrumental frame within which God personally encounters man and actualizes revelation in the form of dynamic response.

Instability Of Liberalism

This view brought welcome relief to the problems that harassed Protestant liberalism for half a century. Remember that Wellhausen’s post-evolutionary criticism had narrowed the traditional confidence in the infallibility of Scripture by excluding matters of science and history. The Bible was then considered reliable only in matters of faith and practice. Next, William Newton Clarke’s The Use of the Scriptures in Theology (1905) yielded biblical theology and ethics to the critics as well as biblical science and history, but reserved “Christian theology,” or the teaching of Jesus Christ, as reliable. British scholars took a further step. Since science and history were involved in Jesus’ endorsement of creation, the patriarchs, Moses and the Law, English critics more and more accepted only the theological and moral teaching of Jesus. Contemporaries swiftly erased even this remainder, asserting Jesus’ theological fallibility. Actual belief in Satan and demons was intolerable to the critical mind, and must therefore invalidate his theological integrity, while the feigned belief in them (as a concession to the times) would invalidate his moral integrity. Had not Jesus represented his whole ministry as the conquest of Satan and invoked his exorcism of demons to prove his supernatural mission? The critics could only infer his limited knowledge even of theological and moral truths. The Chicago school of “empirical theologians” argued that respect for the scientific method in theology disallows in toto any defense of Jesus’ absoluteness and infallibility. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s The Modern Use of the Bible (1924) championed only “abidingly valid” experiences in Jesus’ life that could be normatively relived by us. Gerald Birney Smith took the final plunge in Current Christian Thinking (1928): We are to gain inspiration from Jesus, but it is our own experience that determines doctrine and a valid outlook on life.

This history of concession and retreat had one pervading theme, namely, that the Bible differs from other so-called sacred books only in degree; it contains the highest religious and ethical insights gleaned from universal divine revelation. Liberalism moved from the fallibility of the Bible to the fallibility of the God-man to the fallibility of the indwelling Spirit to the fallibility of everything except, perhaps, of contemporary criticism! The resulting confusion and chaos were therefore a propitious time for a view which recognized that the perplexing problem of religious knowledge could not be solved in so narrow, so artificial a framework. If that new view, moreover, could dissolve the need for identifying the Bible in part or whole as the Word of God—thus rising above the fatiguing and exasperating game of epistemological “blind man’s bluff”—it could attract the liberal theologian and critic even while it disputed him.

Neo-Orthodoxy’S New Look

Neo-orthodoxy sets out with a new look at controlling ideas of the nature and activity of God. It rejects liberalism’s metaphysics of extreme divine immanence and accepts instead a reactionary doctrine of extreme divine transcendence. Furthermore, neo-orthodoxy rejects the post-Hegelian epistemology of extreme monistic realism that virtually identifies God’s knowledge with man’s knowledge. But its doctrine of subjectivity perpetuates the error of epistemological dualism, bridging the tension between eternity and time not conceptually but dialectically and/or existentially in dynamic faith-response. Gordon H. Clark traces this development of modern counter-thrust to the excesses of Hegelian rationalism in his book Thales to Dewey. He discloses the generous philosophical rather than biblical indebtedness of recent theories of God and revelation. One could say of the contemporary theology of revelation that its vocabulary is the vocabulary of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but its plot is the plot of Kant and Kierkegaard, of Ebner and Buber.

Our immediate concern, however, is the role of the Bible in the new theology of the Word of God. Assuredly, the current interest in special revelation has stimulated fresh exploration of the Bible. As opposed to the old liberalism, neo-orthodoxy no longer gears Scripture to a naturalistic, evolutionary development of religious experience, nor demeans the Bible as a human interpretation of a universal divine activity. Instead, the Book’s theological message is an authentic witness to God’s unique self-disclosure in Jesus Christ.

Evading The Biblical Witness

Precisely this profession of neo-orthodoxy, however, to honor the Bible as a witness to special divine revelation, is an Achilles’ heel. For the witness of the Bible does not conform to the dialectical and non-rational exposition of revelation affirmed by the contemporary theology of the Word of God. Because of this divergence, neo-orthodoxy ultimately must choose one of two alternatives: either the new theology must abandon its merely formal appeal to the Scriptures as witness to special divine revelation, or neo-orthodoxy must dissolve its antithetical exposition of revelation and reason.

If the inspiration and revelation-status of the Scriptures as depicted by neo-orthodox writers is set alongside the witness of the biblical writers, their conflict becomes apparent at once. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, translator of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, has long observed that whereas Barth emphasizes the “inspiringness” of Scripture, that is, its dynamic potency in religious experience, the Bible itself moves beyond this claim to assert the very “inspiredness” of the writings. The decisive reference here, of course, is 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is inspired by God.…” This passage identifies Scripture itself as “God-breathed”; the writings themselves, as an end-product, are a unique product of divine activity. The divergence of crisis theology from the biblical witness is even more apparent in neo-orthodoxy’s claim that divine revelation does not assume the form of concepts and words. This assertion runs so directly counter to the specific claim of the biblical writers that Emil Brunner, uneasy in the presence of the repetitious Old Testament formula “Thus saith the Lord …,” concessively called this prophetic ascription of words and statements to Deity “an Old Testament level of revelation” (Revelation and Reason, p. 122, n. 9).

One of Brunner’s students, Paul King Jewett, has long since pointed out that to admit such propositions as revelation, whether low or high, breaks down the assumption that revelation is conceptually and verbally inexpressible, and unwittingly surrenders the thesis that divine revelation must take a form that impinges dialectically upon the mind of man. Not alone do the Old Testament prophets provide a biblical basis for identifying the inspired spoken and written word with the very Word of God; this selfsame identification is made by the New Testament apostles as well. Paul wrote that the Thessalonian converts “received the word of God which you heard from us … not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13, RSV). Peter declared that “no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:21, RSV). The writer to the Hebrews repeatedly ascribes to God what the prophets had spoken. One senses their uniform readiness to regard the sacred teaching as sharing the authority of divine revelation.

Certainly both the evangelists and apostles distinguish Jesus of Nazareth as the supreme and final revelation of God. Matthew records Peter’s confession that he truly is the Christ, the Son of the living God (16:16). John writes that “no one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (1:18, RSV). Paul finds the climax of the gospel in redemption personally secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:1–4). But the New Testament writers never make this staggering fact of God’s personal relevation in the flesh by Jesus Christ the occasion for depriving the inspired utterances of the sacred writers of a direct identity with divine revelation. In thus honoring the prophetic word as the veritable Word of God (cf. Paul’s characterization of the Old Testament as “the oracles of God” in Romans 3:2), the disciples and apostles had the sacred example of their Master and Lord; he spoke of himself indeed as the one “the Father consecrated and sent into the world,” yet he spoke at the same time of those “to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken)” (John 10:35).

Besides this validation of the divine authority of Scripture, Jesus’ followers heard him ascribe absolute significance to his own words and commands uttered in their hearing. The dialectical theory, if true, would preclude any direct identification with divine revelation of the spoken words of Jesus, no less than of prophets and apostles. In line with its presuppositions neo-orthodoxy distinguishes constantly between the Word of God as revelation and the “pointers” to revelation or assertedly fallible human ideas and words. But this distinction will not bear the scrutiny of Jesus’ teaching. For Jesus held men responsible not only for hearing his “word” (John 5:24), but for Moses’ “writings” and his own “words” (5:47). Indeed, he specifically identifies his own words and commands with the Father’s word: “The words that I say unto you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.… He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.… If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.… If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 14:10, 24; 15:7, 10, RSV).

Integrity Of Theology

All this may seem like a needless revival of marginal concerns in circles throbbing to modernist traditions. But the very integrity of theology is at stake. As a theology that professes to honor the biblical witness to revelation, neo-orthodoxy must face the fact that it does not really derive its doctrine of revelation from the witness of Scripture; it does not have an authentically biblical concern for the fundamentals of that doctrine.

The new theology may disparage identification of the Bible in whole or in part with revelation as a kind of bibliolatry, as dishonoring to the idea of revelation, or as injurious to faith. Yet several facts remain clear. The new theology cannot find support for its anxieties over the evil implications of the traditional view in the biblical witness itself. The Bible nowhere protests nor cautions against identifying Scripture with revelation, but rather approves and supports this turn. Whoever evades these verities in constructing a doctrine of revelation, however vocal his plea for biblical theology, shows greater concern to baptize biblical criticism with an orthodox justification than to confirm the central features of the scriptural view.

The neo-orthodox rejection of the Bible as revelation rests actually on rationalism rather than on reverence. To expel Scripture from the orbit of revelation itself to the sphere of witness, and subsequently to ignore that witness in forging a doctrine of revelation, reveals speculative rather than scriptural and spiritual motives. The devout considerations by which neo-orthodoxy ventures to support its maneuver are unpersuasive. A radical skepticism in metaphysics, a relational theology still tainted with the philosophical influence of Kant and Schleiermacher, determine its elaboration of divine revelation.

Editor Carl F. H. Henry’s address was delivered at Union Theological Seminary in New York City recently under auspices of the Student Forum Committee. An evangelical symposium on the same theme will be published later this year by Baker Book House. Dr. Henry is serving as general editor of the project, which will include chapters by distinguished scholars chosen from the major denominations in many lands.

When we went to Palestine in the summer of 1956 to begin the first archaeological excavation of the city of Gibeon, we might have anticipated our most important discovery from some hints in biblical history. While in the more than 40 times that Gibeon is mentioned, practically nothing is said about the physical features of the city, there is significantly an occasional and casual mention of the city’s water supply.

Joshua once cursed the wily inhabitants of Gibeon, those who so successfully deceived him that he made a covenant of peace with them, and “made them that days hewers of wood and drawers of water” (Josh. 9:27). Later, the scene of the famous contest between the 12 men of Joab and the 12 men of Abner is explicitly named as the “pool of Gibeon.” There the two opposing groups of contestants sat down, “the one on the one side of the pool, and the other on the other side of the pool” (2 Sam. 2:13). Centuries later, after the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the usurper Ishmael was found by Johanan “by the great waters that are in Gibeon (Jer. 41:12).

Remarkable Water System

Yet these hints that Gibeon was long and widely known for its water supply did not fully prepare us for the discovery in 1956 and 1957 of one of the most extensive water systems ever unearthed in ancient Palestine. It included a system of tunnels cut through a total distance of 389 feet of solid rock, more than 172 steps for the water carriers of Gibeon, and a pool around the edge of which is a spiral stairway which once provided the “drawers of water” with an easy access to the water level deep within the hill on which the city stood. This elaborate construction is even more impressive when one considers that it was all hewn from rock with primitive, untempered tools.

When we started digging early in the summer of 1956 at the Arab village of Al Jib, just eight miles north of Jerusalem, we were not absolutely certain that the site was that of ancient Gibeon. Biblical scholars had debated the location of Gibeon for over a century, and there was still reasonable doubt about its being at Al Jib. The expedition had been sent out by the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania and the Church Divinity School of the Pacific for purposes of gathering what information it could. The first staff consisted of seven Americans: S. E. Johnson, Jean H. Johnson, Marcia Rogers, T. H. Hall IV, R. C. Dentan, H. N. Richardson, and the writer, who served as director; and Thorir Thordarson from Iceland, and a Jordanian surveyor, Subhi Muhtadi.

The Site Of Gibeon

After weeks of monotonous work looking through fragments of broken pottery found by our 80 Arab workmen, we one day had the good fortune of finding a short Hebrew inscription on the handle of a jar which supplied the answer to decades of debate over the location of the famous biblical city. It read “Gibeon.” A few days later, there emerged from the ground another piece of pottery inscribed with the name “Hananiah,” a name which appears in Jeremiah 28:1: “Hananiah the son of Azzur the prophet, who was of Gibeon.” Now, at last, we knew exactly where we were.

During the following season, that of 1957, with a different staff (this year the director was assisted by F. V. Winnett, Asia G. Halaby, Linda Witherill, Claus Hunzinger, and again Subhi Muhtadi) we succeeded in clinching the identification even more firmly by finding 24 additional inscriptions of the name “Gibeon” and the actual names of prominent citizens of the city. Some of them bore biblical names, such as Azariah, Amariah, Nahum and Meshullam. Others were Hebrew names not mentioned in the Bible.

Why did the men of Gibeon take the trouble to place the name of their city on the handles of these pottery jars? This question was answered during our second season, when we found that these jars were made for the export of fine wine from Gibeon. The inscriptions were nothing more than labels for wine jars; the manufacturer had labelled his product with his name and address. That which had once advertised the quality of the product now provided the student of the Bible some 2,500 years later with a fixed location on the map of ancient Palestine. This discovery now makes it possible to use the biblical accounts concerning the history of Gibeon as a guide for what is found at Al Jib, and to illustrate the text of the Bible by what comes from the 16 acres of ruins of several superimposed cities at this place.

Vulnerable To Attack

Obviously this ancient city was most vulnerable at the point of its water supply. A city could be swiftly brought to its knees by merely cutting its inhabitants off from the spring which supplied them with water. It has long been known from the Bible (2 Chron. 32:30) and from the discovery of the famous Siloam tunnel in Jerusalem that Hezekiah was famous for the conduit which he had cut to bring water inside the walls of Jerusalem, probably during the perilous days of 701 B.C. when Sennacherib came down “like a wolf upon the fold.”

It was the same kind of peril which must have prompted the building at great cost of the ingenious water system which we uncovered at Gibeon in the summers of 1956 and 1957.

Actually there were two systems. Gibeon was built on a rocky hill rising about a hundred feet above the surrounding plain. Around the edge of this naturally defended hill the inhabitants had built a strong city wall, 26 feet thick just above the spring; but at one time the people had been accustomed to go out a small watergate and climb down the steep hill to get water from the spring below.

In time (just when, we have not as yet been able to determine) the engineers of the city devised a safer means of getting to the water which flowed from the base of the hill. They cut a tunnel through 170 feet of solid limestone from the city square within the city wall to the spring at the bottom of the hill. There, at the end of the tunnel, they carved out a cave and equipped it with a stone door which could be dropped quickly into place in time of attack. Within the cave they had a reservoir which could be reached easily and safely even when the enemy was encamped in the plain.

The tunnel was no temporary measure. It was equipped with 93 steps cut from the solid rock of the floor, and niches held oil lamps to provide light for the water carriers.

A second system, far more protected than the first and surely more costly to construct, was a further provision for civil defense. To make this additional access to water in time of siege, the dwellers within the walls had quarried straight down to a depth of 82 feet through solid rock.

In the days when there were no metal buckets, water had to be carried from wells in earthen jars. These fragile containers could not be let down with ropes, so a narrow well could not suffice for the drawers of water in ancient Gibeon.

The makers of this system first removed the rock from a large cylindrical hole, 36 feet in diameter, down to a depth of more than 30 feet; and along the edge they cut a spiral stairway for the water carriers. Then, at that point, they continued the stairs by means of a tunnel to the depth of another 49 feet until they reached water. At the bottom of 79 steps they cut a large chamber in which water could collect.

When we finally broke into the water chamber, a workman made his way into the room, which had been closed for 25 centuries, and found there the water cool and sweet. The entire construction had been filled in, perhaps at the time of the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar, and its existence had been completely overlooked until we found it below the field of one of the farmers at Al Jib.

The Gibeonites had more than earned the right to be called “drawers of water.”

We Quote:

JOSEPH R. SIZOO

Professor of Religion, George Washington University

Religion and education have been regarding one another as rivals. The hue and cry about separation of church and state means for many people education without any reference to religion. We need desperately a view of society in which education and religion are not given independent provinces. Education divorced from religion is doomed to spiritual sterility. Religion divorced from education is doomed to superstition and bigotry. Religion and education when both are honest, humble, and informed are natural allies. And education shot through with a glad awareness that the universe in which we live is the creation of a living God, makes for a far different way of appraising life from the way the secularist looks at it.…

The ministry is a lonely profession; the minister is often a lonely man. That may seem strange to lay people but it is true. He keeps silent vigil in the lonely night watches with his God and comes down storm-swathed sides of Sinai to announce thus saith the Lord. He is in the world but not of it, he is with people and yet apart from them. What Richard Watson Gilder wrote in his Ode to Grove Cleveland is true: “Lonely is the life that listens to no voice save that of duty.” Believe me, being a prophet of God is often a lonely business. Many, many times in the past I have wondered if I stood alone.… The minister of God, keeper of the pathway to the eternal stars, is always sustained and encompassed by more loyalties and friendships than he dreams.—In an address at the Awards Dinner of the Washington Pilgrimage, where he was honored as “Clergyman of the Year.”

James B. Pritchard holds the A.B. degree from Asbury College, B.D. from Drew, and Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania. He was Professor of Old Testament literature at Crozer Theological Seminary from 1942–54, and now holds that post at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. He served as annual Professor at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem in 1950–51. His role in excavations at Gibeon has brought him wide prominence. Here he recalls the weeks of patient search and exciting discoveries.