The kingdom of God is near.

Give and double your impact.

Theology

Bible Text of the Month: Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and

Between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head,

And thou shalt bruise his heel (Genesis 3:15).

This text embraces and comprehends within itself everything noble and glorious that is to be found anywhere in the Scriptures.—LUTHER.

The obverse side of the sentence upon the serpent is a curse upon him; the reverse a promise for mankind. Before the penal sentence upon man is pronounced, the mercy of God fashions the curse upon the tempter into hope for the tempted.—F. DELITZSCH.

The first promise was revealed, proposed and given, as containing and expressing the only means of delivery from that apostasy from God, with all the effects of it, under which our first parents and all their posterity were cast by sin. The destruction of Satan and his work in his introduction of the state of sin, by a Savior and Deliverer, was prepared and provided for in it. This is the very foundation of the faith of the church; and if it be denied, nothing of the economy or dispensation of God towards it from the beginning can be understood.—JOHN OWEN.

Implanted Enmity

The statement emphasizes that it is God who will not suffer this enmity to die down: “I will put.” God wants man to continue in undying opposition to this evil one and He rouses the enmity Himself.—H. C. LEUPOLD.

In the place of the false, ungodly and man-destroying peace between the serpent and the woman, must there come in, between them, a good and salutary enmity, established by God.—J. P. LANGE.

The work of regeneration is included in the first promise. We cannot have an enmity to that which is the same with our nature, without a change of disposition. That foolish appetite, affected sensuality, indulgence to the flesh, the cause of our first friendship with Satan, must be changed into divine desires, affection to heavenly things, a mortification of the flesh, before a man can part with this friendship.—STEPHEN CHARNOCK.

Had not the devil spite and enmity enough against men, without God’s putting enmity between them? Yes, enough and enough again; but man had not enmity enough against the devil. He had been too much friends with him, in hearkening to him, obeying him, complying with him to the violating of God’s command, and the undoing of all mankind; and should he still continue in that compliance with him, there were no hope of recovery, no way but eternal ruin. Therefore, it was a most comfortable and happy passage, when God himself takes on him to dissolve this society, and to set hem at odds,—that the seed of the woman should set the devil at defiance, be an enemy to him, and fight against him,—and, at last, through God’s strength and good assistance, tread him under foot.—JOHN LIGHTFOOT.

Wicked Versus The Righteous

“Thy seed”—There must be meant the children of the evil one who are of their father the devil and will do the lusts of their father (John 8:44). If “seed” must refer to a whole class and so is used in the collective sense in the one half of the statement, then “seed” in the second half or parallel member of the statement must be used collectively for the descendants or posterity of woman. To take the word “seed of the woman” at this point at once in the sense of an individual and so as a definite and exclusive reference to Christ the Savior is wrong and grammatically impossible.—H. C. LEUPOLD.

There are four things here intimated, each of which is worthy of notice. (1) The ruin of Satan’s cause, was to be accomplished by one in human nature. (2) It was to be accomplished by the seed of the woman. Satan had made use of her to accomplish his purposes, and God would defeat his schemes through the same medium. (3) The victory should be obtained, not only by the Messiah himself, but by all his adherents. (4) Though it should be a long war, and the cause of the serpent would often be successful, yet in the end it should be utterly ruined. The head is the seat of life, which the heel is not.—ANDREW FULLER.

The enmity is spiritual, but the warfare often times is outward. The first manifestation of this enmity was in blood. Cain slew Abel. Why? Because he was of the evil one. And so it hath been carried on by blood from that day to this.—JOHN OWEN.

Against the natural serpent the conflict may be carried on by the whole human race, by all who are born of woman, but not against Satan. As he is a foe who can only be met with spiritual weapons, none can encounter him successfully but such as possess and make use of spiritual arms. Hence the idea of the seed is modified by the nature of the foe.—C. F. KEIL.

Bruising Of Head And Heel

If we had a lively feeling of the serpent’s poison, we could not but rejoice in our Captain, who hath bruised his head.—JOHN TRAPP.

In the protracted struggle with Satan thou mayest receive many a wound.… Still be thou in Christ; abiding in Him as the Seed of the woman and thy Savior; and thou shalt have confidence and good hope through grace. Satan may wound thee, but only in thy heel. His own head is bruised; and he has no power over thee, no power to keep thee under condemnation, no power to keep thee under bondage, no power to prevail against thee, either as the accuser or as the oppressor.—R. S. CANDLISH.

By head, we are to understand the whole power, subtilty and destroying nature of the devil; for as in the head of the serpent lieth his power, subtilty and poisonous nature; so in sin, death, hell and the wisdom of the flesh, lieth the very strength of the devil himself. Take away sin, then, and death is not hurtful.… Wherefore, the seed, Jesus Christ, in his braising the head of the serpent, must take away sin, abolish death and conquer the power of the grave.—JOHN BUNYON.

This promise was the great charter of our redemption, and the foundation of the faith of Adam’s posterity for several ages. It was indeed spoken to the serpent, but for the sake of man; a threatening to the tempter, and a promise to the tempted, and an argument of terror to the first, and support to the latter. Christ is here proposed for men’s comfort under the notion of a conqueror, but yet under the notion of a sufferer; his passion in his heel was to precede his breaking his enemies’ head; so his sufferings are first to be eyed by faith before his victory.—STEPHEN CHARNOCK.

Application

We perceive, that the person, sufferings, glory and triumphs of the Redeemer; the character, tribulations and felicity of the redeemed; the temporary success and final ruin of all enemies of Christ and his people; and indeed almost the whole history of the church, and of the world, through time and to eternity, are compendiously delineated in this singular verse; which stands, and will stand to the end of time, an internal demonstration that the Scripture was given by inspiration from God.—THOMAS SCOTT.

This victory also is set out in the New Testament in such expressions and phrases as evidently doth allude to this very promise in Genesis, as the accomplishment of it. Romans 16:20, “And God shall tread down Satan under your feet shortly.” It is God indeed treads him down, and yet it is their feet he is trodden under. Yea and Christ himself is pleased to give forth to his apostles, and us in them, our part and share in this victory over Satan, under the same expressions and allusion to this promise, as then bequeathed to us together with himself, Luke 10:19, when speaking of their subduing Satan, verse 17, and by their ministry throwing him down as lightning, verse 18, he utters it in these words, verse 19, “Behold I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and all the power of the enemy.”—THOMAS GOODWIN.

Christ is the leader of the seed of the woman, the captain and head of it in this great conflict; and Satan, as he was the head of the apostasy from God, continues the head of his seed, the generation of vipers, to try out the contest with Christ unto the end. The victory shall always be to the seed of the woman.—JOHN OWEN.

The protevangel contains the germ of all later Messianic prophecies; therefore is it so universal, so comprehensive, so dark, and yet so striking and distinct in its fundamental features. As the ground outline of the future of salvation, it denotes: 1. The religious ethical strife between good and evil in the world, and the sensible presentation of this strife through natural contrasts—the serpent, the woman. 2. The concrete form of this strife and its gradual genealogical unfoldings: the seed of the serpent, the seed of the evil one, and the children of evil; the seed of the good and the children of salvation. 3. The decision to be expected: the wounding of the woman’s seed in the heel, that is, in his human capability of suffering, and its connection with the earth, the treading down or the destruction, not of the serpent’s seed merely, but of the serpent himself, and that too in his head, the very centre of his life. The whole is, therefore, the prediction of an universal conflict for salvation, with the prospect of victory. From this basis the promise proceeds in ever-narrowing circles, until it passes over from the general seed of the woman to the ideal seed and from that again draws out in ever-widening circles, together with the self-unfolding promise of the kingdom of God.—J. P. LANGE.

General Harrison Answers Graham Critics

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

(The following excerpts are taken from a letter written to a well-known Christian leader in America by Lieutenant General W. K. Harrison, Commander in Chief, Canal Zone, U. S. Army, and contributing editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.The letter pertains to the controversy over “modernist” ministerial cooperation in the coming New York City campaign of Dr. Billy Graham—ED.)

The questions you raise are important and should be carefully and prayerfully considered.

The first question is, does Billy Graham consistently preach the Gospel?… I have heard Mr. Graham speak and have read some of his writings and not once have I heard him depart from the Gospel. By the word “Gospel” I mean essentially the good news that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He arose from the dead according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3). He preaches this truth, with its attendant truths, in a positive and sincere manner.…

The basic position in your letter, as I understand it, is that it is a disobedience of God’s commands for Bible-believing, born-again men to associate themselves with modernist churches and church organizations in supporting the dinner of September 17th given in honor of Billy Graham. You cite 2 Cor. 6:14; Ephesians 5:11; 2 Thess. 3:6. Since the purpose of this dinner, sponsored largely by modernists, was to gain support for the coming evangelistic campaign (in New York City) by Dr. Graham in 1957, it seems fair, also, to assume that you object to association with them in that campaign.

I examined the matter on the premises you stated in your letter; that is, that the major group supporting the dinner and the campaign is the modernist Protestant Council of the City of New York.… These men … have preached the social gospel, which is the only gospel they can preach until God speaks to their hearts. They would see some of the fruits of true Christianity, without the living tree itself. Now, after years of Christ rejection and of social gospel, they see failure. They are frustrated. Their religion is losing its adherents. Now they do the only thing really left to them. They turn to the kind of revival ministry that Dr. Graham has, and Moody, and others before him. True, they are not seeking salvation of the soul; they are seeking better morality and environment, better Christianity, but they are seeking them in the only place that they can see hope, in the Christian Gospel. And behind them, unseen behind the big names and ecclesiastical titles, are hundreds of thousands of little people who “don’t know their right hand from their left.” To me, it is a demonstration of God’s infinite love and grace that these unsaved blind leaders of the blind are, in their blindness, turning to the only truth which can lead them and their followers to salvation. In a way, it reminds me of Paul’s vision of the man of Macedonia, who beckoned to Paul to come over and help them. Do you not see the similarity?…

If these modernist groups invite Mr. Graham to preach the Gospel to them and offer to support it with money, effort and prayer, should he refuse? God’s command is to preach the Gospel to every creature. Would you accept an invitation to speak in a modernist church, in a synagogue, in a Roman Catholic church? I would, because I think that every ambassador of Christ would welcome the opportunity to tell the lost of the good news. It seems to me that rather than reject the Macedonian call we should praise God for it.

Now, if it is right for Mr. Graham, or you, or me, or Paul, to accept an invitation by unbelievers to speak the Gospel to them and their flocks, is it right for other real Christians to refuse to associate themselves with this ministry of the Gospel?… The crux of the matter is, what is to be preached and expounded? And that, we know, is the true Gospel of Christ.

In considering the verses which you cite in your letter, I noted first 2 Thess. 3:6 (Now we command you brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of its). It seems to me quite clear that this verse, taken in its context, verses 6 to 15, refers to persons who are disorderly in their conduct, not working, but busybodies. Yet, even so, these are to be treated not as enemies but as brothers (verse 15). It is a matter of discipline in conduct among believers.

The next verse is Ephesians 5:11, which says, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” In considering this verse I have examined six translations and three commentaries. The context in which this verse occurs is a condemnation of and warning against fornication, all uncleanness, covetousness (which is idolatry), filthiness, foolish talking and jesting. Those are all sinful and immoral acts … I must say that I see no resemblance between the unfruitful works of darkness mentioned in the context and the present action of the New York modernists in seeking and supporting a true gospel ministry in that city, unless we must take the position that their action is a work of darkness simply and only because they do it. This alternative leads to the following discussion of the third verse you cite, 2 Cor. 6:14.

This verse states, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” I think that this verse is really the one which is relevant to the question … It seems to me that where born-again Bible scholars differ as to the exact meaning and application of this passage, the least they can do is to treat one another in love, remembering that only God is infallible …

In trying to discover from the Bible the application of this verse to myself, I reached the conclusion, first, that it does not mean total separation from unbelievers. This seems clear from John 17:15, 1 Cor. 5:10 and 1 Cor. 10:27. Christ maintained contacts with people generally; many of whom were undoubtedly unbelievers (John 2 is an example). The most obvious example is the fact that during His earthly ministry He included Judas Iscariot with the other Disciples. We are also told to love and do good to our enemies, both of which involve contacts and action. Similarly, we are to remain in the human calling wherein we were called into God’s kingdom and service (1 Cor. 7:17–24). This inevitably involves some form of yoke or association with unbelievers and it is so indicated (Romans 12:1–7). Therefore, the separation commanded in 2 Cor. 6:14–17 is less than total and must have a special character.

It seems to me that the governing word is “unequally” and that its meaning must be understood in the light of righteousness, light, Christ, belief, the temple of God on the one hand as against unrighteousness, darkness, Belial, unbelief, idols, respectively on the other hand, as indicated in verses 14–17. We are to be separate, not necessarily by segregation, but by not touching that which is unclean (verse 17). Admittedly, this separation may, and often does, require segregation in some matters, but not inevitably in others. That is, if we are yoked or associated with unbelievers in objectives, purposes, methods or actions which are contrary to God’s will, commands or character, in other words, which are sinful, the yoke is unequal and must be avoided.

The question next arises as to how we are to determine those objectives which are to be so avoided. In many cases this is no problem because the Bible clearly states them. In others where there is no clear biblical command we are to be guided by the principles of love …

On the basis of the preceding thoughts we can consider the application of 2 Cor. 6:14 to the recent Billy Graham dinner in New York and the revival campaign which it supported.

I doubt if any unbeliever would argue that the objective or purpose is sinful, since the preaching of the Gospel of Christ is commanded by the Bible. The desire of and consequent invitation by the Protestant modernists to receive Mr. Graham’s ministry is certainly to be desired in the interest of saving men’s souls … The use of unbelievers’ money to pay the necessary expenses of the meetings which they themselves seek seems logical and legitimate to me. That modernists may be on the committee or sit on the platform are not in themselves evil, as I see it. I believe any real believer would welcome an invitation to preach the true Gospel to the pastor and unsaved people in a modernist church. Why should he withhold the Gospel which Christ commanded His disciples to preach? Yet, if one accepts such an invitation, he does so from the pastor of the church, and that pastor will sit on the platform and probably take part in the service.

There is in this no recognition of any yoke or Christian fellowship.… Now, I see little difference other than in magnitude between the preaching of the Gospel in a single modernist church and in New York by Billy Graham.

… I think we must all recognize that God has saved many, many persons and multitudes have received the true witness through the ministry of Mr. Graham.… I simply cannot see how such a movement and salvation could be of Satan, which it must be if it is not of God.

If it is of God, then are we, who have been saved through the ministry of the same Gospel, to refuse to cooperate? Are we to hinder or to help? And I ask myself, what kind of Christian testimony is it when we stand before the world in opposition to the preaching of the Gospel to unsaved people who ask for that preaching …?

It may be true that Mr. Graham in his public ministry does not try to put converts into, or keep them out of, certain churches, leaving the decision to the individual. I agree with him that the Sovereign God is able to keep His own and to finish that which He has begun. Who knows that converts who go to a modernist church may not be God’s witnesses in that church until such time as they leave it or are expelled?

Personally, I do not feel that I am in a position to judge others in this respect, although my personal inclination is to worship in the churches which are faithful to the truth as it is given in the Bible. I think the great objective is to try to lead people to salvation, in full confidence that God Himself is the one who saves them, keeps them saved and guides them through life in accord with His plans for them (Eph. 2:10).

I personally hope that all true believers in New York and elsewhere will support the Graham campaign there.…

Worth Quoting

“A man cannot be right with God in his heart until he is right with God in his pocketbook.”—Howard Butt, Texas supermarket executive and lay evangelist.

“A sober teenager with a craving for speed is much better than a drunken adult with liquor banging away at his senses.”—Dr. Robert A. Cook, president of Youth for Christ International.

China Visits Hit

A move by the National Council of Churches of Christ to send a delegation of churchmen to Communist China has been strongly denounced by the National Association of Evangelicals in a letter to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Clyde W. Taylor, Secretary of Public Affairs for NAE, in a letter dated January 8, urged the State Department to “hold its present policy of invalidating all American passports for travel to Communist China.”

He stated:

“If any American Churchmen should be allowed by the communists to visit the mainland of China, it would be only because the communist regime feels that it is in their interest to allow such a visit. It is reasonable to assume that such churchmen would not be allowed to interview those Chinese Christians who have refused to surrender their faith and as a result are in concentration camps, many of them in Manchuria. Nor is it likely that they would be allowed any extensive contact with the leadership of the noncollaborating evangelical segment of the Chinese Christian Church.

“Thus it is quite possible that such a visit would be a serious detriment in several respects. It would be a source of great discouragement to the leadership of the vital evangelical segment of the Chinese Church. It would undoubtedly produce a very unrealistic picture of the situation of the Church in China. It is certainly impossible to get a true picture in a few days of the pressures and persecutions which have spread over several years. This is especially true in light of the fact that the evangelical church in Communist China has grown in spite of persecution. It undoubtedly would be used as a means to bring further pressures on the U. S. Department of State toward the recognition of Communist China. Finally, and this is most important, such a visit would imply U. S. approval of the collaborationist tactics of the leaders of the ‘government-approved’ church in China.”

Worship In Washington

Before the opening of the 85th Congress, President Eisenhower, leaders in various branches of government, including cabinet members and congressmen, gathered for a reverent and impressive communion service in historic National Presbyterian Church.

Participation from the upper echelons of political leadership was the largest since the annual service was inaugurated on the day Congress convened in 1948.

Above such dramatic asides as participation by dignitaries of both party affiliations was the spectacle of national leaders humbling themselves, from the President down, in corporate intercession in the house of God before assuming new duties in the White House and houses of Congress. The annual service, possible under the Presbyterian doctrine of the catholic church, probably could not now be discontinued, because many officeholders who value its spiritual significance would doubtless insist on its repetition.

President Eisenhower sat in his customary pew, and was served the communion elements by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Dulles was one of 30 Presbyterian elders serving the elements during the 43-minute gathering.

Because of unfamiliarity with the service among new members of Congress, briefings were held in the church auditorium a half hour early. Those serving included Secretary of the Army Wilber M. Brucker, Paul W. McCracken of the Council of Economic Advisers, Assistant Attorney General Perry W. Morton, five elders in the Senate (Martin, Pa.; Dirksen, Ill.; Ervin, N. C.; Stennis, Miss.; Scott, N. C.) and five elders from the House (Beamer, Ind.; Pillion, N. Y.; Simpson, Pa.; Fountain, N. C.; Laird, Mich.).

President Eisenhower came with his assistant, Sherman Adams, and Press Secretary James C. Hagerty. (Former President Truman, also without the first lady, usually attended with a considerable group of aides.)

The house of God is the one assembly where the arrival of the President goes unmentioned, and the people remain seated as he joins the worshippers. At the close of the service, they remain in their pews until the President is escorted from the church by the host minister.

Leaders in the service, no less than participants in the pews, contributed their share of interest. Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, the President’s pastor and contributing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, offered the prayer for divine guidance and blessing upon all in authority. The Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., David W. Profitt, who was elected to that post over Dr. Elson in a “layman’s year,” acted as chief elder. The customary exhortation or invitation before the serving of the elements was omitted. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, president of the National Council of Churches, presided.

The service is sponsored each year by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., in cooperation with the N. C. C. and Washington Federation of Churches. As a symbol of merger negotiations now in progress, Dr. Robert W. Gibson, Moderator of the United Presbyterian Church, was among those officiating. In recent years, before the Presbyterian Church, U. S. (Southern), rejected a merger proposal, its Moderator, likewise, was asked to officiate at the Lord’s table.

—C.F.H.H.

Digest …

► Dr. Duke K. McCall, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, named chairman of Accrediting Commission of American Association of Theological Schools.… Brig. Gen. Lester Maitland, first man to fly non-stop from U. S. to Hawaii, ordained deacon in Protestant Episcopal Church, Iron River, Michigan.

► Chicago management consultant firm—Booz, Allen and Hamilton—hired to study ways of improving effectiveness of Southern Baptist Convention agencies.… Annual budgets of 155 churches between Windsor and Ottawa, Canada, boosted from $1,000,000 to $2,500,000 in biggest Protestant stewardship campaign ever undertaken in the country.

► Dr. Carrol A. Wise, professor of pastoral psychology and counseling, Garret Biblical Institute, Evanston, Ill., elected president of board of governors of Council for Clinical Training, Inc., with 42 accredited training centers.

► C. E. Bryant, public relations director of Baylor University, named director of publications of Baptist World Alliance.… University of Chicago Press announces publication date of January 26 for first English translation of Walter Bauer’s Worterbuch, formerly available only in German to Greek New Testament students.

► Each family belonging to Hillcrest Methodist, Bloomington, Minn., receives key to front door of church.

Aroused Broadcasters

Unusual interest is being shown in the 14th annual convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, Inc., scheduled for the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D. C., January 30–31.

In what promises to be the largest and most representative gathering in the history of the NRB, there will be two main concerns:

*A new strategy for the preservation of the right to purchase radio-television time for the broadcasting of the Gospel.

*Development of more effective religious broadcasting techniques.

Special interest in the convention resulted from the official pronouncement of the Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches against the purchase of radio and television time for the broadcasting of religion. (The National Council apparently wants to control the allocation of broadcast and film time.)

Members of the NRB, affected by the active implementation of this policy, broadcast on 80 per cent of the nation’s radio and television stations. It is estimated that their annual budgets are in excess of $10,000,000, most of which is spent for broadcasting time.

Representatives of the religious broadcasting field who will address the convention are Dr. Eugene R. Bertermann, executive director of The Lutheran Hour; Dr. Theodore H. Epp, head of The Back to the Bible Hour; Dr. Peter Eldersveld, The Back to God Hour of the Christian Reformed Church; Dr. Clarence W. Jones, president of the World Radio Missionary Fellowship and director of Station HCJB, “Voice of the Andes.”

Faith On Campus

The 2,360 delegates to the Southern Baptist Student World Missions Congress in Nashville, Tennessee, signed commitment cards pledging themselves to relate their faith “integrally” to campus life.

An estimated 200 of the delegates also pledged themselves to full-time service as missionaries or in other Christian vocations. They responded to a call given by Dr. Baker J. Cauthen, executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention’s foreign mission board.

Dr. Cauthen said he believed a chain reaction would develop when the delegates returned to their campuses, with “many other recruits” coming from the influence of the Congress.

Exclusive Right

The U. S. State Department has announced that the Republic of Colombia is reconsidering an order banning a substantial area of the country to Protestant missionaries.

“Since 1951,” the Department said, “there have been numerous incidents of violence against American Protestant missionaries and the destruction of American mission property.”

Under terms of a so-called Mission Agreement signed by the government of Colombia on January 29, 1953, the Roman Catholic Church was given the exclusive right to proselytize and carry on religious and educational work in “a considerably expanded area, believed now to constitute between two-thirds and three-fourths of the national territory.”

A number of Protestant missions were closed as a result of the order.

The Department added:

“The Colombian government has given considerable study to the problem, and has indicated that it hopes it will be possible to re-open the closed churches in the near future.”

Major Advance

Speakers at the eighth annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Philadelphia described the Dead Sea Scrolls as “a major advance in biblical scholarship.”

Dr. R. Laird Harris of Covenant Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, said the scrolls have given “new importance and value” to the Septuagint, or first Greek translation of the Old Testament.

Dr. Ned B. Stonehouse, dean of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, was elected president of the society. He succeeds Dr. Roger B. Nicole of Gorden Divinity School, Boston, who presented a paper on “Opportunities and Perils of Evangelical Scholarship.”

Treasures On Earth

Clergymen will have to lay a little more money aside in 1957 to pay their self-employment tax under social security coverage.

The rate is going up from 3 to 33/8 per cent this year, with the tax assessed against the first $4,200 of a clergyman’s income. This raises the maximum payment from $126 to $141.75.

Since the tax is due in a lump sum, many clergymen follow the plan of laying aside a specific amount each month. The payment must be made at the time personal income tax returns for the year are filed. These are due on April 15 of the year following the end of the calendar year. The higher tax, therefore, will not be paid until April 15, 1958.

In return for the increased tax, clergymen who become completely disabled because of accident or illness may retire on full social security payment at any time after the age of 50 and wives will be eligible for benefits at age 62 instead of 65.

Europe News: January 21, 1957

Drastic Measures

Soviet Zone leaders of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKID) are resorting to drastic measures—including a cut in ministers’ salaries—to thwart efforts of the communist regime to paralyze the Church’s work by undermining its financial resources.

Some churches already have ordered a 10 per cent reduction in the salaries of both pastors and church workers. They have levied special contributions, and in addition, have taken disciplinary measures against members who balk at paying their church “taxes.” Such persons will temporarily forfeit their right to such services as baptisms, marriages and funerals.

In a recent sermon, Bishop Otto Dibelius of Berlin, chairman of the EKID Council, appealed to the East German members to respond to the financial plight of their churches in “a true spirit of Christian sacrifice.”

Communist measures to disable the Church financially have become increasingly stringent over the past two years and are generally regarded as attempts to minimize the Church’s influence as an anti-communist force.

The measures include reductions in State subsidies, sharp reduction in street and house-to-house collections.

Control In Hungary

Hungary’s State Office for Church Affairs has been abolished as part of a governmental reorganization program undertaken by the communist regime of Premier Janos Kadar.

The office’s “sphere of influence” has been assumed by the Ministry of Public Information.

What effect this action will have on the churches of Hungary was not immediately apparent.

The Budapest Radio claimed that the move “virtually ends State control of the churches.”

“The churches,” it said, “can fulfill their tasks freely. The State authority will no longer interfere with the churches’ work.”

The Office for Church Affairs was set up in May, 1951, as a separate department for religious matters. Late last November, after Soviet forces had crushed the insurrection, the office issued a statement saying that “the revolutionary worker-peasant government stands for the free practice of religion as laid down in the constitution of the Hungarian People’s Republic … It wishes in the future to resolve questions arising between the State and the Church through negotiations and agreements.”

Abolition of the Church Affairs Office came after Hungarian church groups had acted in the wake of the uprising to throw off the shackles imposed on religious life and institutions by the communist regime and to oust collaborationists appointed to church offices.

Janos Horvath, a communist, had been director of the Church Affairs Office. During the short-lived revolt, the Office apparently ceased functioning and telephone calls there remained unanswered.

Africa News: January 21, 1957

Nitro In Nigeria

The State and the Roman Catholic Church in Eastern Nigeria are locked in controversy over the government’s free universal education plan, designed to take effect this year.

Basis of the disagreement is the government’s decision that all schools receiving government subsidy must conform to government standards. The Roman Catholics, who claim over 50 per cent of the Christians among the region’s 7,000,000 population, assert that parents have the right to decide the nature of their children’s education. Also, they have expressed fear of mishandling of funds in a region which has had frequent investigations of corruption.

In answer to the Roman Catholic charge of a “godless State monopoly of education,” Prime Minister Azikiwe said, “the government of the Eastern Region is irrevocably committed to the principle of religious freedom.”

Protestants have quietly accepted the plan, feeling that they will benefit from it. Under the new arrangements, financial problems will be solved and missions, responsible for 95 per cent of education in the country, will have the right to give religious instruction in classrooms. Mission officials have the opportunity of being nominated as managers of schools and can influence policy by becoming members of local councils.

Roman Catholics, on the other hand, see the plan as a threat to their bid for control of education in the region.

The Prime Minister has pointed out that “the government will not prevent any person or voluntary agency from establishing a private school which shall charge fees, provided that such schools need not claim to be eligible to receive grants-in-aid as a right.”

—W.A.F.

Exodus From Egypt

Familiar faces are being missed in Egypt today as a result of the recent government action against British and French nationals.

In addition to virtually the entire business, professional and consular communities, three distinct groups of British people have been ordered out of the country. These include one missionary organization almost in its entirety, the total force of educationalists and all the Anglican clergy.

The missionary organization was the Egypt General Mission, a group of women and laymen, including nurses and doctors, from Britain and Australia. Members of the organization came under a dark cloud last spring on government charges of teaching Christianity to Muslim children. The Mission’s two schools were closed and taken over by the government.

After the recent outbreak of hostilities, the Mission Hospital in Shebin al Qanater, in the Delta, was expropriated and the staff sent to the Mission headquarters in Zeitun, a suburb of Cairo, where all were kept under house arrest and given orders to leave the country within seven days. With the bank account under sequestration, members had no way in which to pay for plane tickets. Appeals for the release of funds fell on deaf ears. Finally, tickets were bought by non-British friends. Observers predict the organization will never be permitted to return to Egypt.

In mid-December, only one clergyman from the United Kingdom remained—the Rev. Roy Stewart, for the past five years pastor of the St. Andrews Church of Scotland, Cairo. Of Mr. Stewart’s congregation, two remained, one a retired Scottish businessman and member of the Kirk Session, and the other the wife of an American University professor.

Russia News: January 21, 1957

‘Rise In Vain’

Metropolitan Anastasi, head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, has told the people of the Soviet Union in a radio message that the communists “rise in vain against Christ and his immortal gospel.”

The Gospel, he said, has “edified and consoled” countless millions through the centuries, while Communism “has brought with it nothing but bitter disappointment.

“Communism has not eliminated poverty and suffering from the earth, and it has not given people the blessings it has promised. Instead of bread, it gives them a stone. Instead of freedom, it gives them agonizing slavery and impoverishment.”

All free peoples, the Metropolitan said in the message broadcast by Radio Liberation, “recoil from Communism.”

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia comprises those who refused to accept the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate after the Russian Revolution.

‘Emptiness Of Heart’

The broadcasting of Christian teachings and principles to the Russian people is the free world’s greatest opportunity of smashing the Iron Curtain.

This is the opinion of the Rev. Paul E. Freed of Greensboro, North Carolina. Back from a six-week visit to European countries, including Russia, he said there is “a great emptiness of heart” among young Russians “which I am convinced can be filled by true Christianity.

“The young people of Russia have had atheism pounded into them since childhood, but I don’t believe that deep down within themselves they can deny the existence of God.”

Mr. Freed is president of International Evangelism, an independent missionary group which since 1954 has operated the “Voice of Tangier,” an international radio station in North Africa. The short-wave station currently broadcasts seven hours a day in 23 languages. It uses five sets of beamed antennas, one of which is directed to Russia.

Far East News: January 21, 1957

Campaign In Manila

An evangelistic campaign, described as Manila’s first major Crusade for Christ, is now under way, with Dr. Robert Pierce delivering the messages in an open-air auditorium seating 5,000.

Never before have churches in the city united for a campaign to continue for three consecutive weeks (January 13-February 3). The National Evangelistic Strategy Committee is sponsoring the crusade, with 75 churches giving support to the effort.

(This is a large majority of Protestant churches in the predominantly Roman Catholic city. In December, the Philippines were officially consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the Eucharistic Congress.)

Dr. Pierce, president of World Vision, Inc., with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, is well known throughout the Far East, where his organization supports many Christian projects.

Meetings are held in the auditorium of the famous Sunken Gardens, opposite city hall in downtown Manila. The platform, with its 60-foot tower and cross, seats a 600-voice choir. Heading the sponsoring committee are Chairman Jose A. Yap and Ellsworth Culver, coordinator.

Prayer support is being given by many churches in the provincial areas.

Chaplain Honored

The Republic of Korea Award of Military Merit has been given to an American Protestant chaplain for his work in organizing a Christian chaplaincy to aid men of the Korean Air Force.

Air Force Chaplain (Captain) Robert M. Moore (Presbyterian, U. S. A.), of Jersey City, N. J., received the award from Major General Chang Duk Chang, vice chief of staff of the Korean Air Force. It was bestowed in a ceremony at Bergstrom Air Force Base, Texas, where Chaplain Moore is now serving.

Different Message

Former Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who as a pilot in the Japanese Navy led the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, is on a tour of the United States as a Christian missionary.

Fuchida was converted after the war through the efforts of an American missionary Timothy Pietsch, and later joined the Sky Pilots of America, a group which aims at interesting boys in Christian work through their love of airplanes and trains young men to become flying missionaries.

He is chief of the Sky Pilots in Japan and has launched an evangelistic campaign among his fellow countrymen.

Before the Pearl Harbor attack, Fuchida trained 360 special pilots for a month and a half. During the attack, he said years later, he was filled with a love of his country and hatred of Americans, but added, “there was no real joy in my heart.”

At Midway, he was in sick bay aboard an aircraft carrier when it was bombed by United States forces. Both his legs were broken. Later, he was sent to build an airfield in Iwo Jima.

In August, 1945, Fuchida was to take part in a suicide mission against Guam, but the war ended before it could take place. He was tried as a war criminal and acquitted.

Stemming The Flood

“When Viet Nam joined the ranks of Communist-divided countries, Christian people the world around said, ‘My, isn’t that too bad.’ … Why shouldn’t it have been so? Millions of Americans, and others, had done nothing to stop it … hadn’t even said a prayer.

“In nearby Cambodia, I found only one missionary printer and one antiquated press … only one! He had succeeded in rolling off material which was piled from the floor to the ceiling of his tiny back-alley shop in Phnom Penh. In an adjoining room, a native Cambodian boy, a spastic child, was trying to fold and assemble that material by hand. That Christian printer had been praying and hoping for over a quarter of a century for reinforcements that hadn’t come.

“Is it not inconceivable that in these days of technological know-how, achievement and advance, that we should expect one man and one spastic boy to stem the Red flood in such a strategic country all by themselves?”—From address at “Men’s Council on World Objectives,” Spokane, by Clay Cooper, president of Vision, Inc.

Strong Bid For Aid

When Roman Catholic authorities in New Zealand made a strong bid to obtain state aid for their expanding network of church schools, the government set up a special commission to hear evidence.

The Commission heard reports from all quarters and finally reported it had no recommendation to make. A Roman Catholic member of Parliament moved that the matter be referred back to the Commission for further investigation, but the motion died for want of a second.

Roman Catholics comprise about 16 per cent of the population of New Zealand. Anglicans total 37 per cent and Presbyterians 25 per cent. Both have a number of church schools and other educational institutions.

Under the existing plan, time is allowed up to a half-hour a week for religious instruction in state schools.

Government Ally

A leading Australian Methodist clergyman has charged that the Christian Church in Communist China is now “so fully a party to the plans and politics of the government that it is actually an ally of that government.”

“It is playing its role,” declared Dr. Malcolm Mackay, minister of the Scottish church in Sydney, “in subverting men and women from the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Its prophetic function is ended and Jesus Christ is not its King.”

He called for an end to contacts between Western churchmen and the State-subordinated churches of either Communist China or Russia, branding such contacts as “sentimental nonsense.”

He added:

“It is time we put an end to this blind and wilful folly which has made deep inroads into our churches and to have an end to this sentimental nonsense which sees all the right with the other side and all the wrong on our side. That is not Christian charity. That is high treason in an ideological war.”

Deaths

*Richard Johnson, American Methodist missionary of Owatonna, Minnesota, drowned when he was caught in a strong current while swimming at Kuala Trengganu in Malaya.

*George T. Stephens, 72, Canadian-born evangelist associated with both Billy Sunday and Billy Graham.

*Dr. Clarence E. Krumbholz, 69, executive secretary of National Lutheran Council’s Division of Welfare for 15 years.

*Bishop Alexander Caillot, 95, of Grenoble, France, said to be oldest Roman Catholic bishop in world.

CHRISTIANITY TODAYis a subscriber to Religious News Service, Evangelical Press Service and Washington Religious Report Newsletter.

Books

Book Briefs: January 21, 1957

Indispensable Tool

The Westminster Atlas to the Bible (Revised Edition) by George E. Wright and Floyd V. Wilson. The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1956. $7.50.

To say that the present atlas is an indispensable tool for every serious Bible student is to say the obvious. This revised work is a delight. As to format, printing, illustrations and maps it is a masterpiece. It contains sixteen more pages than the first edition (1945) and discusses the latest discoveries in Palestine, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. The remarks on the excavations at Megiddo (p. 113) are a model of compact archaeological reporting. One can spend much profitable time in examining the well chosen illustrations, and will learn a good deal about the Holy Land from such examination. The picture of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (p. 104), which in the original edition had been reversed, is now printed correctly. All in all, the book is a pleasure to behold.

We cannot but commend the authors for the manner in which they have written the material which accompanies the maps and illustrations. An introductory essay by William F. Albright provides an excellent introduction to the study of the ancient Near East. This is followed by a chronological table or outline of ancient history which will well serve the purposes of ready reference. There is an excellent restraint, also, in the discussion of some of the problems connected with the relationship of archaeology and the Bible. The patriarchal period is dated as c.2000–1700 B.C. No attempt is made to force a late date upon the patriarchal age, and this, we believe, is wise.

To be regretted is the fact that the authors are willing to embrace a “critical” view of the Holy Scriptures. Their sympathies lie with the modern school of biblical studies rather than with the historic Christian position which regards the Bible as infallible Scripture. For example, on page 26 we are told, “—we lack precise knowledge of the nature of Abraham’s religion,—”. Genesis one to eleven is said to contain “Hebrew traditions about the Creation and the Flood” (p. 25). The Christian position is that these are not merely Hebrew traditions but the revelation of God about the origin of all things. There is much mention of the ministry of Jesus, but one looks in vain for a clear-cut statement as to who this Jesus is. Nor does it help to be told of Paul that on the way to Damascus “—he had the vision of the living Christ which transformed his life and affected the course of history” (p. 95). The phrase “living Christ” is vague and shadowy. The Christ Whom Paul saw on the Damascus road was One who had been crucified and by a mighty miracle had risen from the dead. He was the risen Christ.

For the most part, however, the “critical” viewpoint of the authors is excluded from the discussion, and for this we are truly grateful. The value of the book is thereby tremendously enhanced, and so, can be used with great profit. The scholarship which has gone into the book’s preparation is truly admirable and we congratulate the authors upon their production.

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Exegesis And Homiletics

The First Epistle of John, by Robert S. Candlish, Zondervan, Grand Rapids. $5.95.

Like a trip to the mountains that border the sea!

Candlish was a leader among “the Wee Frees.” For many years he preached in Scotland’s most influential church and was Principal of New College, Edinburgh. In this book he combined careful exegesis and true homiletics to produce forty-six messages of insight and inspiration. He died in 1873, but in this reprint his preaching lives on.

The Doctor did not pause for thorough investigation of the background of First John, but he occasionally makes clear the references to the incipient Gnosticism which John contacted (e.g., pp. 198, 528). The analysis is of the text. The Epistle is “the divine fellowship of light, righteousness, and love, overcoming the world and its prince” (p. 436). There are four parts: in 1:5–2:28 God is light; in 2:29–4:6 God is righteousness; in 4:7–5:3 God is love; and then there is conflict with the world, 5:2–21. Our author overrides human chapter divisions for new truth (e.g., 350) which is often strikingly stated. For example, the child of God is born of the Spirit as Jesus was:

You who believe are born of God as he is. I speak of his human birth; in which you, in your new birth, are partakers with him; the same Spirit of God being the agent in both, and originating in both the same new life. His birth was humiliation to him, though it was of God: your new birth is exaltation to you, because it is of God. His being born of God by the Spirit made him partaker of your human nature;—your being born again of God by the Spirit makes you partakers of his “divine nature” (p. 220).

Criticism? There is perhaps too much subjectivism, as in dealing with what John says about anti-Christs (p. 355). He seems to teach an impeccability realized on earth from a passage like “whosoever is born of God cannot sin” (3:9 A.V.), without sufficient attention to the continuous action of the Greek infinitive, which makes John really say, “he cannot go on sinning, he cannot make sin a habit of his life” (Cp. however, p. 352).

May I suggest, first, that laymen buy this book for their pastors; second, that pastors take a course in First John, under Candlish, by reading this large type for fifteen minutes a day for 46 consecutive days. It will deepen spirituality and quicken love for Christ and men.

W. GORDON BROWN

Ecumenicity

The Church for the New Age—A Dissertation on Church Unity, by Christopher Glover. Exposition Press, N. Y., 1956.

This is an extraordinary book. Every Protestant ought to read it. It sets forth opinions which, if believed by the Anglican Church generally, are eye-openers in the area of Ecumenicity. And if what the author claims is true, it is indeed essential for every Protestant to be aware of the claims and to understand and appreciate them.

Bishop Walter Carey of the Anglican Church wrote the foreword. He stated that the author’s “thesis and analysis is (sic) uncontrovertible.” What then is the viewpoint which is uncontrovertible?

Mr. Glover claims that the Church (the holy catholic church) is marked off by four characteristics. It is divine in origin, visible in character, organic in structure and priestly in function. There are only three communions (possibly a fourth) which are true and valid parts of this holy catholic church by these standards. One is the Roman branch of the holy catholic church, a second is the Greek Orthodox branch of the holy catholic church and the other is the Anglican branch of the holy catholic church.

Only through the aforementioned branches of the church is it possible to be assured of salvation. God has worked through other so-called churches and has allowed people to be saved, but their salvation is “uncertain” and they can have no certainty or assurance save through the branches of the holy catholic church. All Protestant churches, including Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed, Congregational, Baptist, etc. are not true churches. Their ministries are not valid and their sacramental systems are built on error and not on truth.

Biblically, God intended that there should be one visible organically united church. This is the plan and will of God. Division is sin and while the division of the three branches of the only true church is sinful, the schism of Protestantism is more sinful. There is little present hope for reunion of the three dissenting branches of the true church—Roman, Greek, and Anglican. Error exists in the Roman and Greek forms and these two branches are temporarily confirmed in their obstinacy. The Anglican Church alone possesses all the truth and alone is the branch of the true church which is true to the demands of the biblically true church.

There can never be a reunion of the churches as this relates to Protestantism because Protestant churches are not really churches. They must submit to the basic claims of the Anglican church and come penitently to its fold and recognize its basic or essential claims. Protestantism’s ministry can become a valid ministry when it has been validated by the laying on of the Anglican hands and its people assured of salvation through Anglicanism’s sacramental system.

If the author of this book is right, Protestantism has been wrong for more than four hundred years. Its views on the church, ministry, and sacraments have been wrong too. With incredible aplomb this writer takes himself and his church so seriously that he becomes as dogmatic as any Roman pope. Most ecumenical enthusiasts will be far less enthusiastic once they read through this volume. If a Fundamentalist wrote a book the way this book is written he would be pilloried and termed as an obscurantist. At times this reviewer asked himself the question, “Is the author really serious?” Well, he certainly is serious, and his conclusions are well and good for those who wish to accept them. But for me and my house (my father having come up through the Anglican tradition) there are dissenting voices both from the conclusions and the evidences used to support them.

—HAROLD LINDSELL

Cancer Anonymous

Determined to Live, by Brian Hession, Peter Davies. 15s.

No one can read this book without being moved with admiration for the courage of its author. A clergyman of the Church of England who has for many years been deeply impressed with the value of visual aids in the presentation of the Gospel, Brian Hession was in Hollywood in 1954 acting as “spiritual technical adviser to a company making a religious film,” when he consulted a doctor and was informed that he had only three or four days to live. The diagnosis was—inoperable cancer in an advanced stage. As they faced this stunning blow in the presence of God, Mr. Hession and his wife became convinced that they must find a surgeon who would consent to take the risk of operating. They found their man in Dr. John Howard Payne of Pasadena, California. The finest human skill, the best possible nursing and all expenses paid by generous friends are not uncommonly found in the United States. In the Hessions’ case these were combined with a strong faith in God and a determination not only to survive, God willing, but to prove that it is possible after a colostomy to live an active life to the glory of God. As the story shows, Brian Hession is still alive and engaged in worthwhile work after more than two years. It is his great desire not only to continue in the production of religious films, but to sell to the world the idea of Cancer Anonymous (on the analogy of Alcoholics Anonymous). The greatest need, he feels, is to stimulate faith and hope amongst cancer patients who are too ready to accept a fatal diagnosis as certain. The plain fact is that there are far more cures in the early stages of the disease than most of us imagine, and Brian Hession is alive to show that even in an advanced stage, recovery is not impossible.

This is not a treatise on faith healing, for under God it was the surgeon’s skill which brought about the miracle. But miracle is not an inapt word, for thousands were praying, and it was surely God who blessed the means used and inspired His servant to remain alive, for the sake of his wife and children and his work, when the medical verdict left no loophole for recovery.

Cancer Anonymous is surely a project which ought to command universal sympathy and widespread support. If the main subject of the book were a plea for the production of religious films, your reviewer would feel obliged to enter one or two strong caveats, particularly concerning the propriety of any actor impersonating our blessed Lord. Nor must affectionate admiration for the author be misconstrued as an endorsement of some decidedly loose phraseology from a biblical and theological standpoint.

FRANK HOUGHTON

Too Brief

A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, edited by Eugene R. Fair-weather. Westminster, Philadelphia, 1956. $5.00

This book is volume 10 in The Library of Christian Classics. Other volumes are: 1. Early Christian Fathers; 4. Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa; 15. Luther: Lectures on Romans; 24. English Reformers.

The present volume covers Anselm to Ockham. Aquinas is naturally given a separate volume, but the verb covers is still too inclusive. The material on Anselm is perhaps sufficient, but this can hardly be said of Abelard, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus and Ockham. Duns, for example, is allowed nine pages of fairly important material, and Ockham is give six pages of fairly unimportant material.

The editor’s Introductions to the several sections are well written and reflect great learning; but they are so general and summary that I fear a scholar would find them too brief and a general reader too unintelligible.

GORDON H. CLARK

Missionary Literatur

Jungle Doctor Hunts Big Game, by Paul White. Paternoster Press. 4s.6d.

Here we have the fourteenth volume the now famous Jungle Doctor series, but lest there should be any misgiving, prospective readers may be assured that there is absolutely no sign of any diminution in Dr. White’s unrivalled powers as a narrator of his missionary experiences and adventures in Central Tanganyika. From beginning to end the book is completely absorbing, and in places most moving. Like its predecessors, its pages effectively and unselfconsciously display the Gospel as the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, and as missionary literature, entirely suitable for both young and old and challenging to both young and old and challenging to both believer and unbeliever, we know of nothing better. The book is attractively illustrated by Graham Wade.

PHILIP E. HUGHES

Biography

The Protestant Bishop, by Edward Carpenter. Longmans. 35s.

This is the biography of a Bishop of London who, though little known, exercised a powerful influence upon the destinies of the English Church and people. Henry Compton came of a noble family which had rendered great service to the Royalist cause. Henry Compton exiled himself to the continent during the commonwealth and only returned to England with the restorction of the monarchy.

His early promotion is sensational by our standards and stemmed, no doubt, from his noble birth, but was later justified by his outstanding ability. He was ordained deacon and priest in 1666; three years later he became a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. Within a month he proceeded to the degrees of B.D. and D.D. In 1674 he was made Bishop of Oxford and a year later, of London.

Compton was a man of very simple faith. His biographer says, “he may perhaps be numbered among the twice born.” He scorned the proud conceit of those who exalted their own intellect above spiritual understanding. “We are absolutely dependent,” he writes, “upon the righteousness of Christ for our justification: and for getting out of our state of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

He was devoted to the monarchy because he was even more passionately devoted to the English way of life, and he believed each to be dependent upon the other. But he was a typical Englishman in his rooted antipathy to the Church of Rome which he considered to be alien to the freedom-loving Englishman, the inevitable cause of despotism and tyranny and the source of unscriptural doctrine and worship. Thus his career as a Bishop was dominated by a determination to keep England Protestant, and this determination ultimately overrode even his loyalty to his sovereign. It was impossible to avoid a clash between Bishop and King. Whatever religious sympathies Charles had were with Rome, and his successor, James, was a Roman Catholic determined to force his religion upon the Country. Compton drafted a loyal address on behalf of the clergy in which he assured the King that “our religion established by law is dearer to us than our lives.” Compton was soon suspended from office but he did not cease to use his influence to oppose the policy of the King. The danger to Parliamentary Government from the King’s arbitrary conduct and the threat to the Church from his Roman Catholic influence, drove Compton to be one of the signatories to the invitation to William of Orange to come to England. Canon Carpenter’s book has much that is relevant to our contemporary situation. Compton taught his clergy by an ingenious system of conferences the dangers of Roman Catholicism and the errors of that church, and he saw that this teaching was passed on to the people. Such teaching would be most valuble in this age of what Bishop Hensley Henson called “comfortable anarchy.”

When the bloodless revolution was achieved many of Compton’s Episcopal friends deserted him and the Archbishop shut himself up at Lambeth and took no part in the Coronation. (Incidentally it was left to Compton to draft a Coronation service which is substantially what we use today and it was his genius which introduced the presentation of the Bible to the sovereign). Episcopal leadership is frequently timid and hesitating in matters of deep theological moment but in things of social or political sentimentality they are bravely, but not always wisely, vocal.

Compton’s boldness and faithfulness was not rewarded by William or Anne, both of whom passed him over when the Archbishopric was vacant. This soured him so that in his later years he encouraged “just those elements in the nation which would have bypassed the Act of Succession in the interests of the Pretender.” It is refreshing to read of an ecclesiastic in high office so fearless and forthright in his determination to preserve the church and nation from spiritual tyranny, but it is rather saddening to discover that human nature in every age bears some of the less attractive characteristics.

Parts II and III of this book tell the story of Compton’s work as a Diocesan Bishop and his responsibility as such for chaplains in “the Plantations of America.” His wide sympathies included the French Refugees and the Greek Orthodox Community in London. It is interesting to note that his conditions for approving of a Greek Orthodox Church in London were that there should be no pictures or ikons, they must repudiate the doctrine of transubstantiation, and there must be no prayers to the Saints.

T. G. MOHAN

Cultic Dictatorship

Thirty Years A Watch Tower Slave—The Confessions of a Converted Jehovah’s Witness, by W. J. Schnell. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, $2.95.

This volume was writen by a man who was entangled in the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses for three decades. He writes his personal life testimony of his relationship to this movement. The story is in the form of an expose of the cult and its machinations.

Briefly the author contends that the cult is dangerous, having its origins in the personalities of Charles Taze Russell and Judge Rutherford. Both of these men, he claims, were deceivers who deliberately and for evil gain created this cult and its crude theology. Based upon distortions and falsehoods the cult moved forward in a totalitarian framework in which innocent men and women were led astray. The victims lost their freedom, their right to think and their souls too in the maze of this deception. Once under the iron rule and reign of the cultic dictatorship the victims were used to promote the sale of literature and to fill the coffers of the cult with the financial gains.

When an individual tried to free himself from the meshes of the dictatorship he would be persecuted and hounded in a fearful fashion. Mr. Schnell himself experienced the tortures perpetrated on those who would be free—not in the sense of physical imprisonment but from the pressures used by the organization to keep the victims in line.

One cannot doubt the genuineness of the author’s insights nor the obvious lessons which should be learned from his experiences. At the same time one cannot but be amazed at the organizational zeal of the movement and its remarkable success in winning converts. Quite obviously the cult is not even sub-Christian—just anti-Christian and thoroughly dangerous.

The volume lacks some of the artistic graces of good writing, but it has the touch of the sincere about it.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: January 21, 1957

John H. Gerstner

We shall comment on Roman Catholic matters currently discussed in Roman periodicals.

The Jesuit weekly, America (Dec. 22, 1956), reports with satisfaction that California is the 48th state to permit tax exemption for private schools. The magazine rejoices in this triumph for religion in general. The concluding words are: “The will of the people, confirmed by the courts, now prevails. A dubious legal quibble has been destroyed—and with it, is to be hoped, the spectre of an injustice in education alien to every Christian nation.”

This is a characteristic attitude of the Roman church in this country. Every act that tends to favor her and other religious groups’ interests she approves as triumphs for religion in general. This gives the impression that Rome is concerned with liberty and benefits for all religious groups. But in Barcelona we visited with an evangelical minister. A little second-story room was all he was allowed to use for a church. Even then he had no sign to indicate the nature of the building. This was against the law in officially Roman Catholic Spain. This evangelical pastor was not supposed to speak to Roman Catholics about his religion. And he had much more time to do so because Franco’s Roman Catholic state closed all non-Roman schools. So it goes in Peru and other Roman nations.

The Roman Catholic refutes the charge of inconsistency, thus: We claim religious liberty for ourselves on your principles and deny them to you on our principles. But why does Rome not say this openly and plainly? Why is this information hidden in textbooks for scholars only? And why, in 99 cases out of 100, is the opposing idea implied, as in the article above cited?

How the Roman scholar looks on Protestantism is revealed in the current Ecclesiastical Review. “An English theologian recently visiting America asked to speak to an expert on Protestant theologies at a Catholic seminary. He was promptly informed that no such expert existed precisely because Protestantism is not theological. If the Englishman had put the question differently by asking for the expert on Protestantism, he would probably have been introduced to the professor of Church History. Protestantism is too often treated in our seminaries as a sixteenth-century phenomenon which has somehow perpetuated itself for the past 400 years.” The article develops the idea that Protestantism is theologically amorphous varying with the denomination and the century. “Which Protestantism?” is the question.

There is undeniable truth in this pet Roman polemic. Variations in Protestantism are many and confusing, we must penitently acknowledge. But, Roman Catholics almost never mention relevant further considerations. Vast variations exist also within the unity of Rome, and a core of unity exists within the diversities of Protestantism. One variation within Romanism was alluded to in the preceding paragraph. The Roman Catholic teaching concerning religious liberty varies between the U.S. and Spain, for example. It has broken out at times in controversy between American ecclesiastics and Cardinal Segura. In the practical realm one Romanist promotes bingo and another attacks it. In the theological arena opposition is most apparent. Almost every variety of doctrinal opinion in the denominations of Protestantism is found in the orders of the Roman church.

Rome does not deny these things, but rather points out that, despite them, all her different schools acknowledge the authority of the pope. But Protestants may reply: We all recognize the authority of Christ and the Bible. The Roman Catholic counters: Yes, but you have different opinions about Christ and the Bible. We can then observe: Your theologians differ in the definition of an ex cathedra statement. It would be good if both sides would let this point rest about here: the Roman Catholic, admittedly, has more external, visible, constrained and conspicious unity; the Protestant has more internal, invisible, unconstrained and inconspicuous unity.

The Marian Year is now past, but deification of the Virgin continues apace (Ecclesiastical Review, Nov., 1956). In a remote way, Mary became our Co-redemptrix already in the Incarnation, for Christ took on himself a human body with all its sufferings in order to redeem us and atone for our sins. Mary agreed wholeheartedly to be mother of just such a suffering Redeemer, hence already in the Incarnation Mary cooperated in our redemption. At the cross the Saviour consummated his work of redemption amid great sufferings. He gave himself up entirely as our Sacrifice to the Father. But Mary is there too: ‘with her suffering and dying Son, Mary endured suffering and almost death. She gave up her mother’s right over her Son to procure the salvation of mankind; and to appease the divine justice, she, as much as she could, immolated her Son so that one can truly affirm that together with Christ she has redeemed the human race.’ (Benedict XV). Hence not only remotely in the Incarnation, but also proximately and immediately in the very act of the Redeemer on Golgotha, Mary is our Co-redemptrix. Not that the price paid by Christ was not sufficient. It was all-sufficient. But God willed to accept Mary’s offering as part of the price, even though that of the Son was all-sufficient.”

The entire article is in the same vein. But we confine ourselves to but one other phase of mariolatry—Mary’s Queen-ship. The present Pope Pius XII had said in 1946: “Jesus, the Son of God, reflects in His heavenly mother the glory, the majesty, and the dominion of His Kingship, for, having been associated to the King of Martyrs in the ineffable work of human redemption as mother and Co-operatrix, she remains forever associated to Him, within an almost unlimited power, in the distribution of grace which flows from the Redeemer. Jesus is King throughout all eternity by nature and by right of conquest; Mary, through Him, with and subordinate to Him, is Queen of grace, by divine relationship, by right of conquest, and by singular election. And her kingdom is as vast as that of her Son and God, since nothing is excluded from her dominion.” “Mary is also Queen by conquest, for she cooperated with the Saviour in redeeming us from Satan.…”

Since the statements are made, criticism is necessary. If Mary is thought of as Co-redemptrix, this implies her divinity. Redemption is, as the Roman Catholic church teaches, a work of infinite grace: an infinite sacrifice to an infinite God to remove an infinite guilt. If Mary could cooperate in that—if she could be a co-effector of an eternal and infinite redemption—she must need be infinite and eternal. The Roman church is nothing if not logical—so it should not take long for her to say this in so many words, rather than leaving the inferences to Protestant polemicists.

Theology

The Prayer of the Five Widows

Elisabeth Elliot

An account after the Auca ambush in Ecuador, from CT’s seventh issue.

11th November 1966: Kimo, one of the Auca Indians of Ecuador who killed five visiting missionaries, visits London in the company of Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the victims. Kimo is now a converted Christian, although he still displays the large holes in his earlobes which his tribe believe will keep them faithful to their wives.

11th November 1966: Kimo, one of the Auca Indians of Ecuador who killed five visiting missionaries, visits London in the company of Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the victims. Kimo is now a converted Christian, although he still displays the large holes in his earlobes which his tribe believe will keep them faithful to their wives.

Hulton Archive / Getty

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon a year ago, five young women were asking God for two things regarding their husbands: that they might be permitted to contact the Auca Indians again, and that they might be protected. As we sat in our jungle homes here in Ecuador, two in Arajuno, one in Shandia and two in Shell Mera, we little dreamed of the answer God was then giving. He answered both of those prayers, but, as is often the case with him whose thoughts are as far above ours as the heavens are high above the earth, his answer far transcended what we had in mind.

Silence on a Sand Strip

The second contact was given. Probably at about two-thirty in the afternoon at least ten Aucas arrived at the strip of sand where the men had set up their little camp. Having seen them some time earlier from the airplane, approaching the beach, the pilot had reported to his wife the anticipated contact. We can imagine the five, then, as the forest rang with their praises. They sang hymns together, committed themselves to the Lord once more and eagerly prepared for their longed for visitors. It was not long before savage yells, instead of hymns of praise, echoed through the forest, polished wooden spears slashed through the air and five young men lay dead on the Rio Curaray. Silence closed once more over the stand strip, and those beloved Indians returned nonchalantly to their thatched homes, to recount another killing to their waiting families.

When Christianity Today inquired about the burden in the hearts of the five widows of the Auca ambush in Ecuador (January 23, 1956), their reply suggested that this article might appear anonymously, since it mirrors the mood of all five women. Their scribe, however, was Elisabeth Howard Elliot. Graduated from Wheaton College (48) with a Greek major, she studied Spanish in Ecuador and, with a view to Scripture translation, studied the Colorado and Quichua languages in the west and east jungles there. In 1953 she married missionary-martyr Jim Elliot. Today at Shandia, on the headwaters of the Napo River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon, where the only communication with the outside world is by radio and airplane, she works alone in Bible translation, literacy work among women, teaching and medical work at a government accredited school for boys. Marjorie Saint is now serving in Quito as hostess of the guest house for HCJB (The Voice of the Andes). Barbara Youderian continues to serve in the Ecuadorean jungles, at the outstation of Cangaime among the Jivaro headhunters. Olive Fleming plans to return to the United States to serve in the office of The Fields, a religious publication. Marilou McCully manages a home for missionary children in Quito.

The asked-for contact had been given. But what about the protection?

Protection from Disobedience

When the Lord Jesus prayed to His Father, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John, he asked, too, for protection for those whom the Father had given him. For what purpose? “. . . that they may be one, as we are.” Protection from what? “. . . that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one.” Each one of our five men, years before, had asked for the whole accomplishment of God’s will in him at any cost, to the end that Christ be glorified. The Evil One is determined, however, that Christ shall not be glorified. But, in making them obedient men, God had answered the prayer of his Son, the prayer of the men themselves and the prayer of their wives. The adversary did not succeed in turning them aside from Gods highest purpose. They were protected from that most fearful of all dangers, disobedience. They loved God above all else. “Herein is the love of God, that ye keep his commandments.”

The prayer of our hearts today, of the widows who remain, is the same, that Christ may be glorified.

Christ’s Glory in Some Aucas

First of all, we continue asking for that which motivated the men from the beginning of the project—that Christ may be glorified in some Aucas. The contact God gave to the five was only one step in the opening of the fast-closed doors to that tribe.

Nor was it the first step. Others had thought and prayed for years about them, asking for an entrance, flying over the territory in search of their whereabouts, seeking a way to carry to them the Word of Life.

Some of the five men had long borne them before the Lord, asking for their salvation and committing themselves to God for them.

Now, thousands of Christians in all parts of the world have learned of them and are praying.

For us who have been most closely touched by the death of the five, there could be no greater joy than to know at last that the blood of our husbands has been the seed of the Auca church. Our hearts go out to the very ones whose strong brown arms sent flying the lances that killed our loved ones, for we know that they walk in darkness, knowing not even the name of Him who is more than life to us. And how shall they hear without a preacher?

So we ask for those whom God has prepared to be sent to the Aucas and only those. A well-meaning but misguided effort could ruin further opportunities to enter the tribe. But because God has done a tremendous thing in taking five of His choicest servants in this incipient stage, we are bold to expect tremendous answers to prayer in the future. We believe He will send the Light to the Aucas and have given ourselves anew for that, if He should care to choose any one of us to go. We were wholly at one with our husbands in their desire to reach the Aucas and had it been possible, would gladly have accompanied them. The last thing on earth we would have wanted would have been to hinder them in obeying the command of Christ, which was as clear to us as it was to them. He was directing; the only issue at stake was obedience. Jesus made the conditions of discipleship unequivocal—“Forsake . . . Deny . . . Follow.” This is the price we are asked to pay.

Many speak of the five men as having made the “supreme sacrifice.” We do not think of it in that way. They would not have called it that. One of them wrote in his diary years ago, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Jesus promised that whoever loses his life preserves it. Can we call this sacrifice? When we make a purchase, we pay the price, of course, but no one thinks of this as a sacrifice. How much less, then, when our lives, already paid for by Christ at tremendous sacrifice on his part, are offered to him? We lose nothing. We gain everything. Hence, we ask that God may choose those whom He wishes to carry the gospel to the Aucas, that they may be prepared by his Spirit, that they may not count their lives dear unto themselves, and that thereby the Aucas may be brought out of their bondage to know Jesus Christ, that he may be glorified in them.

Christ’s Glory in Us

We ask, further, that Christ may be glorified in us. “For we know that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Our hearts are filled with gratitude for the privilege He gave us in being the wives of men who were chosen to be slain for His sake. None of us is worthy. It is all of His grace, but we know that the Lamb is worthy, a thousand times, the lives of our husbands and of us. He chose to glorify himself in their death—may He now glorify Himself in our lives.

During those harrowing days when the rescue party was on its way to the beach, when we did not know what the next radio report would bring, we were conscious that whatever the outcome, God was determined to bring us to himself. He had promised, “When thou passest though the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee, for I am the Lord thy God. . . . Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honorable, and I have loved thee.” How could we have proved the truth of that promise if there had been no waters? And what rivers could overflow but deep ones? And so, to show us that he meant what he said, to prove to us his love, this was what he sent, this thing which each of us had been sure she could never endure, the loss of the one who was as her own soul.

Purpose in the Stab of Pain

And how, then, can Christ be glorified in us through this experience? By our responding with thanksgiving to his dealings with us, by our declaration of our love to him in utter obedience, by our believing that his judgments are right, that he in faithfulness has afflicted us. We ask that we may go on in peace, as he has mercifully permitted us to do thus far. In talking together, we have often said that we did not want to miss one lesson which our loving Father would teach us by this thing. To us, the loss of our husbands is not a tragedy in itself—it is one more of our Father’s right judgments. But it would indeed be a tragedy if, in our failure to respond to him with love, trust, and praise, we should miss what he intended for us through it. We ask that we may know him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death. If, through the loss of our husbands, we may cause Christ to rejoice, to see in us the travail of his soul and be satisfied, we shall never call it sacrifice. Each day, when little things remind us, with a new stab of pain, that our husbands are gone, we turn these things into prayer—“Lord, by this, too, glorify thyself. For this, too, I thank thee and trust thee, knowing that there shall be glory, as thou has promised, through this suffering.”

Christ and the Little Ones

Not only do we ask that Christ be glorified in the Aucas and in us, but also in our children. Most of them will have no recollection of their fine fathers. But our Lord gave his word, “All thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.” We ask for his wisdom in training them, for his Spirit in us, that they may be as obedient as their fathers. How wonderful it would be if he should prepare one or more of them to go to the Aucas! We would give them to him for his use, asking that they come to know him as Savior and Lord at an early age. Far be it from us to withhold from the Lord the lives of these little ones, children of the men who did not withhold their own lives. May they sing from true hearts,

Faith of our Fathers, Holy Faith,
We would be true to Thee till death.

Wherever the Spirit Speaks

Finally, we ask that Christ be glorified in the lives of those to whom the Spirit of God has spoken because of the death of the five men. We have received letters from all over the world, telling of the impact of the event on one and another. But we have heard of few who have actually done anything about it, who have been changed by it. We pray earnestly that those who have heard the voice of the Lord may be obedient. We pray that young men who have been attracted by the “opportunities to use their talents for the Lord in the United States” may abandon themselves, with their talents, to Christ, for his use wherever he wants them. We pray that if any young wife is hesitating to commit her husband and family to God, through fear of loss, she may believe the words of our Lord Jesus, “Truly I say to you, there is no man who hath forsaken . . . who will not receive.” We have proved beyond any doubt that he means what he says—his grace is sufficient, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. We pray that if any, anywhere, are fearing that the cost of discipleship is too great, that they may be given to glimpse that treasure in heaven promised to all who forsake.

And all our supplication is “with thanksgiving”— for his great love, for the high privilege of serving him with all of our hearts, for having given us as husbands men who were true soldiers of Jesus Christ, men to whom we could look up in every respect, men who set for us a great example of faith that acts on what it believes. We look forward with joy to that day when God will reveal to us his complete plan, knowing that we shall see clearly that every step of the way was ordained to the end that Christ might be glorified. Our husbands already walk with him, their joy complete. We, too, shall see him face to face, and be satisfied.

This hath He done, and shall we not adore Him?
This shall He do and can we still despair?
Come let us quickly fling ourselves before Him,
Cast at His feet the burden of our care,
Flash from our eyes the glow of our thanksgiving,
Glad and regretful, confident and calm,
Then through all life, and what is after living,
Thrill to the tireless music of a psalm,
Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and
through sinning,
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed:
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.
(From St. Paul, F. W. H. Myans)

Cover Story

The East German State: Has It Feet of Clay?

Harold B. Kuhn

The title “Democratic Republic” sounds nowhere more hollow than when applied to the present government of East Germany. Its rulers can scarcely be reassured by recent events in Hungary, where the instruments of power in the hands of the ruling elite have perforce been turned against the people in whose name they profess to rule. It is the purpose of this article to note some of the major features of this “Republic” and to seek to evaluate its points of strength and its areas of weakness.

Soviet Advantages

In installing the puppet regime in their zone of occupation, the Soviet rulers had three major points of possible advantage. First, they had at their disposal the large Junker estates, which most of the world agreed should be divided. Thus the land reform should have pleased the beneficiaries, and should have brought to the government a broad popular support from the peasants. This advantage was not pressed; crushing agricultural quotas discouraged the tillers of the land at the outset. More important still, the history of such “reforms” in Russia convinced the East German farmers that collectivization would follow in short order. This they have not wanted. Many are not waiting for it, for farmers make up a good portion of the refugees who leave the “Republic” at a rate of 1,000 per day.

The population of the seven Lander or provinces comprising the East German state has been traditionally socialistic. Thus the workers would not normally be opposed to the basic objectives of socialization. Yet the regime seems to have failed signally to enlist the loyalty of the workers, who for some uncanny reason are largely unmoved by socialist inventives. The barrage of agitative propaganda seems to annoy and disgust them, so that the new political orientation fails to “take” on them.

The intellectuals of this land have been traditionally tolerant of bureaucratic administration and generally responsive to official dictation and to state planning. Why, then, has the regime failed to win the general support of the intelligentsia?

Leaders in East Berlin official circles complain of the ideological indifference among the intellectual classes. Conversations with those who flee to the West reveal, however, that there is much active opposition to the dogmatism of Marxist science. As one trained physicist told the writer, he faced the choice of assenting to the dogmas stemming from dialectical materialism (at the expense of intellectual honesty) or of rejecting them and in consequence running afoul of the regime. He chose the latter alternative.

One cannot avoid the impression that the Communist party and the major classes of the East German population are separated by a lack of rapport. With the exception of the events of June, 1953, this has generally manifested itself in passive antagonism. Rulers and subjects appear in the form of two opponents in a battle of attrition, each determined to wear down the other.

Weaknesses Of Government

The causes underlying the weakness of the government of Pieck, Ulbrich, Grotewohl and others are numerous. The government began under the handicap of having been installed by a conqueror. It has never been able to make the smallest logical claim to rest upon the popular will. Indeed, its leaders seem to feel no need to establish such a base of support. They have, moreover, been embarrassed by their own pretension to sovereignty. At the demand of their Soviet masters, they have insisted that they headed a government which could make up its own mind. This prevented any candid statement to their subjects of precisely which powers remained in their hands and which were reserved to the Kremlin. This failure to take the people into its confidence has compelled the regime to bear the responsibility for the repressive acts and arbitrary decisions which, in part at least, have been imposed upon it from without.

A further feature tending to alienate the government from its citizens is the exactness with which it maintains the features which are part of the ritual of communist dictatorship. These are: rigid censorship of press and mails, constant internal espionage, senseless restrictions upon travel into and out of the country, the secret police and a brutal administration of the penal code. Most of these seem senseless to the outsider, while to the insider they bear no obvious relation to the achievement of the goals set by the rulers for the land.

Brute Force

The Party itself, hated by the masses, maintains itself in power by brute force. It rationalizes its position by posing, through endless propaganda media, as the agent of transformation, which promises a glorious tomorrow through planned and managed change. Conversations with refugees from all classes fail to support the view that this appeal finds much popular response.

The regime justifies its rigid control of the social and cultural life of the land upon this basis, namely, that it must discipline in order to reform. Propagandistic attacks upon the West as decadent continue monotonously. Life is designedly austere, and no major concessions are made to the demands of the masses for emotional relaxation, save such minor ones as the qualified tolerance of jazz and lipstick.

The governing clique lack much of the creative inspiration which their counterparts in the Soviet Union may at times experience. In Russia there is some measure of realism in the adaptation of measures to conditions in the land. In East Germany, on the other hand, the processes of the Kremlin are applied without creative imagination to a situation that is radically different. This creates an air of unreality, a feeling that the land is a stage upon which an unconvincing drama is being played. It is against this feeling of unreality that the instruments of official propaganda work with fervor and without great apparent success.

Impermanence Of Two Germanys

In the light of the foregoing factors, the East German government seems a strange combination of strength and weakness. It is difficult to weigh the one against the other. It is doubtful whether the East German officials expect their government to survive for long should Germany be reunited. This may account for their continued demands for recognition of their state, and for the pressure of Vice-Premier Otto Nuschke upon the Church of East Germany to acknowledge its permanence. These and similar actions bear witness to a possible doubt in their minds as to whether the impossible situation of two Germanys can long be maintained.

It is well known that East Germany is predominantly Protestant. The Evangelical (Protestant) Church has attracted wide attention for its courageous resistance to the encroachments of the regime. Dr. Jacob, Bishop of Cottbus, declared in Berlin last June that the Church would accept no compromise with atheism and would resist the “theoretical and material godlessness” that underlies the dialectical materialism to which the government professes such slavish adherence.

The Church in East Germany operates currently upon the basis of the agreement which Premier Grotewohl signed with Bishop Otto Dibelius on June 10, 1953. This agreement was secured by the prompt and courageous action of Bishop Dibelius and provided for a reduction of the many forms of harassment of the Church by Red officials. It promised, among other things, a review of the sentences of imprisoned pastors, relaxation of regulations upon public services and the readmission of youth expelled from schools because of church attendance.

A Secular Confirmation

The major thrust of the government’s attack upon the Church has been against the youth work, the Junge Gemeinde. At no point has the war of attrition against the Church been pursued with more ingenuity. Knowing the place which Church confirmation held in the mind of the German people, the regime introduced its own secularized version of confirmation, the Jugendweihe, or Youth Dedication. This is an impressive ceremony, urged upon all East German children “who wish to become loyal citizens” and arranged to coincide with the time of Church confirmation, generally during Holy Week.

Bishop Dibelius spoke promptly for the Church, condemning the Jugendweihe and laid down the general principle that a youth cannot participate in both Church confirmation and the state’s “youth dedication.” The outcome of the struggle is at this moment still in doubt. There can be no doubt that the long-range objective of the government is the destruction of the Christian Church. At present, the regime tolerates the Church, provided it “refuses to become a refuge for reactionary circles”—meaning that it may take no part in any movement to restore freedom to the people of East Germany.

The struggle for the minds of the youth continues. The F.J.D. (Free German Youth) compels its members (numbering some 2,000,000) to pledge to destroy “capitalist moral standards and superstition”; in other words, to obliterate the Christian religion and the ethics which it seeks to inculcate. Youth who refuse to participate in Youth Dedication are barred from universities and incur other serious handicaps.

The Weight Of Restrictions

It is difficult for the outsider to imagine the weight of restrictions under which the Church in East Germany operates. A pastor may not be transferred from one parish to another, save under most unusual circumstances. His income is less than that of common laborers, averaging about $30 a month. His children may not enter schools for higher education, and he and his family are in constant peril of arrest for some imaginary or real infraction of obscure bureaucratic regulations. This writer’s knowledge of these pastors indicates that they are overworked, tired, poorly paid but withal courageous in their determination to perform their duties in the fear of the Lord.

The larger ministry of the Church is curtailed in every way imaginable. A church may receive little or no help from the outside; it may export no funds whatsoever. While the supply of paper for atheistic literature is abundant, the publication of religious periodicals is rigidly controlled because of “paper shortages.” Home missions are rigidly curtailed; all but a handful of the Railway Missions ministering to the aged, the infirm and mothers traveling with children have recently been closed.

It is clear that the regime tolerates the Church solely because it finds her obliteration too costly. This toleration is a temporary expedient, until the older generation dies, and until a new generation can be trained in atheism. Meanwhile Vice-Premier Nuschke (a member of the Christian Democratic Union who is currently tolerated in the government) advises “a united front” and suggests that there is no time for controversy over religion or “other minor issues.”

A Light In The Night

Today the East German Church finds herself on the defensive in this conflict of wills with the State. She is the only significant bridge between her unhappy land and the free world. Within her tight frontiers, she is exerting an influence which is surprising when measured against her problems. There is reason to believe that as she cannot extend herself laterally, she is finding her own spiritual life deepened through her sufferings, and that as she can draw but little from the Church outside her frontiers, she is drawing more heavily from the resources of her Living Head.

In the meantime the people of East Germany live in their meager and monotonous world, while their rulers live in isolation from them in their own world of words and of perfectly coherent ideological dogmas. Many from all walks of life can bear the stifling and unreal atmosphere no longer. By the hundreds, these walk away, making their way to East Berlin, and thence across the border into the refugee installations in Free Berlin. Others cross the border temporarily, upon the pretext of visiting relatives, and spend a few cherished hours breathing the better air of the free world.

If and when Germany is reunited, and if the present government of East Germany is liquidated, the question of what legacy the regime will leave behind is a crucial one. One dares to hope that such a time will reveal that the East German Church has been largely significant in keeping alive the ideas and ideals of Christian civilization during the long night of communist rule.

We Quote:

ROBERT C. COOK

Director, Population Reference Bureau

In our finite world indefinite multiplication of people must eventually pass any possible optimum. Standing room only becomes a possibility in no very long time … In about 4½ centuries population density of the entire 52 million square miles of the earth’s land surface would be some 25,000 persons per square mile. That is the concentration on Manhattan Island today.… Considering how much desert, arctic, and mountain land is uninhabitable, it is not too soon to give serious consideration to the question of population optimum for this unexpansible planet.—in “The Population Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. XII, No. 8 (Oct., 1956), p. 296.

LORD BOYD ORR

Director-General, FAO, from 1945 to 1948

Our immediate problem is the provision of food for say 5,000 million by 2,000 A.D. and possibly a further 2,000 million in the following twenty-five years.… The limit to food production is neither lack of knowledge nor physical obstacles of soil or climate. The limit is imposed by economic factors. The amount of any food a farmer produces is determined not by what is possible but by what he hopes to sell at a remunerative price.—in “Science and Hunger,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. XII, No. 8 (Oct., 1956), pp. 309 f.

Dr. Harold B. Kuhn is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Ky. Summer after summer he has carried on an educational and evangelistic ministry to Russian zone refugees in Germany. He holds the B.A. from John Fletcher College, and the S.T.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has pursued post-doctoral studies at University of Munich.

Apple PodcastsDown ArrowDown ArrowDown Arrowarrow_left_altLeft ArrowLeft ArrowRight ArrowRight ArrowRight Arrowarrow_up_altUp ArrowUp ArrowAvailable at Amazoncaret-downCloseCloseEmailEmailExpandExpandExternalExternalFacebookfacebook-squareGiftGiftGooglegoogleGoogle KeephamburgerInstagraminstagram-squareLinkLinklinkedin-squareListenListenListenChristianity TodayCT Creative Studio Logologo_orgMegaphoneMenuMenupausePinterestPlayPlayPocketPodcastRSSRSSSaveSaveSaveSearchSearchsearchSpotifyStitcherTelegramTable of ContentsTable of Contentstwitter-squareWhatsAppXYouTubeYouTube