Pathos of Hungarian Protestantism

The tragic developments in Hungary have involved a large and flourishing Protestant community there. Twenty-eight percent of the population is Protestant; of these, twenty percent are Reformed and six percent Lutheran. They have been suffering with their compatriots in the recent attempt to throw off Soviet domination and gain freedom.

Saga Of Suffering

Suffering is not a new experience for Hungarian Protestantism, however. Its history is a moving tale of glory and of woe. It is glorious because of the eagerness with which a large majority of the population at one time accepted the Reformation of the sixteenth century; because of the centers of learning which it founded and has maintained for centuries; because of its impact upon Magyar culture; and because of its loyalty to the faith through centuries of oppression and persecution. It is a tale of woe because of the almost incredible sufferings imposed upon its adherents by Turk and Romanist who expressed only contempt, in those centuries, for the Word of God and the re-forming people who sought to live by it.

The historian d’Aubigne writes that “it was by a kind of thunderclap that the Reformation began in Hungary.” Its spread was so rapid that within a few years, by 1525, the five royal, free cities in upper Hungary had already embraced the faith re-formed according to God’s Word. The following year, however, the first note was struck in a melancholy strain which threatened to develop into the funeral dirge of Hungarian Protestantism. For on the fateful twenty-ninth day of August, Suleiman the Magnificent, the Turkish Sultan who was to cause all Europe to tremble, killed the Hungarian King, the flower of the nobility, a long line of aristocrats, and annihilated the Hungarian army. The reverberations of the battle of Mohacs were heard in every hamlet and peasant home in the country and served as an ominous warning of difficulties ahead. For more than a century and a half the Turks dominated most of the country and the flower of Hungary’s youth and manhood sought to stem the Moslem advance and save Europe.

A more severe persecution, however, was experienced at the hands of Jesuit and Hapsburg representing respectively ecclesiastical and secular imperialism both of which were in the service of Rome. Whereas Turkish masters fought their battles for the glory of Allah, the other, more devastating, oppression was done in the name of Jesus and might well have destroyed the easternmost European rampart of Reformation Christianity had not the Prussian, English and Dutch governments intervened in its behalf. Cut off from the rest of Protestant Europe, with the help of God and occasional help from fellow Protestants, the Magyars maintained a virile evangelical witness.

Ravages Of War

A reading of the history of the Magyar Reformed Church enables one to understand how it could survive during the past two decades of our era. Raped and looted by the vast armies of two powerful countries, Germany and Russia, during World War II, Hungary’s condition became tragic. The lurid details can be read in such reliable reports as those of the Swiss Legation in Budapest which state, in part, that, when the Soviet armies occupied the country in the spring of 1945, rape was “so general—from the age of ten up to seventy years—that few women in Hungary escaped this fate.” Almost every home, every shop, was entered and looted several times with almost everything of value taken. In that agricultural country there was hardly a domestic animal, a wagon, or a piece of farm machinery to be found. Factories were stripped but a $300,000,000 reparations debt was demanded of the prostrate country, the debt, according to John F. Montgomery, United States Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Hungary, actually amounting to $1,100,000,000 because the currency exchange rate was specified as that of 1938 and a five percent a month penalty for delay in delivery was imposed. During the war two complete harvests had been lost and the Central European drought of 1947 ruined most of that one. The one bright spot in this picture was the witness of the Church in Hungary. Throughout the struggle there had been faithful preaching of the Word of God. The Reformed community heeded the advice of its presiding superintendent who exhorted it, ringed about with apparently insuperable difficulties, to look “inward and upward.” In May, 1947, the Synod of the Reformed Church solemnly declared that, in view of the circumstances through which its members had passed, all who desired to retain church membership should re-affirm their faith with the following declaration:

I give thanks to God, my heavenly Father, for receiving me into His Holy Church, into the communion of the believers of Jesus Christ, through the sacrament of baptism. I remember also my profession and vow made at confirmation through which I gained admittance into the communicant fellowship of the congregation. And now, in order to become a full-fledged member of the Church and as a renewal of my confirmation vow, I declare before God and this congregation, that I desire to be a loyal, obedient, and self-sacrificing member of the Reformed Church. For this reason I promise and pledge that I shall attend regularly the services of worship and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; that I shall submit to ecclesiastical discipline; that I shall rear my children of the Reformed faith in that faith; and that I shall participate in the material support of my Church and in her benevolences according to my ability. In all these resolves I pray for the effective help of God’s Holy Spirit.

This unprecedented action of the Synod was a potent factor in the strengthening of Hungary’s evangelical witness. Reporting on that witness, Dr. Stewart W. Herman, in an address to the Lutheran World Action conference, stated that Hungary was “experiencing the greatest religious revival to be found in all Europe.” The effort to put the Church back on its feet in the thick of the struggle, the speaker said, is “the hope of Europe.”

Protestant Valor

The tragedy of that struggle has deepened in these last days and Hungarian Protestantism lies in agony with the rest of the country. The complete story we do not yet know. But we do know that much of the leadership of the Small-landholders Party, overthrown in the revolution of 1948, hated by the victorious Communists, and active in the most recent revolt, came from the Protestant Church.

In 1848, an even century before the Communist coup, there was another great war for independence with a finale similar to that which we have just witnessed. Led by a Protestant, Louis Kossuth, Hungary’s greatest patriot, that effort to achieve freedom from foreign domination seemed assured of success until crushed by the might of Russia which, then as now, feared the popular demands for freedom by suppressed peoples. Again it has been Russia the Communist rulers of which, by their own admission, have liquidated millions of their own countrymen to consolidate their power which has steam-rollered the heroic, and pathetic, Hungarian quest for freedom.

In a moving address delivered a decade ago, Dr. Charles Vincze, leading Hungarian-American pastor now deceased, closed with these words:

The Magyars of the past stormy centuries, while defending their own way of life and that of the Western World, against the onrushing hordes of Mohammed, used the Savior’s name for a battle cry. ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!’ they shouted, while facing the onslaught and laying down their lives for a West that never really knew or appreciated them or even cared to do so. In spite of all the unfavorable experiences of the past, all the Magyars that are really Magyars turn once more toward the West and in the name of Jesus ask for the kind of life which they so self-sacrificingly helped to preserve for the West.

That request has become a cry. It is a cry from a Hungary which today is in the throes of death. The free world has heard it. May God give us the courage and strength to respond.

M. Eugene Osterhaven, Th.D., is Professor of Systematic Theology, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Mich.

We Quote:

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

President of the United States

… Our minds and hearts turn to Almighty God, in grateful acknowledgment of His mercies throughout the year.… It is also fitting at this season that we should consider God’s providence to us throughout our entire history.… Humbly aware that we are a people greatly blessed, both materially and spiritually, let us pray this year not only in the spirit of thanksgiving but also as suppliants for God’s guidance, to the end that we may follow the course of righteousness and be worthy of His favor.… Let all of us, of whatever creed, foregather in our respective places of worship to give thanks to God and prayerful contemplation to those eternal truths and universal principles of Holy Scripture which have inspired such treasures of true greatness as this Nation has achieved.—From President Eisenhower’s 1956 Thanksgiving proclamation.

Douglas Macarthur

Commander, Occupational Forces in Japan, 1945–51

I called upon America for Bibles. An offer of a hundred thousand was raised by me to ten million with an ultimate figure of three times that number.… Although I am of Caesar, I did try to render unto God that which was his. And I even dare to hope that through this resurgence of religion, Japan will in the struggle that lies ahead be indissolubly confirmed against any whose doctrines embrace the deadly poison of atheism. It might prove more potent than bullets or bayonets or bombs—or even bread.—In an address, Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, Jan. 26, 1955.

- More from M. Eugene Osterhaven

Majestic Music of the King James

Paul K. Jewett

On the eve of the release of the Revised Standard Version, Lowell Thomas, eminent news commentator, read excerpts from the Prophet Isaiah in the King James version and added—prophetically—“Pretty hard to beat.” Time has confirmed his judgment. The older version, like “ol’ man river, he jus’ keeps rollin’ along.”

It is easy to answer that the masses are prejudiced in favor of the old and suspicious of the new. But the King James itself had to begin as a lowly new version, pelted with charges of “bad theology, bad scholarship, and bad English.” It appeared without trumpet blast or public proclamation; it waged a running battle with the Geneva Bible for half a century and in this time completely took the field on the strength of its superior merit alone. In contrast to this the American revisers combined the advantage of organized sponsorship in high ecclesiastical places with access to a more accurate critical text, better scholarly equipment to understand Greek and Hebrew, and the lesson of the American Standard Version, “strong in Greek, weak in English.” And yet for all this, the King James, Gulliver-like, with its Lilliputian burden of colons and commas, verse and chapter divisions, is walking off with the victory. Why is this so? One reason that overshadows all others, it would seem, is the vastly superior literary quality of the older version. The King James is a work of art, the Revised Standard a compendium of scholarship; the one is literature, the other reading material.

To many, the element of literary excellence may seem inconsequential. Was not the New Testament written in vernacular Greek? Is not the Bible the book of the masses, and what do common people care about poetry? Anyway, our concern should be with the content of revealed truth, not its literary form.

Unconvincing Plea

I think these arguments are specious. It is true that the Greek of the New Testament is common Greek and in many of the books destitute of literary embellishment. But why should we not rejoice in the fact that the Bible in our mother tongue excels the original as literature? If the New Testament was written in the silver age of Greek and the King James in the golden age of English, is it not all Providence? The apostolic Christians worshipped in crypts and sand pits. Should we then tear down our cathedrals and seal up our organs?

Although it is a most significant feature of our Protestant heritage that the Bible is the book of the common man, to suppose that he is so circumscribed by the mundane realm of factual existence that he never breathes the rare atmosphere of poetry is an error as egregious as it is common. As Louis Untermeyer once observed, in A Treasury of Great Poems, we cannot escape poetry. To call an orange Sunkist, to name a melon Honeydew, capitalizes the power of poetry for the man in the street.

True, accuracy of thought is of paramount importance, yet we should never forget that men feel as well as understand, and what they understand with feeling they understand best. Here the incomparable literary quality of the King James, the music mingled with the meaning, is without a rival in its evocative power. The multitudes who never give a serious moment to literary analysis hear the majestic music of the King James as surely as the scholar—more surely than some Hebrew and Greek scholars.

How out of touch some scholars can be with this dimension is shown in the way the revisers translated Paul’s hymn to love (1 Corinthians 13). Love is the most beautiful thing in all the world, and with unerring literary instinct the King James translators have convinced us of this by giving us a supremely beautiful translation of this passage. The revisers, on the other hand, have left it a literary shambles. The same may be said of the unbelievable freedom with which they have handled the Psalter. Recognized as the peak of sacred poetry, with language exquisitely rich and resonant, the Psalter has not only been altered but ruined. In the King James we have poetry printed, unfortunately, as prose; but in the R.S.V. we have prose printed as poetry. Says Dorothy Thompson (“The Old Bible and the New,” Ladies’ Home Journal, March, 1953):

I have tried to read the new Bible with an open mind, and without prejudice, indeed with humility and with respect for so great an effort … But I am compelled to say that I find the new text inferior on nearly every page to the one it seeks to supplant and for reasons that I think I can define. It is weaker, less vivid, defective in imagery, less beautiful and less inspired. And I, at least, do not find it easier to understand.

But someone may still persist that the King James, beautiful as it is, is absolutely wrong in many places. This is undoubtedly true. The finest gems have flaws and there may be sand in the marble of the Parthenon. But shall we tear down the whole edifice for the sake of a few stones? This procedure becomes highly impracticable when we consider that those who have the wit to raze the old lack the genius to remake it.

But someone else will say that, though the King James is not hopelessly corrupt, it is fast becoming archaic. Since language is constantly changing, it is only a matter of time till the venerable version of our fathers takes its place on the shelf with Chaucer. Now this may happen, but if it does no one but the devil can contemplate it with glee. Our King James Bible is not a dispensable luxury of our English Protestant heritage. It is rather a part of us; it has permeated our culture in warp and woof; it is fused with our literature, our liturgy, our hymnody. Our situation is quite different in this respect from that of our Roman Catholic neighbors. All that Rome had to do to replace the Douay New Testament in 1941 was to announce its successor, an unwitting testimony to the negligible place of the Bible in the piety of its devotees. As a commonwealth changes the color of its automobile plates, so they changed their Bible. But fortunately we as Protestants have not the machinery to expedite such a change, nor is the biblical orientation of our piety so superficial that it can easily sustain such a macromutation.

Role Of New Version

Why then labor to bring new versions to the birth? What do we gain but an overpopulation of inferior species? The private modern-speech translations of individual scholars are most stimulating and edifying (e.g., Phillips’ Letters to Young Churches), but we have nothing to gain and everything to lose by multiplying versions, which claim the official sanction of the church as a whole. The first effort of 1886 and 1901 split the British and American churches and, had it succeeded, would have given the English-speaking church two vastly inferior Bibles in the place of one good one. And now with the R.S.V. we have in the American church three Bibles, even as the medieval church had three pontiffs during the Great Schism. If we multiply our Bibles as we have multiplied our denominations, we will only confuse people the more and psychologically, if not theoretically, undermine their sense of the authority of Scripture. The common man always speaks in the singular of THE BIBLE, which is no mere phonetic accident, but an unerring instinct. Variety is not always the spice of life. We need several Bibles about as much as the Roman Church needs several popes. If we are serious about ecumenicity, we would do well to preserve the one thing we really have in common, i.e., our King James Bible. We therefore conclude that the King James ought not, even as it cannot, be replaced.

But the question still remains, what to do. Even if we grant that our age has not the creative powers to produce a worthy successor to the version inherited from our fathers; even if we say with all conviction, like the man who tasted old wine and refused the new, that we are standing by our King James Bible; will our King James stand by us? Will not time, whose art turns all things to dust, take it from us as surely as the weather will carry the mountains into the sea? Though as literature it will abide forever, from the perspective of the centuries can it endure as a vehicle of revelation for the common man?

We have come to a point where one must speak as an expert, or risk the role of a dilettante. But not to speak at all would end the discussion, as some modern plays end, leaving the frustrated spectator to supply his own denouement. Let us then address ourselves further to this question.

Theoretically it is true that no version can endure forever, but this is no reason for sitting on our hands. The fate of the King James a million years from now has no more bearing for us than the second law of thermodynamics for the current price of real estate. Had we expended half the scholarly energy in saving the King James that we have spent in efforts to supplant it, we should have come a long way on the path to a solution.

The first and most obvious thing that needs to be done is to modernize the physical form of our received Bible. It is common knowledge that the King James has undergone such revision in the past. In 1613, just two years after the original printing, a second edition appeared with more than four hundred variations. Other revisions occurred in 1629 and 1638 and in 1762. In 1769 the Oxford edition appeared with much modernization of spelling and punctuation. It is almost unbelievable, but true, that this is the current form of the text. In nearly two hundred years we have hardly converted a colon to a semicolon. Why is this? Do we believe that God wrote the King James with his finger on tables of stone? If we can give up inspired Hebrew vowel points and Holy Ghost Greek, must we canonize the commas of the King James? Why could not an ecumenical committee of experts, working jointly in England and America, solve this problem to the satisfaction of all? If a King James version, word for word as it now appears, were to be given a new form to this limited extent, it surely seems that the archaic punctuation would surrender its dominance to the new.

Having leaped this hurdle, the next step might be to cast the poetry as poetry and the prose as prose, giving the later the form of the modern paragraph rather than the present chapter and verse arrangement. Even the most rabid defenders of the King James admit that our chapter and verse divisions are not inspired.

Though long overdue, the changing of actual words should wait till these less controversial alterations have generally ingratiated themselves with the people as a whole. Perhaps marginal notes could be used to prepare readers gradually where usage is becoming archaic or the text is quite different from the best MSS evidence. In any event, when the changes are made, the task should be approached as one for experts in English primarily and only secondarily for Hebrew and Greek specialists. In other words, if in the mind of those best able to judge, a given usage has become archaic, then let the experts in English choose a new word or phrase, in consultation with those who know best what the Hebrew and Greek actually says. Under no circumstances should many such changes be made in a given generation, and rarely, if ever, should a change be made in those areas affecting received literary parlance or the common idiom of personal piety and public worship. Every literate person knows, for example, what the expression “God forbid” means. There is, therefore, no excuse for changing this to “let it not be” or “by no means.” The same goes for “plow with my heifer,” “skin of my teeth,” “whited sepulchre,” and the like. As for the idiom of personal and public piety, the decision of the American revisers of 1901 to substitute “Jehovah” for “Lord” was a blunder for which there can be no other word than crude. To delete from the Bible the most common name of deity in our language and insert “Jehovah” was enough, in itself, to doom their effort. The recent revisers had the good sense to go back to “Lord” in the Old Testament. One could wish that they had restored the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 to its common form. We are pleading, then, for principles of translation, that not even the architects of the R.S.V. have been able altogether to ignore. The advantages of a procedure along the lines outlined above are obvious. First, by pursuing such a course we would, first of all, preserve our King James version, the greatest version of the Bible ever achieved. In the second place, we would bequeath it to our children in a form that would enable them to hear the Word of God in language not only meaningful but magnificent.

Paul K. Jewett, Ph.D., is Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Emil Brunner’s Concept of Revelation.

- More from Paul K. Jewett

Cover Story

‘Rediscovery’ of a Gutenberg Bible

Don Cleveland Norman

It is part of the wonder surrounding my interest in the Bible that, on the 500th anniversary of the completion of the Gutenberg Bible, I should have rediscovered (pinpointed it for scholars is perhaps more exact) a copy which virtually nobody knew was missing.

The last of five twentieth-century censuses of this famed Bible listed 46 copies known to have survived—32 in Europe and 14 in the United States. Two copies, when exhibited outside their regular habitat in recent years, were insured for $500,000 each. So high is the value placed on the first Bible, and believed by many to be the first book, printed from movable type in the Western world.

A year ago, in writing on the Gutenberg Bible for a national magazine, I closed the piece with an unconscious prophecy: “Someday, somewhere in the world, there may be another discovery like the one in the peasant’s home in Olewig; or there may be another library like Sir George Shuckburgh’s. And in our land of free enterprise no one can stop us from dreaming that one of us may locate the next copy of the most expensive book in the world.” (The reference to Olewig and Shuckburgh is to the last two copies of the Gutenberg Bible rediscovered.)

Despite these words, when I started planning late in 1955 a pilgrimage to all the libraries in the world containing original Gutenberg Bibles, I never dreamed that my journey would be instrumental in pinpointing for scholars Copy Number Forty-seven of this almost priceless Bible.

Time For A Census

My plan was to examine and photograph each copy, gather bibliographical and human interest material about each, and publish a 500th Anniversary Illustrated Census of the Gutenberg Bible. Nothing like it had ever been done before (I did not propose to plow the ground so ably furrowed by scholars like Seymour de Ricci, Paul Schwenke, and others), and 1956 was the time for making this census. According to a handwritten note by Vicar Henry Cremer of the Collegiate Church of St. Stephen in Mainz, Germany, he completed rubricating Volume II of the Gutenberg Bible, now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, on August 15, 1456 (Volume I was finished nine days later).

It was important, it seemed to me, that someone should make a “hand count” of all the Gutenberg Bibles in the world. In no other way could their locations be exactly established. As a matter of record I found three changes, not previously listed. The Berlin copy is now in the library at the University of Tubingen, Germany. The Pelplin, Poland, copy is at the Museum of the Province in Quebec, Canada. And another of the three Leipzig, Germany, copies (one had been previously reported) is not in its former place. Most of these Bibles were removed at the time of World War II for safekeeping.

On August 15, 1956 (exactly 500 years after the earliest authenticated date connected with the Gutenberg Bible), I sat with Dr. Aloys Ruppel, director of the Gutenberg Museum and vice president of the Gutenberg Gesellschaft, in the library of his home in Mainz, Germany, the city where the famed Bible was printed.

Neglected Copy In Mons

I had already been in Europe 25 days at that time, and was able to bring him greetings from his many friends among the librarians. This genial Gutenberg scholar turned to me suddenly, in the course of our two-hour visit together, and asked if I knew of the Gutenberg Bible at Mons, Belgium. I told him I had heard of a Belgian copy from a friend in Geneva, but had thought it might be only the Leipzig copies on loan, until I had learned in Leipzig that this was not the case.

Then unfolded the story of how the librarian at Mons, Dr. M. A. Arnould, had stopped off at Mainz on a trip to Munich and had showed the Gutenberg Museum staff some photographs of the Mons copy, convincing as to its genuineness. Naturally excited, I told Dr. Ruppel that scheduled visits to German libraries would delay my seeing the Mons Bible a week, but I would eagerly work toward that day.

So at 11:30 on the morning of August 22 a member of Bourgmestre Fernand Demarbre’s cabinet guided me up the narrow cobblestone streets of Mons to the Bibliotheque Publique on Rue Marguerite Bervoets, where Dr. Arnould greeted me. We had time only to introduce the subject of my visit before lunch, which took place in one of the city’s few recently constructed buildings. The food was excellent, the atmosphere peaceful—unlike many a warlike scene Mons had witnessed in its 1300-year history. Here the British first met in World War I. The Germans occupied the city in World War II. Early, the bloody religious repression of the Duke of Alba, the wars of Louis XIV and Louis XV, had all left deep scars on the city of Mons. But after each she has made a valiant recovery, with the result that today Mons takes pride in having preserved a large part of her rich heritage from the past. As capital of the province of Hainaut, the city is known afar as a cultural center, to which its several outstanding museums bear eloquent testimony.

After lunch we crossed the cobblestone passage between Dr. Arnould’s office and the exhibit hall. He took a huge key and unlocked the great door to a room filled with treasures; the library is rich in rare tomes. The Gutenberg Bible, Volume I only, was in a glass-covered case. Dr. Arnould opened it and placed the Bible on a table before me.

On examination I saw that the Mons copy was quite incomplete. It contained, as he told me, only 220 of the 324 leaves in Volume I. It was bound in a brownish leather the library identifies as nineteenth-century. Excessive humidity had taken its toll of the Bible’s lower margins, some of them being almost completely eaten away near the spine. As I leafed through the volume, page by page, I found the first of big missing sections—twenty leaves between Genesis 16 (folio 10 verso) and Exodus 6 (folio 31 recto). The next was from the end of the Book of Ruth (folio 128 verso) to 2 Kings 5 (folio 149 recto). The third, from the last page of IV Esdras (folio 260 recto) to the end of the volume (folio 324 verso), comprised 64 leaves. These accounted for the 104 missing leaves.

First American Interest

Back in his office, Dr. Arnould gave me some clues as to the reason for this copy’s having escaped general notice so long. It had been willed to the city, along with his other valuables, by Canon Edmond Puissant at his death in 1934. Until recent years, it had remained in the Puissant Museum, with his other books and works of art. Dr. Arnould, after becoming librarian in 1950, wrote about the Bible in papers of local interest. It received wider publicity in November, 1955, when it was exhibited in Brussels by the Belgian Bible Society. Several newspapers wrote about it as “the only example of the Gutenberg Bible in Belgium,” but for some reason these accounts seem never to have crossed the Belgian frontier. In January, 1956, another article by the Mons librarian appeared in the German monthly, Deutches Pfarrerblatt. To my knowledge, however, only one German scholar wrote for further information. And Dr. Arnould said I was the first American with a scholarly interest in the Bible to view the Mons Gutenberg.

This was the highlight, of course, of a journey which carried me 16,500 miles through twenty-nine cities in twelve European countries this summer. Before the year is ended, another 9,000 miles will be added as I visit the American libraries.

Irony Of Our Times

It is part of the irony of the twentieth century that we should have to “rediscover” a Gutenberg Bible only five centuries after its appearance. It reflects the great change which has taken place in our outlook—from faith to secularism. Printing’s first great end-product was the Bible. No more would it be necessary tediously to make copies by hand. The common man would be able to possess his own copy of the Word. But a free press before long became preoccupied with other end-products—and, in many cases, the Bible was forgotten.

The Mons copy of the Gutenberg Bible remains a symbol of every neglected Bible with which bookshelves in the West are heavily populated.

Don Cleveland Norman, Th.B., is religion editor of The American People’s Encyclopedia, managing editor of The New Analytical Bible, and former executive secretary of the Chicago Bible Society.

- More from Don Cleveland Norman

Eutychus and His Kin: November 26, 1956

HYPERTENSION

The fall Angst Lectures by the Professor of Dialectical Theology from Zwischen den Zeiten were fabulous. Einstein didn’t touch this chap for extrapolating in another dimension. His polysyllabic prose inspired me to try a cadenced reply:

Do you find it essential to be existential
Since you’ve been up-ended in time?
Dialectical tension describes your suspension
For you dare not ignore Kierkegaard’s either/or nor
Expect to find reason or rhyme
In a life where the moment foments that sheer torment,
The crisis of being in time.
But before such deep pathos descends into bathos
And poetry drowns in a shriek,
I would venture to ask if this temporal casket,
Inner lined with red woes, is the cause of neurosis
Which we existentially seek?
As we trace all our crime to this framework of time, since
We’re for the time-being too weak.

We are told that the blame must be ours just the same though
The fall did not happen in time.
By the sheerest invention we hold fast our tension.
Sharing Adam’s declension outside this dimension
In new super-temporal time.
But in all this two-timing our ego is climbing …
Existence! So tragic-sublime!

Blaming time and existence, we keep at a distance
The guilt of primordial crime.
We are evil and covet, we sin and we love it
As did Adam before us; but Christ to restore us
Lived sinless in calendar time.
Both our fall and salvation took place in duration
In that frame of creation, that time of decision,
That daily and commonplace time …
Momentous significant time!

EUTYCHUS

HODGE PODGE

How you are going to bundle together the World Christianity of today, and unscramble it, I don’t yet see. It certainly needs doing. I only wish some Power might be given, a la Omar Khayyam, to “Shatter it to bits and then remould it nearer to our heart’s desire.” It certainly is a hodge podge today. Enclosed is my subscription.…

C. TELFORD ERICKSON

Claremont, Calif.

Your magazine seethes with intellectual dishonesty. It should have been stillborn. Maybe it will die an infant.

Why do you fundamentalists-literalists feel that you and everyone else must swallow a rotten egg every morning before breakfast in order to prove religious faith?…

DAVID C. PAUL

Kyle Methodist Church

Kyle, Texas

Read with delight your first issue and gladly become one of the pioneer supporters.… We need a good religious journal that will command respect, have weight, and be quoted. Who knows whether thou art come to the churches for such a time as this.

GEORGE MCPHERSON HUNTER

First Presbyterian Church

Mannington, W. Va.

I feel that the theological point of view which you represent is barren.…

CHARLES M. KNAPP

Almira Community Church

Almira, Wash.

A welcome corrective to the idea that true conservatism is obscurantism.… Hand in hand with the upsurge in Biblical evangelism, your periodical will contribute to a renewed and scholarly orthodoxy.

ELVIN L. CLARK

Baptist Temple Church

Louisville, Ky.

It was with exuberance that I have read the publication.… Such an impact has been in-the-need for too many years.

MISS ARDIS JOHNSON

Bryan University

Dayton, Tenn.

I readily agree to differences of opinion, but … I cannot see that Almighty God has so endowed some few—or a few thousand—people with the infallible truth … May God bless your paper that it might be a mark of true unity, and not of diversity, among the Christians of the world.

FRANK D. MEDSKER

Colstrip Community Church

Colstrip, Montana

FORMULA FOR SUCCESS

Congratulations! The 3 year subscription shows my confidence in this venture, which has been badly needed. Publish something soon that will really help us with respect to: (1) healing, (2) the cults, (3) Pealeism, (4) soulwinning. Avoid denominational controversies and promotional schemes. Stay on a scholarly level.…

JOHN KENNETH OSBORN

Rosebush, Mich.

Praise the Lord for such a publication.

WILLIAM G. NYMAN JR.

Washington, D.C.

Perhaps a paper with as wide a contributing staff as CHRISTIANITY TODAY may arrive at a solution, from the Scriptures, which would bring together the diverse and often warring elements of Fundamentalism.

ROBERT A. WILDERMAN

Woden, Iowa

Why not a column entitled “Christianity on Stamps” for the stamp collectors among us?

Philadelphia, Pa.

LOUIS A. J. MEYER

Could you run a children’s page, so that my twelve-year-old could form the habit of reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY early?

Portland, Ore.

A. C.

ANNUAL INDEX

I saw so very much of permanent value that I plan to save every copy and put it into a note book.… An index published yearly would be a big help.

LANE ADAMS

Decatur, Ga.

• For the convenience of libraries and of subscribers saving their copies, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will print an annual index of articles, editorials, reviews and special features. The first such index will appear in Volume 1, Number 26.—ED.

Bible Text of the Month: Isaiah 9:6

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).

In the text there is a constellation of titles; and such a constellation, as, were it not for the blindness of the human mind and the obstinacy of the human heart, one should think, would be sufficient to confound all the Arianism and the confraternity of heresies upon the Divinity of Christ, to the end of the world.—HORAE SOLITARIAE.

It is manifestly impossible to associate these words of majestic prophecy with any other than the Messiah himself, and the Christian Church throughout the centuries has found here the certain attributes of the living and victorious King of the hearts of men, the only One able to deliver and to save the soul in its desperate plight and to lead men into the new and better way of the commandment of God.—W. FITCH.

When it is said that his name should be called, it does not mean he should actually bear these names in real life, but merely that he should deserve them, and that they would be descriptive of his character.—J. A. ALEXANDER.

He is given, freely given, to be all in all to us, which our case, in our fallen state, calls for. God so loved the world, that he gave him. He is born to us, he is given to us, us men, and not to the angels that sinned: it is spoken with an air of triumph, and the angel seems to refer to these words in the notice he gives to the shepherds: Unto you is born, this day, a Saviour.—MATTHEW HENRY.

Wonderful

Consider him in any point of view, either as God or man, or as God and man in one person; he is altogether wonderful. If we contemplate his works, both of creation and redemption, we shall find some legible characters of the wonderful Lord indelibly written upon them all.—HORAE SOLITARIAE.

By the first title he arouses the minds of the godly to earnest attention, that they may expect from Christ something more excellent than what we see in the ordinary course of God’s works, as if he had said, that In Christ are hidden the invaluable treasures of wonderful things (Col. 2:3). And, indeed, the redemption which he has brought surpasses even the creation of the world.—CALVIN.

Counsellor

There is no need for him to surround himself with counsellors; but without receiving counsel at all, He counsels those who are without counsel.—FRANZ DELITZSCH.

This word has been sometimes joined with “Wonderful,” as if designed to qualify it thus—wonderful counsellor. But it expresses a distinct attribute or quality. The name counsellor here denotes one of honourable rank; qualified to advise or counsel; one who is fitted to stand near princes and kings as their advisor. It is expressive of great wisdom, and of qualifications to guide and direct the human race.—ALBERT BARNES.

Mighty God

That the same person should be “the mighty God” and a “child born,” is neither conceivable nor possible, nor can be done, but by the union of the divine and human natures in the same person.—JOHN OWEN.

He is the mighty God. As he has wisdom, so he has strength, to go through with his undertaking; he is able to save to the utmost; and such is the work of the Mediator, that no less a power than that of the mighty God could accomplish it.—MATTHEW HENRY.

For if we find in Christ nothing but the flesh and nature of man, our glorifying will be foolish and vain, and our hope will rest on an uncertain and insecure foundation; but if he shows himself to be to us God and the mighty God, we may now rely on him with safety. With good reason does he call him strong or mighty, because our contest is with the devil, death, and sin, enemies too powerful and strong, by whom we would be immediately vanquished, if the strength of Christ had not rendered us invincible.—CALVIN.

For if we find in Christ nothing but the flesh and nature of man, our glorifying will be foolish and vain, and our hope will rest on an uncertain and insecure foundation; but if he shows himself to be to us God and the mighty God, we may now rely on him with safety. With good reason does he call him strong or mighty, because our contest is with the devil, death, and sin, enemies too powerful and strong, by whom we would be immediately vanquished, if the strength of Christ had not rendered us invincible.—CALVIN.

Everlasting Father

The title Eternal Father designates him, however, not only as the possessor of eternity, but as the tender, faithful, and wise trainer, guardian, and provider for his people even in eternity.—FRANZ DELITZSCH.

His fatherly care of his people and tenderness toward them are everlasting. He is the author of everlasting life and happiness to them, and so is the Father of a blessed eternity to them. He is the Father of the gospel-state, which is put in subjection to him. He was from eternity, Father of the great work of redemption: his heart was upon it; it was the product of his wisdom, as the Counsellor; of his love, as the everlasting Father.—MATTHEW HENRY.

The prophet is describing the nature of the Messiah, and therefore gives us his name, as the name of his nature. He is not describing the mode of his existence with the Father and Holy Spirit, but his essence as true and very God. For this reason, the application of this name to Jesus Christ by no means militates against the doctrine of the Trinity, or the peculiar relation of Christ in that Trinity; but establishes and confirms it. For if Christ be the Everlasting Father, and if there is but one God, the Father; then Christ being God, that divine person, who is usually styled the Father, must be of one essence with him, or there would be two Gods. And if these divine persons be of one and the same essence, they may bear the character of Father to all their creatures relatively, which they do not bear to each other, considered in the sacred essence, respectively. Thus the I ord Christ, though he is not the Father respecting the personality in the Godhead, is very properly and justly denominated Father respecting the universe of beings; for he created them all, as well as supports them all, by his power.—HORAE SOLITARIAE.

Prince Of Peace

The pole star of this constellation of titles, “Prince of Peace,” speaks to the deepest needs of the human heart; it is of utmost comfort and reassurance to every believer individually, and to the people of God as a community. In the first instance, it contained a particularly desirable promise to Israel. The nation was constantly harassed by war, their little land being the cockpit in which the surrounding great powers often waged their battles. Peace was the supreme longing of the true Israelite. It was promised in the reign of the Messiah. How appropriate also, in that respect, is this title of Christ to our own war-ridden generation! Through the reign of the Prince of Peace alone will real peace come to this earth, not only for Israel, but all nations.—HERBERT F. STEVENSON.

This is a Hebrew mode of expression denoting that he would be a peaceful prince. He would seek to promote peace. The tendency of his administration would be to restore and perpetuate peace. This expression is used to distinguish him from the mass of kings and princes who have been warriors and conquerors, and who have delighted in conquest and blood. In contradiction from all these, the Messiah would seek to promote universal peace and concord, and the tendency of his reign would be to put an end to wars and conflicts, and to restore harmony and order to the nations.—ALBERT BARNES.

Through the coming of Christ, as the angels sing, true peace will come on earth. Here in the first place is meant peace with God and a peace given by God through Christ. And when the inner harmony is there because the human soul has peace with its Lord, peace also spontaneously comes about in mutual relations between human beings. It is the work of Christ to bring peace into all human relations—in man’s relation to God, to himself (his own feelings, desires, and the like), to his life’s circumstances (calamities and trials), and to his fellow-men.—NORVAL GELDENHUYS.

Fulfillment

It is difficult to avoid the natural and striking application of the words to Jesus Christ, as the promised child, emphatically born for us and given to us, as the Son of God and the Son of man, as being wonderful in his person, works, and sufferings—a counsellor, prophet, or authoritative teacher of the truth, a wise administrator of the church, and confidential adviser of the individual believer—a real man, and yet the mighty God—eternal in his own existence, and giver of eternal life to others—the great peace-maker between God and man, between Jew and Gentile, the umpire between nations, the abolisher of war, and the giver of internal peace to all who being justified by faith have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.—J. A. ALEXANDER.

The name Jesus is the combination of all the Old Testament titles used to designate the Coming One according to his nature and his works. The names contained in Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6 are not thereby suppressed; but they have continued, from the time of Mary downwards, in the mouths of all believers. There is not one of these names under which worship and homage have not been paid to him.

—FRANZ DELITZSCH.

Ideas

The Perils of Ecumenicity

The discussion of “The Perils of Independency” in the last issue of Christianity Today was not based upon a predisposition to condemn Independency, but rather to examine its foundations and to assess its weaknesses. It is time now to reflect on its antithesis, ecumenicity. In this issue we propose to speak of its perils.

Independency is often motivated, we conceded, by a commendable desire to glorify Christ and to exalt the Word of God. The ecumenical movement likewise, gains its appeal from a worthy biblical concept. That concept is the unity of the body of Christ. While it has been elaborated from time to time since the Reformation, not until lately have multitudes in the churches regarded it with great seriousness.

The Christian leader can point to much in the Bible which speaks of Christian unity. We do not say there is never a biblical basis for division. Apart from the issue of apostasy, so much invoked by the separatists, there exists another biblical basis for separation about which little is said today in any Christian circle. There is clear biblical precedent for the discipline of true believers who, falling into gross sin, thereby invite excommunication. Such an act of discipline, which purposes the exclusion of the impenitent lest he contaminate other believers, is exercised not with a penal objective in view but aims to reclaim the offending person through refusing him fellowship in the ordinances or sacraments. But except for these reasons, divisions in the body of Christians originating in the pride of men are sinful.

The unity of the body, virtually all would stress, is a clear teaching and requirement of the Word of God. Nor should we minimize the fact that much of the current literature devoted to the study of church unity is biblically oriented. Thus John Bennett could assert (as one example): “The new emphasis upon the Church has been accompanied by a return to the Bible as the medium of revelation” (Toward World-Wide Christianity [edited by O. Frederick Nolde] [italics supplied] Harper, 1946.) Men look to the Scriptures as to a polished mirror which reflects the true unity of the body. This biblical appeal is significant. It acknowledges, consciously or unconsciously, a formal principle which Independency has always stressed, and represents in reality a dynamic change from that attitude and spirit of Liberalism long rampant in America.

Unfortunately, for the ecumenist, two main problems follow when he resorts to the Bible either as a temporary authority or witness. These problems jeopardize the major logic of the ecumenical movement because of the impasse to which they lead.

In the first place, proponents of organic church union who appeal to the Scriptures as a basis for the movement seldom choose to go much beyond this preliminary dependency on the Bible. But the Bible witnesses, in fact, to far more than the unity of believers. The question may rightly be asked: “Since the ecumenist lays stress on the biblically-taught unity of the body, why stop there? Why not accept the other teachings of the Scriptures, truths on which the Bible lays emphasis no less vigorously than on the truth of the unity of the body?” Many proponents of the ecumenical movement clearly resist such a step. They proclaim unity from the housetops, but they shy away from the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of the dead, the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, as well as from the historical trinitarianism of the church and other clear implications of Scripture. By what logic and authority, then, is there any justification for the isolation of one strand of the biblical teaching from all else, elevating it to a position of supreme importance and degrading the other teachings to positions of relative inconsequence? For such doctrines are as much a part of biblical theology as the unity of the body.

The ecumenical movement in general elevates the doctrine of the unity of the body above every other doctrine. There is a driving emphasis on this unity accompanied by a rather pale and anemic concern for basic Christian doctrine. This trend is regarded by those who cannot support ecumenicity as a key reason for their fears. Doctrinal laxity to many is vitally related to participation in a movement, and unless the great fundamentals of the faith have been spelled out intelligibly they cannot warm up to the concept of unity without dogma.

This theological vagueness which has been characteristic of ecumenicity makes it vulnerable to the charge of doctrinal inclusivism. Whereas Independency errs on the side of exclusivism, tending to spell out its position so minutely that it separates itself readily from true believers as well as from unbelievers, the ecumencial adherents tend to be so inclusive that they regard outsiders as members of the body. One group excludes some persons who really ought to be included; the other includes some whose lack of adequate credentials ought to exclude them from an apostolic fellowship.

A second problem which faces the ecumenical movement, if it professes to find its rationale in the Word of God, has to do with the nature of unity. No one can disagree with the emphasis that the Bible has a specific view of the nature of Christian unity. And, if there is to be unity, there must first be some agreement upon the nature of that unity. Precisely what is it? Here again the vessel of ecumenicity floats in waters filled with perilous shoals.

It would be unfair to ascribe to the ecumenical movement one definitive and authoritative voice touching the nature of the unity it seeks. There are divergent opinions on this subject. The question is being debated vigorously. These considerations suggest an adventurous search for a goal which is itself uncertain. Ecumenicity is “going someplace,” but it has not officially defined just where it is going. Passionately it believes in unity, but which unity it cannot, or does not, tell. Therefore those alert to the perils of ecumenicity must forge their criticisms with a view to what the advocates of union say.

Sincere, devoted men in the ecumenical grouping assert that the ultimate goal of the movement is organic union of the churches. This is not to say that all of them believe in it but a substantial number do and they are vocal and active in their desires to make this union a reality. Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam in a 1948 episcopal address in Boston before the Bishops of his church discloses the concept of unity cherished by him. He plainly advocated the ultimate union of all Protestant churches, looking forward to a future merger of the two remaining churches—Protestant and Roman Catholic—into one holy catholic church. Prior to the remarks of Bishop Oxnam, Harper and Brothers published the Interseminary Series. This series contained material written by leading ecumenists, and at least one volume of that series bulwarks Bishop Oxnam’s expressions.

John C. Bennett quotes Henry Pitt Van Dusen as saying (and he agrees with Mr. Van Dusen): “Henry Pitt Van Dusen rightly says that ‘Christian Unity which does not imply and make possible whatever degree of Church Union may be held to be the ultimate desideratum is something less than genuine and true Christian Unity.’ ” John A. Mackay of Princeton Theological Seminary is a fervent believer in union. He has declared that a world church will make the greatest contribution to world community. Thus, in 1946, he said: “While it is true that nothing will make a greater contribution to world community than a world Church, the possibility must also be contemplated that a world Church, a Church united in Jesus Christ with a membership in every part of the inhabited globe, might find itself in a very hostile world.” In a further word he says: “It would be much better that union be postponed until their differences have been frankly faced.” Henry Smith Leiper and Abdel R. Wentz have stated: “… a basic, if not the most important aspect of the ecumenical movement is its vision of a universal Church.”

H. Paul Douglass reflected the feeling of the Madras Conference of 1938 which foretold the same story. “It was especially emphasized by the Madras Conference of 1938 that there ‘has come in many fields a deep and growing conviction that the Spirit of God is guiding the various branches of His church to seek for a realization of a visible and organic union.’ ”

Such statements of sentiment can be expanded by quotations from men in the “Who’s Who of Ecumenicity,” O. Frederick Nolde, ed., Interseminary Series, Harper and Brothers, 1946, pps. 42, 44, 61, 66, 80, 197.

Still other perils, however, lurk in the background of the movement. Ecclesiasticism bedevils all movements which seek union. One need not go beyond the Roman Church to discover how true this is. Therein the right of private opinion and of private interpretation of the Scripture is denied. The concentration of power in the hands of the few is a corrupting device. The experiences of secular and religious history demonstrate that power corrupts and that complete power corrupts completely. When men are dependent upon their superiors for position and preference, they easily lose their freedom to speak the truth in charity without suffering ecclesiastical censure and loss of preferment. The seeds of this evil already exist in some of the denominations. More men would testify to these evils if they did not fear official reprisal.

Another certainty is that ecumenicity can never achieve the absolute visible organic union of Christ’s body in history. Assuming for the moment that the ultimate goal is the reunion of Christendom, then the ecumenical movement itself contains seeds of divisiveness as does Independency. There will always be those who will insist that unity is spiritual, and not visible nor organizational, and that true unity has in it a transcendental element in view of the communion of saints. Never will it be possible to bring together all these diverse elements which make up the true body of Christ. As long as so much as one segment of the body is excluded in history, absolute unity does not exist. It has never fully existed in history, although the Roman and Greek Churches before the Great Schism provide the fullest approximation in history. Any goal of absolute unity is ephemeral and chimerical; at best, visible unity can never be more than partial.

Ecumenicity tends to be just as intolerant as Independency, although this intolerance is expressed in a somewhat different fashion. Whereas Independency draws narrow lines, defining beliefs in such a detailed and technical fashion that it rules out many, ecumenicity also draws lines which are narrow and intolerant. It has little use or respect for those with whom it differs, easily regarding as fanatical and divisive those who refuse to cooperate within its orbit of inclusivism. It will tolerate and welcome those who will submit to its inclusivistic theology, but will try ruthlessly to crush and eliminate the opposition by ecclesiastical devices.

One of the tragic weaknesses of Independency is that it majors on minors. And ecumenicity does not entirely escape this same peril. It reverses the process, however. It minors on majors, exalting to a place of primacy what is not important, relegating to a secondary position that which is basic and necessary to a full-orbed Gospel. Both attitudes are essentially heretical. While they are opposite in polarity, they both rise from a departure from the apostolic base. One narrowly excludes divergence of opinion, so that it becomes difficult for some undoubted Christians to find standing room. The other is so broad and so indefinite that one cannot be sure on what ground he stands. Neither one is truly biblical nor finally acceptable. The narrow obscurantism of Independency is more widely known and challenged. The broad vistas of ecumenicity, indefinite and elusive, are less generally recognized as participating in the same spirit which characterizes those who major on minors. But the one is no less a peril than the other.

The discussion here does not concern the question of “elements of good” in ecumenicity or in independency. Rather, the purpose is to speak about the perils which beset both. This much is clear: neither movement is entirely in error. But neither possesses the sum total of truth. Neither movement possesses the ingredients of a permanent and suitable solution to the problems which vex the Church of Christ in history. The end of one is an unrestrained individualism: every man his own master, priest and congregation. The end of the other makes one man the master of all; its ultimate form is the pope of Rome, or another pope like him. The fact that both movements head in these directions does not mean that the end is inevitable. But it does suggest that, unless substantial changes are made to redirect the movements, this sad outcome remains a live possibility.

These observations are made neither in a spirit of criticism nor of condemnation. They follow rather from an earnest attempt to see the patterns in history, and from them to anticipate, however dimly, the shape of things to come. Silence has little influence; a word in season, spoken in an irenic spirit, may give pause for reflection and revision.

***

Does Jesus Repudiate the God of Mt. Sinai?

For several decades Liberalism has impressed upon the mind of the Church the notion that the God revealed by the prophets has little affinity with the God revealed by Christ. This strange concept still prevails in the thought life of the Church even though liberal theology is on the decline. Frequently “the thunderous war God of Sinai, demanding an eye for an eye” and “the merciful heavenly Father of Jesus Christ” are contrasted to each other.

That the God of Old Testament revelation differs in nature from the God revealed by Jesus is often vindicated—at least, so it is thought—by an appeal to the Sermon on the Mount: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” The God of Sinai established the principle of an eye for an eye. It would seem that Jesus rejects that dictum as unmerciful and ipso facto rejects the God who laid down such a principle.

Only a cursory reading of the passages involved in the Old and the New Testaments would give substance to this viewpoint. Jesus deals with a false application of the Old Testament principle. The Pharisees and scribes applied the text for the purpose of personal revenge, whereas the God of Sinai revealed the principle as a rule for the administration of justice. A guide for magistrates was misapplied as a regulation for private life.

The rule “an eye for an eye” appears first in Exodus 21, which is headed by the statement: “Now these are the judgments.” The word judgment in Hebrew signifies legal decision. Deuteronomy 19:18, 21 announces the precept as a guide for judges. Leviticus 24:19 also declares the regulation to be a law. To this day it is considered an elementary principle of sound jurisprudence that the punishment should fit the crime. If the God of Sinai be despised for promulgating this principle, modern day judges should also be condemned for measuring justice by this norm.

Jesus did, indeed, reveal God as merciful. But He did not thrust into the background the justice and holiness of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “For if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” An unforgiving “eye” on the part of man would receive an unforgiving “eye” from God. Further in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus declares, “with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” These statements concern judgments and are no different from the pronouncements in the Old Testament.

Thus Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount reveals God also as demanding an eye for an eye as a principle of justice. The God whom Jesus disclosed is no different from the God of Sinai. Only a superficial interpreter of the Word would make an unsubstantiated contrast between “the thunderous war God of Sinai” and “the merciful heavenly Father of Jesus Christ.” This false concept must be effectively challenged and combatted. Neither Christianity nor the province of ethics is bound by attempts to magnify mercy that ignore or depreciate the claims of justice. Correctives must be vigorously employed to counteract erroneous concepts active in the theology of the church today.

What Is the Way to a New Society?

To thoughtful and conscientious Christians there comes the recurring problem of one’s Christian faith and the social application of this faith. None of us lives in a vacuum and each of us exerts an influence in these matters, either for righteousness or against. Neutrality is an impossibility.

The issue on which the greatest debate centers is how shall the Christian and the Church exercise influence for righteousness in the social order?

The easiest way is to permit the Church to speak through her agencies and leadership and, as the Church, to exert moral pressures in the areas of public opinion, legislative halls and enforcement agencies.

The hardest way is for the individual Christian, as a Christian citizen, to make his position known through his personal life, his publicly and privately expressed opinion and his vote.

There are many who will insist that both methods are necessary and legitimate.

To arrive at a satisfactory philosophy several questions must be asked. What is the primary task of the Church? What is the position of the Christian in the world? What is it that distinguishes both the Church and the Christian from the society in which they find themselves?

The primary task of the Church. One has but to take any Saturday edition of a metropolitan newspaper and read the topics for the one sermon to be preached in the majority of the larger churches the next day to see that for many the primary task of the Church is either a forgotten or a never-grasped truth. Instead of soul-searching messages based on a scriptural grasp of the Gospel of God’s transforming and redeeming power, there are homilies on any number of trivial problems the solution of which, one way or the other, has no eternal significance.

No greater tragedy exists in contemporary religious life than the fact that from thousands of American pulpits today there comes the faint peep of a tin horn rather than the clear blast of a trumpet sounding the call of the living God to a people who are bowing at the altars of a thousand modern Baals and who need to hear of righteousness and of judgment and of wrath to come.

But some will argue that proclaiming the social demands of a righteous God is the prophetic preaching so much needed today. Is not social unrighteousness on every hand? Is not the inhumanity of man to man, so much in evidence at home and abroad, justification for the plea of brotherly love? Must not the Church proclaim social justice?

The answer to these and other questions should be obvious. How can a new social order be built without new men? How shall there be new men unless they are born again? How shall they be born again until they come to a personal and saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ? How shall they come to such a relationship unless they hear the Gospel?

In our desire for social righteousness, by a rectification of the corporate sins of a corporate society we are forgetting that there is no such thing as corporate salvation other than in and through personal, individual salvation.

The primary task of the Church is therefore to win individuals to Christ. It is a spiritual mission, a mission not only alien to but completely obscure and meaningless to the unregenerate world in which it works.

What is the position of the Christian in the world? Although the formula is denied by some and considered trite by others, the fact remains that the Christian is “in but not of” this world. The moment he becomes a Christian he has transferred his citizenship from a dying and lost society to a heavenly fellowship which is eternal.

Does this mean that he no longer has a responsibility in this world? Just the opposite. For the first time, he has a responsibility, and it is a tremendous one. According to our Lord’s own statement, the Christian has now become “salt”; he has become “light”; he has become a “witness”; he has become a living man walking among those who are dead; he is no longer walking in darkness but in light.

Because of this transformation the Christian is the key to the improvement of society. By his personal life, by his private and public utterances, by his influence in every area of daily contact it is his duty to live for his Lord and in so doing to lead men to glorify the God whom he serves.

What distinguishes the Church and the Christian from the society in which they find themselves? The answer is this: the Church and the Christian are a spiritual force in the world. To substitute political and other factors for this spiritual force is to exchange the seamless robe of the Lord of Glory for the toga of a modern Caesar.

This does not for one minute imply that the Christion abdicates as a citizen. But it does mean that he recognizes that the transformation which has taken place in his own life is the same transformation his fellow men, individually and corporately, must also undergo if they are to live to the glory of God and for the good of their brothers.

At the same time when the Church, in the name of the Church, enters the secular arena and exerts political pressures for righteousness in the social order, then the Church is prostituting her mission and adding to the confusion of the world.

There are thinking and earnest Christians who will not accept the above. They honestly believe that the Church, as such, must exert political pressures for social righteousness.

Let us honestly try to face this problem. Let us take certain specific sins; slavery, alcoholism, lust, greed, prejudice, hate, to mention only a few. All of these have widespread social implications.

What happens when slavery is abolished? when there is no intemperance? when purity of life supplants licentiousness? when the material welfare of others take precedence over personal gain? when all race prejudice is eliminated and every evidence of this prejudice disappears from the horizon? when love reigns and hatreds are no more?

The obvious answer is that then we will have heaven here on earth. But a question immediately follows: How can such things be?

The final answer throws us back on the Bible and the Christ of the Bible and the Gospel He came to make possible. The solution of the spiritual and moral and social problems of the world is to be found in the redeeming and transforming work of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. This solution is found in that which Christ has done for individual souls; and that solution is called the Gospel.

Christian Responsibility and Communist Brutality

Events of the last few weeks are causing many Christians to experience an “agonizing reappraisal” of their concept of world order. How are the demands of an enlightened Christian conscience to be met when confronted by the situation in Hungary? When men are dying in their desire for freedom; when God-given aspirations for self determination are being brutally crushed; when a reign of terror of unexceeded rigor is being perpetrated even as these lines are written, what should be the reaction of Christians who are living in freedom and peace?

Is the Christian approach to expend itself in resolutions of disapproval? Is a renewed statement of the principles of Christian freedom and human justice a sufficient answer to the wilful destruction of a nation?

A relatively small number of trucks carrying Red Cross supplies does not solve the problem, although it is a part of our responsibility and can and will be amplified as opportunity presents itself. Nor will expressions of sympathy mean much unless sympathy is implemented by action.

The philosophy: “Anything short of war,” can do irreparable harm, for it gives the aggressor a sense of security which itself begets aggression. We believe just such a situation has developed.

The rape of Hungary may be the desperate act of a tottering regime which was born in terror and which has continued to exist in the same manner. But America and other free nations share the blame insofar as they have sustained that regime by recognition and given it a forum of respectability in which to operate.

A slap on the wrist is not the answer to what Russia has done in Hungary. Expulsion from the United Nations, with its accompanying disintegrating effect on world Communism, is the least Christians should demand in way of punishment.

Which shall take precedence—the preservation of an organization, or the certifying of a moral principle?

Book Briefs: November 26, 1956

Human Predicament

Christianity and the Existentialists, by Carl Michalson (editor). Scribner’s, New York, 1956. $3.75.

This book is made up of a very readable series of public lectures delivered at Drew University during the academic year 1953–54. Eight well-known scholars contribute as follows: Carl Michalson, editor, and Professor of Systematic Theology, Drew University, on “What is Existentialism?”; H. Richard Niebuhr, Professor of Theology and Christian Ethics, Yale Divinity School, on Soren Kierkegaard; John A. Mackay, President of Princeton Theological Seminary, on Miguel de Unamuno; Mathew Spinka, Professor of Church History, The Hartford Seminary Foundation, on Nicholas Berdyaev; J. V. Langmead Casserley, Professor of Dogmatic Theology, the General Theological Seminary, on Gabriel Marcel; Erich Dinkler, Professor of New Testament Literature, Yale Divinity School, on Martin Heidegger; Paul Tillich, University Professor, Harvard University on “Existentialist Aspects of Modern Art”; and Stanley Romaine Hopper, Dean of the Graduate School, Drew University, on “On the Naming of the Gods in Holderlin and Rilke.”

A certain arbitrariness in the selection of the existentialists under consideration was inevitable, as acknowledged by the editor, but as a service to the uninitiated, the book serves as a useful introduction to a philosophy made difficult not only because of its vocabulary and the importance of subjective moods of existentialists, but also because it is so contemporary. The aim of the book is further served well by the inclusion of a bibliography directing the beginning reader to additional sources.

Each writer sets out in brief compass some of the basic principles of the existentialist philosopher he is discussing, but it is not always apparent to the reviewer that the writers relate these to specifically Christian forms of thought and experience. In the opinion of the writer of this review, Professor Dinkler gives us the most explicit attempt in the latter by devoting twelve pages out of thirty to the relationship between Heidegger’s thought and Christian teaching. President Mackay’s essay on Michael de Unamuno proved to be the most vibrant of the book due first to Dr. Mackay’s personal acquaintance with Michael de Unamuno and Spanish life, and also the fact that for most of us this philosopher is a new figure.

After reading the book a Christian gets a sense of the acuteness of the problems of human existence in the face of the ultimate questions of human experience. Four of these stand out here, namely, the problem of guilt, the problem of communion, the problem of history and the problem of death. It is refreshing to find in these philosophers a disdain for the categories of Naturalism in terms of which an adjustment is sought to whatever happens to be the prevailing current in the cultural stream. It must be pointed out, however, that the contributors to this volume and especially the editor make clear the distinction between atheistic and metaphysical or theistic existentialism. Carl Michalson exhibits this contrast by the poignant use of an apt illustration from Kierkegaard. Man is shipwrecked at a point in the sea where the water is 70,000 fathoms deep. The atheistic existentialist suggests that man, in this predicament, will find his support in his thrashing about, whereas, the theistic existentialist will find his in the hope that while thrashing, his arms will encounter something outside himself for support.

Existentialism rubs the salt into the wounds of the human predicament, but where are the answers to the problems of human existence? One wonders whether answers are really possible within the framework of reference suggested in existentialism. For if as Heidegger writes, “… belief, not permanently exposing itself to the question and danger of unbelief, is no faith at all, but mere convenience and agreement with one’s self to keep the doctrine as to a comforting tradition” (p. 121), then the certainties of Christian experience based on justification by faith and union with Christ are not possible to the existentialist. If it is the prerogative of the existentialist to ask, but not to give, or find, answers to ultimate questions, then Paul Tillich is right in saying, “… I would agree that there is no Christian existentialism. There are many Christian existentialists; but insofar as they are existentialists they ask the question, show the estrangement, show the finitude and show the meaningless ness. Insofar as they are Christians, they answer these questions as Christians but not as existentialists” (p. 141). The assurances of genuine Christian experience will always prove a stumbling-block to philosophies not taking into account as final God’s intervention in history in redemption and the application of this by the Spirit in assured spiritual experience in the heart of the believer. No better expression of the problem of human existence on the one hand, and the resolution of the problem on the other, can be suggested than Augustine’s famous opening words in the Confessions, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they may have found their rest in Thee.”

SAMUEL J. MIKOLASKI

Divine Revelation

Exploring the Old Testament, by W. T. Purkiser. Beacon Hill, Kansas City. $4.50

Exploring the Old Testament comes as the answer to a need which has existed for a long time in the area of conservative scholarship for an introduction to Hebrew Scriptures at the undergraduate level. The panel of contributors to this work have sought to combine Old Testament introduction with the materials usually incorporated in Old Testament “book studies.” The editor has done his work so well that the volume gives no indication of its composite authorship nor of any essential differences of outlook among its writers.

A review of such a work can hope to do little more than indicate its general plan and to give its major characteristics. Sections 1 and 2 are basically introductory, dealing respectively with the themes, “This is God’s Word” and “Why the Old Testament?” These, along with Section 16, under title of “The Message and Meaning of the Old Testament” serve to acquaint the reader with the significance of the Old Testament for today’s Christian.

Sections 3 and 15 combine an analysis of the respective sections of the Old Testament with a survey of their meaning. These deal chronologically with Israel’s history, and after the events of 975 B.C. deal almost entirely with Judah’s history, except Section 11, “The Northern Kingdom and Its Prophets.” The volume includes two valuable appendixes, the first being designed to relate the chronology of the Old Testament to general world chronology; the second giving well-written summaries of the Old Testament books.

To characterize the work in detail would require more length than this book review permits. Some features, however, require special mention. First of all, Exploring the Old Testament is a good statement of the historic Christian position with reference to the Hebrew Scriptures. This statement is made from a generally affirmative approach, letting the Old Testament speak for itself and proclaim its own message. The writers show, however, an awareness of the critical problems which have been raised in connection with Old Testament studies and of the basics of so-called liberal Old Testament criticism. Its answer to the positions of liberal critical scholarship is two-told: that the Old Testament taken by itself fails to support these positions (i.e., that liberal criticism has forced its conclusions), and that the evidence for many liberal contentions is insufficient.

The volume embodies a valuable statement concerning such questions as the Old Testament canon, the versions and the New Testament use of the Old Testament. In addition to good basic statements upon these questions, there is an excellent bibliography by means of which the undergraduate teacher in biblical studies can expand the work of his classes as much as his program will permit and his needs will indicate.

The volume indicates an awareness upon the part of the writers of the significance of contemporary cultures for the understanding of Hebrew life and thought. The writers have a good knowledge of contemporary usages in Babylonian and Mesopotamian civilizations. Parallels in thought and practice are not minimized nor neglected by the writers, but rather, are shown for what they really were, namely survivals from an original disclosure of the Divine purposes—in fine, of an original Revelation.

The over-all impact of this work seems to this reviewer to be capable of summary in one word: appreciation. The writers have sensed the high significance of the Old Testament as divine Revelation. Their blend of comment and homiletics, their cross-referencing of Old Testament with the New Testament and their general attitude all work toward this objective. College student or intelligent layman will find this volume equally challenging. It is a significant addition to the literature of Bible-believing scholarship.

HAROLD B. KUHN

For Undergraduates

Exploring the New Testament, by Ralph Earle, Harvey S. Blaney, and Carl Hanson. Beacon Hill, Kansas City. $4.50.

This companion volume to Exploring the Old Testament is designed to meet a similar need, namely to be a “text for the required course in New Testament survey for lower division students in college.” Exploring the New Testament is similar in form to the earlier volume, seeking to compress the basics of New Testament introduction into three chapters, and then to expound in a topical order that which will reflect the general order of events described.

Chapter 1, “Why Study The New Testament?” is essentially hortatory: it seeks to inspire a love for the written Word and to cultivate an appetite for study of it. Questions of the extent and quality of inspiration are passed over briefly, with the emphasis being upon the message rather than the form of the New Testament Scriptures. This work then, assigns the home work for the study of apologetics rather than seeking to do its lessons for it.

The discussion of “The World Into Which The New Testament Came” (Ch. 2) seems unusually well-done; this reviewer would like to have had such an introduction to his undergraduate studies in New Testament. The same may be said of Chapter 3, “The New Testament Transmitted and Translated.” The writers have sought to broaden the base of New Testament study for undergraduates by filling the vacuum which the inter-testamental period seems too frequently to be.

The chapters dealing with the four Gospels present our Lord in a four-fold role: as Messiah-King, as Conqueror-Servant, as Son of Man and as Son of God. This division is, to be sure, not wholly original; but the manner in which the work of the four Evangelists is shown to present one outstanding portrait is unusual in books of this kind. The approach is affirmative; the writers indicate an awareness of modern liberal New Testament criticism, but in general take the approach that the interpretation of historic Christian faith presents the fewest problems, while many critical views are lacking in supporting evidence.

Taken together, the conclusions to the chapters dealing with Matthew, Luke and John (pp. 112; 185 ff.; and 224 ff.) afford an excellent over-all view of the events which tie together the Gospels and the remainder of the New Testament. From this, as well as from the manner in which parallel passages in the Synoptics are treated, the student can scarcely fail to gain the impression of “togetherness” which underlies the volume—and which is a wholesome relief from the excessive analysis which has plagued New Testament critical scholarship.

This same factor finds emphasis in the continuity which the writers trace in the several studies of the Acts of the Apostles, and of the Pauline, Johannine and Petrine literature. In a similar vein, the treatment of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the chapter “God’s Last Word to Man” (Ch. 13) pursues the method of relating the Old Testament to the New Testament and of discovering in both the Incarnate Word. The same may be said for the treatment of the Book of Revelation. Here the writer(s) treat with reserve the areas in which legitimate difference of opinion and interpretation exists among scholars, and lay emphasis upon the One who is revealed, and who stands supreme over angels, living creatures and elders.

The volume, Exploring the New Testament, maintains in fine balance a careful scholarly analysis and a spirit of reverent regard for the Lord and Mediator of the New Covenant. Historical and background materials are well written, and documented so far as is essential to keep the work in line with standard volumes of its kind. Footnotes are, in general, kept to a minimum.

This reviewer asked himself the question: Suppose that, prior to becoming acquainted with the New Testament itself, the book Exploring the New Testament came into his hands. What major thought would be in his mind as he read this work? The answer seems clearly this: Where can he secure a copy of

the New Testament of which Dr. Earle and his colleagues have written? To all who approach the matter in reverse, having first the New Testament, such a volume as this is of great value in making the Scriptures to be the object of earnest study.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Church In Politices

The Kingdom Without God, by Gerald Heard, Edmund A. Opitz and others, Foundation for Social Research, Los Angeles, 1956. The Powers That Be, by Edmund A. Opitz. Foundation for Social Research, Los Angeles, 1956.

Recently some laymen urged the union of two denominations because they would then be more able “to mold public opinion.” Their argument reflects the struggle being waged today to win support for ideas and causes.

But the laymen’s argument produces a disturbing question. What is the content of the Church’s message? Or to state it differently, what is the function of the Church’s voice?

As many evangelists see it, the Church is here to proclaim God’s saving grace in Christ and to teach all the things that He commanded. This teaching has many social implications, but it builds upon an individual experience of salvation. Regeneration occurs, then nurture and instruction. Since the proclamation of the Gospel is public, the world outside of Christ’s fellowship will be aware of Christian ideals and standards and will be affected by the attitudes and actions of faithful Christians in all areas of life.

There are many liberals in American Protestantism who construe the message and function of the Church differently. While in varying degree they may pay tribute to the need for individual salvation, they are engrossed in social improvement. To achieve this improvement, the Church must be expert in political and economic matters. Having decided on the best program available at the moment, the Church must have a powerful, united voice to sway public opinion. Then the Church depends upon the State to legislate and enforce the program.

Two booklets published by the Foundation for Social Research present the cleavage in American Protestant thought incisively. The larger booklet, “The Kingdom Without God,” bears the revealing subtitle, “Road’s End for the Social Gospel.” It contains essays by Gerald Heard, Edmund A. Opitz and others.

The essayists contend that the social gospel movement was “a first cousin to modern socialism” (p. i.). The older flag bearers were Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch; the newer ones, Reinhold Niebuhr, John C. Bennett, Liston Pope and Roswell P. Barnes. Social Action departments in the denominations and in the Federal Council of Churches were the centers of social gospel strategy. Their refuge and strength was in the enlarged use of government’s power according to their theories.

Mr. Opitz contributes more than others to the indictment of the social gospel movement and argues effectively for the “libertarian” case. “The role of governments is to protect individuals in their God-given individual rights” (p. 162). He deplores the popularity of the axiom that “political action, i.e., legalized violence, has an efficacy in human affairs far surpassing uncoerced, voluntary action” (p. 69). “Collectivism,” he avers, “in its many varieties, is the great secular faith of our time” (p. 78).

The other booklet, “The Powers that Be,” written exclusively by Opitz, presents case studies of the Church in politics. It exposes the one-sidedness of positions and pronouncements of the Federal Council and of its successor, the National Council of Churches, in questions concerning labor, the United Nations, and other economic and political issues.

The title page of both booklets lists the Foundation for Social Research “as a nonprofit corporation.” Its president is James C. Ingebretsen, 1521 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles 17, California, at which address the booklets may be obtained.

CARY N. WEISIGER, III

Repentant Liberalism

Vocabulary of Faith, by Hampton Adams, Bethany, St. Louis. $2.50.

This little book, a series of popular messages on central Christian doctrines, could be mistakenly associated with the current revival of interest in the study of the theological key words of the Bible. In this respect the title is misleading.

Dr. Adams, distinguished pastor of Park Avenue Christian Church, New York City, teacher of courses in religion at New York City’s Union Theological Seminary and active representative of the Disciples of Christ in the ecumenical movement, confesses here a change in his own theological thinking (p. 113).

Against an apparent background of thorough-going liberalism, he now feels the language of the street cannot carry the Christian Gospel’s full weight of meaning (p. 7). In step with the repentant liberalism of today, he is ready to make fuller use of the once discarded vocabulary of faith.

On this basis the author proceeds in the course of 12 brief chapters, slanted particularly to the layman, to discuss such central doctrinal themes as: revelation, Christ, faith, God, the Holy Spirit, the atonement, reconciliation, redemption, resurrection, the Kingdom of God, the love of God, and grace. His point of departure in each instance is not the biblical witness but human experience, particularly the author’s own experience in counseling with those who “came to my study” (pp. 8, 9, 10, 23, etc.).

Some of the author’s ideas are: “Within their own experience, persons can have a positive revelation of God that is not traceable directly to God’s specific revelation” (p. 9); the early Christians called

Jesus Lord because “they could not believe in Jesus without believing in God” (p. 14); God is not to be thought of “as three separate, or even distinguishable, persons” (p. 52); faith that appropriates God’s forgiveness is “faith in God’s fatherhood that is inspired by Jesus’ death on the cross” (p. 64); we cannot be sure that anyone ever finally refuses to seek God’s forgiveness (p. 72); God’s forgiveness is “not an act but a quality of the love he gives to men” (p. 83); “many perhaps all, of the truest Christians have known themselves to be sinners ‘saved by grace’ ” (p. 116).

Although this is repentant liberalism, a chapter on sin is omitted.

Much could be said in appreciation of the book as far as it goes, particularly with reference to the author’s apologetic and his constant exposure of the inadequacy of contemporary secularism.

There are detracting oversights in printing: “Kupios” (p. 14), “authropos” (p. 27), “James S. Steward” (p. 51, f.n. 1), and “James Denny” (pp. 64 and 66, f.n. 1). There are inaccurate judgments: the Latin fathers are said to have written the historic creeds (p. 51); “nephesh” is said to indicate the principle of life which man as man possesses (p. 53); and a reference to the innate immortality of the soul is quoted without qualification (p. 92).

W. BOYD HUNT

Attractive Booklets

Booklets. American Tract Society, New York. 30c each.

These are five attractive booklets which a minister may desire to distribute to young Christians and others who desire knowledge of the subject treated. The first is “The Story of our Bible,” by Dr. David J. Fant. In simple and graphic form the study of the divine origin and growth of the Bible is told. Charts are given and there is a fine chapter on the scriptural portrait of Christ. The second booklet is, “The Spirit and Method of Bible Study,” by Dr. Wilbur M. Smith. This helpful booklet teaches the beginner how he may obtain the most out of the Scriptures. The third is a searching message to the minister titled, “Words to Winners of Souls,” by Horatius Bonar. This reveals the causes of an unfruitful ministry and indicates how one’s ministry may be enriched. The problem of prayer is dealt with in the fourth booklet, “Prayer,” by Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer. Along with suggestions regarding how to make prayer more effective, there is a brief exposition of the Lord’s Prayer. What to place in the hands of an inquiring Roman Catholic is sometimes a vexing problem. A fair presentation of the differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism is given in the fifth booklet, “Which Religion,” by Dr. George Wells Arms. It considers such doctrines as the Pope’s Infallibility, the Mass, Confessional, Indulgences, Purgatory and Mariolatry.

An Old Friend

A Dictionary of the Bible, by John D. Davis. Baker, Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Davis Dictionary of the Bible is not a new arrival but an old friend. It was in large measure the life work of Professor Davis who taught for many years at Princeton Seminary. The first edition appeared in 1898 and the fourth in 1924, about a year before Dr. Davis’ death. This fourth edition was reprinted seven times between 1924 and 1940; and it is a testimony to its enduring value that in 1954, thirty years after this edition appeared, the Baker Book House published this “photolith” reproduction which has been reprinted three times.

The reasons for the popularity of this Dictionary are briefly stated in the Preface to the original edition:

The book aims to be a dictionary of the Bible, not of speculations about the Bible. It seeks to furnish a thorough acquaintance with things biblical. To this end it has been made a compendium of the facts stated in the Scriptures, and of explanatory and supplementary material drawn from the records of the ancient peoples contemporary with Israel …

The serious defect in many of the books which have been written in recent years as “helps” to the study of the Bible has been that they have devoted too much time to theories about the Bible and have done this all too often for the purpose of imposing these theories upon the facts of the Bible. The facts remain the same; theories about them are often as ephemeral as they are various. Theories are discussed when it seemed advisable to do so. But they are distinctly secondary. It is also to be noted that Dr. Davis had the assistance of two of his distinguished colleagues at Princeton, Dr. George T. Purves and Dr. Benjamin B. Warfield.

Something should now be said about the second aim of Dr. Davis, to make the Dictionary a compendium “of explanatory and supplementary material drawn from the records of the ancient peoples contemporary with Israel.” It is quite superfluous to remark that archaeological research has made many and notable discoveries in the second quarter of the present century. Were Dr. Davis alive today he would make it his aim to incorporate them in what would be a fifth edition of the Dictionary. The present publishers have not deemed it advisable to revise the Dictionary in order to bring it up to date archaeologically. As to this two things are to be noted. The one is that the discoveries of the archaeologist, important and valuable as they are, concern the background and setting of Biblical history. They add nothing to the Biblical revelation per se. Helpful as they are in many ways they serve rather to show the vast difference between the religion of Israel and the religions of the peoples with which Israel came in contact. Furthermore, it must be remembered that many of the findings of archaelogy are inconclusive, that while it has solved some problems it has raised many others. The scroll of history which it unrolls before us is in many respects more obscure and fragmentary than we often realize.

Fifty years ago there were two main theories as to the date of Exodus. The one made Thothmes III the Pharaoh of the oppression, the other Rameses II, a difference of about two centuries. Dr. Davis advocated the later date, holding it to be in harmony with the facts given in the Bible. Other scholars held then and hold today that the earlier date is more probable. The question is much debated today. Many critical scholars hold that only a few of the Twelve Tribes ever were in Egypt, and the Conquest took place at several different times and from more than one direction, a view which is utterly incompatible with the facts stated in the Bible.

The distinction drawn by Dr. Davis between facts and theories is an important one. The Christian rejoices in every confirmation and illumination of the statements of the Bible which archaelogy has produced. But he does not accept these statements because the archaeologist tells him that he may do so, but because they are found in the Bible. And conversely he feels fully justified in rejecting the findings of the scientists when they contradict the statements of Scripture. Consequently, while we may regret that the archaeology of the Dictionary is not fully abreast of the clearest finding of the archaeologist, we welcome it and value it because it is primarily a dictionary of the Bible and not of speculations about the Bible and because a multitude of users have found its interpretations to be “sober, fair, and just.”

OSWALD T. ALLIS

News Report: Conflict of the Gospel with Paganism, November 26, 1956

WORLD NEWS

Strong Communist Thrust In Italy

The biggest Communist Party in the Democratic West exists today in Italy.

What causes have given rise to such a strong communist movement, with a membership of over 1,250,000 members? Youth organizations and fellow-travelers boost the total past 2,000,000.

Historical Causes

The fact that Italy is 99 per cent Roman Catholic accounts for much. For long generations, especially since the Counter Reformation, the Italian people have been nurtured with a religious system and doctrine which in denying freedom of investigation has deprived them of an effective sense of personal responsibility. This facilitated the rise of a formalistic and hence anti-democratic mind (for democracy requires freedom of thought and speech). In addition, the Italians were governed till 1870 by a number of absolute monarchies. They were kept bereft of many civil rights; to speak of freedom and democracy was a crime. This antidemocratic stream provided the cadres of Fascism, just as today it provides the cadres of communism. At the end of World War II, when Fascism collapsed, many leaders and members were accepted into the Communist Party. Entire brigades of fascist militia entered communist organizations.

Economic Causes

Poverty in Italy is a chronic disease. Many factors contribute to its permanence: shortage of resources, unemployment, underemployment, overpopulation and the egotism of privileged classes. These factors induce a large mass to long for an overthrow of the present situation, and to look at the Communist Party as the only agency able to operate such a change.

Political Causes

The powerful Soviet Union, reaching with her satellites to the borders of the peninsula, suggests to the majority of Italians a defensive attitude, but it excites in a strong minority feelings of attraction. Moreover, the overflowing of the Catholic Church into the political field has given rise to a revival of anti-clericalism, pushing many categories of Italians, especially intellectuals, into the hands of Communists.

Accidental Causes

When, in 1944, the new Italian nation was rising from the ashes of war, Russia first gave recognition, and Signor Togliatti, most skillful leader of Italian communism, entered into the first democratic government. Communists remained in power until 1947, with the approval of the Allied Control Commission. This meant placing communist leaders in many administration key-posts. Besides, the Communists have until now enjoyed full support from the Socialist Party, with which they signed an agreement for unity of action.

Signor Togliatti and his Etat Major, re-entering into Italy at the back of Allied Troops, after having been long catechized in Soviet Russia, were able to draw an unimaginable profit from all these historical, economical, political and accidental causes. They set up a model Party organization, through which they could reach all kinds of classes of people, imbuing them with communist doctrine.

Fortress Of Communism

Within a short time there arose in Italy the strongest Communist Party in the West. The strength, more than in numbers, lies in the devotion of every member to the Party. The Marxist ideology has for them the appeal of a religion. Week by week they meet in their cells for indoctrination. Whether in their office or workshop, out in the country or in the market place, they are active propagandists. This zeal earned them 6,125,000 votes at the last general elections in 1953. Added to 3,450,000 votes gained by the Socialist Party of Signor Nenni, this represents 35 per cent of the whole Italian constituency.

Nevertheless, it is doubtful if communism could make such a thrust in Italy if it lacked certain means. Apart from funds from the Cominform agency, some export-import communist sponsored companies have been set up in Italy to monopolize commerce with countries behind the Iron Curtain. Communist countries do business with Italian firms through these companies only.

But the power of communism in Italy would not be so matchless without the handling of a mighty weapon—the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (C.G.I.L.), the strongest labor organization in the land. Signor Di Vittorio, general secretary of the C.G.I.L. and president of the World Federation of Labour Organizations (communist), is one of the big bosses of international communism, frequently putting Italian Government in difficulty by strikes.

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

Outlook For Future

Is there an answer? Part of the answer to communism undoubtedly lies in the strengthening of democracy.

There is evidence of this axiom. In 1946, the allied Communist and Socialist Parties together reported 41 per cent of the votes. In 1948, after the Socialdemocrats of Signor Saragat left the Socialist Party for a coalition government with the Christian Democratic Party, the Social-Communists garnered only 31 per cent of the votes. But the Vatican-inspired Christian Democratic Party, having obtained the absolute majority, made the government its monopoly and did not always rule democratically. In some instances civil and religious rights were denied to citizens. Many acts of intolerance and religious persecution were carried out against Protestants. At the political elections of 1953, Social-Communists lifted their votes again to 35 per cent, while Christian Democrats fell to 41 per cent. In these circumstances a coalition of the democratic parties was necessary. Christian Democrats sought alliance with Social-democrats, Liberals and Republicans. At last a democratic government was set up. Since then the political situation in Italy is undergoing favorable evolution. In addition, the recent deconsecration of Stalin and the revelations of Khrushchev have inflicted a big blow on Italian communism.

For the first time a crisis is in the making within the communist movement in Italy, and is already reaching the communist constituency and the leaders too. In local government elections last May they lost a half million votes. The “Unita,” organ of the Italian Communist Party, has reduced its printing 21 per cent, while sales have declined 27 per cent. The Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro is floating in bad waters. Workers are more and more giving credit to the free and democratic labor organizations (C.I.S.L., Christian Democrat and U.I.L., Social-democrat).

This crisis, however, may be just a “momentary bewilderment.” Communism is still powerful and Italian conditions are not much changed. Only a continuous, untiring effort to broaden the basis of democracy can save the Italian nation from the Communist threat.

The next 12 months will indicate if democracy is to be firmly established in Italy or if the Communist threat shall continue to hang upon her like a Damocletian sword.

R.T.

Jerusalem + Judea + Samaria News: November 26, 1956

Paul Walked Here

Several threads of biblical history were woven together recently when the Stoa of Attalos was dedicated by the American School of Classical Studies as the Museum of the Agora of Athens.

(The “Agora” is the “market” where Paul “disputed daily” with the philosophers of Athens during his short stay in the city.)

Excavation of the Agora was undertaken by the school in 1931 and has continued to the present, with a five-year break during the war years. The 25-acre site formerly housed some 5,000 people.

East, west and south boundaries have been brought to light in the largest part of the excavation. Still to be explored is the north side, where the “painted Stoa”—birthplace of the Stoic school of philosophy—is to be found.

Discoveries now being studied include the ruins of the law courts, the Mint, the concert hall (Odeion) and the public library of ancient Athens. A broad road passing diagonally through the Agora was the one used once a year by the Panathenian Procession on its way to the Acropolis.

The Agora was surrounded by “stoas” (shed-like buildings with deep porches). Bordering the square on all sides, these buildings provided sunshine or shade, according to the needs of the season.

The Stoa of Attalos, on the east side of the Agora, has been reconstructed on the original site in the original design. Attalos II of Pergamum built the Stoa. Pergamum, which later became the seat of the “Emperor-cult” for the Roman province of Asia, was called “Satan’s seat” by the Lord.

Within the Stoa are housed the finds from the excavation: some 65,000 catalogued objects, along with 100,000 coins, great masses of pottery, ancient sculpture, inscriptions on marble, bronze voting ballots, water clock from the law courts and elaborate machines for selecting civic officials by lot.

Now, after 19 centuries, followers of the Bible can visit the place where Paul encountered the philosophers of ancient Greece and where he was sent to be tried by the Aeropagus.

G.A.H.

Scroll Revelations

The radiant beauty of Sarah, wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac, is noted in an excerpt of a Dead Sea Scroll made public in Jerusalem by the Hebrew University and the Institute of the Shrine of the Book.

Badly preserved and very brittle, the 2,000-year-old Aramaic-written scroll is the last of seven found in the Qumran caves of the Judean desert in 1947 and acquired by the university.

The excerpt enlarges on the story of Abraham’s journey to Egypt with Sarah, as related in Genesis, Chapter 12. Just before entering Egypt, Abraham persuaded her to pose as his sister, according to the biblical account.

Abraham, in the biblical story, said:

“I know that you are a woman beautiful to behold; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me, and keep you. Say you are my sister.”

The newly-deciphered scroll gives this description of Sarah:

“And how beautiful the look of her face. And how fine is the hair of her head; how fair indeed are her eyes and how pleasing her nose and all the radiance of her face.

“How beautiful her breast and how lovely all her whiteness. Her arms goodly to look upon and her hands how perfect. How fair her palms and how long and fine all the fingers of her hands.

“Her legs how beautiful and without blemish her thighs. And all maidens and all brides that go beneath the wedding canopy are not more fair than she. Above all women she is lovely and higher is her beauty than that of them all, and with all her beauty there is much wisdom in her. And the tip of her hands is comely.”

The scroll then gives Abraham’s account of how his fears about Sarah’s beauty were justified, when the Pharaoh Zoan heard she was “very beautiful,” had her brought to him, “marveled at all her loveliness and took her to him to wife,” unaware that she was the wife of another.

Abraham tells in the scroll how he prayed that God would show His “mighty hand” and descend upon the Egyptian king and “all his household and may he not this night defile my wife.”

Biblical accounts say that God afflicted the Pharaoh with plagues and “most grievous stripes.”

The scroll quotes Abraham as saying: “That night the Most High God sent a pestilential wind to afflict him (Pharaoh) and all his household, a wind that was evil. And it smote him and all his house and he could not come near her nor did he know her.”

Abraham’s account ends with a description of how, after two years, the ruler of Egypt sent for him and restored his wife, asking him to pray that the plagues might cease.

As the Bible relates, he tells how he was permitted to leave Egypt “exceedingly rich in cattle and also in silver and gold.”

Africa + Asia + Australia News: November 26, 1956

Action In Burma

A plan for the Burma Baptist Convention to take over duties previously handled by missionaries was approved by delegates to the 88th annual meeting in Rangoon.

Proposed by the missionaries themselves, the plan has a goal of making Baptist work in the country self-supporting, self-directing and self-propagating.

Main points of the agreement deal with the turning over of church properties on the mission field “to the appropriate holding bodies representing the indigenous Christian community,” assigning to the convention the responsibility of determining the number of missionaries needed in Burma, and giving the convention the major responsibility for financial needs.

Prime Minister U Ba Swe, in an address to the meeting, emphasized the guarantees of religious freedom in Burma.

‘Mistaken Policy’

A decree ordering full freedom of religion throughout Communist North Vietnam has been issued by the Council of Ministers.

The order reportedly corrects “a mistaken policy of the government in the past.”

North Vietnam is the first Asian Communist nation publicly to proclaim deviation from the Moscow line. It is also the first to admit the existence of anti-religious persecution within its boundaries.

From time to time, the Hanoi Radio has broadcast statements claiming that all religious groups in the country enjoy full liberty, despite reports to the contrary. Most of the North Vietnamese are Buddhists. The Christian minority is predominantly Roman Catholic. A majority of the Christians fled to the South after partitioning of the country.

“Freedom of religion must be strictly respected,” the new order declared. It specifically directed that the “unjustified” house detention or “unlawful” arrest of religious personnel be abolished.

Communist authorities in North Vietnam 17 months ago issued a decree of religious freedom which nevertheless provided many loopholes for persecution. One of the loopholes was the proviso that “when they preach, ministers of religion must impress on their flocks … respect for the democratic authorities and the laws of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.”

Another was a clause which said “the law will punish everyone who uses the pretext of religion to attack peace, unity, independence and democracy, to make propaganda for war, to break popular opinion, to keep believers from their duty as citizens, to attack other persons’ freedom of belief and thought, or to commit any other violation of law.”

These provisions were subject to communist interpretations that made religious groups especially vulnerable to attack.

Property confiscated during the land reform movement “will be restored to owners,” according to Hanoi Radio. But it did not say whether this measure applied to church-owned property.

The new decree may contain hidden implications, but for the moment Christians are grateful for the tiny crack of religious freedom in the Bamboo Curtain.

Turn About

Christian missionaries in India, who have been the target for much government criticism in recent months, received warm praise recently from Gov. K. N. Munshi of Uttar Pradesh.

At celebrations marking the centenary of the Methodist Church in southern Asia, he lauded missionaries for a century of “useful educational and humanitarian work. Above all, by the impact of their work, they have imparted a keener sense of mission to other religious and philanthropic bodies.”

Gov. Munshi said the “comparatively small Christian community of India” (5,000,000 Protestants in population of 400,000,000) had taken its full part in national life.

“Many Christians participated in the struggle for freedom,” he said, “and many now bear heavy responsibilities in this country.” He cited the role of Protestantism in “restoring to man his sense of individual dignity and freedom.”

The governor warned missionaries of all faiths, however, against an “active campaign of mass conversion” for social, political or economic motives. He said this could not be considered a “religious act,” and was bound to create resistance.

Scores of foreign Christians in India have been falsely charged with political activity and many have been sent home. Resident permits are extremely difficult to obtain, except in the cases of medical missionaries and other professional people.

Observers predict that the days of missionaries in India are numbered, but point out that God seems to be using the situation to make the Protestant Indian Church, under Indian leadership, stronger than it has ever been under foreign support.

Research In India

The National Christian Council of India has voted to establish a research center for the study of non-Christian religions in the country—especially Hinduism.

Dr. P. D. Devanandan, visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, will be invited to serve as the center’s director.

A statement of objectives for the center said “it will be allowed from the beginning to develop its own atmosphere where a free intercourse between scholarly Christians and leading non-Christians may take place.”

Religious Freedom Asked

Full religious freedom was given major emphasis in a document drawn up in Singapore by the Malayan Christian Council as a guide to the kind of country Christians want Malaya to become when it receives its independence from Great Britain next year.

“It is significant that the question of religious freedom has been given careful consideration by many Asian nations in recent years, notably India and Pakistan in their final constitutions and Indonesia in provisional constitutional proposals,” the Christian Council said.

“In all these,” the Council added, “there is careful protection of minorities in fundamental freedoms and the giving of full religious freedom to all residents of the country.”

Christians are a minority in Malaya.

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