The Spirit of Christmas

Millions of hopeful words have been written in thousands of publications pleading that Christ be put back into Christmas and deploring the failure of people to observe the spirit of good will all year.

Magazines and newspapers will give a great deal of space to similar articles again this year. This is to be commended, even though the articles have accomplished little. A comparatively few sympathetic readers will nod their heads approvingly and try to put the words into practice. Some will obtain a good feeling by gathering baskets of fruit and taking them to a poor section of town, but will be too busy to sit down and talk for 30 minutes about Christ. They will talk for an hour and a half, however, telling neighbors about the joy of helping others.

Cocktail parties, even in some highest government circles and attended by some devoted church officers, will begin brightly and end blearily. The boss will beam as he drapes what he hopes others will regard as a paternal arm around the secretary he has been secretly admiring. Neighborhood parties will mushroom. A friendly kiss under the mistletoe may culminate in an indiscretion of the bedroom. Good old John will fail to make a turn on the way home and his family will spend Christmas day in a funeral parlor.

Professional bums will have a field day, as scoffers who haven’t given a nickel all year to the church get their godly feeling by dropping a dollar into the cup.

Christians look at the messy scene and remark, “How awful!” They visit the church and view the manger scene. They sing a few carols. They utter pious phrases. But few take the trouble to examine their own lives in the light of what Christ would have them be.

Christians are the reason why Christ hasn’t been put back into Christmas. Christians are the reason Christmas isn’t practiced the year ’round. The blame can’t be placed on non-Christians. They have never known the love of God through Jesus Christ.

Scores of Church leaders around the world have stated that the number one problem of Christianity is people who profess to be Christians and fail to observe Christian principles in their everyday lives.

The life of Christ provided the perfect example. He came from a heavenly home to the poverty of earth.

The stables of the Middle East aren’t the pretty things they appear to be on the Christmas cards. They are dirty and smell of bad odors, with flies buzzing around the filth. Christ lived a perfect life. He went about doing good. And then he went to the cross and died in order that people might live.

Christ entered into history because he loved the world. He did good things for people because he loved the world. He died because he loved the world. Love was the center of his teachings. He said all the trappings of Christianity amounted to nothing, without love.

But the great majority of Christians today display little love. They give at Christmas, but little of the giving is sacrificial and with genuine compassion.

It wasn’t the Christmas season when refugee Koreans were tramping through the snow at Seoul, with communists following closely behind. At 5 a.m., Christians of Seoul were having a prayer meeting in the shell of a building without sides or a roof. Snow blew in upon them as they huddled together on the dirt floor. Mothers put their babies inside their thin wraps for warmth. Few had coats. The pastor, at the conclusion of his message, said he was going to take an offering. To a listening American, this sounded ridiculous. These people didn’t have any money. Most of them had come to the prayer meeting without breakfast. They didn’t know where or when the next meal would be provided.

The pastor then explained he wasn’t taking an offering of money. He asked for an offering of clothing—to be shared with the refugees who had practically nothing. One by one, members of the congregation left their places and went to the table placed near the pulpit. Mothers with their babies pressed against their skin took off pieces of outer clothing and placed them on the table. Men wearing shoes and socks gave the socks. Scarves were unwrapped from cold necks and given.

These people had spent much time in prayer. But when they finished praying they got up and did something about it, because the love of Christ was in their hearts.

Ponder the words found in James 2:15, 16: “If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit?”

What will you give “in Jesus’ name” during Christmas, or any month of the year, for unwanted children who are dying in ditches of the Far East for want of food and love? What will you give to the families of India who sleep in the streets and tie their few possessions onto the branches of trees? What will you give to the American who wants to find peace with God during a season when the spirit of love and goodwill overflows the land?

Are you the kind of Christian who offers to pray for a person in trouble? After you have prayed, are you willing to help in a material way? Maybe you are the Christian who spends so much time dissecting other Christians that you have time neither to pray nor help.

Christians, many with great reputations, have caused more people to stumble than all the world put together. All the trappings are present, but genuine love is missing.

Are you the reason Christ hasn’t been put back into Christmas? Are you the reason that Christmas isn’t observed throughout the year?

Advance Of Science And Decline Of Morality

No American will regret the mounting pressures for improved instruction in order to enhance scientific competence and progress. The United States has no excuse for neglecting a single scientific discovery that might contribute to the health, safety and well-being of man. But to locate the cause of inadequate American education in the neglect of scientific instruction is a tragic misunderstanding that will handicap American youth in the race against Communism.

We have nothing to fear from Russian science, only from power that is misused in the service of injustice and unrighteousness. The great peril of Communism lies, as it always has, in the rejection of truth and morality and the repudiation of God and his commandments. But on the other hand, the great weakness of American education for about a generation now has been its ambiguous stand concerning spiritual and moral realities. Communists reject these, and we neglect them. And it is inevitable that our fault will be compounded if the structure of American education continues its concentration on physical realities, while ignoring the reality of God and his creation, redemption and judgment. Fortunately, some leading institutions of science today are recognizing the need in their curriculums for moral and religious emphases and especially are they acknowledging this in view of the men of scientific distinction who are now being called to roles of national and world leadership. That some scientific centers have already seen the paucity of religious life in their sensate environments is instanced by one technological institute (recently gifted with an attractive chapel for worship services) whose highest Protestant chapel attendance out of an enrollment last year of 10,000 was some thirty, falling at times to two. President Eisenhower’s recent first address on “Science and National Security” was less disappointing in its avowal of spiritual priorities than his second, and we hope that in the future he will say more. He made pointed mention, in that address, however, of what he called “the most important stones in any defense structure.” These he identified with “the spiritual powers of a nation,” mentioning first “its underlying religious faith.”

The world crisis today is fundamentally moral and spiritual. America will never be able to show the nations how science may serve justice and truth if its educators continue to make those realities of secondary classroom concern. When totalitarianism contends that peaceful coexistence between science and religious faith is impossible, how doubly imperative is it for a professing religious democracy to prove that just and enduring peace can never become actual until faith and science are both placed within the orbit of God and his revealed will for man.

Campus Witness To Jewish Students

Jewish students in American colleges and universities comprise a group of great potential influence in the years to come. These students are an almost untouched segment so far as any Christian witness is concerned. Prior to World War II almost any Christian approach would have been met with hostility but the atmosphere now has changed considerably. Many of these students are disillusioned with Judaism because, in turning to the faith of their fathers, they have been appalled by the poverty of its outreach and message. Hungry for a spiritual experience, many are failing to find satisfaction where they had hoped.

One of the great handicaps to such work is that almost all Jews look upon the terms Gentile and Christian as synonymous. They need to know that only a minority of Gentiles are Christians and to sense the great difference between pagan and believer.

One encouraging development within Jewry today is a renewed interest in the Old Testament Scriptures. For the first time in history there now exists an Israel Bible Society that meets annually. A great contribution is possible by means of an effective movement to carry this interest over into the New Testament itself.

One of the greatest single factors in influencing Jews to Christianity is the individual’s discovery that there are already thousands of Hebrew Christians.

- More from The Editors

John Newton Lives On

Donald E. Demaray

December 31 marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of John Newton’s death. But John Newton in evangelical tradition is by no means dead. He has lived on and is remembered today in some of the choicest hymns of Christian praise. What Christian, for instance, has not sung “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds” or “Glorious things of thee are spoken”? Or that simple and direct spiritual autobiography which was written long after a jeopardous career, “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me”?

Through Many Snares

Quite remarkable, one observes, is the literary quality of these hymns, for Newton in his early days had been the son of a shipmaster, a sailor of little education. He had served his father on the Mediterranean during his youth and later had been impressed into the British navy as a midshipman. Pursuing the typical reckless and godless habits of life at sea, he made several attempts at escaping from his duties there, and for his perniciousness was flogged and later half-starved—an experience to which he appears to allude in the lines, “Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come.”

He became for some years a commander in the African slave trade; but because he had employed his spare time to acquire some education, he chanced to read among other books a copy of Thomas a Kempis’s Imitation of Christ. It was this that implanted the seed of his conversion. Newton gave his heart to God and straightway abandoned his sinful habits for a new life. Returning to England, the young convert completed his studies in ministerial preparation and in time took his ordination at Olney church in Buckingshire.

While at Olney, Newton befriended the mentally disturbed poet, William Cowper, and set him to writing hymns. Together they published the Olney Hymns in 1779, the best known of which are perhaps, “Jesus, where’re thy people meet” and “There is a fountain filled with blood.” It is possible that the world would have been less enriched by Cowper’s poetry had he not been encouraged by his friend to write for God.

Social Reforms

But Newton became more than a hymn writer, and his influence expressed itself in the numerous social reforms of his day. Take, for instance, his incitation upon William Wilberforce, champion for the cause of Abolition. When Newton left Olney to become rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, London, he made the acquaintance of Wilberforce. The latter came often to the pastor for counsel and after a period was converted under Newton’s ministry. Familiar with the infamous character of slave trade, Newton enlightened Wilberforce on the state of Negroes in slavery. In May of 1787, the Society for the Abolition of Slavery was founded. Wilberforce directed its proceedings. And before Newton’s death, abolition became law. Slavery was totally abolished by 1833.

Newton has also lived on in the realm of evangelical missions. To illustrate, in 1791 a young irreligious Scot by the name of Claudius Buchanan went to hear Newton preach in London. In spite of himself, he liked the sermon and, after an interview with the minister, was converted to Jesus Christ. As a friend, Newton persuaded the young convert to enter the ministry. Buchanan went to Cambridge and later became Newton’s curate at London. But Newton cherished other ideas for the talented graduate and encouraged him to go to the mission field. It is undoubtedly significant that Buchanan was one of the earliest missionaries to be engaged in the modern missionary movement. Father of the movement had been William Carey, also a beneficiary of Newton’s encouragement and spiritual guidance. But these instances are not all. Newton influenced evangelical missions in other ways; i.e., as founder of the Church Missionary Society, as spiritual father of Thomas Scott who became the first secretary of this Society, and as promoter in the founding of the London Missionary Society.

Credit may go to Newton also for the efforts which Hannah More exerted as a pioneer in the field of Christian education. Miss More had had a brilliant career as a playwright in London, but like the others she had come under the now famous preacher’s ministry. She re-examined her life and her relationship to God and determined to change the direction of her vocation. Seeing the need for better education among children in a period of widespread illiteracy, she started the famous charity schools. But to teach these “sixteen or seventeen hundred” children how to read was not enough, she believed, for they would read wrong things if good literature was unavailable. So it was that she also put her literary abilities to work and created Christian stories and tracts. Two million tracts were sold in the first year and this was a means to establishing the Religious Tract Society. Hannah More had been inspired by Newton’s “vital, experimental religion,” as she called it. And this was the fervent evangelical faith which she conveyed to children and readers alike. Those who caught the spirit from her propagated their faith and the spread of Christian witness has identified the evangelical tradition to this day. John Newton lives on in their faith.

Heartily entering into the religious work and views of Wesley and Whitefield, Newton also provoked the Great Awakening of the century. Today we sing the hymns, enjoy the social reforms, witness the missionary efforts and profit from the Christian education and literature that John Newton as well as others made possible for their generations and ours. In all this, John Newton lives on.

Donald E. Demaray is Associate Professor of Religion at Seattle Pacific College. He is author of Devotions and Prayers of John Wesley just published by Baker Book House.

- More from John Newton

Retreat from the Ministry

Kenneth L. Miles

“I’ve resigned my pastorate,” said a minister recently, “and have signed a contract to teach school this year so I can get something done for God.” This may seem an astonishing statement coming from a pastor, but I for one understand what he meant by it. As he later explained, he had become something of an office manager, a master of detail, an architect and a committee maneuverer; whereas originally, he had been trained and commissioned to give himself to the Word, to prayer, to soul-winning, to Bible teaching and to visiting the sick and the lost.

“Sure,” he admitted, “they let me preach on Sunday, but the real emphasis was usually on how I could organize, engineer, create publicity, and so forth.” By returning to high school to teach in the chemistry labs, he believed now that he would have more time actually to witness and win souls to Christ. Surely, this is a sad commentary on twentieth-century evangelical church life, but it is representative of the feeling of many earnest ministers today.

It is high time spirit-filled pastors took the position affirmed by the twelve disciples who, tom by increasing demands, said, “It is not fit that we should forsake the word of God and minister to tables.… But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word” (Acts 6). Others were appointed to attend to material matters. Did God vindicate and approve the stand taken by those disciples? The answer is found in verse 7: “And the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly.…”

Shall we pursue the matter a bit further and ask ourselves candidly what has contributed this sad condition? Here are a few possible answers:

The pressures and material demands of twentieth-century living have brought mothers as well as fathers into full-time business. The result has been that fewer people are free to do church work. Hence, the minister must take over lay peoples’ duties or face serious losses in the work of the church.

A second possible answer is that churches have relied too heavily upon machinery, committees and organizational wheels, and not upon the efficacy of the Holy Spirit. This indicts clergy and laity alike.

By way of a third consideration, if the truth be frankly faced, it must be said that some of us preachers have lost our intense love for Jesus and for the simplicity of the gospel message. The result of this, of course, has been that we would rather manage an office, blueprint an educational unit or duplicate church bulletins than go from door to door compelling men and women to seek the Saviour. Were we to get back to our first love (Rev. 2:4), we would set aside everything for the Lord Jesus’ sake, and we would allow ourselves to be driven by the Spirit into the wilderness of sinners to claim them for the Kingdom.

Kenneth L. Miles is pastor of the Ballard Baptist Church of Seatde, Washington.

- More from Kenneth L. Miles

Eutychus and His Kin: December 9, 1957

Eutychus

13 SHOPPING DAYS

Plunging into a parking space at the Grand Plaza shopping center, I brushed fenders with a faded sedan and recognized Pastor Peterson inside. He was waiting for his wife, and cleared the front seat of packages so that I could join him.

“Christmas shopping?”

He winced and suddenly thrust an envelope in my hand. In the growing dusk I read the penciled lines:

Hark, the tinsel fairies sing,

Santa Claus will come to bring

Lighted trees with presents piled,

Rocket ships for every child.

Gleeful all the space kids rise,

Join the sputniks in the skies

With the missile men exclaim,

‘Christmas sure was getting tame!’ ”

It was my turn to wince. Pastor Peterson not only admitted to writing it, but insisted that he was about to prepare a “realistic” Christmas program, including a litany to Santa Claus, and with Jingle Bells for an offertory.

Why was he so bitter? It began when his children wanted to miss the Thanksgiving service to see Santa arrive at the Plaza in a space satellite. He was further depressed by the mixture of syrupy “White Christmas” music and syncopated carols blaring from the Plaza audio system. Then he had passed a bargain table crowded with plastic figurines: Santa Claus, Bambi, Flower, Rudolf, the Holy Family, and a few shepherds.

“What good will it do to put Christ back into Christmas?” he demanded. “That’s precisely the trouble. Christ is buried in Christmas. The nativity is only a Christmas fable, the least interesting one, since it is Santa who pays off. We need to get Christ out of Christmas. We need Christ to save us from our Christmas Christianity!”

The parking lot speakers boomed,

“Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,

Hail the Incarnate Deity …”

Perhaps somewhere in the crowd someone heard the words, Pastor!

MOODY ORIGINALS

We are gathering and organizing historical material on D. L. Moody, especially in view of the coming 75th anniversary of Moody Bible Institute in 1961. If any of your readers have original letters, photographs, clippings, or similar material concerning Moody or the early days of the Institute … we are especially interested in … information on Moody’s activities in the U. S. Christian Commission during the Civil War, and also in YMCA work during the Spanish-American War; photographs, admission tickets, etc., of Moody’s campaign in the tabernacle at Monroe and Franklin Streets, Chicago, in 1876, and an illustration of the huge Forepaugh circus tent at Madison Street and the lake front during the Chicago World’s Fair campaign of 1893; any definite information on voice recordings of Dr. R. A. Torrey and Dr. James M. Gray …

Moody Bible Institute

Chicago, Ill.

PROTESTANT PRECEDENT

The article on “What is Christian Separation” (Nov. 11 issue) argues that Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians did not justify them, and presumably does not justify us, in being “come-outers.”

If this is true without qualification, and the author does not add qualifications, then the Protestant Reformation was a mistake.

May we then expect the ecumenical movement to restore us to Rome?

Indianapolis, Ind.

Spurgeon and Morgan may have smoked but they did not smoke to the glory of God … Great men of God could become much greater if they were to separate themselves from the world … Conscience is not to be man’s guide, but conviction should be based on the word of God.

First Baptist Church

Berwick, La.

David Cowie’s article on Christian separation should be challenged by every Protestant. He argues that … “Paul nowhere urges the Christians of Corinth to be ‘come-outers.’ ” While I do not prize the expression ‘come-outer,’ I do prize the Reformation. Cowie’s argument would be an argument against leaving Rome, if pressed to its proper end.

A Christian should never leave a church until he has to. And when does he have to? When that church would compel him to sin … To tolerate and support the agents of Satan, in order to support the agents of Christ, is forbidden as doing evil that good may come.

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church

Garden Grove, Calif.

In 1910, at Nan Tungchow, China, I was a medical missionary, employed by the Foreign Christian Missionary Society, the missionary arm of Disciples of Christ. The mission employed a Chinese teacher for me, and he was an opium-smoker.

After I had admonished this teacher for several months to stop using opium, he told me he had quit. Experience with opium-smokers whom I had treated, to help them overcome the opium habit, caused me to fear this man was not telling the truth, which is the usual way out of a dilemma, for an opium addict.

So I asked this teacher how he quit so easily. His reply caused an investigation that resulted in my return to America, to invest my life. I was a graduate of two American medical colleges and did not know that tobacco is a narcotic!

Here is the reply of this Chinese to my question: “I did not find it so hard to stop using opium: I just began using your American tobacco.”

Delta, Ala.

CHRIST’S COMINGS

Biblical interpretation has missed one of the most significant truths in the New Testament. It is that of Christ’s reign, his comings, and his climactic coming.

Evidently Christ was already reigning when he announced: “All authority is given unto me in heaven, and in earth.” I like to render that announcement, “above history, and within history.” Christ, then, is already reigning unseen, above the changing episodes of history: and just as he disciplined Israel through the conquering power of Babylon, so he is disciplining the Christian world today, through the disturbing restless ambitions of a lying communism. But despite communism, Christ has all authority both above history and within history; and the release of the atom bomb was by his timing, and so also the other revolutionizing scientific inventions of our age. Christ has all authority; and he has released all these creative and threatening forces.

As such forces are released, the purpose of God within history necessarily makes advances. Jesus called these “comings”; and he said (Matt. 26:64) that his comings would be manifest in history continuously from that time forward. Our confusing English word “hereafter” has obscured his meaning, but the Greek is perfectly definite. He said (ap arti) “From now on ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” The parallel passage in Mark has no time clause, but in Luke it is equally vivid. He said (apo tou nun) “From the now shall the Son of Man sit on the right hand of the power of God” (Luke 22:69).

Evidently Jesus is using the vivid imaginative apocalyptic language, and, “sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds,” refers to manifestations of his increasing influence within history. Jesus calls these manifestations, “comings,” and he specified one “coming” that was very near at hand. It would take place within the then living generation (Matt. 10:23; 24:30–34). Neither of these statements refer to the Saviour’s Climactic Coming, but to intermediate comings that mark off the progress of his Kingdom’s increase within history. His Climactic Coming will be the crown of all his comings, and it will be as objective as his Ascension. New Testament interpretation, however, is confused when the Saviour’s multiple comings are dropped out of emphasis, and his Climactic Coming is called his Second Coming, just as if these other “comings” were not equally real and equally essential to the unfolding of his purpose. It is interesting to study the successive crises of history from this point of view; and not since the Ascension has there been such a tremendous release of creative new forces into history as at the present time.

Browns Mills, N. J.

ACTION AND REACTION

The lack of consistency in content and point of view makes me agree with one correspondent, “anemic.”

Calvary O. P. Church

Middletown, Pa.

I had hoped to find something great in your journal, but find instead a series of dull, wordy, self-satisfied sermonizings of schoolboy standard (but much too [sic] boring to hold the attention of any schoolboy I know). Is there NO American theology comparable with that of England, Scotland, or Germany?—and as readable?

St. Mary’s Vicarage

Hawera, New Zealand

As a local preacher in the Methodist Church, I have found your magazine the finest thing that I have received in the nature of Christian publications.…

Chattanooga, Tenn.

Why not try to be as fair in evaluating the position of the “extreme fundamentalists” as you are in setting forth critical studies in other areas of Christian life in the world today?…

Bible Baptist Church

Russell, Kans.

… An intelligent, definitely high-class publication, and fills a place that no other periodical that I know does.… But I think a periodical that presented fully and impartially all the types of Christianity within my own Anglican Communion would come nearer to giving a picture of Christianity today.…

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Salem, Ore.

The title CHRISTIANITY TODAY sounds modernistic.… something different from the Christianity of Jesus Christ Himself and His chosen apostles.… Having seen your paper, I take it to be just part of the trilogy “Yesterday, Today, Forever.”

Lutheran Bible Institute

Kobe, Japan

So long as the journal continues as “good as it is” I wouldn’t want it to be better. Best wishes.…

First Methodist Church

San Jose, Calif.

I am impressed by the thoughtful character of the articles and the way in which the contributors relate the Christian faith to the present day scene, and also the wide news coverage.…

Redhill, Surrey, England

I have read with deep appreciation the challenging and refreshing articles in your new publication. It is most rewarding to know that the leading evangelical thinkers in America today have fulfilled a need of long standing—to produce a periodical that is dedicated to the advancement of a sound spiritual Christianity in a highly materialistic age. Your attention to high standards of literary technique, intellectual achievement, and spiritual insight is commendable.

Zion Evang. U. B. Church

Reading, Pa.

Okay. You made a “sale.” I have been receiving and enjoying your magazine all these months.… What I really wondered is whether you could and would keep up the real meat-dispensing articles.… Well, apparently you are going to do just that, and rather than miss a single issue, here’s my order.…

First English Lutheran Church

Missoula, Mont.

Always a seeker after the truth, I am happy to commend you for the fairness of most of the articles.… Also, I like the keen analysis in the editorials.…

The Presbyterian Church

Seneca Castle, N. Y.

It is a great satisfaction to see at least one religious magazine stand foursquare regarding the divinity of Christ, without any apology or doubt.…

Thousand Islands Christian Service Camp

Sandy Pond, N. Y.

Your magazine will, I am sure, find a warm welcome in many a minister’s study.

United Church of Canada

Orangeville, Ontario

It will be received warmly everywhere by all who love the unadulterated Word of God.… More power to your group in their high and holy endeavor …

Arlington, Calif.

You are rising above the petty grievances of many Fundamentalists and are free to tell the whole story of contemporary theology and social views.…

Evan. Free Church

Yuba City, Calif.

You are on the right track.… Keep going.

San Diego, Calif.

The most stimulating and useful tool I have yet found for my ministry.…

Presbyterian Church

Stewartsville, N. J.

- More from Eutychus

“God’s Word—Man’s Hope”

Christianity in the World Today

The Literacy-Literature Movement

This special article is written forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby James W. Carty, Jr., Religious News Editor of The Nashville Tennesseean, one of the South’s outstanding newspapers. Mr. Carty has taken part in literacy-literature and adult education projects in Egypt and Tanganyika. He taught religious journalism for two years at Scarritt College, and has contributed book reviews and articles to 35 journalistic, educational and religious journals.

Christian literacy and literature represent the most promising—but probably the most underdeveloped—channels of missionary work in a period of rapid social change. In many Asian and African countries, between 70 and 90 per cent of the adults cannot read. In South America, several nations have illiteracy rates of 20 to 50 per cent and in Bolivia it reaches 80 per cent.

It is a tragic paradox that Protestant followers of Calvin and Luther have lagged in teaching millions of adults overseas to read, the main prerequisite for gaining direct access to the Bible.

Christian leaders now realize that literature is one of the main hopes of the church at this time when doors are closing to western missionaries in the non-Christian countries. Many nations are denying visas for new missionaries and they have placed restrictions on traditional mission methods of education, preaching and personal evangelism.

Moreover, new life is surging in the old faiths of the Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, and animists. Communism is spreading—and largely on the wings of attractive and appealing literature, widely distributed.

American mission boards and younger churches abroad are awakening to their mutual responsibilities to provide the written word of God for converting pagans and nurturing Christians. Christian leaders finally are accepting in their hearts what they paid lip service to in the past—the belief that Scripture, when read by each individual and not the preacher alone, has power to transform lives.

An overview of the world-wide literacy-literature movement will indicate the trends, weaknesses and suggested future development for this type of Christ-centered, adult education program.

Frank C. Laubach, the noted apostle of literacy, has stimulated great interest in literacy as evangelism. With his literacy charts and his “Each-one-teach-one” slogan, he has championed the cause of the world’s millions of non-literates. He has called them the “silent billion”—those who lack the knowledge and the voice for determining their own affairs.

On many mission fields throughout the world, Laubach has helped church leaders organize programs to teach individuals to read and to provide them simply-written reading materials. These brief, attractive booklets have been of a self-help nature—about health, farm life, family relations, economic affairs, and moral problems that arise in all of life. These have been graded so that they are a stepping stone to reading the Scriptures.

For many years, Laubach was field representative and special counselor for the Committee on World Literacy and Christian Literature—popularly referred to as “Lit-Lit.” He retired from that program in 1956, but the committee is carrying on the work he inspired.

Laubach-led and other teams sponsored by the Lit-Lit committee have done work in approximately 250 languages in more than 60 countries. These efforts have initiated campaigns in which several million people have learned to read and have been provided Christ-centered reading materials.

This committee, a unit of the foreign missions division of the National Council of Churches, is spearheading the most comprehensive literacy-literature program of any of the church-related organizations. It works with NCC members and non-members alike and so gets more cooperation, more spirit of unity, around the central theme of the Word of God than many other religious organizations. It is interesting denominational leaders in stepping up literacy-literature programs. It helps some of the mission groups get on their feet by subsidizing their printing efforts in part. And to recruit volunteers to do this highly specialized work, Lit-Lit is providing approved missions candidates with scholarships at American schools.

More foreign and American candidates are trained in Christian literacy writing at Syracuse University than any other institution in the United States. Work there is under the direction of Robert Laubach, son of Frank C. Laubach. The staff of the school also includes the outstanding religious journalism teacher, Dr. Roland E. Wolseley, and he helps students acquire a knowledge of the social significance of their work and of their role as creative writers and interpreters. Another education center doing solid work of training workers in literacy techniques is Hartford Theological seminary.

The Lit-Lit committee also sends teams to start campaigns and to train missionaries and nationals in follow-up techniques. These efforts help develop indigenous writers and illustrators especially appropriate for each nation.

The committee is conducting continual research as to the effectiveness of the literacy-literature approach for different peoples. The result, these experiments invariably show, is that literacy-literature is a valuable evangelistic method, because it is both a mass and an individual movement. Thousands learn to read simultaneously—but in pairs. One individual is taught to read by a friend and then reinforces his learning and shares his knowledge by teaching another.

One of the most significant, long-time pieces of work has been done by Dr. Wesley Sadler, linguist-missionary for the United Lutheran Church of America. He has done 16 years of pioneer work among the Loma people of Liberia. In that period he has put the Loma language into written form, produced a grammar and a dictionary, written 62 Christ-centered social-education booklets, translated Scripture and started a newspaper, the Loma Weekly. This periodical is the only non-English language newspaper among 26 tribes in Liberia.

The value of editorial specialists on the mission field is evident in the results obtained by Sadler. The Loma Weekly solidifies social cohesion among the Loma tribesmen of 32 villages, and gives them a wider vision of kinship with other people in Liberia and the rest of the world. Papers like this are essential to prevent the new literates from lapsing back into illiteracy.

Sadler and his wife, Roslyn Sadler, an artist, headed the first interracial, international and interdenominational field team sponsored by Lit-Lit in developing an overseas progarm. That team of six members was sent to Tanganyika in the summer of 1956 and took part in a project co-sponsored by the interdenominational Christian Council of Tanganyika. Forty missionaries from six missions, including Lutherans and such evangelical groups as Assemblies of God and Baptists, took part.

The other specialists on the team with the Sadlers included Mrs. Elizabeth Chesley Baity, American novelist living in Geneva; Artist Phil Gray, who worked eight years with Frank Laubach; Horace Mason, British senior social development officer for the Tanganyikan government; Enoch Mulira, African community development officer who is the brother of the president of one of the two political parties in Uganda, and this writer.

This team taught missionaries and national church workers how to organize and conduct literacy campaigns. The visiting members also produced literacy charts, and a primer in Swahili, the lingua franca or trade language of East Africa; and some simply written follow-up leaflets on how to improve agriculture, economics, health, spiritual and family life. Writing courses were offered to teach the nationals or missionaries how to write additional booklets. Over a period of months, materials were tested to see that they were valid, and then were revised and refined. The long-range project, designed to teach millions to read, is scheduled to begin in 1958.

Lit-Lit plans to establish a regional center in the near future in Africa. Dr. and Mrs. Sadler will be among the workers. Teams of specialists on loan from various denominations will train visiting personnel, who come there for short-term, intensive courses. Such literature houses will need to be established by many denominations, sometimes working separately and sometimes pooling their employes and plans cooperatively. These houses are needed for sections of Asia, Africa, and South America.

Literature centers have grown out of local needs and are varied. An outstanding one is Literacy House, at Minia, some 180 miles south of Cairo. Staff personnel include Egyptians of the Evangelical church, such as Miss Halana Makhiel, trained at Berea College, and the Rev. Sam Habib, trained at Syracuse School of Journalism on a Lit-Lit scholarship.

Literacy House has started programs in 16 Egyptian communities. One of the most successful has been at Deir Abu Hinnis, a city of refuge established when the Arabs drove Coptic Christians across the Nile in the fifth century. The town was tom by a bitter feud at the time the literacy campaign began in 1955. The disagreement started seven years previously over a boundary dispute between elders of the two churches, the Coptic and Evangelical, and spread to political, conomic and social affairs. But an 18-month literacy campaign increased adult literates from 362 to 2000; reconciled man to man and men to God; turned the village from one of hate to one of love. The group organized a democratic village planning committee, started a farmers’ cooperative, a health clinic, a school, two library-recreation rooms, and 18 Bible study groups.

The late Margaret Runbeck, noted American author, went to Egypt and helped nationals prepare the booklets. She taught pastors of the Evangelical church (established by missionaries of the United Presbyterian Church) to write social-education materials, directly in Arabic.

Lit-Lit’s purpose is not to publish books, but to get them published. An ideal book cannot be written in London or New York, but has to be prepared on the field, to suit the thought and cultural patterns and needs of the people. Field work must be a training experience for those who will become the literature leaders of the younger churches.

In India, mission presses have set up a service council so that members can share in technical equipment and skills. The Board of Christian Literature of the National Christian Council of India published 87 books in 11 languages in 1956. Fourteen theological textbooks were done, one book on Billy Graham in Tamil and Telegu vernacular languages, and a biography of Graham in the Malayalam vernacular. Trunks are used to pass collections of books from village to village.

Support of organizations like Lit-Lit is needed, because the younger churches cannot always afford the printing expenses. Christian churches do not have the financial support of the governments; in Ceylon, for example, much Buddhist literature is published with government support.

In Hong Kong, a great amount of Christian literature is published by the Council for Christian Literature for Overseas Chinese. It is sold widely outside Red China in countries where Chinese now live.

Japan is the literacy exception in the East, since 98 per cent of adults are literate. Christian books are published by 14 different presses. Stress in 1956 was on Luther and the great Christian classics, as it can be where the people have literacy and a traditional culture. Many Japanese—sometimes 9,000 a year, and all literate—are moving to Latin America. Their habits of reading may influence Latin Americans.

The evangelical groups are a major hope for building Christian democracies in South America. Catholics hunger for direct possession of the Bible. The Wycliffe translators have done outstanding work in translating Scriptures into Indian languages. Spanish literacy work is ready to move forward in churches and seminaries. A forward push in this area is needed because a new generation of illiterates has come into being. In Honduras, for example, an estimated 200,000 children are not in school because of lack of teachers and buildings. The school program of the evangelical missions and churches are important to the culture, economic and spiritual welfare of that country.

In an effort to help the churches coordinate their efforts, Dr. F. J. Rex, education secretary for Lit-Lit, recently held several meetings with church leaders in Latin America. In Mexico, for example, he met with 22 representatives of evangelical churches, missions and other agencies. That session was arranged through the help of Dr. Gonzalo Baez-Camargo, literature secretary for the committee on cooperation in Latin America, and Dr. William Wonderley, American Bible society representative in Mexico.

Lit-Lit officials have headquarters in New York City, but supplement team trips to the field by going themselves to advise personnel on the spot. Dr. Floyd Shacklock, executive secretary, went to Africa in 1956 and 1957 to help missionaries and nationals plan work. Both Dr. Shacklock and Dr. Rex are able men who have had long backgrounds of actual work experience in the field.

Some 39 denominational boards share in supporting Lit-Lit’s financial program. Even more communions take part in the work on the field. In 1943, when Lit-Lit was formed, there were 19 member denominations. It was made up of the Committee on Christian Literature of the International Missionary Council and the World Literacy Committee of the Foreign Missions Conference. Later that year, the American Christian Literature Society for Muslims merged with Lit-Lit.

Through encouragement of Lit-Lit, there is a trend toward use of specialists by the denominations. In the past, literacy-literature was only a part-time added duty for missionaries with other responsibilities. Now there is an increasing number of full-time people working on problems of writing materials, some trained before their missionary work began, others trained on furlough.

The goal of each denomination should be a literature secretary for each country where it has missions work.

Jesus asked, “Have ye not read?” (Luke 6:3). His own stress on the centrality of Scripture demands that Christians take a new look to see if they themselves are giving priority to the written Word of God.

Sixth Elo Conference

Sixth annual conference of Evangelical Literature Overseas is being held this week (Dec. 9–12) in Lincoln, Nebraska, with daily sessions and workshops on editorial, publishing and distribution problems. Among the speakers are Harold J. Kregel, missionary recently returned from Spain, David B. Woodward and J. Oswald Sanders of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship, and R. M. Searing, recently of Colombia. Experts in several branches of mission literature work will appear in panel discussions to deal with practical problems aired by the delegates.

ELO is an independent organization designed to implement mission literature in many areas of the world, has its headquarters in Wheaton, Illinois. Executive Secretary Harold B. Street has spent several months this past year setting up literature councils in Africa and the Middle East, and Director Kenneth N. Taylor recently returned from a three-month trip around the world in the same cause.

People: Words And Events

Matter of Age—Dr. James Thomas Blackwood, Monteagle, Tenn., who may be the oldest Methodist minister in the world, was honored in absentia recently on his 100th birthday by the Church’s Tennessee Conference. He was too ill to attend the celebration.… The Rev. Newell J. Matthews, a Baptist minister, celebrated his 104th birthday at Pilot Mountain, N. C. He was spry enough to pose for a birthday photo.

City Churches—Gov. Theodore R. McKeldin of Maryland says “urban renewal” must include a reinvigoration of city churches. In an address at Baltimore, he asserted: “It is not the function of the church to serve either property values or the convenience of its members. Its function is to provide spiritual strength and comfort to those who need it, and to discharge that function it should take its stand where the need is greatest, not where it is the least.”

United Church Leader—John V. Matthews, Fayetteville, Tenn., has been elected president of United Church Men—the laymen’s unit of the National Council of Churches. Matthews, a lawyer, is a layman of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. He succeeds J. Clinton Hawkins of St. Louis, a Methodist.

Honors—Miss Mary Cermak, a missionary nurse of the Bolivian Indian Mission, has received the Florence Nightingale Medal from the International Red Cross for her self-denial on behalf of the sick and the needy. The medal was awarded in a ceremony at the National University by the Bolivian Minister of Health.… Mrs. Aogot Baeza, primary teacher at the David Trumbull School sponsored by the Presbyterian Church in Valparaiso, Chile, has received popular tribute for the part she played in teaching first grade lessons to presidential candidate Luis Bossay Leiva.

Annuity Plan—Protestant readers across the nation are being offered a Roman Catholic-sponsored annuity plan which has been available to Catholics for the last 25 years. The offer, addressed to “all men and women of good will without regard to religious affiliation,” was made in advertisements appearing on the financial pages of such publications as the Chicago Tribune, Journal of Commerce, New York Times, U. S. News and World Report and the Wall Street Journal.

Space Patron Saint—Selection of a patron saint for space travelers is being informally considered by authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, a Vatican official said recently. The most likely patron, it is believed, will be St. Joseph of Copertino, a 17th-century Italian Franciscan friar. According to tradition, he floated in the air during religious ecstasies on more than 70 occasions.

Dancing Banned—A ban on all campus dances at its colleges has been voted by the North Carolina Baptist Convention. The action overruled trustees of Wake Forest and Meredith Colleges who recently permitted on-campus dancing after a lapse of 20 years. In addition, the Convention named a committee to “study attitudes or organizations on any campus which might be hindering the development of a genuine spiritual atmosphere. This action indicated the Convention intends to look into fraternities and other campus groups, as requested by its retiring president, Dr. J. C. Canipe of Hendersonville. Wake Forest students retaliated by burning Dr. Canipe in effigy.

Hall of Fame—Allen Wright, an Indian chief and Presbyterian minister in Oklahoma during the 19th century, was honored by the National Hall of Fame for Famous American Indians in ceremonies recently at Oklahoma City. His statue was unveiled in the rotunda of the state capitol. Wright, who died in 1885, was chief of the Choctaws from 1866 to 1880. He was a pastor, scholar, military leader, philosopher and statesman.

King James Version—The King James Version outsells the Revised Standard Version by about 8 to 1, a NCC check revealed.

Edwards Catches Up

Millions of Americans peeked into the so-called private life of Dr. Billy Graham recently when the television cameras of “This Is Your Life” made an excellent effort to accomplish an impossibility—packing the story into 30 minutes, with commercials.

Ralph Edwards, noted TV personality, had been trying to catch up with the fast-moving evangelist for several years and finally made it when the temporarily-crippled Dr. Graham limped into the Beverly Hilton Hotel to address several hundred members of the Hollywood film colony.

Memorable events and people appeared briefly on the screen, depicting the unprecedented rise of a North Carolina farm boy, who had more talent for milking cows than influencing people, to a position of world spiritual leadership.

To keep the record straight, Dr. Graham had to interrupt Edwards near the end. He said: “This is God’s doing. The praise, honor and glory must go to him.”

It is impossible to gauge the total effect of such a program. As is so often the case, however, God seemed to begin his greatest work after the cameras had stopped turning.

Top actors and actresses, who themselves have held audiences spellbound, gave rapt attention as the evangelist began his scheduled address on Bible answers to the problems of the world. Almost an hour later they were still sitting on the mental edge of their seats.

Dr. Graham mentioned the great importance of sputniks and muttniks now circling the globe. He quoted Prime Minister Nehru of India as saying, “the world is now living on the brink of disaster.” He quoted a German scientist as saying it is now possible to depopulate the earth in 24 hours.

He warned that it is now impossible for anyone to live with any sense of security, outside of Jesus Christ.

“America and the world have no hope,” he said, “unless they repent of sin and return to God.”

Then, concentrating his thrust on the individual, Dr. Graham told his listeners about their great need of God and of the force for good they might be in a world that looked to them for entertainment.

He urged them to take a stand for Christ, no matter how unpopular it might be. He explained the Bible’s conditions—upon which the stand might be made—personal repentance, faith in Christ as the Son of God, surrender of will to God’s will, daily Bible reading and prayer, witnessing for Christ and active participation in a church where the Bible is preached.

The address in many respects was similar to those he had given throughout America, Great Britain, Europe and Asia. The Hollywood locale didn’t make any difference.

Dr. Graham has stated on many occasions: “People basically are the same. All have sinned. All need God.”

The evangelist and members of his team were in California primarily to meet with ministers of the San Francisco area, where a six-week crusade will begin April 27 in the Cow Palace. An estimated 1,400 ministers turned out for for the meeting to hear a discussion of plans for the mammoth undertaking.

Observers described the occasion as one of the largest and most significant gathering of ministers ever held in the San Francisco area.

‘Breather’ Asked

Rep. Brooks Hays (D.-Ark.) has proposed that a “breather period” be given the South in the matter of school integration. He said this would “permit a re-evaluation of the U. S. Supreme Court’s school integration order.”

The Congressman, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention, made his proposal in an address to the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce-Associates Industries.

Mr. Hays, in another talk, told the annual meeting of the Arkansas Baptist Convention that the solution to the Little Rock integration crisis will come as a result of “God’s law.”

“We will not be disturbed by the great conflicts between state and federal laws,” he said. “We will seek a solution in the realm of spiritual values because it is God’s law that will bring peace.”

In his address to the business group, Mr. Hays said the “breather” plan is to “invite our northern friends to consider a suspension of judicial procedures for a while to give us an opportunity to re-evaluate and re-examine this most difficult question.”

He admitted it would be a difficult problem to obtain a suspension of procedures but said this was necessary to prevent a repetition of the Little Rock integration controversy and preserve the nation’s morale and unity.

Mr. Hays said he would seek such a suspension by using “friendly persuasion” on his northern colleagues in Congress.

The Arkansas lawmaker said he respected the Supreme Court and warned that “we lose something precious” by flouting its decisions. But he said the court can be wrong, and in areas of national policy it is the duty of Congress to correct the tribunal’s mistakes. He intimated that he considered the racial question a matter of national policy.

Mr. Hays referred to the Little Rock situation when he discussed the growing interdependence of the world.

“What happens in America is known in the heart of Africa tomorrow,” he said. “The recent experience in our city makes that truth known to us.”

He expressed the hope that Baptists would be able to exert a moral influence throughout the world to insure peace.

“We disappoint God when we allow national loyalties to involve us in war,” he asserted.

Jeroboam’S Temple

A biblical archaeologist has announced that he knows the location of the ancient Temple of Jeroboam but can’t reach it.

Dr. James L. Kelso said the temple is buried under the southern edge of Bethel, 12 miles from Jerusalem, but “homes are so close together there that any excavation work is impossible.”

Dr. Kelso is professor of Biblical Archeology and Semitics at Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary. He left last June on his third attempt to uncover the temple that Jeroboam I built as a rival place of worship to Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem.

Bethel was the chief sanctuary of the Northern Kingdom of Judea following the secession of 10 tribes under Jeroboam, the rebel leader. Jerusalem was the capital of the Southern Kingdom of Judea after the breakup of the original 12-tribe nation.

In previous explorations Dr. Kelso unearthed a giant stone wall surrounding Bethel. He also discovered portions of the winter palace of King Herod the Great near Jericho. Herod was the ruler of Judea when Christ was born and ordered the infamous Slaughter of the Innocents.

His next expeditions will be to Herodium, a few miles from Bethlehem, and Pella, near the Sea of Galilee.

Theology

Bible Text of the Month: Matthew 1:22-23

C. H. Spurgeon

Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel which being interpreted is, God with us (Matt. 1:22, 23).

Who would have thought that the prophecy contained in Isaiah 7:14 could have referred to our Lord? One of these days we shall discover a great deal more in the inspired Word than we can see today. Perhaps it is needful to our understanding a prophecy that we should see it actually fulfilled. What blind eyes we have!

No one can doubt that the Christianity of the New Testament is supernaturalistic through and through. Whether we have regard to the person of Jesus or to the salvation he brought to men, the primary note of this Christianity certainly is supernaturalism. He who walked the earth as its Lord, and whom the very winds and waves obeyed; who could not be holden of the grave, but burst the bonds of death and ascended into the heavens in the sight of man; he who now sits at the right hand of God and sheds down his gift of salvation through his Spirit upon the men of his choice—it were impossible that such an one should have entered the world undistinguished among common men. His supernatural birth is given already, in a word, in his supernatural life and his supernatural work, and forms an indispensable element in the supernatural religion which he founded.

God-With-Us

Emmanuel—One of the forms of the principal Hebrew word for God is el; and emmanu signifies “with us.” While this was to be the actual name of the child born in the time of Ahaz (Isa. 7:14), it was for Jesus not a name actually borne, but only a description of his character and position.

J. A. BROADUS

The Christian world could derive but little comfort in one part of this title, were it unconnected with the other. As the Almighty El, or Diety, he would be rather an object of terror and confusion to guilty and offending creatures; but as the El, in covenant, as God with us, he is the inexhaustible source of hope and joy to those who believe.

HORAE SOLITARIAE

The pure nature of God, and the base nature of man, that were strangers ever since the fall, are knit together in Christ. What can be in a greater degree of strangeness than men’s unholiness and God’s pure nature? Yet the nature of man and of God being so severed before, are met together in Christ; so that in this one word “Emmanuel” there is heaven and earth, God and man, infinite and finite; therefore we may well prefix Behold.

RICHARD SIBBES

Emmanuel—This name they are directed by God to give him; and there could be no reason with God to select this name but because its meaning denoted a reality. The person bears the name because he is what the name signifies. As the Lord was called Jesus, saviour, because he is Saviour; and as he is called Christ, anointed, because he is the Anointed, so is he called Emmanuel, God-with-us, because he is God with us. He is God with man; he is Divinity with humanity. And he is called God with us because he is virgin-born, for the prophet conjoins these two facts as antecedent and result. That is, because he has only a human mother, and so a divine Father, therefore he is in name, and thereby in reality, God with us. No Jewish or Unitarian gloss can evade this. It demonstrates that Messiah is by birth, God with us; and therefore that he is so by person, by nature, and by substance.

D. D. WHEDON

One Person

By a wonderful and unsearchable union; the manner whereof is to be believed, not discussed; admired, not pried into; personal it is, yet not of persons; of natures, and yet not natural. As a soul and body are one man; so God and man are one person, saith Athanasius. And as every believer that is born of God, saith another, remains the same entire person that he was before, receiving nevertheless into him a divine nature which before he had not: so Emmanuel, continuing the same perfect person which he had been from eternity, assumeth nevertheless a human nature which before he had not, to be born within his person for ever.

JOHN TRAPP

What constituted the extraordinary character of the fact here announced (Isa. 7:14)? It consisted in the fact that, according to chapter 9:6, Emmanuel himself was to be a wonder or wonderful. He would be God incorporeal self-manifestation, and therefore a “wonder” as being a superhuman person. We should not venture to assert this if it went beyond the line of Old Testament revelation, but the prophet asserts it himself in chapter 9:6: his words are as clear as possible; and we must not make them obscure, to favour any preconceived notions as to the development of history. The incarnation of Deity was unquestionably a secret that was not clearly unveiled in the Old Testament, but the veil was not so thick but that some rays could pass through. Such a ray, directed by the spirit of prophecy into the mind of the prophet, was the prediction of Emmanuel. But if the Messiah was to be Emmanuel in this sense, that He would Himself be El (God), as the prophet expressly affirms, His birth must also of necessity be a wonderful or miraculous one.

F. DELITZSCH

Reconciliation

Christ hath his name Emmanuel, not only because he is God and man too, both natures meeting in one person, but because being God in our nature, he hath undertook this office to bring God and us together. The main end of Christ’s coming and suffering was to reconcile, and to gather together in one; and, as Peter expresseth it, “to bring man again to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). Emmanuel is the bond of this happy agreement, and appears for ever in heaven to make it good.

RICHARD SIBBES

From the day of the Nativity God was with man, not simply as heretofore, as the Omnipresent, but under new and more intimate conditions. From the day of the Nativity there was a change in the relations between earth and heaven. To be one with Christ was to be one with God; and this union with God through Christ is the secret and basis of the new kingdom of souls which Christ has founded, and in which he reigns. Who shall describe the wealth of spiritual and moral power which dates from the appearance of the Incarnate Son in our human world, as our “Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption?” Here and there we see through the clouds, as though by glimpses, some streaks of the glory of this Invisible Kingdom of souls; but only in another life shall we understand at all approximately what it has meant for millions of our race.

H. P. LIDDON

- More from C. H. Spurgeon

Books

Book Briefs: December 9, 1957

Stereotyped Pretence

Small Giant, by Phyllis Woodruff Sapp. Zondervan, Grand Rapids. $3.00.

This novel is one grand contrivance without adequate characterization, genuine emotion, or artistic merit. In fact, it is not a novel at all, just a stereotyped pretence. As an evangelical Christian I deplore the supposition that such stuff is intended for me and others like me. Yet this novel is the winner of a big prize offered by a Christian publisher!

It is hard to know where to begin a review, for the sleaziness starts with the first page of the book. As a sample of the totally trite style let me quote a few sentences from page 14: “A hush settled over the room and his heart seemed to stop beating. Wouldn’t these people applaud even for politeness’ sake? Then a spontaneous burst of applause echoed and re-echoed around the room and Phil sank back in his chair, swallowing his heart out of his throat.” It would be hard to discover in the same number of words anywhere in print (unless in a parody on triteness) an equal spate of cliches.

Among many bad things the very worst is the hand-me-down emotions throughout the book. They are here in melodramatic abundance but in unbelievable paucity of expression. Although the novel is under three hundred pages in length, such phrases as “dark pounding in his heart,” “heart began to hammer against his ribs,” “his heart thudded heavily” occur over seventy times. Expressions such as “he clenched his hands,” “smacking his fist into his palm,” and “beat his fist into his open palm” occur at least sixty times. Another set of cliches such as “she moistened her lips,” “licked his lips,” “wet his lips” is repeated at least thirty-five times, and about twenty-five times we have the hero or somebody else gritting his teeth or chewing his lips. Most objectionable of all is a set of phrases such as “pleased flush crawling up his neck,” “angry flush came crawling up his neck,” and “a hot, aggravating flush crawling up his neck,” which make it sound as if the hero is a sort of human thermometer. These five stereotypes of pounding heart, clenching fists, moistening lips, gritting teeth, and flushing neck and face occur, believe it or not, over one hundred and fifty times. Were they sporadic they would be bad enough, but in this book they are chronic. Sometimes, indeed, they fall thick and fast. On page 147, for instance, we find Jane’s heart “thudding against her ribs.” Then in the next sentence she “clenched her hands together,” and before the end of the page she has “moistened her lips.” On page 128 Jane “bit her lip,” Phil’s heart was “thudding against his ribs,” Jane had “clenched fingers,” and twice Phil “pounded his fist into his palm.” All on one page. Toward the end of the book we note that Jane’s heart “started a strange, insistent pounding” and, a few pages later, Phil’s heart “began a strange, uneasy pounding.” No reasonable person could ever believe that either of their hearts could have a strange pound by this time, for their hearts have been thumping since page one in every way conceivable to the human mind, even flipping clear over on occasion.

Beyond these trite expressions is the equally serious psychological fallacy that to say a character has an emotion is the same as causing the reader to feel an emotion. When the lack of artistic talent and vision is total, a writer has no recourse but to fall back on described rather than portrayed emotions. It is something to note when the evil of described emotions has added to it the superabundance of pathetic cliches found here.

Even though this novel has been published almost solely on the basis of its plot, that also will not suffer close examination. Phil Sanders, a young lawyer, discovers that if he breaks up a liquor and dope ring in his town he will at the same time ruin his prospective father-in-law, the District Attorney. Phil has to decide his course of action in this matter and also to discover legal cause for his intuited suspicion of Mel Morrison, one of the other assistants to the D.A. who turns out to be the brains of the dope racket. Mel Morrison happens also to be in love with Jane Lawson, daughter of the D.A., who comes to love Phil and fear Mel. Apart from its traditional detective slant, there is nothing wrong with, such a plot. But because the complications become simply too much for the author, characters and action are shoved around with relatively little regard for logic and the nature of things. There is space for only an illustration or two. Early in Phil’s career he goes out and inspects a flimsily constructed honky tonk called Sam’s Shanty and becomes suspicious that it is peddling liquor and dope to minors. Then one night the building eatches fire. Conveniently, Phil happens to be at the police station talking about the matter when the fire alarm goes off, so he and the police hurry to the scene. He stops one hundred yards from the flaming structure, and even at this distance the heat is strong. Shortly a big black Cadillac just like the one owned by Mel Morrison tears up and the door is flung open so quickly that Phil is knocked to his knees. That’s how close he was. Next we learn that several suspicious looking men jump out of this car and feverishly fill the seats, not with burned boys and girls but with “large wooden containers.” Where did these villains—for that is what the reader knows them to be—get the boxes? The building was in total flames and surrounded by police and firemen. The heat was intense at one hundred yards. We are told that the whole sky was lighted by the flames. Did Phil, the shrewd young attorney in charge of dope and liquor peddling, get suspicious that at arm’s length he has the racketeers if he will only nab them while they are stacking their car full of these big boxes? The author says naively: “He supposed it really wasn’t important.” Later—sixty pages later—since it suits the strained plot of the novel—Phil discovers what the reader knew all the time. There are other episodes equally awry. The final resolution of the plot hangs pretty largely upon the fact that the D.A., who turns out to be a user of dope, keeps his heroin and paraphernalia for its use in his desk drawer and is careless enough to leave the drawer open to passing gaze.

Space prevents further discussion of the plot, the shallowness of character depiction, the flimsy contriving of motives and movements and the total lack of artistic touch and symbolic imagination. It can be said that the Christian element is introduced with moderation and some sense of propriety, but that aspect is hard to evaluate in the unstable perspective of the book as a whole.

In offering prizes it is doubtless the aim of Christian publishers to improve the quality of their publication. This is laudable. At the same time, it appears doubly bad to be placed in the position of having to advertise a book like this as the winner of a prize. Would it not be better to stipulate that no prize will be given if disinterested judges think all entries unworthy?

CLYDE S. KILBY

Why Did Christ Die?

A Critique of the Theory of Vital Atonement, by James A. Nichols, Jr. Vantage Press, New York, 1955. $2.50.

Dr. Nichols is Professor of Theology at the New England School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts. The purpose of this book is to examine and refute the view of the atonement held by the late Clarence H. Hewitt, and expounded in his book, Vital Atonement (Warren Press, Boston, 1946). After an initial statement of Hewitt’s views, there follow five chapters which show the inadequacy of this interpretation of the atonement from various points of view: doctrinal, biblical, and historical.

All evangelical Christians will welcome this spirited defense of the vicarious-substitutionary view of the atonement over against Hewitt’s conception, which seems to this reviewer to be a rather novel combination of the mystical and moral influence theories. Dr. Nichols quite rightly opposes Hewitt’s contention that Christ shared the inborn corruption of our nature. The book under review is a strong refutation of the notion that there is no punitive wrath in God which needs satisfaction. The point is very well taken that the one great question which Hewitt’s interpretation of the atonement leaves unanswered is, “Why did Christ have to die?” (p. 36). The reader is impressed anew with the fact that the only adequate answer to that question is: He died as our substitute, to bear for us the wrath of God against sin.

Despite the merits of this book, however, there are certain unfavorable features. Its chief weakness is its excessive use of quotations from other theological writers. All in all, the 91 pages of text contain 115 quotations, a number of them being longer than half a page in length. The author, it seems to me, leans too heavily upon other men; he could often much more effectively have stated his views in his own words. In some instances mere quotations from other theologians are used to settle theological issues, when careful Scriptural exegesis would have been far more compelling. The book would have been greatly strengthened if the chapter dealing with the biblical evidence had been placed at the beginning instead of near the end.

It also appears to this reviewer that Chapter VI, in which the historical background of the “Vital Atonement” is discussed, could have been strengthened. A more thorough survey of Irenaeus’s Recapitulation Theory, and of the general emphasis of the Eastern theologians of the early church on “atonement by incarnation” would have been very helpful in understanding Dr. Hewitt’s views. A brief exposition of Abelard’s Moral Influence theory of the atonement and of the Example Theory advanced by the Socinians would have made clear the affinities of Hewitt’s views to these erroneous doctrines. A good deal more could have been made of Schleiermacher, with whose mystical conception of the atonement the so-called “Vital Atonement” has much in common. And Ritschl’s aversion to the idea that there is a punitive wrath in God which needs to be satisfied ought to have been cited as part of the historical background.

Furthermore, the author should have shown that the idea “that men’s depravity disposes them to sin but is not actually sinful in itself” had its origin, not just in New England theology (see p. 89), but in the Semi-Pelagianism of the 5th and 6th centuries; that it was an essential aspect of the scholastic anthropology of the Middle Ages; and that it was held by Remonstrant Arminianism in the 17th century.

A theological weakness of the book, it seems to me, is the absence of the covenant concept. On page 17, for example, the author defines the uniqueness of our Lord’s relation to the human race only in terms of his Creatorship. He adds, “This relation shows how he might rightfully share our guilt and suffer penalty for us, although it did not obligate him to do so.” An explication of Christ’s covenant relationship to his people, as their head, their federal representative, their second Adam, would have greatly clarified and illumined the doctrine of the atonement at this point.

ANTHONY A. HOEKEMA

Glorifying God

The Psalter in the Temple and the Church, by Marie Pierik. Catholic University of America Press, 1957. 101 pages. $3.00.

It is very much to be regretted that this excellent little book was not written by a Protestant and published by a Protestant publishing house.

I say this, not because even the greater part of its contents represent the Protestant point of view, or is agreeable to it (though I am sure it does and is), but because the sort of interest in the truly inspired songs of the Bible and biblical music which the appearance of such a book would indicate, would be a wholesome sign of a much needed change in some things associated with Protestant religious music of which we are not proud.

One has but to listen to one or two programs on the radio of so-called “popular religious music,” presenting silly, sob-sentimental torch songs and jazz in the trappings of sanctity, but vocalized by the familiar throaty effects of the nightclub and accompanied by the sensuous rhythmic beat of a dance band, to long for a return to a usage by Christians of the inspired songs of Zion, and a rendition and accompaniment which lift the spirit upward. So much of popular religious jazz (and some of it appears in some very good song books, and is heard in some amazingly respectable churches), conveys the subtle, subconscious impression that there is very little difference between religious sentiment, which is supposed to be elevated and ennobling, and the sentiments of the flesh (and unregenerate, sinful flesh, at that).

Miss Marie Pierik is a long-time student and teacher of music, and an authority on the Gregorian Chant who has been recognized by the Vatican as well as by other important critical circles in Europe and America.

Included in her book are chapters on: The Psalter, The Titles of the Psalms, The Contents of the Psalms, The Music of the Temple, The Modes of Semetic Music, and Forms and Rhythm in Temple Music and Psalter.

She quotes freely from well-known authorities, and even includes a quotation from Prothero, and one from Rabbi Akiba (executed in 135 A.D.), “who, either as a little boy witnessed the Temple service before its destruction in 70 A.D., or heard from some of the survivors a description” of the types of re-sponsorial public singing found there.

The latter part of the book is devoted to a study of Psalmody in the Chant of the Church and presents chapters on: How Gregorian Chant Developed, Roman Psalmody, and Preliminary Breathing and Vocal Exercises for the Practice of Gregorian Chant.

The second half of the book, being somewhat technical, will appeal mostly to musicians and music directors. The first half will interest any serious Bible student. That such an excellent study has appeared is a challenge to us all, not only to produce one as scholarly and informative, and simpler, if possible, but especially to return whole-heartedly to a much greater use of the inspired Psalms in the worship of God.

DAVID W. BAKER

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: December 09, 1957

W. Stanford Reid

Christmas is a very ancient feast in the history of the Christian Church. Although it does not go back to the New Testament, it does go a long way, and in most Christian communions it has become one of the strongest and most popular of traditions. There are no doubt many things about its celebration to which one may take exception—the commercialism, the drinking, the prevailing paganism—but it still possesses an inescapable basic Christian element, in that it keeps pointing men to the Incarnation of the Son of God for man’s redemption.

Even the old school liberals, like Scrooge, could hardly escape its influence. They had denatured Christ, historicized him, humanized and even liberalized him to such an extent that his picture in the New Testament was hardly recognizable, but still they celebrated Christmas. How they could stand up and sing:

Hark the herald angels sing,

Glory to the new horn king.…

or any of the other carols is difficult to understand, but they did, inconsistent though they may have been. Since Christ was only an example, a teacher, a great religious genius, Christmas really could mean very little that was truly spiritual. All they could do, therefore, was sentimentalize the manger, depriving it of its true meaning and preparing the way for our modern irrelevant festivities.

There has been a change in theological thinking during the last few decades, however, which seems to alter the picture somewhat. The world having been shaken by two world wars, having felt the searing hunger of the Depression ’30s, has taken a second look at itself—and at the Christ. Not quite so sure of its progress, its climb upwards and its eventual perfection, it has begun to ask itself if perhaps it has not made a mistake. Perhaps it does need a Saviour—not a human but a divine Saviour who can lift it out of the miry clay.

This was the note sounded by Karl Barth in the early ’20s and by many others since. Once again in theological circles it has become respectable to speak of God’s Revelation to man. Indeed, Christ is now accepted as the bearer of that Revelation, the Word of redemption and forgiveness. God has entered into history in the person of Christ, the Word of God. This is a very different point of view from that of the old school of liberals.

Indeed the advocates of this point of view—and they are now very numerous—go further, even talking of Christ as the Redeemer. His death and Resurrection come into the picture and are said to be the core of the new theologies. Indeed, one might think that the old idea of Christmas is tending to come back. Once more men can sing the carols which speak of the Son of God who has come to earth for man’s salvation. This should indeed be great cause for rejoicing.

And yet one should not rejoice too easily or too naively, for one finds that frequently Christmas really has not returned. As one examines the new views one often finds that there are certain things which are missing. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth is either silently omitted or denied, the historical reality of the Incarnation is clothed in an avalanche of words, making it difficult to know what is meant by the term, and only too frequently universalism is the end-product of this thinking, leaving one wondering at the need for Christ’s coming at all.

The fact of the matter is that while there is much said about Christ by the various brands of neo-orthodox theologians, Christmas really does not seem to mean very much more to them than it did to the old line liberals. Once again social reform and redemption are beginning to take the place of the gracious work of Christ in the individual, redemption again becoming something which relates primarily to this life. Christmas has not really risen out of the old liberal ashes.

It would seem that the only way to preserve the true meaning of Christmas is to take into account the whole Christ as presented in the New Testament. One cannot separate him into bits and pieces. One must realize that if he is indeed the Word of God, he is a totality which cannot be reduced to some human schematization but must be allowed to reveal himself and his work as he has to men.

Thus Christmas cannot be merely a sentimentalization of the manger of Bethlehem. It must involve all that Christ is and does, even the Cross itself, and his eventual return. When one grasps this fact, only then will one be able to have a “merry Christmas” in the word’s deepest sense.

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

- More from W. Stanford Reid

Cover Story

Why Revise the Scriptures?

Eugene A. Nida

“But why should I get a new Bible, when the words of my Bible speak so sweetly to my heart?” an elderly lady said, as it was suggested to her that perhaps she would like to obtain one of the more modern translations. On the other hand, another person, who had recently purchased a modern-language translation of the New Testament, declared, “Why, in the few months since I’ve had this new version, I’ve read the Bible more than for ten years. Now, it makes sense.”

These two responses are typical of the differences which have always existed between the old and the new—the continuing conflict between loyalty to the past and concern for the present and the future. It would be quite wrong to imagine that these diverse attitudes concerning different translations of the Bible came into being only after the recent publication of the Revised Standard Version. The accompanying publicity, both pro and con, no doubt threw the spotlight upon certain underlying tensions between “traditionalists” and “contemporaries” (if we may apply such names), but conflicts over new and old translations of the Scriptures in English preceded even the King James Version. In fact, the strong adherents to the Geneva Version, published approximately fifty years before the King James, first opposed the Bishops Bible, published some ten years after their Geneva Version, but when the King James Version appeared, they spared no words of bitter criticism in denouncing the scholars whom they contended had distorted the Word of God.

500 English “Translations”

Between the time of the King James Version, published first in 1611, and the present time, those opposing new English translations and revisions have had plenty of opportunity to denounce the work of persons attempting to put the Scriptures in a more intelligible form, for since 1611 a total of more than 500 translations of the Scriptures have been published in English. These have consisted of twenty-seven full Bibles, over seventy-five New Testaments, more than 150 publications of less than a New Testament, but not printed as parts of commentaries, and the rest, often consisting of major portions of the Bible, printed as new translations to accompany expositions of the meaning of the Scriptures. Even during the last fifty years there has been an amazing increase in revisions of the Scriptures into English, so that scarcely a year passes without some new revision of the Bible or New Testament coming off the press.

This almost unbelievable interest among English-speaking people in new translations of the Scriptures (their interest is manifest by the fact that most of these translations have proven to be profitable publishing ventures), is, however, not an isolated phenomenon. There is scarcely a major language in the world in which Scripture revision is not now going on. These include not only such major European languages as German, French, Norwegian, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Greek, Spanish, and Dutch, but almost all the important so-called “missionary languages” of the younger churches throughout the world, e.g. Chinese, Tagalog, Cebuano, Indonesian, Thai, Nepali, Tibetan, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Zulu, Swahili, Chiluba, Hausa, Bulu, and Cuzco Quechua. In fact, there are major revisions now going on in more than 90 languages in the world, and further translating in another 175 languages, with other translators at work to produce the Scriptures in at least 200 languages which have never had anything of the Word of God.

In the light of so many revisions being made throughout the world, one is inevitably led to ask two kinds of questions: (1) Do all of these revisions tend to meet with the same types of opposition from those who insist, whether rightly or wrongly, that the old is better? and (2) What are the reasons for so many revisions, especially at this time? Is this the result of liberal theology, especially in the mission field? Or is this possibly a genuine “return to the Bible”?

In reply to those who may question the widespread nature of opposition to revision, one can only say that in greater or lesser degree it has always been present. Even the King James Revisers had to deal with the same kinds of complaints, as their Introduction to the Reader (unfortunately omitted from practically all modern editions) so ably testifies, for their work had already encountered strong opposition and they knew it would meet with ungrateful bitterness. Accordingly, they wrote in the Preface:

Zeale to promote the common good whether it be by devising any thing our selves, or revising that which hath bene laboured by others, deserueth certainly much respect and esteeme, but yet findeth but cold intertainment in the world.…

For he that medleth with mens Religion in any part medleth with their custome … and though they finde no content in that which they have, yet they cannot abide to heare of altering …

Many mens mouths have bene open a good while (and yet are not stopped) with speeches about the Translation so long in hand, or rather perusals of Translations made before: and aske what may be the reason, what the necessitie of the employment: Hath the Church bene deceived, say they, all this while?… Was their Translation good before? Why doe they now mend it? Was it not good? Why then was it obtruded to the people?…

It is quite understandable that those who have been led to a personal acceptance of Jesus Christ through a message communicated to them in a particular version should feel that such a translation was not only fully adequate for themselves but equally valid for everyone else. Moreover, those who by long habit or because of vested interests become attached to a particular form of the Scriptures are very unlikely to give up the old without a struggle. It should not be surprising, therefore, that revisions of the Bible have in general been condemned from the time of Wycliffe and Tyndale right down to the present.

Reasons For Revision

Certainly there must be some important reasons for the fact that at present there are more revisions and new translations in process throughout the world than at any other time in the history of the Christian Church. One cannot, however, point to any one reason as being either the exclusive or the principal factor in any one revision. Persons who have felt led to undertake such tasks have usually been induced to do so by a number of reasons, including (1) the existence of more accurate textual evidence, (2) important new information as to the meanings of biblical terms, (3) significant improvements in the interpretation of passages, (4) the inevitable changes which occur constantly in any living language and (5) a re-emphasis upon the principle of intelligibility as the valid basis for legitimate translating.

Better Textual Evidence

In John 1:18 the King James Version and all traditional translations read, “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.” However, some of the important manuscripts discovered during the past century have what was regarded by many as a strange reading, for instead of “only begotten Son” these manuscripts read “only begotten God”—such an unmistakable declaration of the deity of our Lord that certain persons insisted that this must have been a change introduced by some overzealous scribe. But in the recently published Bodmer II papyrus, which dates from the second century A.D., the reading of “only begotten God” is unmistakably confirmed. It would be impossible, of course, to declare unequivocally that “only begotten God” was the reading of the autograph of John’s Gospel, but it is most important that this significant variant be incorporated into modern translations, whether in the text itself or in the margin, for a translation which fails to provide its readers with this important new light is robbing them of some of the most important evidence from the best manuscripts.

There are some instances in which textual differences seem only very slight, but may be highly meaningful. For example, in the traditional rendering of John 7:52 there has always been a problem for exegetes, for it would appear as though the Greek meant, “No prophet ever comes out of Galilee,” which, of course, was not true of Jewish history. To help to remedy this situation Owen suggested some years ago that the text should be amended at this point and that a single article should be added, so that the passage would read, “The prophet (meaning, of course, the Messiah) will not come out of Galilee.” Imagine the keen interest of scholars who in going through the Bodmer II papyrus discovered that in this earliest extant text of John the article, suggested by Owen, is present. Undoubtedly, this passage in John 7:52, instead of being a rather oblique reference to the Messiah, is a direct one, and completely in keeping with the obvious intent of the Gospel account.

In addition to these two minor details, coming from the most recently available textual evidence, there are of course numerous other instances in which better biblical manuscripts have immeasurably improved the sense of passages. For example, in 1 John 5:18 we are no longer constrained to believe that “he that is begotten of God keepeth himself” (speaking of the effort of the redeemed to keep themselves from sin). Because of the absence of a single letter in the better Greek manuscripts, this passage should be translated, “He who was begotten by God keeps him” (indicating clearly that it is Christ Himself who keeps those who trust in Him). Rather than being fearful of the results of textual research, we who place our confidence in the inspiration of the writers of the Scriptures, rather than in the inerrancy of scribes, can be not only intellectually thankful for such greater accuracy but spiritually blessed by the more meaningful message.

It might seem anachronistic to speak of new meanings for words of the Bible, when obviously these words only had meanings in a society of at least 2,000 years ago. Nevertheless, during the last century an immense amount of study and research has gone into the careful examination and evaluation of masses of information coming from the Bible lands. The most important sources of our information are to be found in the tens of thousands of papyri fragments and scrolls, including everything from grocery lists to funeral orations. These scraps of paper have contained many examples of the words also found in the Bible, and thus have provided clues to meanings which were unknown to early translators of the Scriptures into English. For example, the Greek adverb ataktos (and the related derived verb) translated in the King James Version as “disorderly” in 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 7, and 11 really refers to people who “live in idleness.” The meaning of idleness fits the context immeasurably better than “walking disorderly,” for it is in this passage that Paul insists that if one does not work he should not eat. Furthermore, Paul calls attention to his own practice of working for a living with his own hands, as an example of one who was “not idle” (verse 7).

Another term which in the papyri suggests the possibility of a significant difference in meaning is the Greek word hypostasis, rendered as “substance” in most translations of Hebrews 11:1. This same word, however, has been found to be the term for a “title deed” to property. This passage, therefore, may have a meaning which is much more concrete than what has often been assumed. Accordingly, faith may simply be “the title deed of the things hoped for,” for it is faith which makes future hope a present possession.

The careful study of words has resulted in removing several instances of apparent contradiction from the Scriptures. In Galations 6:5 the King James text says, “every man shall bear his own burden,” but in the same chapter, verse 2, the text reads, “bear ye one another’s burdens.” Such renderings are understandably confusing to many people, but a close examination of the two different Greek terms employed in these verses soon clears up the difficulty. The word used in the second verse refers to excessively heavy burdens, and the word in verse 5 means one’s legitimate load. Contemporary Biblical studies have clarified the meanings of hundreds of such passages of Scripture, and it is thus little wonder that people throughout the world are demanding that they have revisions which will reflect certain of these more accurate renderings of the Word of God.

More Accurate Interpretations

All improvements in text and the meanings of individual words inevitably add up to more accurate interpretations. However, there is a class of changes which is somewhat distinct from these other two, for though the text remains the same and the meanings of the words are not significantly altered by lexical research, nevertheless, modern translations have profited by important exegetical suggestions. In John 1:9, for example, the traditional rendering of “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” implies a kind of automatic enlightenment of each person on being born. However, this is not really the import of this passage. The theme of this Gospel is the coming of the light into the world, not the coming of men. Accordingly, most modern translations have followed an alternative rendering, “the true Light, which enlightens every man, was coming into the world.”

Similarly, in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11 the traditional interpretation has been “the just shall live by faith.” This is, of course, quite a possible interpretation of the Greek expression, which is itself a literal rendering of the Hebrew original in Habakkuk. However, there is an equally valid rendering which is much more in keeping with the theme treated in Romans and Galatians, for in these two Epistles Paul was not dealing primarily with “living by faith” but with “being justified by faith.” Hence, the interpretation of “those who through faith are just shall live” should certainly be recognized, whether in the text or in the margin.

There are, of course, some persons who object to marginal notes in the Bible, for they think that these tend to detract from the authority of the Word, thus depriving the message of its full force. Interestingly enough, the translators of the King James Version were faced with this same accusation, and in an effort to forestall such criticisms they said in their introduction:

Some peradventure would have no variety of senses to be set in the margine, lest the authoritie of the Scriptures for deciding of controversies by that shew of uncertaintie, should somewhat be shaken. But we hold their judgment not to be so sound in this point … Therefore as Saint Augustine saith, that varietie of Translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures: so diversitie of signification and sense in the margine, where the text is not so cleare, must needs doe good, yea, is necessary, as we are persuaded.

It is unfortunate for the average reader of the Scriptures that in so many editions of the King James Version the hundreds of marginal notes introduced by the translators have been omitted (except for certain reference editions which include them in the reference column), for their continued printing would have done much to correct false ideas and attitudes about biblical revelation.

This does not mean that editions of the Bible should be filled with the differences of scholarly viewpoints, but complete honesty and integrity dictate that those who are aware of such legitimate diversities in rendering should indicate to the reader when there are alternatives. Anything less than this is not only misleading, but a betrayal of our Protestant heritage, which looks to the Scriptures rather than to human tradition for its authority.

Changes In Living Languages

Another important reason for continued revisions is that no living language stands still. It is in a state of constant change in every aspect, whether in the pronunciation of words (as reflected often in spellings), in grammatical forms, syntactic arrangements of words, or the meanings of terms. People of the seventeenth century had no difficulty understanding “prevent” in the sense of “go ahead of” (1 Thess. 4:15) or “let” (2 Thess. 2:7 and Romans 1:13) with the meaning of “hinder” (compare the legal phrase “without let or hindrance”). They rightly preferred “Holy Ghost” to “Holy Spirit,” but during the intervening years since 1611 the words ghost and spirit have completely changed meanings, for now ghost is understood by us as an apparition, precisely what spirit meant in the time of King James. People of that day could reckon by cubits, rods, furlongs, and firkins, but we need some equivalent in feet, yards, miles, and gallons. For the sake of greater accuracy and intelligibility we must use different words, e.g. “morsel” instead of “sop” (John 13:30), “prune” instead of “purge” (John 15:2), “rooms’ instead of “mansions” (John 14:2), and “Counselor” instead of “Comforter” (John 14:16), to mention only a few.

Rather than “changing the meaning” of the King James Version, as some have claimed, such modern words serve more to “restore the meaning.” In many instances the fault is not with the traditional translations, but with the English language which has changed, but most people are relatively unaware of what has happened.

Re-Emphasis Upon Intelligibility

The importance of communication in our contemporary world has made it fully evident that if a translation does not communicate the meaning of the original it is not really a translation, but a string of words. Accordingly, an idiom such as “children of the bridechamber” (which can be grossly misinterpreted) has usually been changed in modern translations to “wedding guests,” or more specifically “friends of the bridegroom.” Similarly, the strange phrase “bowels of mercy” has been rendered more meaningfully as “tender compassion.” However, in order to make for greater intelligibility modern translations have not only modified the forms of idioms, but have often simplified the complex structure of difficult sentences.

In John 1:14 the phrase “full of grace and truth” obviously refers to the Word, earlier in the verse, but when it is placed at the end of the verse, even though after a parenthesis, its meaning may be readily confused. Accordingly, a rearrangement of order is not only fully legitimate but helps to convey the meaning of the original, which in Greek is quite clear because of the grammatical forms, but which in English can be entirely misleading if the words are left in their Greek order. It is often necessary that long, involved sentences be broken up into shorter, more intelligible ones. Compare, for example, the traditional translations of Ephesians 1:3–14 (which is usually one long sentence, even as it is in Greek) with modern translations, which may use as many as half a dozen sentences, with considerable improvement in sense.

One must not imagine, however, that this striving for greater intelligibility is purely a contemporary development. The King James translators were for their day real pioneers in this field, and as a result they suffered from their critics. On the one hand, they shunned the newfangled ultramodern terms of the time proposed by the Puritans, and on the other, they rejected a host of traditional words used by the Roman Catholics and the strict conservatives. Their ultimate purpose was intelligibility, and in stating their intent, these translators wrote, “But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar.” (By which, of course, they meant the common people.)

This basic principle employed by the King James revisers, namely, that the message in English should be as intelligible to the common man as the original was in its setting in “Canaan,” cannot be improved upon. This means, however, that if one is to follow the same principle one must not hesitate to revise the Scriptures or to use such revisions.

Today, even as in the seventeenth century, there are those whose basic suspicion of learning and scholarship has prompted them to decry revisions of the Scriptures, whether of the King James Version in that day or of various modern revisions in our own. Moreover, there has been in some circles the impression that revisions are generally the outgrowth of scholarly perversity in trying to upset people’s faith. Such charges have been made not only against various English revisions, but perhaps even somewhat more against revisions on the mission field. The truth of the matter is that most revisions are promoted primarily by a desire for evangelistic outreach, and this is especially true for the mission field. When a church is spiritually dead—content with its ritualistic practices and its liturgical forms—there is no life to encourage any revision. It is only when the church becomes aware of its need to communicate the Word of God with greater effectiveness that there is an urge to revise or to translate afresh.

Perhaps, however, the strangest contradiction in certain phases of contemporary Bible translation and revision is that some of those who most loudly proclaim their belief in literal inerrancy cling most tenaciously to traditional translations which in many instances are not based on the best manuscripts, and which at times contain inaccurate interpretations. Apparently, for fear that to give in an inch to modern scholarship will result in complete capitulation, those who affirm so strongly their acceptance of the truth as “God-breathed” frequently have resisted attempts to introduce any changes into the traditional forms. However, rather than being fearful of what might come from research in matters of text and interpretation and hence reluctant to participate in or promote such endeavors, conservatives should be in the forefront of any such undertakings. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose (except perhaps a few pet sermons) by the discovery of the truth as revealed to us in the earliest manuscripts and through the most reliable interpretations. Because the Bodmer II papyrus agrees with the best ancient manuscripts in not containing John 5:4 (the story of the angel disturbing the water in the Pool of Bethesda) and John 7:53 to 8:11 (the story of the woman taken in adultery), we should not be disturbed. Such facts should not prejudice anyone against textual studies, especially when the Bodmer II papyrus does contain such an important reading as “only begotten God.” However, our reactions to scholarship must not be dictated by whether or not present-day discoveries confirm or deny our own theological views. It is the “truth which shall make us free,” and it is this truth which alone can free us from our past errors (regardless of how precious they may have seemed) and reveal to us God’s Word and will. This new appreciation of truth, as expressed in the processes of revision and translation, is the only basis for a common rallying point for all those who love him who declared himself “the way, the truth, and the life.”

Eugene A. Nida is Secretary of the Translations Department of the American Bible Society. He holds the Ph.D. degree, in linguistics, from University of Michigan, and is author of Morphology, the Descriptive Analysis of Words, as well as of Learning a Foreign Language, and Customs and Cultures.

- More from Eugene A. Nida

Cover Story

The Last Days of Babylon

Donald J. Wiseman

What we know about Babylonia is mostly derived from clay tablets. Tens of thousands of these cuneiform texts have been found in the last century and for some periods these tell us a great deal about the inhabitants of the lower Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, about their religion, customs and business affairs. But as yet comparatively few of these texts are historical in the more direct sense of the term.

By a curious coincidence a number of texts that are historical have come to light in recent months, all relating to a comparatively short period of some seventy years—from about 609 to 539 B.C. Between these dates, as it happens, lies the last period of Babylonian greatness. In 612 Nineveh, the ancient capital of Assyria, was taken by the Medes and Babylonians and the latter inherited the former Assyrian empire; Babylon now ruled all Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and, for a brief while, perhaps part of Egypt itself; Jerusalem fell and the Jews were carried off to exile. At the end of these 70 years, in 539, Babylon fell in her turn. She was taken by the Persians under Cyrus.

Although many of these happenings are known from the Bible or from classical writers such as Josephus and Herodotus, we have had few contemporary Babylonian records. Take the Battle of Carchemish, early or in our period; it was at Carchemish that Babylon won Syria and Palestine from Egypt, and its sequel was the capture of Jerusalem nine years later. Until now great events such as these have been known only from the Old Testament and Josephus (who often derived his history from the Old Testament) and their dates and many details have been lacking. The history of Egypt at this time is almost a blank and the doings of even major Babylonian kings like Nebuchadnezzar have had to be reconstructed from a few building inscriptions supplemented by later classical allusions. Scarcely anything is known of the Medes, the northeastern neighbors of the Babylonians, as they pushed their frontier north and westwards to the Halys River. The clash between the two great powers in Asia Minor—the Medes and Lydians—remains a history to be read only in Greek literature. It was of obvious importance that we should find contemporary documents to explain the relationship of the Babylonians with these peoples.

The Babylonian Chronicle

At last, in 1923, two clay tablets were found of the class commonly known as the Babylonian Chronicle. They described the combined Medo-Babylonian sack of Nineveh at the beginning of the period in 612; they described the Medo-Persian advance on Babylon in 539 at the end. But for the next 30 years no further texts of this kind turned up. Then last year I completed the translation of four small inscribed clay tablets found in the Babylonian Collection of the British Museum. They were among a lot of ordinary contract tablets, looked exactly like them, and had been there for over 50 years. It now turned out that they were part of the same unique, reliable and contemporary Babylonian Chronicle, written in Babylon itself. One text tells how Babylon struggled to free itself from the Assyrian yoke, inspired by the leadership of Nabopolassar who was later elected king. Then in 605, it says, the aged and sick Nabopolassar handed over the army to his eldest son and crown prince, the vigorous Nebuchadnezzar. The very same year Nebuchadnezzar won the battle of Carchemish and turned three years of defeat by the Egyptian forces into a glorious victory. He marched boldly up the Euphrates bank to the Egyptian stronghold; then, says the Chronicle:

He crossed the river to go against the Egyptian army which lay in Carchemish. The armies fought with each other and the Egyptian army withdrew before him. He accomplished their defeat and beat them to non-existence. As for the rest of the Egyptian army which had escaped from the defeat so quickly that no weapon had reached them, the Babylonians overtook and defeated them in the district of Hamath so that not a single man escaped to his own country. At that time Nebuchadnezzar conquered the whole of Hatti-land.

The Book Of Kings

Hatti-land was the name for Syria and Palestine; the biblical Book of Kings puts these same events this way:

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up and Jehoiakim became his servant three years. And the king of Egypt came not any more out of his land; for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt.

The new Chronicle even gives the precise date of Nabopolassar’s death, the 8th of Ab, that is the 16th August, 605 B.C. and the date, three weeks later, when Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne in Babylon. It was the very day he entered the capital after his victory, having ridden in from Palestine. This confirms what we already know from another source: from Berossus, who was a priest of Bel in Babylon, in the third century B.C.; fragments of Berossus’ history are incorporated in Josephus. Berossus tells how Nebuchadnezzar, hearing of his father’s death, “set affairs in Palestine in order and committed the prisoners he had taken to some of his friends while he went in haste, having but few with him over the desert to Babylonia.” It can be estimated now that the young crown prince made the arduous five-hundred-mile journey in about ten days. The chronicle goes on to give details of the Babylonian operations in Palestine during the first years of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. He now received the submission of all the kings of Syria and her neighbors, including Jehoiakim of Judah who was to be his vassal for the next three years. Ashkelon was sacked. Fragments of a letter, written on papyrus, show that the city urgently appealed for help from Egypt but in vain. I think that all these successful operations were part of a carefully conceived plan. Nebuchadnezzar must have realized that, like many of his predecessors, he would have to consolidate his hold over the many city-states of Syria and Palestine before carrying the war across the Sinai desert into Egypt itself. He knew too that this step would have to be taken quickly if he were to free his armies for the defense of their own homeland from any possible invasion from the opposite direction—from the east. For in the Persian hills the first moves to unite the tribes were already taking place. The Medo-Persian confederation was no sudden achievement. It is not surprising then to learn from the new Chronicle that four years later, in 601, Nebuchadnezzar marched right through Palestine and fought a fierce battle with Egypt. There had hitherto been no hint of this from Egyptian, Babylonian or biblical sources, nor was it known that Egypt was so strong a military power at this time.

Defeat For Nebuchadnezzar

The communique giving the Babylonian version of this battle says rather vaguely that the Babylonian and Egyptian armies “clashed in open battle and inflicted heavy losses on each other”; it is obvious though that it was really a defeat for Nebuchadnezzar, for he had to spend the next 18 months re-equipping his army. This revival of Egyptian prestige may explain why Jehoiakim of Judah now ceased to pay tribute to his Babylonian overlord despite repeated warnings of the prophet Jeremiah. The inevitable punishment followed: three years later Nebuchadnezzar set out for Palestine, having previously safeguarded his line of march by punitive raids on the Arab tribes of Kedar and Hazor, south of Damascus. The siege and capture of Jerusalem, well known from the Bible, is graphically reported in the Chronicle:

In the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, the month of Kislev, the king of Babylon mustered his army, marched to the Hatti-land and besieged the city of Judah. On the second day of the month Adar he captured the city and seized the king. He appointed there a king of his own choice, received its heavy tribute and sent it to Babylon.

An Extra-Biblical Account

So for the first time we have an extra-biblical account of this historic event which began the period of the Jewish exile in Babylon. Jerusalem fell on the second of Adar, that is the 16th March 597 B.C., and so we now have a fixed point in both biblical and Babylonian history. Jehoiachin’s captivity in Babylon, by the way, is also confirmed by ration tablets which were found at Babylon in 1917 but were not published until 1949. These tablets name the king, his family and some fellow-Judeans, and list the amounts of oil and barley issued to them by prison officials. The Jewish king chosen by Nebuchadnezzar to succeed him was Zedekiah, whose rebellion eleven years later was to result in the desolation of Judah, the destruction of Jerusalem and further large-scale deportations. But of this the new Chronicle tells us nothing; the text breaks off after describing the suppression of an army revolt in Babylon in Nebuchadnezzar’s eleventh year—that is, in 595. Except for one interesting tablet the Chronicle is only resumed in 556 for the reign of Nabu-na’id, better known perhaps as the classical Nabonidus, the last native king of Babylon.

Discovering A Clue

While I was working on these small documents, another piece of the jigsaw puzzle was found to fit into the growing picture of this period. Last autumn Dr. Rice of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London uncovered three unusually large paving stones in the floor of the Great Mosque of Harran in Southern Turkey, the city where once the patriarch Abraham had stayed before moving on from Ur to the promised land. These stone blocks proved to be inscribed in Babylonian and are now being read by Professor Gadd, to whom I owe much of the information concerning this most recent and important discovery.

The three Harran texts all tell of events in the reign of the same Nabonidus. One of the newly found inscriptions purports to be the autobiography of the Lady Adad-Guppi, the mother of Nabonidus. This remarkable old lady enumerates her pious deeds done at Harran to the gods Sin, Nergal, Nusku and Sadarnunna; it seems she gave great gifts to these gods in return for the benefits bestowed on her during her many years of service. She names the eight kings of Assyria and Babylonia in whose reigns she acted as the high-priestess of the moon-god at Harran.

The other two monuments found at Harran are a more direct continuation of the events I have described. They are duplicates. They show the king himself holding a distinctive notched staff and above him the emblems of the moon-god Sin and other deities. A third copy of the same stele, by the way, has long been in the British Museum but so mutilated that it could not be read. In contrast to his mother’s account of her life Nabonidus describes his own affairs in an unconventional manner with an appearance, at least, of much candor and modesty.

I am Nabu-na’id who has not the distinction of being somebody, and kingship is not within me, but the gods and goddesses begged for me and the god Sin raised me to the king-ship. In the depths of the night the moon-god caused me to behold a dream saying, “Rebuild Ehulhul, the temple of the god Sin, which is in the city Harran, immediately. All the lands are entrusted into thy hands.”

This introduction was no doubt intended to explain several things—how Nabonidus reached the throne (he was an irregular successor, what the Assyrians earlier called “the son of a nobody”), and why he was so devoted to this remote and distant sanctuary. His fanatical obsession with Sin’s temple and worship was perhaps inherited from his old mother; it certainly led to his concentrating all his resources there for the first two years of his reign.

From Nabu-na’id we now learn for the first time of an unexpected turn of events.

But the people, sons of Babylon, Borsippa, Nippur, Ur, Erech and Larsa, both priests and people of the chief cities of Babylonia sinned against his great god-head. They created disturbance, they acted evilly, they paid no heed to the command of the king of the gods, Sin. They forgot their duty, they talked rebellion, falsehood and disloyalty. Like dogs they devoured one another. Thus they caused plague and famine to be in the midst of them, and it diminished the people.

Nabonidus then did a strange thing, he says.

I went far away on the road to the towns of Tema, Dadanu, Padakku, Hibra, Iadihu, as far as Iatribu; for ten years I went about among these and entered not into my city of Babylon.

Light On Nabonidus’ Exile

The exile of Nabonidus to Tema in Southern Arabia has long been an event as celebrated as obscure and here at last is new light on it. He left the administration to his son Belshazzar—the same Belshazzar whose fate we know from the Old Testament Book of Daniel.

During his ten-year voluntary exile Nabonidus seems to have occupied Tema by force and settled there, building himself a palace in the Babylonian style. His new kingdom, if such it was, lay in the Arabian desert some 500 miles south of Babylon. It covered a wide area, for Dadanu is obviously the biblical Dedan named by the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel as the neighbor of Tema and as a center trading in cloth with Tyre.

Now the most controversial and enigmatic aspects of the exile of Nabonidus are his motives for it. The new text seems to imply that he left because plague and famine were rife in Babylonia; we do in fact possess numerous Babylonian contracts which allude to the famine itself and show how sharply the prices of staple commodities rose as a result. Yet one suspects that plague can scarcely be the main reason for so long an absence. Perhaps the Babylonians thought that the plague itself was due to the king’s religious heresy. One feels that at any rate the priests at Babylon must have thought his exile to be a just retribution for substituting Sin, the moon-god, for their local Bel-Marduk, as head of the pantheon.

Now by a singular coincidence another account of the same event has come to light within the last few months. This is a fragment of an Aramaic scroll found at Qumran in Jordan, which forms part of the “Dead Sea Scrolls.” This fragment probably dates from the first century B.C.; that makes it about four centuries later than the events recorded by Nabonidus himself. It tells how “Nabu-na’i,” here called king of Assyria and Babylonia, was smitten with a severe disease by the Most High God. At length God sent him a message from one of the Jewish exiles in Babylonia. This man told the king that the protracted sickness was a divine punishment because he had transgressed by praying to gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, of wood, stone and clay. The king thereupon repented and was healed. Then, as a result of a dream, he returned to Babylon where he proceeded to establish the worship of the one true God. His reign ended in peace and prosperity. Obviously, to the monotheistic Jews the moon-god Sin could never replace Yahweh as the Most High God.

Remarkable Agreement

There is a remarkable agreement between this Aramaic second century document and the Book of Daniel—so different in origin and inspiration. In Daniel you have an almost identical story told not about Nabu-na’id but about Nebuchadnezzar; how he was afflicted for seven years, repented and was restored to his kingdom. The similarities cannot be explained by mere literary borrowing, for, as we shall see, the story also reflects historical facts concerning the end of Nabonidus’ exile. Incidentally, Herodotus himself refers to both Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus by one name—Labynetus.

If the reason for the king’s exile was not primarily the desire to avoid the plague or ostracism on religious grounds, Professor Sidney Smith may be right in his view that by going to Tema, Nabonidus sought to restore the dwindling fortunes of his country; his plan would have been to gain control of the rich trade routes passing through Arabia to Egypt and to the north. We know that during his absence he kept contact with his capital by camel caravan. But even if this move was prompted by economic necessity it does look to me as if the main reason for Nabonidus’ absence was personal pique toward opposition to his pet project at Harran, and, perhaps, to the religious innovations which accompanied it. For on the stele Nabonidus tells us that at the end of ten years he found his subjects in a better frame of mind, being now willing to do the gods’ will.

They rejoiced in abundance and the kings of Egypt, of the Medes and of the Arabs, who had been hostile, sent messengers to me to make an alliance involving peace and friendly relations. The gods made the peoples of Babylonia and Syria to be united with me in word and heart … they kept watch and fulfilled my commands in the remoteness of distant mountains and in the remote paths I travelled.

The Identity Of Darius

Nabonidus had won his own way, but not for long. “The king of the Medes” in the tenth year of Nabonidus’ reign can be no other than Cyrus the Persian, for he had incorporated the province of Media in what became the greater realm of Persia. We know that at the end of our seventy-year period—in 539—Cyrus captured Babylon; both Nabonidus and Belshazzar died soon after the fall of the city and the Babylonian empire passed under the sway of the Achaemenid rulers. It now seems that in Babylonia Cyrus used the title “King of the Medes” in addition to the more usual “King of Persia, King of Babylonia, King of the lands.” On the other hand, according to the Book of Daniel, the conqueror of Babylon was an elderly Median named Darius who succeeded Belshazzar. The biblical text, if you remember, says: “So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.” There is no place in Babylonian or Persian history for any such predecessor of Cyrus, and attempts to identify this “Darius” have been a source of controversy for years. In fact, the majority of scholars doubt his historicity. But this new text reopens the whole question. Is it too bold an hypothesis to suggest that the “King of the Medes” of our Babylonian text may yet prove to be the “Darius the Mede” of Daniel’s day? Cyrus, at the age of 62, might well have taken another name as king of the Medes and even have been the son of an Ahasuerus, as was the biblical “Darius,” so obscure is his ancestry. The biblical reference can as easily be translated “Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, even in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.”

Donald J. Wiseman, O.B.E., M.A., is head of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities of The British Museum. This article abridges a recent BBC broadcast talk given on “Nebuchadnezzar and The Last Days of Babylon.”

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