Far East News: February 18, 1957

Kandy For Council

Almost as certain as death, war, taxes and clergy controversy is the fact that the 1960 meeting of the World Council of Churches will be held in Ceylon, a country now in the throes of a Buddhist revival.

The historic city of Kandy is expected to take its place in the distinguished line which began at Amsterdam in 1948. (The Council meets every six years.)

Kandy is a modern city set in surroundings of tea and coconut plantations. Fence posts often are the trellis for long, creeping black pepper plants. A muddy little river meanders through the city. Tourists come to the banks at tea time to watch elephants wash up after a day’s work.

Three miles from Kandy’s heart, in an adjoining suburb, the river borders one of the world’s most beautiful botanical gardens. Across the well-paved road from the garden is the University of Ceylon, an extravagantly-built educational center less than 10 years old.

The university campus will be the site of the World Council meeting.

Prime Minister Bandaranaike, leader of the Buddhist revival, has given strong assurances of welcome to Dr. Vissert’Hooft, secretary of the WCC. Ceylon is a friendly land for tourists and offers many attractions.

Kandy is sacred to the Buddhists because its Temple of the Tooth, situated in the heart of the city, once claimed to house a superhuman-sized tooth of Buddha himself. Every August, for the last 20 centuries, a procession of elephants, numbering as many as 100 in modern times, honors the Temple of the Tooth.

Broadcast Cancelled

Billy Graham’s Hour of Decision broadcast has been cancelled by the Ceylon government and all Christian broadcasts are expected to be eliminated by the end of 1957.

Radio Ceylon, a government broadcasting agency, said a recent sermon by Mr. Graham contained anti-communist remarks, including criticism of Russia and China.

C. R. Dodd, director of the commercial service, said he asked officials of the program for an explanation on “why a religious talk should include political comment.” In cancelling the contract, he said he had not received any explanation.

A number of other missionary programs, including Back to the Bible and Light of Life, have been purchasing time on Radio Ceylon for several years. Broadcasts are made in several languages and beamed to nearby India, where they are forbidden. One program reported hearing from more than 20 different countries scattered from Australia to the Gold Coast.

Objections to Christian missions using the facilities of Radio Ceylon have been raised since the government of Prime Minister Bandaranaike took over last April. The government needs money badly but has decided it can do without the thousands of rupees spent annually by Christian missions.

Report From Japan

“You can’t unscramble eggs,” was the favorite remark of my church history professor. The hymn writer states the same idea in beautiful words:

God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.

We may not be able to fathom all the mysterious movements in the Church, but we know that the Church, in all its branches and forms, is moving forward in Japan.

There is great hope, signs of vigorous growth and a courageous planning for big things.

There is hope because of the evident blessing of God.… In the mysterious rise of denominations (114 missions work with 65 denominations, more than double pre-war figures), the hand of the Lord is ever guiding, ever making “the wrath of man to praise him.” Through these various denominations, more people in more scattered areas and more diversified strata of society are being reached.

There is vigorous growth. The Japan Bible Society reports the largest sales in its history, with the publication of the Kogotai version New Testament in 1954 and the entire Bible in 1955. Sales for 1956 total 1,854,574 copies of Testaments and portions. The 1955 Bible won the Osaka Daily News prize for typography and style in its class of publications. More people are reading the Bible than ever before; consequently, more persons are seeking out the churches so as to understand the Bible. Another sign of growth is the rapid expansion of the lay visitation evangelism movement. In 1948, Bishop Arthur Moore and the Rev. Hugh S. Bradley came to Japan in an effort to introduce visitation evangelism, but it failed to “catch.” Then suddenly, in 1952, the Rev. Yoshida, pastor of Reinanzaka Church in Tokyo, “discovered” the method. He has been successfully advocating it throughout Japan.

The spiritual birthrate varies with each denomination, but on the whole compares favorably with older churches in the Western World. According to the 1956 yearbook published by the Christian News, the figures for 1955 show a total Protestant membership of 271,394, with 81,466 baptisms.

When we think of the small number of Christian in Japan, about one-fourth of one per cent of the population, it is amazing to see the courage with which they plan for great things. Two big events loom before them: the 14th World Convention of Christian Education, scheduled for Tokyo in August, 1958; and the Centennial Year of Protestant Missions, in 1959. Various plans are now being drawn up for a year of nationwide evangelistic campaigns.

J.A.M.

Korean Appraisal

Nowhere among the younger churches, save perhaps in the islands of the South Seas, has evangelism cut more deeply into the moral and spiritual fabric of a nation than Korea.

In two generations this hermit, pagan kingdom has become the most Protestant country of Asia. Out of the revivals of the first decade of this century, undergirded by earnest and intense Bible study, came a massive growth of the Protestant church, and out of this church have come the leaders of the new Korea, from President to primary school teachers, in such proportions as no other country of Asia has known.

Has the turning point, then, already been reached? Probably not. In the first place, revival has produced its paganreaction. Already there is powerful resentment among the non-Christian majority against the ascendancy of the Christian minority. In the second place, revival is no end in itself, but leads on to consistent, responsible Christian living, or it is discredited. It has taken only a few scandals in high places to begin to weaken the reputation for integrity which the Korean Church won for itself at so great a price in the days of persecution.

The basic question is: Can Korea’s Christians stand up to the corrosive responsibilities of power as gloriously as they have faced the tortures of the oppressors? Until we know the answer to that question, the immediate future of what may be called the Korean Revival remains in doubt.

S.H.M.

Decree On Bowing

The executive branch of the Chinese Nationalist government has published a decree authorizing penalties against state employees who refuse to bow to the flag or the portrait of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic.

The decree upholds findings last year by the committees of law and education of the legislature that such salutes are “not acts of religious worship,” but merely gestures of respect to the flag and to the memory of Dr. Sun.

Issuance of the government decree climaxed a controversy which arose in 1953 when two American Presbyterian missionaries—Egbert W. Andrew and Richard B. Coffin—objected to the practice as “sacriligious.”

Middle East News: February 18, 1957

Another Invasion

Israel is anticipating an invasion of tourists from America and Europe, with a quick resumption of normal traffic expected.

The Israel Government Tourist Office in New York City reports many inquiries about bookings.

Coptic Leader Held

Archmandrite Joachim El Anthony, leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Israel, has been arrested by Israeli authorities on charges of espionage in behalf of Egypt.

The Coptic Church, founded at Alexandria in 451, is the largest Christian body in Egypt, with an estimated membership of 2,500,000.

The 45-year-old Egyptian-born priest was taken into custody as he crossed into Israeli territory through the Mandlebaum Gate from the Arab-held Old City. He has been head of the Coptic monastery in Jaffa since 1948 and has made several visits to Egypt.

Britain News: February 18, 1957

F.C.

Red Dean Attacked

The current issue of Cantuarian, the magazine of King’s School, Canterbury, carries an attack on the “Red” Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Hewlett Johnson.

The dean, 83, is chairman of the school governors.

Strong feeling was aroused in the school last term over Dr. Johnson’s views on the Russian invasion of Hungary. A petition, signed by nearly 200, was presented to the dean, deploring his attitude over Hungary.

Then came the editorial:

“Profoundly moved as we all are by the outrage the Russians have committed, the statement which the dean has made on the subject of Hungary has caused particular distress. This is not the first occasion on which we have felt strong disagreement with the dean’s views, nor the first time that we have regretted that such pronouncements should be made by a high dignitary of the Church of England and the chairman of our board of governors.

“We have not so far taken issue with the dean in these pages out of respect for his office; and, like everyone else, he has the right of his own opinions and the right to express them. But there comes a point when we, too, have the right to say what we think of views he has so publicly expressed and when, considering his official connection with us, we have a duty to do so.

“The Hungarian people know what Fascism is. They suffered under it both before and during the war. But the dean claims to see a resurgence of Fascism in a rising which has been made nationwide. And what must we think when we are told that an action which cannot be condoned from a moral point of view can be justified politically?

“It is true there are people who believe this, unfortunately even among those who do not otherwise share the dean’s views, but one is sorry to find such teachings coming from a minister of God.”

- More from F.C.

Books

Book Briefs: February 18, 1957

Life Against Nature

The Nun’s Story, by Kathryn Hulme. Little-Atlantic, Boston. $4.00.

Riding high on the nation’s best-seller lists in this fall and winter of election, war and rebellion is The Nun’s Story, Kathryn Hulme’s novelistic biography of a Belgian nurse who became a nun, served her order for 16 years at home and in the Congo and returned to “the world” at the end of World War II.

The book’s right to be a best-seller is obvious: it caters to the well-known American preoccupations with medicine and hospital life, with psychiatry, with the bizarre and mysterious continent of Africa, with the secrets of the cloister, and with the Resistance movements during the Nazi occupation. For Sister Luke, the heroine, did not lead a life of quiet retirement. During her novitiate she finished her nurse’s training and received a diploma in psychiatry in institutions run by her Order. Her first months out from under the wing of the mother-house where she was trained were in a rigorous government course in tropical medicine. The proving ground where she demonstrated the ability and stability to undertake missionary work was a large mental hospital for women which the Order operated.

Finally she reached Africa, the land of her dreams, but instead of being allowed to do evangelistic work among the natives was detained as a supervisory nurse in the European hospital in a large city in the Congo. Just before the outbreak of World War II, she made an emergency trip to Europe, accompanying a mental patient, and was caught in the hostilities. From her nursing post in the tuberculosis wing of a hospital she aided the fight of her countrymen against the Nazis after their armies had surrendered. In this struggle she realized openly what had been implicitly true all along, that she was more nurse than nun, and that her Christian conscience often contradicted the rule of life she had sworn to follow. The story ends the morning she shed her habit, and dressed in a lay nurse’s uniform supplied by the Order, stepped forth into a strange world to make her own way.

The elements of a “sure-fire hit” are here, but above them all are religion and the religious life. The Nun’s Story is being read in search of an answer to the spiritual needs of today by the same people who followed Thomas Merton to the Seven Storey Mountain, who seek to “understand” such diverse characters as Albert Schweitzer and Billy Graham, or who eagerly looked for Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift From The Sea. The answer given by The Nuns Story is not simple or unequivocal. In spite of her departure from the Order, Sister Luke remains a devout Catholic, and no where does she deny the validity of a Rule—for those who subscribe to it.

From the first days of her postulancy to the days of war, a battle raged between Sister Luke and the religious life. She and “it” might he described as the two protagonists of this book.

Gabrielle Van der Mal, the girl who became Sister Luke, was the lively young daughter of a famous surgeon. She had medicine in her blood, had learned to use a microscope when she learned to read. She was devoutly religious, and though her father had prevented her marriage to the man she loved, entered the Order from a sincere devotion and desire to serve Christ as a missionary in the Congo, a land that had captured her imagination.

Alongside Sister Luke is the Life to which she is dedicated. The making of a nun is given in brilliant detail, from the hundred bare cubicles which the novice marvels can hold such diverse women and not show it, to the perfect worship in the motherhouse chapel which must not be disturbed even when a Sister faints, to the silent meals in the refectory and to the “recreation” in the sunny garden where the sisters sit in a large circle and talk—but only of items of general interest. Through Sister Luke’s eyes as a novitiate we see these women living by a Rule which forbids mirrors (or even highly polished shoes), which provides a small flagellant made of light chains with hooks at the end of each (but orders moderation when it gives them), and which gives the older sisters permission to talk to the novices when their hair is clipped (to prevent nervous giggles at the sight of one another’s bald heads). With her we learn the rules governing the minutiae of daily life—eating, sleeping, walking, speaking, praying, travel, clothes, letters. Each small rule, we learn, is to further the community toward its goal of “constant conversation with God.”

The striking demands made in God’s name are for detachment, charity, obedience—and perfection in the keeping of the Rule. On the road to detachment from “the world” the nun leaves behind belongings, pictures, even a room of her own in the dormitory. The call of a bell stops her in the middle of a word or in the middle of a helpless child’s meal to turn to prayer. The road to charity leads through humility, service, and selflessness. Obedience is won through public confession of faults—and the older sisters help a younger one if her memory seems lacking. The goal of perfection involves continuous self-searching for faults—as well as a voice that is neither too loud nor too low, and promptness that is neither late nor early. The battle between Sister Luke and the religious life rages around one principle—obedience. The first trial came when a superior suggested that it might be a great gift to God if Sister Luke were purposely to fail her examination in tropical medicine, in order to restore the self-esteem of an older sister who feared she might fail. After days of self-searching and prayer she found that she could not throw away her training and prospects for service in such a way. In the Congo, gradually she turned from nun to nurse, apparently feeling that God needed her more in the hospital than in the sisterhood. Back at home, under the stress of war, she turned more and more to the Underground and to the spiritual needs of her patients as having priority over the rules of the Order. Sister Luke could not be a good nun; her conscience protested.

Whatever one’s religious background, this book leaves in the mind admiration and appreciation—of the life as well as of Sister Luke. The nuns who follow this Rule are fine people, sincere in their desire to serve God. There are a minimum of neurotic or misplaced inhabitants of the Order—a smaller percentage than one would find in “the world.” The grandeur of their goals shames those of us who with deadened consciences settle for less. In Sister Luke, in spite of her “failure”, we find a Christian heroine, for she tried, and her courage was spiritual as well as moral and physical. The great traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience when we see them lived before us strike at our hearts and show up our softness, self-indulgence, weakness of will, sloth, and our lack of any intention to put God first. The rigorous life of the cloister and the accomplishments of the sisters make us aware of the dissipation of our energies into so much that is not ‘ “of faith.”

And yet there is much about the so-called “religious life” that gives one pause. One to whom the Orders are strange, whose tradition does not include a veneration of them as a higher way of life, cannot but be struck by the conflicts inherent in this life. Obedience and charity are at war when a nurse takes away the cup of milk at a child’s lip so that she may pray. The “grand silence” Sister Luke found kept her from ever talking to her patients of their souls’ needs in the one time of day when they relaxed and “opened up.” The humility and charity in failing the medical tests would have been achieved at the cost of a lie. The detachment from the world includes detachment from the other nuns as well—and the heart cries out against such a studied denial of nature. Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus and wept, yet the sisterhood may not mourn its martyrs. What is the glory of “a life against nature?” (Mother Emmanuel’s description to the novices.)

The age we live in is in many ways an age of anarchy. Standards are changing in many areas of life, as governments are changing around the world. Our enthusiasms, our passions are muddied and impure. We Americans particularly are doing our best to sell our spiritual birthright for something we call “the American way of life,” but which in another day might be called gluttony or greed. The tenor of our times is to seek comfort and content. Our slang farewell bids fair to become our national creed: “Take it easy!”

Is it any wonder that from the midst of a self-indulgent, materialistic society like ours the cloister looks like heaven, or at least a haven? Its battles exist, but they look easier perhaps than the everyday decisions facing Christians. If I have given away everything it is no longer painful to decide between keeping up with the Joneses and my obligations as a Christian steward. If I bind myself to mass and prayers seven times a day, I am no longer plagued with the proper use of time. Is it any wonder that to one whose conscience pricks the cool, quiet, holy life of discipline and charity—and withdrawal—calls? Is it a surprise to find Trappist monks in our popular magazines—and Sister Luke sponsored as a Book of the Month? Or that untold numbers of women read Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s extremely tentative searchings for some kind of inner life?

But withdrawal can never be the answer for all of us—and as Protestants we even say for any of us. The life which the Gospel imparts is to be shared. Jesus was no ascetic—in fact he made rather a point of being the opposite. Neither did he show two ways of life-one for the mass of his followers and one for the special few with higher aspirations.

The New Testament denies a “life against nature.” It hallows all of life, all its relationships, all its duties and obligations, all its tasks. There is one call to all-in the words of Paul, “Follow after love.” How can we compute the value of an ordinary life—outwardly unrestricted by a special rule, unhampered by petty laws, in which the love of Christ is released? Which is greater, the denial of self within the bounds of a community, or the forgetfulness of self of an ordinary man, living an ordinary life, beset by the problems of all mankind, yet who gives the cup of water, the coat along with the cloak, or goes the second mile? We see Christ in a dedicated nun indeed, but is He not more evident in the life of a mother or house-wife who has made of her work an offering to God?

The disciplines of life which the convent brings to our attention are all there in the New Testament. Sister Luke and her world speak to our hearts because they have the strength too many of us lack. Set times of prayer are not a monopoly of any one group—they may he found recommended by such diverse Protestants as William Law and Frank Lauhach. Some of the disciplines should be part of our daily lives if we are aware of our need of “constant conversation with God.” Some of them have their place on special occasions, in times of preparation for future service, or for short periods of special need. Paul says husbands and wives may stay apart for prayer and fasting. Jesus spent some time in fasting, some whole nights in prayer; neither was made an absolute. For our discipline, our gifts, our virtues themselves, are all subservient to one principle: “The greatest of these is love.” Sister Luke said her conscience asked questions; love can tell us when to pray and when to work. It told Hudson Taylor on one occasion to get up from his knees where he was asking God to supply the needs of a family in want and give them the money in his pocket. “Love never faileth.”

Sister Luke can teach us the importance of singleness of heart—we who live so close to Mammon. She can teach us not to be afraid of differences which may be the result of following Christ—if a nun can forget all the inconveniences and peculiarities of her life in serving others, can we not bear to do without something our television sets declare we need, to be perhaps a little shabby, or to forego the neighborhood cocktail parties or poker games—for His sake?

We can love Sister Luke, and admire her for what she is—and at the same time remember the words of Paul: “I show you a more excellent way.”

PRUDENCE TODD MOFFETT

Defensive Tone

American Catholicism by John Tracey Ellis. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1956. Cloth $3.00, paper $1.75.

The Right Reverend John Tracy Ellis, Professor of Church History at the Catholic University of America, editor of the Catholic Historical Review and author of a number of works on English and American Catholicism is certainly the right man to write this volume for The Chicago History of American Series. He has produced a succinct and scholarly piece of work for both historian and general reader.

It is not possible in the space available for this review to give anything more than a very brief statement of the contents of the work; but probably the four chapter headings summarize it most effectively. I. The Church in Colonial America, 1492–1790; II. Catholics as Citizens, 1790–1852; III. Civil War and Immigration, 1852–1908; IV. Recent American Catholicism.

Dr. Ellis traces clearly and interestingly the history of the rise and expansion of the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S.A. He cannot of course go into great detail, but his work does form a good, readable introduction.

The most important criticism which one could make of the work, however, is that a defensive tone dominates the work. There is a continual stress upon the “maltreatment” meted out to Roman Catholics both in Britain and in America.

No doubt Professor Ellis has some reason for complaint, but he never mentions that Roman Catholics in America were much better off than Protestants in Roman Catholic countries. For instance he fails to say that while Roman Catholics were at least permitted to live in Maryland, albeit under certain restrictions, Protestants were absolutely banned from New France and from the Spanish Empire.

Coupled with this he has ignored the reasons for American anti-Roman Catholic movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has apparently failed to understand the influence which the anti-liberal actions of Pius IX and of the Roman church in Spain, Bolivia and other countries have had upon American Protestant thinking.

To pass these examples of Roman Catholic persecution off as having no more relation to American Catholicism than Afrikaander racial polices have to American Calvinists is a little misleading (p. 158). After all the anti-Protestant actions in Roman Catholic countries seem to be based upon that church’s doctrine and law. (cf. A. G. Cicognani, Canon Law, Philadelphia, 1935, pp. 120 ff.) It is because of this that many Americans fear the possibility of the Roman church gaining political power.

Yet, despite this weakness, the book should be of great use to those who are concerned with the contemporary American religious picture. It is well produced and has an excellent list of suggested readings.

W. STANFORD REID

Useful Instruction

Personal Evangelism, by J. C. Macaulay and Robert H. Belton. Moody Press, Chicago. $3.25.

The instructors in evangelism at Moody Bible Institute have prepared a textbook on personal evangelism that should find wide acceptance both in and out of the classroom. These men write out of passion for the souls of the lost, and both of them bring to the task a broad background of experience in this field. The result is a book which lends itself well to class use but which will be stimulating and helpful to the individual reader as well.

The book begins with a careful definition of evangelism and then treats the message of evangelism. This latter section shows that man’s need of salvation lies in his guilt, depravity, alienation and judgment, and then clearly demonstrates how perfectly the Gospel of Christ meets each aspect of man’s need. The authors’ conclusion here is “We need no new Gospel, no new evangelism but a mighty increase of sane, sound, Spirit-filled evangelism” (p. 28).

The presentation of the various forms of evangelism takes in some of the most recent developments in this field and shows how each new form has its place in God’s plan. The counsel given by the authors as to the way of approaching various types of people is most practical, and to this reviewer, the section on dealing with Roman Catholics was especially valuable. Almost any Christian, however experienced in personal work, would be helped and encouraged by reading these pages.

The book is characterized by a wealth of illustration, much of it drawn from the experience of the authors, and by an evident familiarity with the books which have become classics in this field. A helpful bibliography is appended, and a list of questions is given at the close of each chapter.

HORACE L. FENTON, JR.

The Red Dean

Christians and Communism, by the Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. Putnam. 10s, 6d.

Britain’s “Red Dean” states his views in this book, and sees Communism as an ally of Christianity. To do this, he has to concentrate on the field of moral ideals. Thus the Marxist slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” is a commendable aim for the Christian. Ideas of brotherhood and of human rights may be found in the two systems. Moreover, the Christian approves the banning of suggestive papers, films and advertisements, as also do the Russians.

The Dean baits his hook attractively, but the hook is what worries the Christian. Ideas of brotherhood and human rights sound hollow in the face of happenings in Hungary and elsewhere. The kindly Communist provisions for old people presuppose that one is allowed to grow old before being “removed.” And at heart the Christian finds the basis of Communism in hopeless antagonism to Christianity, in spite of what the Dean says. Thus, “Ultimate reality, says the Marxist, is a substance, a stuff, a something objective, existing outside us and our mind, though including our minds. The basis of reality is substance, not just idea; substance, as in the Christian Creed” (p. 125). Here is a subtle misuse of the term “Substance” in the Nicene Creed. Are Christianity and Communism brothers because both are monistic, even though the ground of one is the personal God and the ground of the other is matter?

What shall we say of matter and spirit? “Jesus was materialistic in His attitude to the world” (p. 28). Yet He taught the essential need for faith in himself and of spiritual rebirth. “Jesus was not hated for his attitude to God. He was violently hated for his attitude to man” (p. 47). Yet scholars have shown a high proportion of parallels between the moral teachings of Jesus and those of the rabbis. Jesus stood his trial on a charge of blasphemy, and reasserted his own identity with the Son of Man of prophecy.

J. STAFFORD WRIGHT

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: February 18, 1957

William A. Mueller

The Southland continues to be perturbed over racial desegregation problems. We read of violence and resistance to the Supreme Court decision of May, 1954. What are Southern Baptists, the largest and most influential Christian body in the South, doing about the situation?

It is a fact that a number of Southern Baptist pastors have been ousted from their churches because of their loyalty to King Jesus and their defense of constituted rights for all Americans. The Rev. Paul Turner, pastor of First Baptist Church in Clinton, Tenn., made the headlines due to his courageous stand for righteousness in race relations.

The Alabama Baptist (Dec. 20, 1956) copies from RNS a detailed account of the Rev. Mr. Turner’s defense of Negro children’s basic rights. This same journal prints an editorial from the Chilton County News in the same issue:

In this day of race problems, would all races accept Him, no matter which He chose to be born into? He is the King of all races and yet, would we listen to His Word if He were anything but Anglo-Saxon?

More likely than not, this editorial continues, were Jesus to appear again, he would not come as a “dynamic business, political, or religious figure,” but would “make His appearance where He was least expected.”

“Few things are more dangerous than the germs of racial prejudice,” writes The Baptist Reflector of Tennessee (Sept. 20, 1956). Christians, it is argued, have a new spirit. They are therefore concerned that all men are treated with fairness. T. B. Matson, professor in Southwestern Baptist Seminary, Texas, writing in the same journal, speaks of the substitution of orthodoxy for basic morality and practical Christian living. “Some of the most unscrupulous, dishonest, immoral preachers are loudest in proclaiming their orthodoxy.” Alas, such can also be the worst purveyor of prejudice and hate in race relations!

Pastor Sterling Price of University Baptist Church in Abilene, Texas, spoke to 3000 persons at the Baptist Training Union conference at Wichita Falls with prophetic force when he said:

The Christian churches are failing to take decisive action on such social issues as racial discrimination, labor relations and work opportunities.

Thus reports The California Baptist (Dec. 13, 1956).

The Christmas 1956 editorial of the Florida Baptist Witness stabs us wide awake with these questions: “Are we as concerned for the Mexican in San Antonio as for the one in Mexico City, for the Chinese in Miami as for the one in Hong Kong, for the Indian on the Seminole reservation as for the one in South America, … for the Negro in Jacksonville as for the one in Nigeria …?”

President W. R. White of Baylor University in the Baptist Standard of Texas (Nov. 10, 1956) speaks of the issue of racial integration as the greatest problem confronting Southern Baptists since the days of slavery. “It threatens to sever the fellowship of Southern Baptists in twain.” Dr. White senses the urgency of the situation. He counsels moderation, warns against the hotheads on both sides of the controversy, but considers adjustment imperative for several reasons: world opinion is against treating any human being as less than human; Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, the U. S. Constitution, the Judeo-Christian concept of God compels us to act; our far-flung missionary endeavors face the shadow of unfavorable reaction; as communistic agitation and Catholic attempts to lure the Negro away from our ranks, these dangers and imperatives compel us to be “Christian in principle, spirit and attitudes.”

Professor Stewart A. Newman of Southeastern Baptist Seminary at Wake Forest, N. C., in his The Christian’s Obligation to All Races lays bare the tragic race issue in these sobering words:

The extent of this contradiction of our ideals with our attitude and conduct toward other races is illustrated by the reaction of new converts who recently came to America from our mission fields in Africa. Young people who were the product of our Southern Baptist evangelistic and educational work in Africa were unprepared for the disillusionment which they suffered when brought by our missionaries to this Christian land. They were caught up in such a maelstrom of bickering and prejudice, race antagonisms and discriminations as to be ostracized from the Christian fellowship which was the source of their greatest blessing.

This tract bears the imprint of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. J. B. Matson’s Integration and John Hass Jones’ The Unity of Humanity speak with equal vigor and clarity on the issue under discussion and are being widely distributed among Southern Baptists. In due time they will bear fruit, but the going will be hard in the days immediately ahead.

Christianity and Crisis (Dec. 24, 1956) admits—and this is encouraging to all right-minded people in the South—that “vast progress has already been made in the direction of public acceptance of the Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution, though, to be sure, defiance and outbreaks of violence are what makes headlines.” While the editor, E. T. J., considers the Supreme Court decision of 1954 “a great moral judgment,” he nevertheless realistically states that “evils that have a tragic character are not expunged by recourse to law.” John C. Bennett of Union Theological Seminary, commenting in the same journal (Oct. 29, 1956) on Billy Graham’s stand on desegregation of our public schools in Life, calls it a “truly prophetic statement about the racial problem.” Bennett believes that “there is no other Christian leader in America who can do so much as Billy Graham to open the eyes of believing Christians to the implications of their faith in this area.”

There are other hopeful signs on the horizon of Southern Baptists in this matter of race relations. Their five theological seminaries with their more than 5000 students have been interracial for more than five years. During the recent Thanksgiving season two international house parties with more than 300 nationals from Latin and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe met in Mississippi and Tennessee for fellowship and discussion of crucial issues facing the life of mankind today.

Other Christian communions in the South are equally concerned about the issue. On the whole, “it seems Christians are more favorable to the abolition of the caste system than secular opinion in the same communities, and Catholics are often more energetic than Protestants, and preachers more positive and articulate on the race issue than laymen.” Thus states W. E. Garrison of Houston University in a recent issue of the Virginia Baptist journal, The Religious Herald.

- More from William A. Mueller

Cover Story

God and the Continental Congress

Stewart M. Robinson

The Journals of the Continental Congress make an excellent textbook on free government. Excerpts would be suitable for the Voice of America. Full sets given to political leaders in a dozen languages might help the cause of peace.

The thirteen original states of our Federal Republic sent a total of 337 official delegates to this remarkable convention during the period September 5, 1774, to the end of 1786, after which its work was taken up by the Constitutional Convention.

A Working Congress

The Congress put in 3,100 working days. The 1774 session was designedly brief, 35 working days. The 1775 session began by appointment May 10, and took the month of August off. In the following years, Congress was on duty twelve months, and took no time off save for Sundays, Good Fridays, and Christmas Days, but not New Year’s Days. It met six days a week. It lost a week in 1776, moving from Philadelphia to Baltimore. In 1777 it lost about two weeks shifting from Philadelphia to New York, via Lancaster. Its sojourn in Princeton in the summer of 1783 was marked by a rather desultory ending. The Annapolis residence became a little sketchy at the end, that at Trenton only an episode. But the last two years in New York saw a strong comeback in pertinacity. The score by years and work-days runs thus: 1774, 35 days; 1775, 146; 1776, 291 days and no day lost by reason of no quorum or no business; 1777, 287 days with 7 lost; 1778, 304 with 1 lost; 1779, 309 with 2 lost; 1780, 299 with 1 lost; 1781, 284 with 2 lost; 1782, 231 with no day lost; 1783, 214 with 21 days lost; 1784, 182 days (26 as Committee of the States) with 33 days lost; 1785, 215 days with 37 days lost; 1786, 206 days with 14 days lost. The founding fathers accepted the Ten Commandments, which state that the Sabbath Day is holy, and that “six days shalt thou labor.”

Sunday Sessions Unusual

In spite of the tensions of that period only seven Sunday sessions were held. Sunday, July 14, 1776, Congress determined “That an express be sent to overtake the powder wagons going to Virginia … that the committee … of Virginia … send … as much of the lead they now have at Williamsburg as they can spare … that a letter be written to the commanding officer in the Jerseys, to march such of the militia, and flying camp … as they may judge necessary … that the committee … of Pennsylvania be requested immediately to order to the several places of their destination all the British officers, prisoners, in this city; their ladies not to be requested to go until the weather is more suitable … that the commanding officer in Pennsylvania … exert himself to forward the immediate march of the militia to New Jersey … that the deputy quarter-master general be directed to request the use of some house of public worship, to cover the troops during their short stay in this city.”

Congress met Sunday, December 29, 1776, to arrange to get “cannon and ordnance stores as are required … being immediately necessary.” Sunday, August 3, 1777, Congress ordered Washington to relieve General Philip Schuyler of command. Sunday, September 14, 1777, Congress met to resolve “that the Board of War be directed to … remove all public bells in Philadelphia … upon a near approach of the enemy … that if Congress shall be obliged to remove from Philadelphia, Lancaster shall be the place at which they shall meet … that the public papers be put under the care of Mr. Clark … General Dickinson … is hereby directed … to conduct the said papers safe.”

Sunday, April 26, 1778, brought Congress together at 3 P.M. to conduct several “yea and nay” votes which had been demanded the previous day. On Sunday, September 26, 1779, Congress met to hear letters announcing the arrival of the French fleet. Congress met on Sunday, April 8, 1781, upon receipt of intelligence that the British fleet was moving out of New York harbor, presumably for the Chesapeake.

Prayer Indispensable

Almost the first item of business in September, 1774, was to obtain a Chaplain for Congress and ask him to open Congress with prayer. With a broad-minded recognition of good religion and good sense the strongly nonliturgical New Englanders plumped for an Episcopalian. Thenceforth, chaplains were regularly elected, two of them at a time. One liturgical and one nonliturgical cleric made up the team. The Journals contain references to stipends, and calls made upon them for additional duty at the funerals of members who died while in attendance. There is one period when the daily Journal commences with the word “Prayers.” The pay schedule on an annual basis indicates that the chaplains officiated regularly as a part of each day’s proceedings. While Congress met in Philadelphia and in New York, and these two places were the principal places of meeting, the clergy were local churchmen, and doubtless carried on other responsibilities.

Recognition Of God

Reference should be made to the public statements of the Continental Congress that recognize God. 1775 had a Fast-Day Resolution; 1779, 1780, 1781, 1782 saw Congressional proclamations for both a Fast-Day and a Day of Thanksgiving. We are familiar with Thanksgiving Days. Where are the Fast-days? Perhaps we are missing something in the most important form of public relations: “getting right with God.” The first Fast-Day Resolution (June 12, 1775) might well be cited since most moderns do not know what the term signifies. “As the great Governor of the World, by his supreme and universal Providence, not only conducts the course of nature with unerring wisdom and rectitude, but frequently influences the minds of men to serve the wise and gracious purposes of his providential government; and it being at all times our indispensable duty devoutly to acknowledge his superintending providence, especially in times of impending danger and public calamity, to reverence and adore his immutable justice as well as to implore his merciful interposition for our deliverance: This Congress, therefore, considering the present critical, alarming and calamitous state of these colonies, do earnestly recommend that Thursday, the 20th day of July next, be observed, by the inhabitants of all the English colonies on this continent, as a day of public humiliation, fasting and prayer; that we may, with united hearts and voices unfeignedly confess and deplore our many sins, and offer up our joint supplications to the all-wise, omnipotent, and merciful Disposer of all events; humbly beseeching him to forgive our iniquities, to remove our present calamities, to avert those desolating judgments with which we are threatened, and bless our rightful sovereign, King George the Third, and inspire him with wisdom to discern and pursue the true interest of all his subjects, etc.”

The Thanksgiving proclamation of October 11, 1782, still glows with the flush of great achievements. “It being the indispensable duty of all nations, not only to offer up supplications to Almighty God, the giver of all good, for his gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner to give him praise for … great and signal interpositions of his Providence in their behalf, the United States in Congress assembled, taking into consideration the many instances of divine goodness to these states … the present happy and promising state of public affairs … do hereby recommend to the inhabitants of these states in general, to observe, … Thursday, the 28 day of November next, as a day of solemn Thanksgiving to God for all his mercies; and they do further recommend to all ranks, to testify their gratitude to God for his goodness, by a cheerful obedience to his laws, and by promoting … true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.”

Spiritual Priorities

A series of letters to the people stud the annals of the Continental Congress, and they are real jewels in the treasury of our country. Besides rendering a faithful accounting of legislative service, they sound a clear note of truthful information, and upon occasion call attention to the spiritual nature of man and to the place which God has in the life of national society. Not every such communication mentions God, but enough do to emphasize the feelings of the heart.

“Above all things we earnestly intreat you, with devotion of spirit, and penitence of heart and amendment of life, to humble yourselves, and implore the favour of almighty God; and we fervently beseech the divine goodness, to take you into his gracious protection.” (Address to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies—October 21, 1774.)

On the same day that Congress assembled in Philadelphia, in May, 1775, pursuant to a call issued on their adjournment in October, 1774, doughty Ethan Allen entered Fort Ticonderoga and demanded its surrender. Captain Delaplace, commanding the garrison, required his authority. Allen answered, as told by Washington Irving, “In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” No tell-tale radio babbled hourly news reports of Philadelphia events to forest-bound Ticonderoga. Many Americans, however, in those days, believed that people should do what they were intended to do, that authority issued from proper agencies, and that God and man linked together make an unbreakable chain.

On December 10, 1776, Congress addressed the citizens: “Confiding in your fidelity and zeal in a contest the most illustrious and important, and firmly trusting in the good providence of God, we wish you happiness and success.” Trenton and Princeton came as an answer to that firm trust.

May 29, 1777, another report was made to the nation, closing: “Do what it is in your Power to do; and you have the greatest reason to rest assured that, under the gracious protection of divine Providence, your virtuous struggles will be crowned with abundant success.”

May 26, 1779, Congress addressed “The Inhabitants of the United States of America” in a summary of the situation which was read beside firesides where the chill of evening still traveled on the wind.

“Fill up your battalions … place your several quotas in the continental treasury … prevent the produce of the country from being monopolized … effectually superintend the behaviour of public officers; diligently promote piety, virtue, brotherly love, learning, frugality and moderation; and may you be approved before Almighty God worthy of those blessings we devoutly wish you to enjoy.”

The principal business of Congress while the fighting lasted was to read the daily communications from George Washington and make suitable answers. Washington was a member of the Congress until he accepted its commission as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Continent in June, 1775. On December 23, 1783, Washington appeared before Congress to return his commission. It is a moving statement: “Mr. President: The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place, I have now the honor of offering my sincere congratulations to Congress, and of presenting myself before them, to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country … my gratitude for the interposition of Providence, and the assistance I have received from my countrymen, increases with every review of the momentous contest … I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have superintendence of them to his holy keeping. Having now finished the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theatre of action and bidding affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose order I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take leave of all the employments of public life.”

END

Ordained to the ministry in 1918, Stewart M. Robinson served as divisional chaplain, U.S. Army, with the American Expeditionary Forces and then served churches in Ohio, New York and New Jersey until, in 1934, he became editor of The Presbyterian. A frequent contributor to religious journals, Dr. Robinson is editor of Political Thought of Colonial Clergy.

- More from Stewart M. Robinson

Cover Story

The Bible and the Christian Writer

Frank E. Gaebelein

As we think about the Bible in relation to Christian writing, we must define Scripture in terms of the King James or Authorized Version. The literary influence of other translations through more than three centuries has been but a drop in the bucket compared with that of the King James Bible. Perhaps the Revised Standard Version or some other new translation may eventually supplant the King James Bible. If so, the loss from the literary point of view will be very great, as some versions of inferior nobility and vigor of language replace the book that is literature’s chief glory.

Turning now to the Christian writer, we need first of all to look closely at the objective, “Christian.” If we limit our discussion to the evangelical segment of Christianity, let us be careful to avoid any parochialism of outlook. Evangelicals are not the only Christians. There are those who share with us a firm belief in historic, supernatural Christianity, who worship Christ as Lord and Saviour, who take a high view of Scripture, yet who may not use all our terminology and who hold a view of the church and of the ministry different from ours. They, too, are Christians; and from some of them we have much to learn, especially when it comes to writing.

What Is A Christian Writer?

Let us grant that the writer whom we are considering is a Christian, a regenerated child of God, committed to the evangelical doctrines of Scripture. The question is, What do we really mean when we talk about a “Christian writer?” We might say simply that we mean Christians who write. That is much too broad a definition. The other day I asked the editor of a leading Bible study magazine, “What’s the matter with Christian writing today?” His answer was candid, if not entirely elegant: “Most Christian writers,” he said, “can’t write. Many of them can’t spell or punctuate. And a lot of them have nothing to say anyway.” The plain fact is that not every Christian who writes is a Christian writer!

We must go on, therefore, to identify the Christian writer as a Christian who, being reasonably competent in the craft of writing, treats his subject in a manner that directly or indirectly reflects his spiritual convictions. He may be working in such fields as theology, biblical exposition, philosophy, or other areas closely related to the faith. Or he may be writing about so-called secular matters. Again, he may be practising what is often called “creative writing,” such as fiction or poetry. Whatever his subject matter, he is a Christian writer if the Christian world view, which is the world view based upon the Bible, is reflected in his writing.

This distinction is subtle but all-important. Reflecting the Christian world view does not mean conscious and obvious moralizing or, heaven forbid, labored preaching. It does mean that Christians, and certainly Christian writers, ought to have a God-centered view of life and the world. And it means also that this view of life, this Weltanschauung, to use the German term, is not held in a vacuum. Anyone, whether writer, teacher, or scientist, who has genuinely committed himself to the Christ who is the living God incarnate has made a decision that henceforth will color all of his work and all of his thinking. How far-reaching that decision is Browning tells us in “A Death in the Desert”:

I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ

Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee

All questions in the earth and out of it,

And has so far advanced thee as to be wise.

All writers must write from some particular point of view. And Christian writers ought to write from a God-centered, Christ-oriented, biblical view of life.

But at this point in our discussion we must turn back to the Bible. What is there about Scripture that makes it the one book of incomparable influence upon the Christian writer? First, the truth that the Bible reveals; second, the manner in which it states this truth. The two are organically related in that the second grows out of the first. To begin with, it is primarily the distinctive, biblical view of life and the world that influences the Christian writer. The major premise of Scripture is the living God. He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the God who, through his Spirit, inspired the Book. He is the God who, when he speaks in the Book, tells the truth. In the Bible, therefore, he tells the truth about himself and about man, sin, the world that now is and the world that is to come. Thus the Bible presents a view of life and of the world distinctively its own and in a class apart from all other philosophies and all other religions. And this view the Bible equates with truth.

Next, turning to style and form, we find a correspondence with the content of Scripture. The Book that communicates truth speaks truly. The reference here is not to the inerrancy of Scripture, important though that is. Rather am I speaking from the writer’s point of view. Though we must always remember that our Bible is a translated book, it is remarkable how little fumbling for words the sensitive reader sees in Scripture. In its use of words, the Bible is the best model, because it speaks directly and truly; in it the right word is in the right place.

Think, for example, of the declaration of John the Baptist, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Here is finality of expression. So also with the words of our Lord, “By their fruits ye shall know them” or, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Go back to the Old Testament and there is the same rightness of expression, as in the psalmist’s petition, “Search me, O God, and know me; try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting.” Likewise with Job’s great affirmation: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” It was not without reason that the Greek rhetorician, Longinus, in his treatise On the Sublime, which, by the way, every writer ought to know, took as an example of sublimity in literature the words of Moses in Genesis: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

Contagious Greatness Of Scripture

Now this quality of unerring choice of the right word in the right place carries over to the writer who is steeped in the Bible. In the Princeton University Alumni Bulletin (June 1, 1956), there is a moving address by Judge Harold Medina on “The Influence of Woodrow Wilson on the Princeton Undergraduate, 1902–1910,” a period covering the judge’s own college years. In this address, Judge Medina says this of Wilson:

But how he could talk! And we flocked to hear him … At first we were fascinated by his perfect diction and the skill with which he chose just the right combination of words to express his meaning. Pretty soon it dawned on us that what he had to say was important. There was no mistaking his sincerity; he spoke with a singular intensity; he was always quoting from the Bible; and bit by bit he got his spiritual message over to us …

Moral principles, ideals, action, achievement, power; all these spelled out to us in the words of Christ, with continual emphasis upon unselfishness and sacrifice, the peace and good will to men which went beyond one’s own borders and reached out to all mankind, and the unending fight against what he called “the thraldom of evil.”

Here was a man who really believed in unselfish devotion to one’s country, who was seeking, in the words he quoted from the Bible, to “prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God,” and to lead us out of the wilderness into green meadows where ideals and principles were formulated and acted upon. This is what young people craved to hear in 1909, it is what they crave to hear now, and it is what they will always crave to hear.

Woodrow Wilson was not only a great president; he was also a great writer, a great Christian writer, if you will. And he was a great Christian writer in large part because of his intimate and continued use of the Bible.

In his Aims of Education, Professor Alfred North Whitehead has written what Sir Richard Livingstone of Oxford calls the greatest statement about education outside Plato: “Moral education is impossible apart from the habitual vision of greatness.” Unfortunately, Whitehead lets us down as he points to the history and culture of ancient Greece and Rome as “the habitual vision of greatness.” Certainly for the Christian writer, “the habitual vision of greatness” is not classical history and literature but the Bible, the Word of the living God. And a host of great writers rise up to prove this point.

An Inescapable Influence

The influence of the Bible upon our literature is inescapable. Think of Shakespeare, who in his thirty-seven plays alluded to fifty-four of the sixty-six books of the Bible. How many Christians today know their Bibles that well? There is Bunyan, who, with meager education and knowing little beside the Bible, produced the greatest allegory in the English language. Edgar Allan Poe, whose subject matter was far removed from Scripture, drew heavily upon it, as Professor Forrest of the University of Virginia showed in his fascinating study, Biblical Allusions in Poe. We think too of Lincoln, the writer of our most imperishable American prose. In his recent book, A Clerk of Oxenford, Professor Gilbert Highet of Columbia University has a fascinating essay tracing, line by line and phrase by phrase, the influence of the Bible upon the Gettysburg Address. And at that he misses the echo of the close of the eleventh chapter of Romans in Lincoln’s climactic series of phrases: “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

The most telling illustration of the inescapable influence of the Bible upon great writers comes from the poet Shelley. Shelley was expelled from Oxford because he wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Necessity of Atheism.” In it he said, “The genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed Book of God ere man can read the inscription on his heart.” Or, in less rhetorical language, “Man must tear up the Bible, if he would know himself.” Just eight years later Shelley wrote his greatest prose work, the critical essay, “In Defense of Poetry.” At its climax, this is what he said: “Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance [an allusion to Daniel]; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow [almost an exact quotation from Isaiah]; they have been washed in the blood of the Mediator and Redeemer, [New Testament, evangelical phraseology].” The brilliant, unbelieving poet of the nineteenth century could not escape the Bible.

Paradox Of Christian Writing

Now we come to the paradox of the Christian writer today. More than any other of his fellow writers, the Christian writer of our time is close to the Bible. His faith in a biblical one, so much so that he has been labeled bibliolater, biblicist, or literalist. The epithets may not be accurate, but they show that he is known for his closeness to the Bible. Yet in spite of this relationship to the Scriptures, evangelicals by and large are not writing well.

I happen to be associated with a book club that is committed to the policy of selecting for its members only evangelical writing of genuine worth. A survey of our selections since 1954 shows that a large proportion of them have been books from other countries—England, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Australia. Indeed, if we had depended upon the writings of American evangelicals, we should have had difficulty in continuing. Not only that, but of the many books submitted to us for consideration many are marred by careless writing.

To cite another example, a while ago I read Albert Schweitzer’s autobiography, Out of My Life and Work. The difference, theology aside, between this book and one by an evangelical writer that I read at about the same time was as the difference between day and night. With Schweitzer I felt in touch with a distinguished mind; the other book, although well-intentioned, was flat and uninspiring.

Evangelicals Have Written Well

It was not always so. A few generations ago, and, in fact, even more recently, evangelicals were writing a great deal better than today. Nor need we go as far back as Bunyan. Take, for example, a man of more modest ability, the Princeton theologian Charles Hodge. This is the tribute The Cambridge History of American Literature (Vol. III, pp. 202–203) pays him:

There is a strange sublimity and extraordinary perspicacity about the style of Charles Hodge. It is not style at all.… Yet … few books open the mind on fields of grandeur more frequently than this systematic theologian. Its prose is not unworthy of being associated in one’s mind with that of John Milton. Out of the depths this man cried unto his God and found Him.

He writes with transparent sincerity. There is neither condescension nor cringing. There is nothing left at loose ends. There is no sparing of thought.… He only claims to apprehend the Word of God.”

Of more recent evangelicals there is J. Gresham Machen, a writer not inferior to C. S. Lewis in his lucid facility in handling ideas. The Systematic Theology of Lewis Sperry Chafer contains passages of genuine nobility and power, especially in his treatment of the Atonement. Dr. Samuel Zwemer, apostle to the Moslems, wrote with notable vigor. And the books of Robert E. Speer, another evangelical, contain some eloquent writing; while for simple clarity, there is the work of Harry Ironside.

Why The Present Mediocrity?

But why are Christian writers not doing better today? To put it bluntly, there seems to be a short circuit between the Bible and most of our contemporary evangelical writing. We ought to be doing some of the best writing of the times simply because we are, of all writers today, nearest the Bible. But we are far from producing the best work. Why? Why is our supreme model, our authentic “vision of greatness,” being thwarted in its communication, if not of greatness, at least of distinction to our writing? The answers are not easy. I suggest six reasons why present-day Christian writing seems to be so little influenced by the Bible.

First of all, can it be that in this busy day of radios, TV, picture magazines, tabloids, condensed books, much traveling and many meetings, we simply do not know the Bible as well as we think we do—or as well as our predecessors knew it? Yes, we use the Book for preaching, for reference, for proof texts, for help and comfort. But is not much of our use of Scripture for an ulterior purpose? Do we really know, and love, and read the Bible for its own sake? There is such a thing as living in the Word, making it literally the vital context of life and thought. Bunyan did that and God used him to write a book of incomparable power.

Some years ago Professor Charles Grosvenor Osgood of Princeton wrote a little essay, Poetry as a Means of Grace. This is what the Princeton humanist—and he is a Christian humanist—advises, after recommending an intimate acquaintance with any one of the great poets as an antidote to modern materialism (p. 22):

Choose this author as friends are chosen … think of him daily in odd moments. Read a bit of him as often as you can, until at least parts of him become part of yourself. Do not consult other books or people by way of explaining him any more than you can help. Let him explain himself. What you thus come to know in him will every day seem new and fresh; every recourse to him brings forth new thought, new feeling, new application, new aspects of things familiar. He becomes an antiseptic agent against all the agencies that tend to make life sour, stale, and insipid.

Apply this counsel to the Bible, as Professor Osgood himself does. This is what we need—this kind of living in the Book, if the Bible is to communicate power to our writing. But for it to do this the evangelical writer must know the daily discipline of the Word of God, or it will never be for him a means of grace.

A second thwarted biblical influence in our writing is this: Many of us are not bringing to the Bible a truly Christian education. There is within us a tension between the secular and the Christian world view. Even in Christian institutions, the secular frame of reference has crept in. Yet all truth is God’s truth; the Bible knows no other truth but God’s. But most of us at some time in our education have become habituated—perhaps unconsciously—to the false dichotomy between sacred and secular truth. Thus, not being fully committed to a God-centered world view, we have allowed the secularism in our thinking to offset to some extent the biblical view of life.

Danger Of Trifling With Truth

A third reason for the short circuit between Scripture and Christian writing may be the comparatively low estate of aesthetic appreciation among evangelicals today. Is it possible that debasing the aesthetic faculty in some fields affects it in other fields? Consider the third-rate music that we so often hear and sing in our services—the jingling, flip choruses unequally yoked to the name and work of our Saviour, the hymns dripping with sentimentality. Think of the lack of good taste in some public presentations of the grand truths of redemption. At the close of a recent telecast by a popular evangelical leader, viewers were urged to write in for fifteen-cent key rings with “a cute, little cross” attached. What has happened to our Christian, let alone our aesthetic, sensibilities? There is artistic integrity, there is truth in art as in science, history, or finance. The tear-jerking religious tune is false, because musically it lacks integrity. The heart-rending sermon illustration that never happened in the first place, though all too often told by the preacher as though it happened to him, everything in our life and thought that savors of sentimentality and pretension—these too violate integrity. Do not be mistaken. The Bible knows what sentiment is; it is full of true and valid feeling, because it is par excellence the book of the human heart. But the Bible never sinks to pretense and sentimentality. And when evangelicals traffic in these things, the noble and wholesome influence of Scripture may be thwarted in our thinking and in our words.

In the next place, the supplanting of sound values by the world’s methods of popularity and success may be clouding the influence of the Bible upon our writing. This is a difficult problem. Christian writing needs the note of contemporaneity, but never at the expense of truth and never at the price of debasing the coinage of sound usage. Words are important. The right word need never be irrelevant. It is doubtful whether the right and the true word is ever the cliche of the popular, mass-circulation periodical. Exactness in usage is no more equated with stodginess of style than good taste with a dull, unattractive format in our publications. In an article in the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago Jacques Barzun dissected the growing vocabulary of business and bureaucracy. Words like “processing” as applied to human beings and the pretentious business usage of “contract” came under his scalpel. Perhaps a similar deflation is due some of the overworked words in our evangelical vocabulary, so that some day we shall no longer have to read about ministers “pastoring” churches and writers “authoring” books.

Biblical Criterion Of Work

The foregoing is related to a fifth explanation of lack of biblical influence upon evangelical writing today. It may be that some of us have forgotten the Scriptural principle of hard work, resulting in the achievement of excellence to the glory of God. As Solomon put it in Ecclesiastes, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might”—a saying that finds its New Testament extension in Paul’s advice to the Colossian church, “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not to men,” coupled in the same chapter with this great criterion: “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.” But this costs; it costs hard work, and the price will not come down. Whatever we are doing as Christians, whether it be writing, or teaching, or anything else, let us remember that nothing is ever too good for the Lord. On the title page of his autobiography, I Remember, Abraham Flexner, whose report on medical schools revolutionized the teaching of medicine in America, quotes Hesiod: “Before the gates of excellence, the high gods have put sweat. Long is the road thereto and rough and steep at the first, but when the height is achieved then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning.”

The Snare Of Pedantry

Still another reason for the comparatively low estate of writing among evangelicals may be an overconcern with the outward marks of scholarship. In recent decades a good many evangelicals have been among the “have nots” when it comes to recognized scholarship. Today we are concerned, and rightly so, with the growing prestige of evangelical thought. Thus, some who are writing in the more technical fields may be betrayed into a cumbersome vocabulary under the delusion that they are thereby being scholarly and profound. We may, however, safely leave that kind of style to theologians like Niebuhr and Tillich, both of whom excel in it. Instead, we should try to write clearly and incisively like Gresham Machen, or with the fluid lucidity of C. S. Lewis, neither of whom is ever obscure and both of whom are scholarly without pretense. Or, more modestly, we may seek the unadorned simplicity of an H. A. Ironside.

“The Man Of Letters As Saint”

Finally, consider a noble example of the Christian writer at his best, the greatest writer and theologian of the Reformation, John Calvin. Before his conversion Calvin was one of the most brilliant humanists of the Renaissance. In a biographical essay (Calvin and Augustine, pp. 4–5), Professor B. B. Warfield says:

It is interesting to observe the change which in the meantime [i.e., after Calvin’s conversion] has come over his attitude toward his writings. When he sent forth his commentary on Seneca’s treatise—his first and last humanistic work—he was quivering with anxiety for the success of his book.… He was proud of his performance; he was zealous to reap the fruits of his labor; he was eager for his legitimate reward. Only four years have passed, and he issues his first Protestant publication—the immortal “Institutes of the Christian Religion” … free from all such tremors. He is … content that no one of his acquaintance shall know him for the author of the book.… He hears the acclamations with which it was greeted with a certain personal detachment. He has sent it forth not for his own glory, but for the glory of God; he is not seeking his own advantage or renown by it, but the strengthening and the succoring of the saints.… He has not ceased to be a “man of letters,” … but he has consecrated all his gifts and powers … to the service of God and His gospel.

What we see in Calvin, thus, fundamentally is the “man of letters” as saint.… He was by nature, by gifts, by training—by inborn predilection and by acquired capacities alike—a “man of letters,” and he earnestly … wished to dedicate himself as such to God.

“The man of letters as saint.” It is an exalted ideal that we see in a man like Calvin, or, to turn to our own American literature, in Jonathan Edwards, whose literary eminence is so clearly recognized in the recent life by Professor Perry Miller. Verily, it is a great thing to be a Christian writer—a writer who tells the truth about God and His Son, a writer in whose work there is reflected even in a very small way the beauty and power of the Bible.

END

Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, Headmaster of the Stony Brook School, on Long Island, is a gifted lecturer and writer in biblical and educational subjects. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of New York University, with an A.M. from Harvard, he holds honorary degrees from Wheaton College and the Reformed Episcopal Theological Seminary. This article abridges his lecture at a recent Workshop and Conference on “The Christian and the Literary Scene” at Wheaton.

- More from Frank E. Gaebelein

Cover Story

Too Little and Too Late

John Morrison

The fact that this terse expression has become trite does not invalidate its significance, and it is apposite to the situation in many mission fields today. It takes on added significance when we realize, if we do, that time is running out on us and that the coming decade may well decide the issues of our world missionary program. Africa, or at least part of it, is the one continent that is still adolescent in development, and as such, offers the best opportunity for Christian missionary work.

Victory In A Pagan Land

It is computed that there are some four million Roman Catholic and two million Protestant adherents in the Belgian Congo today. Even allowing for a certain enthusiastic exaggeration, the two faiths could probably number, at least, four million sympathizers. That is over 30 per cent of the total population, surely an amazing success in a land and among a people who were entirely pagan eighty years ago, and where the Christian message was quite unknown.

It may be said, with some degree of truth, that the missions went in for quantity at the expense of quality, and that in the early days of missionary work their eagerness to break the crust of pagan life inclined missionaries to impose the minimum of conditions on those brave enough to break away from stark heathenism. Yet, as the impact of the Christian truth made a breach in the walls of pagan thought and custom, it became necessary to hold up a standard for Christian aspirants that exceeded by far that in the home church of which the missionary was a representative.

In the Belgian Congo, for instance, the Congolese did not consider lying a sin. Rather, it was regarded merely as a defensive measure adopted until one could be sure he could somehow wriggle out of the possible consequences of any given predicament. Often a convert would tell a lie when the truth would have served him better, simply because he was faced with an unknown situation, and he was conscious of the fact that he could always tell the truth as a last resort. The evil consequences of drunkenness made abstinence a necessary qualification for entry into the church, and this was not easy in a land where native brews were considered food and drink.

Animism, with its degrading and cruel practices and customs, was woven into the very warp and woof of native life, and was the most difficult of all evils to overcome. What missionary has not been bitterly disappointed and chagrined to discover among those he nurtured in the faith some relapse into pagan belief?

It could also be said that Christianity was a novelty, that the missionaries brought in strange and interesting articles, such as the victrola, the sewing machine, even an organ or piano, and that these enticed the native into taking a chance by breaking away from that which had previously been inviolable, his pagan way of life.

As schools and hosiptals developed in the missionary program, the need for trained workmen became acute. This added incentive to break away from the old things appealed to many. Yet it was as true in these early days of missionary effort as it was in the early days of history that the “spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” and in the ranks of those who came forward was to be found the nucleus of a new order.

Competition For The Spirit

Although Christianity stands today on its own intrinsic worth, many competitors have appeared on the scene.

The lure of wealth is one of these. One former pastor received $40,000 for his yearly crop of coffee; as a pastor he had received $6.00 a month. There is position (fame on a lesser scale); a former school clerk of the mission is flown some 1,200 miles by plane and lodged in the best hotel in the capital at government expense, in order that he may attend the Governor-General’s Council, of which he is a member. One might also mention entertainment; athletes and theatrical artists are brought from Europe and America to instruct and develop the Congolese in these arts and pastimes. Then there is government education. Until the last few years all education was directed by missionaries. Now government schools have been created throughout the Congo, up to and including the university standard, and these appeal to the Congolese.

Finally, one might mention distraction. I call it distraction in the French sense of the word, while keeping in mind the English, for one can hardly call it entertainment or amusement; it is neither. Cheap drinking bars have sprung up, crowded at night where jazz, that primitive African harmony, comes back to its home to roost after having clothed itself with the garments of civilization. It blares forth from loudspeakers, sometimes in the native dialect, and is often obscene. It even mocks the church, by using hymn tunes and putting words of its own to the music. As one travels down the main artery in the native city, it is impossible to reconcile this with the scene of several decades ago, or even with the unsophisticated village of the “hill country.”

Yet the large cities are the mecca of the young boys and girls who are now attending our schools in the interior. Few among the youth think of spending their lives in the drudgery of trudging out to the field or the plantation in the early morning, laboring all day, and then returning at dusk to the primitive habitation and monotonous life of the village. The cities call to them. Returning visitors paint a glowing scene of life in the metropolis, and the tale loses nothing in the telling. The young boy or girl is entranced with the prospect of a glittering life, which holds so much of novelty and diversity, and so the trend to the large centers continues. This means that where the orientation of missionary plans was formerly directed to the “hill” village (as the Congolese call the villages distinct from the nontribal centers), the emphasis is gradually turning to the large commercial and industrial centers. It is estimated that about 10 per cent of the Congo population is concentrated in the larger towns and that most of the brighter students in school, the future leaders of the Congo, are looking eagerly to these places for their future life. Protestant missions have been slow, or reluctant, to admit that the center of emphasis has changed, and that, while the Christian work in the “hill” villages must be maintained, the towns afford opportunities of concentrated work that are unique in Congo.

The Roman Catholic Church has been wiser, and Leopoldville today counts several hundred of their missionaries. The Protestant missions, who have a ratio of about one to three with Roman Catholic missions throughout the whole Colony, have but a score of their workers there. Most of these are engaged in secretarial or cooperative enterprises that have little, if any direct touch with Congolese life.

Crucial Moment In Missions

This may well be the crucial moment for Protestant missions, for it is easy for these bright young men and girls to drift away from the church amidst the temptations of the bright lights. And a new way of life adopted in these surroundings may be quite difficult to change.

The moment is crucial, also, for transferring power to the indigenous church. The fledgling should, if necessary, be pushed out of the nest into trying his wings, for it is the experience of most missionaries that the Congolese, as a group and even as individuals, are reluctant to accept responsibility. The day is ripe for placing the Congolese on the same level of ecclesiastical responsibility as he has attained in government and commercial circles. The church cannot afford to drag behind secular and mundane forces in its efforts to build an indigenous and autonomous Christian institution, the Church of Christ in Congo.

Yet, even as the younger nations of the world today look for help, in counsel and finance, to the older ones, it is no less true that this situation exists in the missionary program. The home churches, if they would ultimately avoid the reproach of “too little and too late” must gain a new understanding of the church’s program “to make disciples of all nations.”

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, John Morrison served in World War I with British forces in France and East Africa. For more than 30 years he has been in the Belgian Congo as a missionary of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., being presently in charge of the new strategic work of that mission in Leopoldville.

- More from John Morrison

Cover Story

Jesus as the Ideal of Christian Ethics

Carl F. H. Henry

Much of the fascination which Jesus Christ has held for scholars comes not simply from his supernatural works, nor from his supernatural teaching, but from his supernatural moral life. The conviction that he is the “personal revelation of the holiness of God” is a prime reason for the great number of Lives about him. He was more than the great Teacher of ethics. He was its great Liver.

Nowhere else does human history show the moral glory of the Divine in human life. Nowhere else has the world found such inspiration for moral earnestness. Christ stands behind what D. M. Ross has called “the singular moral heat” of the early Christians. “From Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ to Charles M. Sheldon’s In His Steps,” Hillyer Straton remarks, “Christian ethics has been centered in Jesus.” And the sweep of his moral influence does not stop with Christian writing. “The track of His footsteps is seen,” Pressense writes, “wherever there has been any real progress in good, in love, in right, in the moral elevation of men.” L. H. Marshall affirms that “beyond Jesus of Nazareth … the moral stature of humanity can never go” and that Jesus is “the last word on all the great issues of right and wrong.”

We are told that “his biography may be summed up in the words, ‘he went about doing good’ ”; that he lived “the only perfectly unselfish life ever seen on earth”; that the “grand outstanding characteristic of Christ’s work” was his “absolute submission to the will of God”; that the uniqueness of Christianity consists in “his utter realization of the immanence of God in this present life”; that he is “the moral law incarnate.… The law of the ‘good’ is in His person a reality.”

The Wonder Of Our World

The magnificent feature of Jesus Christ is that he not only proclaimed a superlative ethic, but he lived it out to the full. In common with the earlier Hebrew prophets he held a morally majestic view of God. He supplemented this view in his teaching. Granting the holiness of their living, the life of Jesus stands apart from them and from the whole of humanity as a brilliant lightning flash in the dark night. His pure walk is the wonder of our world of mixed motives and deeds. Alongside him, even the best of men must confess unholiness. Schleiermacher agrees that the “entire history of humanity” supplies no analogy for this one whose “whole conduct, … deeds, … addresses, have a supernatural character. He must be a divine ambassador.” Here the moral life is unveiled with no discordant note, with nothing that is less than ethically superlative.

Whatever may be said about him, whether as a teacher or as a redeemer, his sinlessness is unique in the stream of human life. Nowhere does history show a fountain of righteousness like the ethical pureness which ever lives in him. He presented the ideal of the kingdom not merely in word but in deed and fact. He is the word of truth and of goodness become flesh. What he taught he uncompromisingly exemplified. “The whole of the active work of Jesus,” Wendt writes, “was an exposition of His teaching through His own example.” In him the kingdom itself appeared on earth, in that “the perfect human life, the moral ideal for man, was perfectly realized.” “No miracle of Christ equals the miracle of His sinless life,” remarks H. R. Mackintosh, in a chapter devoted to the features which set apart “the one quite unspotted life that has been lived within our sinful race” as “solitary and incomparable.” Jesus Christ, even if more remains to be said, is the faultless exemplar of virtue, “a self-determining will, perfectly bent on perfect ends,” the lone exhibition of ethical excellence to be found in the history of the fallen race.

A Superb Moral Weapon

Christ’s moral perfection has given to Christian ethics one of its choicest weapons against speculative ethics. It sets Jesus not only against the champions of a moral naturalism, from Epicurus to Dewey and Sarte, but also against the most earnest idealistic moralists, from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Kant, Hegel and Fichte, or to Hocking, Brightman and Flewelling. Indeed, none of the founders of the other world religions binds his followers in such personal moral dependence. Whether one looks to Buddha or Confucius, to Laotze or to Mohammed, to Mary Baker Eddy or to Joseph Smith, he finds this ethical teaching to be higher than their own ethical living. In this they do not differ from the philosophers of ethics. The life of Jesus thus gives authoritative power to his ethical teaching, since his life accords to it an atmosphere of personal earnestness and realization.

The point is not that all other religious ethics and moral philosophy are the work of scoundrels. Man really does wrestle with moral claims in human experience. His very death marked Socrates as an ethical martyr. Plato is passionate in his call for social and individual justice. Kant gave a dramatic centrality to the moral life. But Jesus is not related to his teaching simply as Socrates and Plato and Kant were to theirs. His life was comprehensively “the example of His own words.” As MacLennan observes, “The life of Jesus differs from that of all other great teachers of religion and morality in that He lived out His teaching Himself to the full.… What Jesus taught He was.” And this fact of itself makes all the other religious and philosophical moralists seem tame and drab, if not ethically shabby, alongside Jesus Christ. Indeed they may be men or women whose teaching here and there strikes our fancy. They may even give us some significant insight. But they do not lay upon us the duty of following them. And if they did, we could not do so with good conscience. Where does the study of philosophy or of religion, we may well inquire with Hovey, “recall the name of any saint or sage whose temper was so sweet and just, so holy and pitiful as his? whose word was so luminous and penetrating and vivifying; whose endurance of wrong was so meek and heroic; whose work was so beneficent and God-like?” Where is even one other who has not been victim of the conditioned ideals of his own day? Who by his self-giving love and supreme virtue has challenged and placed on the defensive men of all ages, notions, temperaments, and stations of life? Where else is a flawless and imperishable pattern for behavior to be found, where else is one who stands in no need of ethical renewal from without? Christ did not simply venture to define the moral ideal. He manifests it. The private lives of the great secular moralists are relatively unknown even where their ethical works are well-known.

The Philosophers Are Sinners

How are we to account for the lack of dynamic in speculative ethics? The moral philosophers of antiquity and their modern successors ignore the tragic factor of sin in the life of man. How account for their relatively lower ethical claims? They formulate objective standards for morals and religion without any dependence on special Divine disclosure. And they assume that man can fulfill the will of God by works. They do not see that he needs special redemption. On every side they betray the pride of reason.

True as it may be for Socrates that the doctrines of providence, prayer and immortality were controlling principles in his philosophy, his conviction that he had “never deliberately wronged a single person” shows dim understanding of the law of love in practice. It also shows the classic moral philosophers were wrong when they said it is impossible to have knowledge of the good without acting upon it. One cannot think of Plato without recalling that he was not taken seriously as the philosopher-king he idealized in The Republic. Seneca, the lofty mirror of Stoic ethics, praised the poverty of those around him while he lived in luxury. He even wrote the shameful document in which Nero defended the treacherous murder of his own mother. The moral achievement even of the greatest ethical philosophers falls under the biblical verdict that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The Pattern Of Perfection

All the excellences of the best men are seen in Jesus, undiminished and unceasing. His spell over the science of ethics, therefore, is not simply that of an attractive, balanced, and deep personality. He does not simply command the respect due a sage. He presents the ideal not only in his teaching but in the flesh. He speaks to the moral dilemmas of life as One who, though sharing the temptations and the burdens of men, nevertheless is a true representation of the Divine nature. “For Christians, the true standard of life exists, not in the dream land of some ideal realm, but concretely embodied in a human life.” The Christian ideal is not left to abstraction, but is manifested in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the pattern of perfect living.

Even those who hesitate to make the highest religious claim for Jesus Christ, and whose philosophy leads them in quite other directions, have acknowledged his peerless character. The distinguished personalist, Edgar S. Brightman, said “in Jesus … the ideal of personality had its highest historical illustration.” Whoever has learned of Christ can be satisfied with no lesser ideal of humanity. And whoever disregards him will fruitlessly search for a superior ideal. Christ brought ethics at the summit and lived out its most exacting demands. David Smith said: “He is never worsted in the moral conflict,” but “passes through the daily ordeal stainless and blameless.” That is why the proud Greek, the noble Roman, the barbaric tribes of the early West, the heathen of the Orient and the modern pagan and sophisticate are halted in his presence. Here, indeed, is “God living a human life.”

Rationalistic Counterattack

It was to be expected that the life and ideals of Jesus would be assailed vigorously by rationalistic ethics. To admit that Jesus authoritatively forged and achieved the moral ideal is the death-blow of speculative morality. The anti-supernaturalism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, later to emerge as a world cultural force in Communism, damned the moral attitudes and example of Jesus as obsolete. The bolder and more radical critics, such as Bruno Bauer, rewrote history in order to do away with Jesus Christ as a historical person, but the Nazarene could not be erased so easily.

The new spirit assails Jesus as a damaging example, attacking such virtues as humility, self-sacrifice and self-abnegation. It proposes to add modern ideals from contemporary science, art and socio-economic interests. The complaint of the American humanist is zealously worded by Harry Elmer Barnes and Edwin A. Burtt. Nels Ferre, a professing supernaturalist, attacks the moral purity of Christ, declaring that “sinlessness is a bloodless category, making an anemic saviour.” He charges Jesus with “unnecessary sharpness,” “moods of undue and exaggerated joy,” “impatience.” He was “almost neurotically self-concerned and invidious of others.”

Tribute From The Uncommitted

But moralists who would not allow themselves to be counted in the tradition of theological ethics have acknowledged the excellence of Jesus’ example. John Stuart Mill superficially reduced Christianity to the Golden Rule. Yet he said an unbeliever would find it difficult to locate a better example of the rule of virtue than that given by Jesus. His example of mercy, compassion and service admits no comparisons.… Even those who are loudest in their repudiation of Christian ethics have borrowed from it more than they know. “While they have been undervaluing the inner worth of Jesus Christ, they have actually been living on the virtue which came out of the hem of his garment.” One need only contrast modern to pre-Christian Naturalism to discern the debt contemporary Humanism owes to the coming of Christ into the world. Even Communism cannot escape his influence. The best elements in its concern for social justice are ultimately rooted in his example. Martineau has noted that Comte propounds as the single maxim which should guide the whole of Positivism the words “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Comte did not even know the source of these words. Yet he deliberately loosed his religion of humanity from the theological fetters of Christianity. But he could not escape the influence of Jesus Christ. So in eclectic outlooks which are openly hostile to Christianity there are unacknowledged debts to Jesus and the prophets who spoke of him.

The older attacks on Jesus’ life are fast disappearing. He is no longer accused of ill-temper or disrespect for human personality. Those protests stemmed from philosophies which tended to make human nature divine. Therefore they concealed the wrath of God. William Ellery Channing spoke for early Unitarianism of “his spotless purity, his moral perfection, his unrivalled goodness.” Jesus was “perfect, spotless in virtue, the representative and resplendent image of the moral goodness and rectitude of God.” His displeasure arose, as Karl Adam has put it, “from a wounded love of truth and honesty,” and he never surrendered moral control in manifesting it. “His anger is detached from all selfish interest; he is enraged against those who have had opportunity and yet remain opponents of the truth and of mercy,” writes George M. Stratton. And we may add that this is precisely the anger of the future judgment.

Preacher In The Red

MUSIC FOR THE MOOD

In a parish I served a number of years ago considerable tension had developed between the organist and the pastor. It reached its most glaring expression when, on a Sunday morning, I announced my resignation from the pulpit. I had hardly finished reading my resignation before the organist, with full organ, played the Doxology. The Rev. O. E. CLAUSON, pastor, Pilgrim Lutheran Church, Portland, Oregon.

For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Suite 1014 Washington Building, Washington, D.C.

The Academic Snub

The current trend is simply to ignore Jesus Christ. There is not a single reference to Jesus Christ in Dewey and Tufts’ Ethics that has pointed significance for the subject. Visit the reserve or stack shelves in the specialized graduate libraries. Comb the indices for mention of Jesus in books on general ethics. One will find such references few and far between. When they do occur, it is often in company with others to whom he is arbitrarily levelled. The tendency is simply to overlook die historical Jesus with indifference, and to assume that no significant ethical system—indeed, no ethical system at all—can be associated with him.

Strangely enough, Christian scholarship of the past century has encouraged this nonchalance toward Jesus. It argued that we do not know enough about Jesus to justify any estimate of his character. The higher critical assault on the New Testament not only undermined confidence in the inherited picture of Jesus but also filled the gap it left in the records with highly fanciful reconstruction. The implication of a verdict like Wundt’s was all too plain: “With the exception of a few incidents in the narrative of the Passion, … the outward life of Jesus is a tissue of legends.” The inward life would be even more difficult to recover. The result of such doubt was well expressed by Warner Fite: “It would be not too much to say that for the part of the world called Christendom the life of Jesus is history’s greatest problem.” The next step is to separate the discussion of the Christian moral ideal from a necessary dependence on the historical Jesus.

Neglect Of The Historical

Modern theology, after having mistakenly “rescued” the “ethical Jesus” from the “biblical Jesus,” today sketches his example only in the most cautious and skeletal manner. The significance of Jesus Christ to the progressive revelation of the plan and character of God is placed “behind the historical.” A curtain intrudes between the life and teaching of the historical Jesus and the exact content of revelation. One of the marks of the current dialectical theology is that both the teaching and example of Jesus lose their central and authoritative significance for the ethical life.

Rudolf Bultmann denies that Jesus regarded himself as Messiah. He finds no essential relationship whatever between the Kingdom of God and the historical person of Jesus. Barth complains that “Jesus Christ … the Rabbi of Nazareth [is] historically so difficult to get information about, and when it is got, one whose activity is so easily a little commonplace alongside more than one other founder of a religion and even alongside many later representatives of His own ‘religion.’ ” So too Brunner treats the historical Christ. He locates Christ’s moral authority wholly outside history. The believer cannot learn the content of Christian behavior from the past, either from the Bible or the historical example of Jesus, but only in immediate revelation-encounter with God. Niebuhr rejects the conviction that the historical Jesus is the incarnation of absolute perfection. “The Christian believes that the ideal of love is real in the will and nature of God, even though he knows of no place in history where the ideal has been realized in its pure form.” Niebuhr never satisfactorily resolves the tension between the Jesus of history and the Christ of Christian faith in his writings. There is little light in the verdict that “the Jesus of history … created the Christ of faith in the life of the early church, and … his historic life is related to the transcendent Christ as a goal and ultimate symbol of a relation which prophetic religion sees between all life and history and the transcendent.”

All such reconstructions neglect the connection between Christian faith and morals and the conviction that the historical Jesus was the embodiment of absolute and sinless morality. Because of this confidence the followers of Christ find their moral example in him. Where else can they turn? Lecky noted that Christianity has been “the main source of moral development of Europe, and … has discharged this office not so much by the inculcation of a system of ethics, however pure, as by the assimilating and attractive influence of a perfect ideal. The moral progress of mankind can never cease to be distinctly and intensely Christian so long as it consists of a gradual approximation to the character of the Christian Founder.” …

A Biblical Motif

This connection between Jesus and Christian morality has not only been recognized across the centuries. It comes from the New Testament witness itself. It is inseparable, as Smyth observes, from the apostolic picture of the moral life. “The ethical example of Jesus as an object of faith was clearly and positively given in the apostolic witness to him, and it is a known and distinct Light in the Christian consciousness.” But that is not all. Jesus himself implied it—more, he explicitly taught it—to his earliest followers. Our Lord’s invitation “follow Me” implied a discipleship in the ethico-religious sense. He is “the Way” (Jn. 14:6). The Christian is to walk in him. Jesus consciously knew that he gave man the ideal pattern of behavior, or more accurately, that he fulfilled the requirements of true human morality in his own life.… The New Testament writers candidly confess themselves to be sinners. They are men who have fallen short of the moral ideal. Their hope is redemption. Yet again and again they set Jesus forth as the supreme moral ideal (Eph. 5:2, Heb. 12:3, 1 Pet. 2:21 ff.). Their verdict is that Jesus Christ is “holy, guileless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens” (Heb. 7:26). He is Jesus Christ “the Righteous” (1 Jn. 2:1).

This portion of Christian Personal Ethics, published this month by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., is an abridgment of Chapter 17, without footnote references, and is reprinted by permission.

- More from Carl F. H. Henry

Cover Story

The Church and Evangelism

A. Skevington Wood

One of the significant features of the Christian situation today is the awakening consciousness of the church to the claimant challenge of evangelism. There was a time, and that not so very long ago, when evangelism, in Professor James Denney’s phrase, was “the disinterested interest” of a comparative few. But now it is taking its rightful place at the head of the church’s priorities. It has become, as the Bishop of Rochester has recently pointed out, “a live and foremost issue in the outlook, planning and strategy of the whole church.” We have, therefore, a new climate ecclesiastically for evangelism.

Technique Not The Secret

Much has been written of late concerning the technique of evangelism. It is indeed an encouraging sign of our times that so much attention should be paid to this vital subject. But perhaps the hour has struck for a warning to be issued against the perils involved in too great a reliance upon method. It is the temptation of this pragmatic age to presume that technique is the secret of evangelism. It cannot be too firmly emphasized, however, that mere methods, mere schemes, mere endeavors will not in themselves produce the desired effect. Without the tide of the Holy Spirit running through them they may prove as futile as the frenzied activism of Elijah’s rivals on Mount Carmel. “And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice; no one answered, no one heeded” (1 Kings 18:28,29, R.S.V.). Method is of secondary importance compared with the primacy of the Spirit and the Word.

It is the purpose of this article to underline certain basic principles relating to the church and evangelism rather than to add to the existing pile of literature on method. And working as I am at the present moment with the “Tell Scotland” movement, perhaps I may be forgiven for utilizing the threefold statement that underlies this great nationwide campaign. Expressed in the words of its leader, Tom Allan, effective evangelism today stems from the conviction “that mission is a continuing engagement with the world at every level; that the true agent of mission is the Church itself; and that the layman has a decisive part to play.”

Engagement With The World

The question of the world is one that should continually exercise the believer’s mind, but not always in the traditional sense. It is, of course, essential that the young convert should clearly separate himself from all that would distract or defile. But once his stand has been made and he is firm on the rock and strong in Christ, then, as the familiar hymn reminds us, he must

“… stretch out a loving hand

To wrestlers with the troubled sea.”

And just as the would-be rescuer must often plunge into the dangerous waters in order to save a sinking man, so the Christian is called upon to risk contamination himself in order to win another out of the world. Remember, it was the Pharisees who drew in their skirts at the sight of the wicked and passed by on the other side. The Son of man was known as “a friend of publicans and sinners” (Matt. 11:19).

Now it is out of this Scriptural attitude that the realisation arises that evangelism is an engagement with the world. Christianity does not represent a flight from the world. That is the choice of the recluse and the ascetic, but it is not the directive of God’s Word. Our Lord’s parting commission, before his ascension to the right hand of the Father on high, was “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). In obedience to that explicit command of Christ, the church must seek to be always in the world yet never of it. And this is not to be a matter of special occasions and specific crusade. Evangelism cannot be relegated to the realm of the sporadic and the intermittent. It is the urgent task of the church all the time. It is a “continuing engagement with the world.”

Moreover, it is to be “at every level.” Too often our evangelism is limited in both conception and scope. We tend to restrict it to stereotyped patterns. We have lost the improvising genius of the New Testament Church. Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul gives us a glimpse of his own evangelistic strategy. “I have become all things to all men,” he says, “that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). When the passion for souls fully dominates our discipleship, then we shall not rest content until every avenue of approach to the unconverted has been explored. We shall covet the beatitude of Isaiah 32:20, “Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.”

The Christian Commando campaigns in Great Britain in the immediate postwar years adopted such a policy. They aimed to penetrate deep into enemy lines and to occupy a bridgehead until the regular troops of the church came. Meetings were held wherever men and women were—in factories, in shops, in cinemas, in dance halls, in public houses, in schools, in clubs and in the open air. Instead of waiting for unbelievers to come to the church to hear the message of salvation (and it might well have been a lengthy interval), the church went to them and confronted them with the Word just where they were. Such a policy must be incorporated into the regular program of every local church. Continuing engagement with the world at every level must be integral to the church.

The Agent Of Mission

A further principle of vital evangelism is that “the true agent of mission is the church itself.” Never before has the church been so closely linked with evangelism at the receiving end. We live in the era of church-centered crusades. It used to be said that too many campaigns failed because they halted on the church doorstep. That is no longer the case. Every possible effort is made in follow-up procedure to channel inquirers into the fellowship of the church.

This reorientation of evangelistic objective brings with it a fresh challenge to the church. It is not sufficient that the actual task of mission should be left to itinerant specialists, valuable though their contribution may be. The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are sadly few. We must therefore pray the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers into His harvest (Matt. 9:37, 38). And the answer to our prayer will be “Go ye.” We shall realise that evangelism is a task for the whole church, and that includes every believer. We cannot conveniently beg off this concern. When the prophet Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” he responded immediately and unhesitatingly, “Here am I: send me” (Isa. 6:8).

We have spoken of the change of attitude whereby the church is now regarded as the natural recipient of converts. There is desperate need for a parallel revolution within the church. Our eyes must be opened to see both our responsibility and opportunity. If we are to fulfill our function in the world by becoming the agent of evangelism, we must be ready for new and unusual ventures in Christ’s name. We must refuse to be fenced in by conventional inhibitions. Over the centuries, sadly enough, the church has built up defences that all too often hem her in, as well as keep the enemy out. God may well be saying to us as He said to Israel of old, “Take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord’s” (Jer. 5:10).

If the church is indeed the agent of mission, then a radical overhaul of our machinery is necessary. Every item must be reassessed in terms of its evangelistic value. The policy of the local church must be evangelistic. Evangelism must be the very air we breathe, the very blood that runs through our veins. So many churches apparently have no policy, spiritually speaking, at all. They are content to drift along from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, from year to year with no evident end in view. No political party would dream of dispensing with a program. No business firm could continue without a clear-cut plan of action. Yet too often in the Christian Church we think that anything will do. We must have a policy and that policy must be evangelistic. We must have a burden for the unsaved. We must have a consuming hunger for souls.

The activity of the local church must be evangelistic. Everything we do on our premises must be related to the task of mission. If need be, we must scrutinize our timetable to ensure that all is done for the furtherance of the Gospel. Every meeting and every organisation must be weighed in this balance and fearlessly dealt with if it is found wanting. The tree will be all the healthier when the branches are pruned.

The worship of the local church must be evangelistic. Every service must be designed to confront the congregation with the claims of Jesus Christ. Every sermon must aim at decisions. What Principal W. M. Macgregor used to call “the preaching of conquest” must return to the pulpit. We must expect conversions, for unless we expect them we shall not see them. And beyond the normal activity and worship of the church, every attempt must be made to reach out to those who are estranged from Christ—especially those resident within the vicinity. All this is implied by the affirmation that “the true agent of mission is the Church itself.”

The Layman’S Part

The final principle of evangelism enunciated by the “Tell Scotland” movement is that “the layman has a decisive part to play.” One of the “Signs of Hope in a Century of Despair” listed by Professor Elton Trueblood in a stimulating book of that title, is what he calls the emergence of lay religion. Such an heartening feature must be capitalized in the interests of evangelism. The growing consciousness within the church of the role of the laity must be harnessed to the task of mission.

This is an unequivocal implication of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. This Protestant insistence is itself derived from Holy Scripture. The Christianity of the Bible is a layman’s movement. Among the twelve whom Christ chose to receive and perpetuate His message not one was a rabbi or a priest. They were all to be found in the ordinary walks of life. Some were fishermen and one was a tax collector. It was to these men, drawn as they were from the common cross section of society, that our Lord issued his clarion call to witness: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19).

Christ is calling laymen still to play a decisive part in the work of evangelism. And if they hesitate on the grounds of inadequacy, they should ponder the second verb in the verse quoted above. It contains the open secret of power for witness. “I will make you.” The disciples were the men Jesus made. It was not what they were that equipped them for their mission, but what he made of them. He who tamed the impetuous Peter until he was known as the apostle of humility; he who enabled the reticent Andrew to become the first home missionary; he who so resolved the dilemmas of doubting Thomas that at last he owned his Lord and his God—this same living Christ can transform the lowliest believer into an ambassador of love.

The layman has a decisive part to play in personal evangelism. In these days of great crusades and mass meetings we tend to overlook the abiding need for the quiet yet fruitful witness of the individual. But in point of fact this is the basis of every sort of evangelism. It is the original New Testament technique. Andrew brings Peter. Philip brings Nathaniel. That was how the Church grew when it was very young. That is how it will still grow today. Obviously, the layman is central here. It is the duty and privilege of every believer to testify to the saving grace of Christ. If our experience is real, it will be evident. If our faith is vital, it will find expression. We shall tell our unconverted friends and neighbors what has happened to us and commend our Saviour to them. We shall say with Paul, “We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak” (2 Cor. 4:13).

The layman also has a decisive part to play in team evangelism. Much of the most effective missioning is being done today by groups. They may go out to visit from door to door or witness in the open air. They may constitute a Christian cell within a factory. Such teams are composed of laymen. They may be trained and instructed by ministers, but they are nevertheless in essence a part of the lay potential of the church.

That is a potential awaiting realisation. “The essential thing in the whole matter,” wrote Dr. Hendrik Kraemer, referring to the layman’s part in evangelism, “is that the churches forget that in the lay membership they have the most precious part of the whole body. If the churches awaken to the importance of the laymen and really try, probably for the first time in history, to give content to the doctrine of the general priesthood of all believers, there will be a deep change in our whole church life and in the relation of the church to the world.” It should be the prayer of every Christian that such a profound and far-reaching revolution may take place. A return to the New Testament principles of every-member evangelism is more than overdue.

Having indicated the fundamental convictions underlying the church’s approach to its commitment of mission in the contemporary situation, let it be stated in conclusion that evangelism is not in itself the answer to the church’s needs and problems. Evangelism is not enough. Our further prayer must be for revival. Only the Pentecostal insweeping of the Holy Spirit can make the dead bones live.

Revive us, Lord! Is zeal abating

While harvest fields are vast and white?

Revive us, Lord, the world it waiting,

Equip Thy Church to spread the light.

We Quote:

RUSSELL MAGUIRE

Chairman of the Board, American Mercury

Of paramount importance, we must have a spiritual revival—we must return to a strong belief in God and the Bible.—In a statement of “Objectives for 1957,” American Mercury, Vol. LXXXIV, No. 396 (Jan., 1957).

A. Skevington Wood served Methodist circuits in Scotland from 1940 to 1951, when he became superintendent of Paisley Central Hall where he still ministers. He holds the B.A. from University of London and the Ph.D from University of Edinburgh, where Church History was his major field. His work on Thomas Haweis (1734–1820) is being published this year by S.P.C.K.

- More from A. Skevington Wood

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