Review of Current Religious Thought: November 26, 1956

The present day stream of literature in Europe dealing with religious and theological questions is best described as overwhelming. It appears that almost all the questions of the previous era are again being considered; also those that were given little attention by the past generation.

Restricting ourselves on this occasion to the dogmatical literature, we refer first of all to newly published dogmatical works such as: Werner Elert (Lutheran), Der Christliche Glaube, 1940; P. Althaus (Lutheran), Die Christliche Wahrheit, 1948; Th. L. Haitjema, Dogmatiek als Apologie, 1948; H. Vogel, Gott in Christo (1000 pages); O. Weber, Grundlagen der Dogmatik, Vol. 1, 1954 (a second volume will follow); H. Diem, Dogmatik, Ihr Weg zwischen Historismns und Existentialismus, 1955. In addition, not to mention more, two volumes of Barth’s Kirchliche Dogmatik (IV, 1 and IV, 2) appeared in 1953 and 1955.

¶ Alongside the Protestant activity there is a profuse stream of Roman Catholic dogmatical publications, some dealing only with particular subjects, some covering the whole field. Important particular studies are those of W. Stahlin, Allein. Reckt und Gefahr einer polemischen Formel, 1950 (dealing with the “sola Scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide” doctrines); and M. Lackmann, Sola Fide, Eine exegetische studie uber Jacobus 2 zur reformatorischen Rechtfertigungslehre, 1949. With respect to comprehensive Roman Catholic dogmatical works, a dogmatics (succeeding the old works of Scheeben, Pohle, Bartmann and Diekamp) is in the process of being published by Michael Schmaus, whose pen has already produced the volume on Mariology (1955).

In the Netherlands the beginning of a new dogmatics by P. Schoonenberg has been published under the title: Het Geloof van ons Doopsel (Vol. I, 1955; II, 1956). This is an important contribution because Schoonenberg is one of the most brilliant representatives of the so-called “New Theology,” a movement which arose in France about 1942 and which is letting itself be heard at the present time. This movement has given a different version of the relation between nature and grace than that found in the traditional Roman Catholic theology, as well as a trenchant analysis of the influence of philosophy on scholastic thought. Without speaking of a radical revolution, one can say that through this “New Theology” the controversy between Rome and the Reformation has taken on new aspects, especially since the criticism made by the Reformation was narrowly connected with the dualistic Roman Catholic vision of the relation of nature and grace. An important point in the discussions is the evaluation of the already famous papal encyclical of 1950 (Humani Generis), in which the new streams of irenism and existentialism were rejected, but in which also a warning was sounded against a relativizing of dogma and an underestimation of the significance of Thomas Aquinas. In spite of the fact that many were of the opinion that the “New Theology” was condemned by this encyclical, the representatives of this theology, through many publications, are playing a very important role in current discussions. We see in this movement one of the important phases of contemporary Roman Catholic thought.

¶ In addition to the literature concerning “Humani Generis” and the “New Theology”, the fixation of the Marian dogma of 1950 (the assumption of Mary) has received special attention. The interest here undoubtedly centers around an infallible proclamation (ex cathedra) because it is declared that whoever denies or doubts this dogma “has totally fallen away from the divine and catholic faith.” A very orientating study has been published by F. Heiler: Das neue Mariendogma im Lichte der Geschichte und im Urteil der Oekumene, 1951. It contains the views of many scholars with respect to this new dogma, including, among others, that of B. E. Mascall (Anglo-Catholic). From all sorts of angles the question is discussed as to the deepest meaning of this new dogma concerning Mary. It appears very clearly that the intention is not to deify Mary. The interest turns rather on the share that Mary (as creature) has in the redemptive work. In this light the Marian dogma takes on its distinct significance at the peak of the Roman Catholic system, because precisely this share of Mary is connected with her physical glorification in heaven.

Although in the above-mentioned “New Theology” new perspectives are visible in the Rome-Reformation controversy, this new Marian dogma has again pointed up the conflict in spite of all the attempts by Rome to demonstrate that its Mariology in no wise constitutes a threat to the glory of Christ as our only Redeemer. Already before 1950 there were signs pointing to the fact that the proclamation of the assumption of Mary would not yet mark the end of the Mariological development. We think of the feelings (not yet firmly established) concerning Mary as participating, not only in the subjective redemption (the distribution of the treasures of Christ), but also in the objective redemption. This dogma is at present not yet fixed, but already studies are appearing under titles such as: Mary as Co-Redemptress alongside Jesus our Lord. It is understandable that in this development there is a constant demand from the Reformation camp for scriptural proof. But tradition plays such a powerful role here that in the proclamation of 1950 of Mary’s assumption, no scriptural proof is given, and the only texts appearing in it are the citations to be found in the church fathers. The power of the Reformation remains here also the power of the “sola Scriptura”!

¶ Besides that already mentioned, there is in continental theology a many-sided interest in the theology of Luther. Excellent studies have been made, e.g., W. von Lcewenich, Theologia crucis, 1954; idem, Luther als Ausleger der Synoptiker, 1954; J. T. Bakker, Coram Deo, Een Bijdrage tot het Onderzoek naar de Structuur van Luthers Theologie, (dissertation at the Free University) 1956; R. Prenter, Spiritus Creator, Studien zu Luthers Theologie, 1954 (translated from Danish into German). In these studies there is a continual discussion of the relation between Luther and Calvin, and this is understandable because there is a growing feeling that in spite of all their differences (e.g., concerning the sacraments), a deep unity in faith bound these two reformers.

¶ It is impossible in any respect to set forth in one “review” a complete survey of what is now in the center of interest in continental reflection. This incompleteness already appears in the fact that we have made no mention up to this point of the continuing discussion surrounding the theology of Karl Barth, who recently put his doctrine of redemption into print (IV, 1 and IV, 2). In commemoration of Barth’s seventieth birthday many articles and “Festschrifte” have reviewed his theology anew.

G. C. Berkouwer, Ph.D., is Professor of Systematic theology, Free Universty of Amsterdam.

Cover Story

Marks of Great Evangelical Preaching

“The Romance of Preaching”! Under this title C. Silvester Horne delivered one of the most brilliant and inspiring series of all the Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale. Speaking in 1914, a few months before the outbreak of World War I, with irrepressible optimism the British divine looked back at certain pulpit giants of other days. In every case he dealt with a man who belonged in what we know as the evangelical tradition: Moses and later prophets; John the Baptist and later apostles; Athanasius and Chrysostom; Savonarola, Calvin, and Knox; John Robinson and the Pilgrim Fathers; John Wesley and George Whitefield.

Risks In Contemporary Evaluation

Any lover of church history can make a longer list of pulpit giants, every man of them strongly evangelical. If a student were disposed to deal with a positive subject negatively, he could try to compile a list of non-evangelical pulpit giants. Whatever the procedure, a prudent compiler would follow Horne in not singling out any contemporary preacher. Among living pulpiteers often counted great, or nearly great, how many will be so regarded after the lapse of forty years? Not many, I judge. I am thinking of my own experience as a lifelong lover of sermons. If I were to name the preachers whom many ministers counted great in 1914, my younger readers would not recognize most of the names. For example, think of Charles Wagner in Paris, William Dawson in London, and Newell Dwight Hillis in Brooklyn. Time has a way of deflating many of our biggest balloons.

In the realm of preaching, what then does it mean for a man to be “great”? Personally, I seldom use the word great about anyone but God, but here I am serving as a reporter of what others have found. According to Barrett Wendell at Harvard, greatness in writing consists in power and influence that continue after the conditions that produced the writing have passed away. Accepting this working principle, let us ask about marks of excellence in the preaching of certain masters in other days, whom many students of church history unite in calling both evangelical and great.

At first glance any such list of evangelical “greats” would impress a student with its variety. For instance, look at the following, and ask what they had in common with each other: Amos and Hosea; James and John; Peter and Paul; Augustine and Chrysostom; Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi; Luther and Calvin; John Bunyan and John Donne; John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards; Canon H. P. Liddon and Charles H. Spurgeon; Dwight L. Moody and John Henry Jowett. Any two of those pulpit masters differed from each other as much as any two stars in the sky at midnight. And yet, being stars, any two of those men were alike in certain respects, all of them important. These likenesses all belong together. As a whole, and one by one, they should help to make clear the meaning and the spirit of evangelical preaching at its best.

Evangelical Philosophy Of Preaching

Preaching here means God’s way of meeting the needs of sinful men through the proclamation of His revealed truth, by one of His chosen messengers. Not as a scientific definition, but as a working description, this account shows why those evangelical preachers looked on their calling as second to no other on earth, and on their preaching as a privilege that angels might covet. Preaching as the proclamation of God’s revealed truth means that the man in the pulpit makes known to others what he has received from God, mainly through the written Word, and there through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in response to the prayer of faith.

Preaching as the proclamation of God’s revealed truth differs from certain ideas now current about the work of a pulpit master. The herald now in view seeks not to discover, to invent, or to change the message that has come from his King. The messenger wishes rather to understand, to accept, and to present in a winsome fashion what he has received from above for the hearers at church. In 2 Corinthians 1–7 Paul most fully enunciates his practical philosophy of preaching. There he refers to himself as an ambassador of Christ as King. An ambassador does not originate his message, by using his reason, or in any other way. He employs his reason, and all his other God-given powers, in understanding the will of his Ruler, and in making that will known to the hearer, or hearers, with clarity, with interest, and with persuasive effectiveness. So it becomes clear that like John Bunyan every would-be ambassador of King Jesus must plan to dwell and toil in “the house of the interpreter.”

Preaching From The Bible

Every pulpit master at whom we have glanced has thought of himself as the Lord’s messenger in explaining and applying the written Word of God, as it relates to the interests and the needs of men and women in his day. Certain pulpit masters have left us expository sermons; others have not. Some have relied largely on a textual method; others equally devoted to the Scriptures have dealt with them topically. Spurgeon did so in his best-known sermon, “Songs in the Night,” and often elsewhere. Still others have preached allegorically, not having learned a more excellent way of dealing with the Bible. “From” the first two chapters of the Canticles, Bernard of Clairvaux preached eighty-five sermons about Christ. From the first verse of the next chapter he “drew” still another message full of Christian truth, which did not come from the Song of Solomon, a beautiful book of poetry with a far different purpose.

Especially since the Reformation, holy men called of God to preach have striven to deal with each Bible passage in the light of its original purpose and meaning. Thus the Reformers went back to the noblest traditions and ideals of the early Church. For example, Home says about Chrysostom: “He is a man of the Word and a man of the World … Chrysostom himself is saturated with the Scriptures, and is determined that his audience shall be taught to base their lives upon the principles of Holy Writ” (op. cit., p. 134). So with our other exemplars: when in the pulpit, every one of them regarded himself as a man behind the Book, and as standing there to use the Book in meeting the needs of the men to whom he preached.

Preaching Bible Doctrine

The master evangelical preachers have accepted the doctrines of Holy Scripture. They have differed about such matters as Predestination and Sinless Perfection, but they have been strangely alike in adhering to the “faith of our fathers.” This term here means loyalty to the body of revealed truth that appears fully in the Holy Scriptures, especially in the New Testament, and echoes repeatedly from every church hymnal, with its Bible truths set to music. From varying points of view the preaching masters of the Church would have agreed with President Nathan M. Pusey, of Harvard, that “the world is seeking for a creed to follow, and for a song to sing.” They would have agreed, also, in looking to Holy Scripture for that creed, and to Christian hymnody for that song.

Preaching The Doctrine Of God

Of late there has been a widespread “theological renaissance,” especially in our seminaries, and in books about religion, but not as yet in most Protestant pulpits. In some respects the doctrines of this Renaissance differ from those of the Reformation. For instance, the Reformers had a way of putting God first, God in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. Modern teachers and writers tend to stress truth about man, and to put that truth first. For all the return to theology we ought to give thanks, but as for the emphasis, surely we should follow Paul and the other apostles in giving the primacy to the Triune God! It would be a pity if we ignored or minimized the Christian truth about the soul and the body of every man born with the image of God. In all these respects we ought to follow the preaching masters of other days, who agreed with the Apostles and the Reformers in putting the first truth first. In the pulpit, and everywhere else, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God.”

Preaching The Doctrine Of Redemption

In recent times New Testament scholars have rediscovered the core of redemptive truth now known as the kerygma. Popularly this means the preaching of God’s revealed truth as it centers in Christ, the Son of God, and the Redeemer from sin. While some of my “preaching fathers” would not have used the word kerygma, they all held to the redemptive facts enshrined in this term borrowed from Holy Writ. In the pulpit those men ranged widely over the known areas of Christian thought and action. All the while they looked on themselves, primarily, as chosen messengers of God’s grace in setting men free from sin, making them strong to serve, and filling them with hope for the Advent of their Lord, with the triumph of His Kingdom.

In all their preaching, the masters took for granted two other basic truths, which have recently come again to the fore. First, the fact of divine revelation. Apart from God’s written revelation, which portion of the kerygma could mortal men ever have discovered or stated? Second, the fact of our human response. From John 3:16, and from the Bible as a whole, as from their own experiences of redeeming grace, the pulpit masters of other days knew that the preaching of God’s revealed truth called for faith on the part of the hearer. That doctrine of redeeming grace they found supremely in God’s revelation through the Death and Resurrection of His Son. So they could have taken as a preaching motto the key verse of the Fourth Gospel, which I paraphrase, reverently:

These words of God’s kerygma are spoken that as hearers of the Gospel you may believe, and that through believing you may be saved from your sins, and set free to serve in the power of eternal life.

Preaching To The Unsaved

The master preachers of other days delivered two sorts of messages: to the unsaved, or the unchurched; and to active followers of Christ. While the proportion between the two kinds of sermons varied, often the ratio seems to have been about fifty-fifty. Among the published messages of preachers as different as Spurgeon, Moody, and Brooks, this proportion holds as a working standard. Search their volumes of sermons and see, as I have done with amazement, the practical uniformity of the findings.

Take Phillips Brooks, for example, in his preaching ministry at Boston (1869–91). Read the three-volume life by A. V. G. Allen, and the Yale Lectures on Preaching (1877). Then study the ten volumes of Sermons (1910), to figure out the purpose of each discourse. You will find that about half the time Brooks was trying to win the hearer who had not yet accepted Christ, and that the rest of the time Brooks was trying to strengthen the faith of the man who already believed. On the other hand, take Dwight L. Moody, whom Brooks admired and liked as much as Moody liked and admired Brooks. Starting from a point of view different from that of Brooks, as a full-time evangelist Moody spent about half of his preaching hours in addressing believers.

Preaching To Followers Of Christ

Almost without exception, the master preachers have dealt with the didache, as well as the kerygma. Like the Apostles, these later men in the same holy tradition strove from the pulpit to build up strong believers, thus preparing them for larger service, in this world and the next. If anyone today feels that the “cure of souls” from the pulpit has been a recent innovation, let him read the sermonic writings of Richard Baxter, or John Bunyan. Where else in print, for example, can anyone find such a heart-searching discussion of suicide as in an unexpurgated edition of Pilgrim’s Progress? On many another page, where Bunyan wrote about Giant Despair, Doubting Castle, or the Hill Difficulty, he was using Bedford Jail as a pulpit to set forth God’s ways of healing every disorder in a man’s soul. So with other evangelical pulpit masters, such as Thomas Chalmers and Alexander Whyte: no one of them ever dreamed of ignoring the heart needs of men and women after they had once been born from above.

Preaching A Message Of Hope

Contrary to a common impression, evangelical preachers as a rule have delivered messages full of assurance and hope. With William Sanday, New Testament scholar at Oxford, many an evangelical pulpit giant would have agreed that “the center of our Lord’s ministry and mission … lay beyond the grave” (The Life of Christ in Recent Research, p. 121). Hence the evangelical pulpit in other times gave a commanding place to messages about “this life and the next.” For worthy examples turn to the university sermons of Canon H. P. Liddon. Note his repeated stress on the Resurrection. Study also the best-known discourse from John Wesley, “The Great Assize,” by which he meant the Day of Judgment. In dealing with any such heart-searching doctrine, the masters as a rule have spoken with what Jowett loved to term “apostolic optimism.” Why not, when the man in the pulpit believed what his mother had taught him to sing: “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness”?

Preaching To Common People

“The common people heard him gladly.” These words, first written about the Ideal Preacher, would apply to almost every one of His messengers at whom we have looked. Instead of referring to them as “great princes of the pulpit,” He would prefer to bless them as “good and faithful servants.” Whatever the designation, the most Christlike preachers in history have known how to make the truths of God seem real and interesting to ordinary people. Not to do so would have meant to misrepresent the Heavenly Father. In the Bible He everywhere appears as the most interesting and appealing Person of all history. At the same time He appears veiled in mystery and splendor, so that we mortals can not look upon His undimmed glory. Still the pulpit masters were able to preach about Him so that any hearer with the mentality of a twelve-year-old boy could understand the truth of God embodied in any sermon. Accepting that truth, the childlike hearer could bow down to worship, feeling “lost in wonder, love, and praise.”

In terms of our day, such a preacher might have looked on himself as a “transformer.” With transforming truth coming from the mountains of God, through the utterances of prophets and apostles, as illuminated by the writings of scholars and saints, many a preacher of the Gospel to common people has been able to “step it down.” Without changing, weakening, or impairing the mighty truths of revelation, the messenger to God’s common people has been able to present in every sermon an important part of what He has revealed. On the human level the messenger has felt chiefly concerned about the spiritual needs of his hearers. For this reason Martin Luther addressed his sermons to common people, not to Philipp Melanchthon, the scholar. So did Jowett deliberately prepare messages so simple that his critics spoke of them as “thin.” According to one of his many learned admirers, Jowett had mastered the fine art of “making a little go a long way.” This kind of pulpit excellence springs from a Christlike sense of humility.

Preaching With Authority

Every evangelical master preacher has spoken with authority, and that not his own. Herein lies the heart of the evangelical tradition: “Thus saith the Lord.” A man called of God to preach receives from Him a message in keeping with the present needs of the hearers. During long hours of preparation, the man in the study “waits on the Lord.” While waiting he also works, until at length he feels sure about what the Lord wishes him to say. In the latter stages of preparation, the messenger keeps on waiting and working until at last he sees how the Lord wishes him to speak. When he goes into the pulpit, without apology he presents every truth, and discusses every duty in light that has come to him from God.

This kind of pulpit work calls for Christlike humility, and for Christlike courage, as well as common sense. Not by bellowing about his authority, not by claiming supernatural powers, but by living close to God and close to people, the minister takes for granted that he speaks to them for God. So do the hearers know and feel that this man has a message from the King, a message that suits the heart needs of the hearers. Alas, who can understand or explain the spirit and the ways of the minister who speaks with authority? On the other hand, who can fail to sense in the pulpit the presence of such authority, or else the absence?

Divine Constraint In Preaching

Authority in preaching does not depend on anything human. In a sense, a metropolitan minister with a vast church “plant,” a large endowment, a massive choir, and a reputation for magnetic powers of speech can speak with more effectiveness than if the, same man displayed his gifts and graces in Cream Ridge or Honeysuckle Valley. But what about a young minister on the threshold of his career, and aware that he has no dazzling brilliancy (Ezek. 33:30–33)? In Alexander Maclaren’s early ministry at Southampton, as with Jowett’s beginnings at Newcastle upon Tyne, the Lord delighted to speak with authority through a young man who still had much to learn about what to preach and how to do it well. At twenty years of age, without any learning of the schools, and with all sorts of crudity, Spurgeon preached with authority as real as thirty years later, when he had become world famous. At every stage of his ministry such a man feels that he has a mission from God and a message from God. O for a rising generation of evangelical ministers, every one of them loving to preach with authority from God!

Looking back we can see ten marks of evangelical preaching before World War I. These marks begin with pulpit work as the proclamation of God’s revealed truth. They end with the seal of God’s approval on the man preaching with His authority. Who follows in this train?

A Special Word To The Young Minister

My son, the Lord has honored you by calling you to the highest, the holiest, the hardest work in all the world today. For the sake of the Redeemer, and of the people whom you serve, or soon will serve, He would have you make the most of all your God-given powers and graces. He wishes you worthily to represent Him as a pastor, as a leader in worship, and in every sermon as an act of worship. Here I refer only to preaching. In the history of the pulpit He has set before you a noble succession of exemplars, every one of whom has shown the power of the Gospel when spoken by God’s messenger. Now that you stand on the threshold of a life work to be full of increasing burdens and joys, He wishes you to set up pulpit ideals that you will never need to change.

From beginning to end let your ministry be strongly evangelical, and also kind. Many years from now you will look back, as I am looking back, on more than forty years of mercy. Then you will give thanks for all the ways in which your preaching has held true to the “faith of our fathers.” You will feel ashamed and sorry if at any time along the way you have turned aside from God’s revealed truth to “preach” about “lesser things.” In the pulpit and in the study remember that preaching still means the Lord’s way of meeting the heart needs of men through the proclamation of His revealed truth and grace. The more you mingle with people, in Christ’s name, the more you will discover that while their lives keep changing on the surface, at heart they still need the Gospel, “the old consoling Gospel,” with its message of redemption, uplift, and hope. Do not ever preach anything else. Every time be sure to present it in a form worthy of one who represents the King.

A.W.B.

Andrew W. Blackwood, D.D., is professor of preaching at Temple University School of Theology and author of Doctrinal Preaching for Today and seventeen other books.

Cover Story

Faith the Foundation of Freedom

It is to me an astonishing thing that nearly all the exponents of the Christian Faith seek to commend it mostly in intellectual or in personal terms. We seek to make people understand that they need faith as interpretation for their wonderment about what life is, as refuge and solace for its hurts and lonelinesses, as dynamic to lend aim and purpose to their lives. We seek to help them to know that the faith can stand on its own feet intellectually. These things are abundantly true, and it is in the personal realm that religion must find its rise and take root.

Freedom Has A Christian Basis

But there is another angle of approach which we do not take as often as we might. It is simply the practical one of reminding people who enjoy the blessings of human freedom that they owe this blessing primarily to the Christian Faith, and if they are concerned to help make the world a good place for their descendants, they had better ask what shall be its spiritual climate. From whence shall we find sufficient inward force to stand against the barbarism and inhumanity and tyranny and slavery that have arisen in our time? Military defense, industrial strength, political and diplomatic adroitness are necessary and important; but they do not have in themselves enough of a worldview to stand against the godless and materialistic view of the world which is rampant about us.

There are a great many people today who find in some kind of Naturalism or enlightened Humanism all the explanation they need, in friends and family and culture all the solace they need, in some creative interests and work all the dynamic they need. They may be young, well, happily married and reasonably successful. No appeal of personal need may reach them at the moment. But there will come a day when some deeper awareness of need will arise, when life will carry them through some dark valley of sorrow or of suffering. Must we wait till this time before we can expect them to wake up?

Sometimes this will be true. But there is a way into their hearts and minds that we have too seldom tried. It is the simple, practical approach of (1) reminding them whence came our chief blessings, especially freedom; and (2) asking them which way they want the world to go in the future. Jacques Maritain says that “States will be obliged to make a choice for or against the Gospel. They will be shaped either by the totalitarian spirit or by the Christian spirit.”

I find this appeal almost unknown by many educated people. They still persist in thinking that some people are weak and need religion, while others (like themselves) are strong and do not need it. Such paltry private considerations loom very small when you ask in which direction the world is going. Such people take for granted the freedom and other characteristic blessings which we enjoy in the western world, as if they were natural rights, not privileges, and were to be found quite easily. They have forgotten, or never known, how scarce a thing freedom has been, how rare in all human annals. They have not learned that the real centerpiece of the West is Christianity; nor have they considered that, if we would continue to enjoy the fruits of freedom, we had better look to the roots of faith. Shall there be less freedom, or more of it, in the world in which our children are growing? Are we using up our freedom as prodigally as we are using our water supply? If faith is the root, of which freedom is the fruit, it is high time we warned people that their legitimate human interests may very well be directly involved with the success of the Christian enterprise.

The Syrian Stream Runs Deep

I know very well that there are other factors in western civilization than Christianity. Arnold Toynbee says, “The Greek wave coalesced with a Syrian wave, and it is this union that has generated the Christian civilization of the Western world.” Nearly everyone knows the debt we owe the Greeks in all our search for truth. But let’s face it, the Syrian wave (in its Christian form) has spread vastly farther and more deeply into the world than the Greek. On one occasion in a university I seemed to be making too great a claim for the influence of Christianity on the West, and saying too little for the Greek, and a faculty historian challenged me. I asked him if he did not think that Christianity had been the pervasive and popular force that had primarily carried the double blessing, of Syrian and Greek influence, down the centuries; and he allowed this might be true.

We must, of course, remind ourselves that western civilization is not our first concern: Christianity itself is that. But there are substantiating effects in western civilization with which some of us will not readily part. When Toynbee calls ours ‘Christian’ civilization, one is sure he does not mean we are Christian through and through, but rather that the greatest blessings we have, including those values to which we sometimes give devotion, and sometimes only lip-service, derive from Christianity. Much of western civilization has grown fat, soft, comfortable and irresponsible with its own blessings. Unless we are mindful whence they came, and unless we share their benefits with others, we shall lose them, for we shall misuse as well as misunderstand them. But let us still be thankful for the amount of freedom to travel, to know the news, to live at a level of physical comfort above the need for grinding toil, which so many enjoy in our land. These are in themselves good things, when observed in the light of a religion that is concerned “for the body as well as for the soul.”

Self-Interest A Proper Appeal

In suggesting that the good human effects of Christianity are further reason for believing in Christianity and working for it, one is sometimes accused of appealing to self-interest. I have no hesitation whatever in appealing to anyone’s self-interest to get him to come quickly out of a burning house, or to go and have a physical examination when he appears to have cancer. What seems to me at stake today is human survival. If a man can be persuaded to give his attention to the Christian religion, on the basis that this may give him a whole view of life, improve his human relations, and help him win the war of ideas between the forces led by Christian thinking as against those led by communist thinking, thank God for having such a practical point of contact by which you can get his attention! There is a great deal of pseudo-spirituality floating about which asks for a purely unselfish approach to the search for God. Come, come, which of us was ever disinterestedly unselfish when we sought God? We sought Him because we needed Him. We used Him at the first, as our little children use us. Later on, let us hope, we came by a more mature mind, and began asking God to use us.

Do not forget that Jesus’ own sayings are filled with the thought of reward, understood as meaning that what He held out to us was good for us. “Seek and ye shall find”. “He that loseth his life for My sake, the same shall find it.” “Seek ye first the Kingdom … and all these things shall be added unto you.” We find some persecution also promised in this arrangement; but the New Testament is not so squeamish about rewards as we are. Do not ask a drowning man to be too meticulous about his motives: he is drowning and he would like to be saved.

Our Malady Is Spiritual Poverty

Our civilization is in just such critical danger. We need help. We ask for it with desperation. If God wills to send it, we shall remember one day to say “Thank You” and one day we shall even begin to say, “Now what do You want me to do?” And then we shall be in the way of getting converted. But the beginning is way back in the elementals of human desperation and need. Too many men, and especially clergy, forget how primitive and unspiritual was their own first cry to God, and persist in making their hearers feel that, unless you come to God from some high motive, you dare not come to Him at all. It is contrary to natural life, as we know it in our children, and to spiritual life, as we have known it in ourselves. Away with this pseudo-spirituality! Our world is sick and we are sick, and our sickness is primarily our poverty of faith in God and the Christ to Whom we owe just about everything of worth that we know. Let us be simply honest about our need. God has answered many a selfish prayer, and then led the prayer on to better things.

Democracy Does Not Stand Alone

Do we need proof of the dependence of our western freedom on our inherited Christian faith? Let me give you just a few statements which carry weight. William Aylott Orton of Yale said, “… it is only in the Christian doctrine of man that we can find a firm and reasoned ground for the American affirmation.” G. K. Chesterton said, “There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” T. S. Eliot says, “The term democracy … does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike—it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.” And there is the widely-quoted remark of William Penn, “Men must be governed by God, or they will be ruled by tyrants.”

If we will not accept the dicta of believers in democracy, we should at least accept those of men who hate and vilify it. Karl Marx said, “The democratic concept of man is false, because it is Christian. The democratic concept holds that each man has a value as a sovereign being. This is the illusion, dream and postulate of Christianity.” And Adolph Hitler said, “To the Christian doctrine of the infinite significance of the individual human soul, I oppose with icy clarity the saving doctrine of the nothingness and insignificance of the individual human being.”

The Best A Christian Bequest

We are not saying that western civilization is perfect: we are saying that the best things in it derive from the Christian heritage. We are saying that freedom is one of faith’s best and most important results. And we are saying that the thing that may catch the attention and the imagination of some selfish, and even sodden, beneficiary of our culture and civilization and freedom may be a reminder of what may happen to his hide in the immediate future, when you cannot get him to think about what is going to happen to his soul in eternity. When he finds out how much he owes temporally to the Christian Gospel, he may wake up and realize that he should be doing something about a faith to which he owes so much.

There are, I think, excellent reasons for beginning where people are, rather than where they should be. We must not fear; instead we should with all honesty and integrity try to make some appeal to the common sense and long-range self-interest of the ordinary man. It would do theoretically-minded clergy a great deal of good to have to think out a really logical argument to convince a skeptic or a materialist that it would be good for him to help forward the Christian enterprise.

Liberty Without God Breeds Bondage

We all know that the danger of freedom is always its misuse. Left to himself, left to a philosophy that does without God, man becomes more and more selfish in the use of his liberty. This in turn will require more and more controls from somewhere to keep him within bounds. Edmund Burke said, “Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.” The converse is also true: the more there is within, the less there must be without. If only western, democratic, so-called Christian man would exercise a little more self-restraint and unselfishness in the use of his freedom, he would have much better prospects for preserving it for his grandchildren. But what will make him do this? Nothing but the setting of his “will and appetite” in the framework of his accountability to God. As faith is the thing that gives a man the conception of himself as God’s child in the beginning, and encourages him to fight for his freedom, faith is also the thing that gives him the sense of his accountability to God when freedom threatens to run away with him. The faith which creates freedom alone can control it.

We believe in the “separation of church and state” in this land. It was proven a good and sound principle. But in the day when our people think that this means a democracy can run well without having continually poured into it sound, believing, God-directed men and women, our greatness will have passed.

Samuel M. Shoemaker, D.D., S.T.D., is rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh and author of The Church Alive, They’re on the Way, How to Become a Christian, and other books.

Preacher In The Red 1For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Suite 1014 Washington Building, Washington, D.C.

NEW AVENUE OF SERVICE

While I was a student in Bible college, several classmates took up the fad of saying things “backwards,” or mixing up words to give an expression a different meaning. One favorite expression was “occupew the pie,” for “occupy the pew.”

There were several small churches in the area where student ministers preached. I was invited to bring the Sunday evening sermon at one of these. A rather unusual number of student ministers attended. My sermon had to do with “Christian Service.”

Toward the end of the message I was building toward the “climax.” I was endeavoring to impress my audience with the fact that they should be “busy about the Father’s business.” I stated that many people could not teach, sing, preach or go as missionaries, but that no man lived who could not lend encouragement to the work of the Lord by his presence each church service. I intended to say that the least thing anyone could do was to come and “occupy a pew.” What I really said was, come and “occupew a pie.” Silence prevailed for a moment until one of my best friends could no longer hold his feelings. The service ended immediately.—The REV. SHERRIEL E. STOREY, Minister, Perry Christian Church, Canton, Ohio.

Cover Story

Worship in the Life of the Nation

America today is a nation at worship. Under many forms and in a variety of practices, the people of the United States are bowing before the Eternal God. Men and women, boys and girls everywhere go to church, say their prayers, participate in the offices of praise and thanksgiving in this period of national spiritual renewal. Once more at this season of the year we are being summoned by the President to observe our only national religious day—a Day of Thanksgiving.

All of this is as it should be. America began with men on their knees, has been strengthened and sustained as it has kept close to God, and Americans—when most truly themselves—have been people of faith and prayer.

The Reformation And 1776

The United States was born at a pinnacle in the progressive emancipation of the mind and spirit of man. Although many streams in the historical process flowed to the confluence of time on July 4, 1776, the most significant stream was the floodtide of the Protestant Reformation. And the dominating influence at our origin was the Calvinian theology and the way of life it fostered. God was the sovereign ruler of a moral universe before whom all nations and all men would finally be judged. A man was a man in his full stature only as he acknowledged the majesty and holiness of the Creator and humbly yielded himself to the divine will and purpose in life. Our forebears were committed to the elemental Christian virtues of chastity, sobriety, frugality, and the disciplined will. God, in the most vivid sense, was the source of our national life. And this life can be sustained only at its main source. That is why the worship and knowledge of God are so important.

Life Nourished By Worship

From the very beginning to this Thanksgiving Day in 1956, we have been a people whose life has been undergirded by faith in God and nourished by worship of the Almighty. In this faith our institutions were created, our culture promoted, our philanthropic endeavors initiated, our liberties secured and freedom for men everywhere promoted. Men accustomed to freedom in their approach to God, as they were accustomed in the dissenters’ paradise—the American Colonies—insisted upon freedom in the public expression of their ideas and the ordering of their lives. Men could be trusted with their own destiny so long as they lived in obedience to a higher authority—the authority of God. The soul of man in this new world would be most free, most trustworthy when captive only to God.

America has become great and strong not simply by vast natural resources made secure from all enemies by wide oceans and friendly neighbors. Other nations have had all that and for longer periods. America has become great and strong principally because of a creative spirit emanating from her religious faith, chiefly and dominantly evangelical Christian faith. In some, this faith has been intimate and personal. In others, it has been a way of life derived from the social atmosphere and psychological climate produced chiefly by evangelical piety.

God And Our Survival

The United States is so completely the child of a great religious heritage that the worship of God is essential to its survival in the purity of its pristine character. The worship of God is not an option in our life, but an indispensable requisite for our very existence. Allow worship to languish and we begin to deteriorate. I am not now concerned with the technical liturgical concepts of worship, although I believe that a true Protestant liturgy is the only sure protection against shallow, insipid and unrewarding worship. I am here desperately concerned that there be worship, that men go to church, enter into its life and in concert with other men give testimony to the glory of God in our common life.

No Fully Christian Nation

In the absolute sense and on the perfectionist basis there is no such thing as a “Christian nation.” In terms of the higher order of the Kingdom of God, no political entity, in this imperfect world, is thoroughly Christian. But some nations embody more Christian principles than other nations. Some nations are more hospitable to Christian truth than others. And some nations are more thoroughly responsive than others to Christian motivations and to doing the will of God. Christian ideas, ideals and culture flourish to a greater extent in some nations than in others. And such nations, in God’s time, become less obstructed conductors of the Christian evangel and more direct conveyors of God’s truth to the world.

When America is most faithful to its origin, to its truest self and to its God, it is that kind of nation.

In humility and fullness of dedication, it may well be that in this epoch when America carries such a heavy international responsibility, God can use her as an instrument of His purposes on the earth. Should that be true, as I believe it is true, the leaders and the people of this land must keep close to God, seek to discover His will and resolutely perform this providentially bestowed role of world leader.

A Nation Under God

A nation under God is a nation under His authority, under His power, and under His judgment.

If a nation is to be a “nation under God,” it must be a worshipping nation. Genuine worship is the offering of one’s self to God. For the Christian, it is accepting the gift of a new life in God through Jesus Christ, which is the result of repentance and faith. God is not to be used but to be served.

The Exploitation Of Religion

Much is being said these days in religious circles about the “exploitation” of religion as a weapon of ideological conflict. In the highest sense, pure religion is not to be “exploited” for anything except God’s purposes. God is to be worshipped and served for God’s sake. Righteousness is to be sought for righteousness’ sake. Nothing in Jesus’ teaching is more emphatic than that. But is it not true that a nation spiritually weak in our kind of world is also ideologically vulnerable? It therefore follows that a people constantly strengthened and renewed by the worship of God is better equipped for an age of sharp ideological warfare. When God is sought for God’s sake, and righteousness is served for righteousness’ sake, the nation becomes a citadel of strength for free men.

Moral Sag And Revival

In the decade since World War II, American life has been characterized on the one hand by a moral sag and cultural deterioration, and on the other hand by a moral resurgence and a spiritual awakening. Both are real and both arise out of the vast and variegated life that is America. Both the negative and the positive derive from a dynamism inherent in the cultural soil of the New World. The presence of the former does not invalidate the latter. That we are living in a period of great religious revival of continental proportions is too clear to need documentation. The evidence is all about us. It is too cumulative and too impressive to be ignored or minimized. We ought not to mistake motion for power, religious activity for religious renewal. But, allowing for all the exaggeration, the excesses, the sentimentality and the superficiality which appear in every age, the truth remains that there has rarely been a period in our national life when the movement of God’s spirit has been so manifestly real as today.

American Christianity

We have an American way of doing things, an American way of expressing ourselves and the American manifestation of religious vitality. This may be mystifying, even an enigma to foreigners, but it is our way. Our own church statesmen have always contended that in our missionary outreach, we should seek ultimately to make the Christian faith indigenous in the lands to which the Gospel is carried. But when we have such a vigorous indigenous American expression of Christianity, some of the same articulate churchmen lament the “nationalization of religion,” and the “domestication of the church.” Paradoxically, to some folk Christianity is good when expressed in some distant cultural pattern but when it appears under American patterns and forms it appears somehow corrupted. At best it seems to them synthetic or artificial. Indeed, we need always to refine the accent of the Gospel in our nation, and we need to purify the expression of Christian piety among our people. And we must ever be submissive to the searching judgment of God. But we need not be, and we are not called upon to be, something other than Christians in the rich soil of freedom we call America.

Spirituality In Washington

Our nation’s capital has become a dramatic focal symbol of a people at worship. Washington shares with the entire nation the drive and force of the contemporary revival. The way of Christian faith and the life of prayer are the norm for most of the leaders of our government. This return to the ways of the Spirit crosses all party lines and penetrates all religious groupings. In Washington it is transparently genuine.

Most of the persons who hold public office today are men who believe in and worship God, who seek to discover His will and who in the stewardship of their offices attempt to do God’s will. After a decade of intimate association with leaders of national life on all levels, through three presidential administrations, it is my judgment that by and large, the men whom we send to the highest offices of the land make the Christian evangel and the reign of Christ’s spirit as relevant and as meaningful in their lives as do men anywhere in the land.

Politics As Divine Vocation

For generations the church has encouraged Christian laymen to enter politics as an expression of the Christian vocation. We have spent our years persuading Christian men to perform public service. Many have been willing to do this.

Today, when such men come to Washington, enter into the life of the church, attend services, read their Bible, teach Sunday School classes, hold church offices and go to prayer meetings, there are some religious analysts who seem to think this is all hyprocritical and sneer at it as “piety along the Potomac.” Religion is good, they imply, for the barber and the baker, for the banker and the butcher, for the teacher and the tcol maker, but when it appears in Washington in a politician, a diplomat or a military leader, there is something sinister and suspect about it. This is what the new cynicism suggests—a sneer is substituted for sagacity.

Can there be any more effective way of discouraging devout churchmen from seeking public office, or preventing good men already in office from worshipping God, than to impugn their motives?

At this moment of history, when we must be great and strong spiritually, it is no service to the nation and no real contribution to the cause of Christ to indict as insincere those who witness to the truths of God and to our historic faith from high places, or to debunk as something “phony” the widespread revival of religion in our land. By all means, let there be precise evaluation, profound judgment, real prophetic insight. That is the way of correction and growth. But let it all be in the spirit of love, in a constructive and not corruptive mood. The ecclesiastical tent must be big enough for all sincere Christians. In this hour, we need a solidarity of religious witness. We need a nation which is a bastion of spiritual power if we are to be adequate for this age.

It was only from a position of moral eminence and authentic spiritual elevation that the President of the United States was able to make his audacious proposals at Geneva. The whole concept was wrought in prayer. It was that which gave lasting meaning to that historic gathering. And it will ever be so.

Americans simply must honor, worship and serve God as He has been revealed in Jesus Christ, our Lord. For the most part, our ideals are Christian ideals, our standards Christian standards, our goals Christian goals, our motivations Christian motivations. Under whatever form or denominational auspices, let us thank God for every American who today says out of a sincere heart, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.”

Edward L. R. Elson, L.H.D., D.D., Litt.D., L.L.D., is minister at National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., and author of One Moment with God, America’s Spiritual Recovery, and other books.

Cover Story

Cranmer’s Message to Our Times

Four hundred years have now passed since England was given the portentous sign of an archbishop dying in flames for evangelical truth, and holding out the right hand that had almost betrayed him as a first victim to the fire. In those four hundred years there have been revolutionary changes in every aspect of the nation’s life, not least the religious. And since no nation can live in a vacuum, they are changes which for good or evil have significance for the world at large. There is every reason, therefore, to ask whether Cranmer still has a message for our twentieth century Christian world, and if so, what form that message will take.

Beliefs Cranmer Valued

Perhaps we can begin with the doctrine of Cranmer. For, after all, it was his doctrine which shaped the rest of his activity. And first we may take into account two or three more formal considerations. Cranmer was a dogmatician, but he was not a dogmatist. He had a mind which was always open to new truth. He took seriously the possibility that he might misunderstand the Word and revelation of God. He was always willing to be taught—so long as the teaching was in the right school and by the right Master. He was sixty years old before he came to understand the doctrine for which he died. And having found it, he did not lose all sympathy for those who had not yet done so. That is why he made his articles of religion as comprehensive as possible within an evangelical and scriptural framework. He was no inquisitor or persecutor. He realized that, to prevent a confusion of voices, the Church needs a confession on disputed issues. But he had no desire either to arrest a conscientious obedience to the Holy Spirit or to disrupt the Church by overly scrupulous definition. If truth, as he saw it, was quite incompatible with error, it was not incompatible with charity. And he had no illusions of having a monopoly of truth.

Materially, the doctrine of Cranmer has no very original feature, as compared with other Reformers. Its basis was loyalty to the Word of God, and it was in this bondage to the Word that Cranmer won through to the true liberty of the children of God.

Justification by faith played a central place in his teaching, with the characteristic emphasis that a true faith is a faith which obeys the divine command as well as the divine invitation, and therefore expresses itself in works. A reconstruction of sacramental doctrine was his third and most detailed contribution, and at this point Cranmer has some insights which may well guide us to a more genuinely biblical doctrine than either a crass “sacramentalism” on the one side or a mere “symbolism” on the other. The patristic learning of Cranmer is a distinctive feature, and if he did not always prove satisfactorily that the fathers taught good Reformation doctrine, he has shown us that they will always repay a careful study—especially when read independently of later medieval categories. Always, however, Cranmer was careful to subject the fathers to the apostolic, and therefore the scriptural, norm. For it is by the Bible that the Church and its thinking may rightly grow into the likeness of Christ. And it was not for nothing that Cranmer as a university don had demanded a biblical knowledge from his students, and as archbishop took practical steps which resulted in the licensing and later the definite institution in the churches of the English Bible.

Gifted Liturgical Phrasing

In the Anglican communion itself, the theological work of Cranmer is often discounted. His writings are not read, and the articles seem alien to a generation which has lost touch with the background from which they come. Only the patristic enthusiasm strikes a responsive chord, and even the fathers are not at all read as Cranmer read them. But if this is the case, and there is scope in many quarters for a deep re-thinking of the issues that Cranmer raised, the situation is very different in relation to his liturgical work. Of course, the prayer-book of Cranmer has its critics. The doctrinal assumptions of much of the revision are particularly disliked. The divesting of many of the offices of the more elaborate ceremonial, as well as the truncation or drastic reorganization of the structure, can hardly command the enthusiasm of those who look in a very different direction from Cranmer. Yet even the worst critics cannot dispute the fact that Cranmer had not only a fine ability to give liturgical form to his doctrinal presuppositions, but a genius in phraseology which makes the English Prayer Book one of the most highly treasured of all service-books, and one of the most daunting and exasperating for those who realize from time to time that there is a practical need to keep it up-to-date.

We can hardly learn from Cranmer’s phrasing, for this displays an element of sheer genius and is therefore inimitable. It teaches us, perhaps, that in the long run large-scale revision of set forms must wait for the hand of a master or masters. But there are many valuable lessons in the aims or principles of Cranmer, whatever forms of worship we may practice or adopt.

Lessons For Worship

A first is that worship should not be too complicated, but follow a simple and well-defined pattern so that there is not the distraction of novelty or confusion.

A second is that worship should be congregational. The mother-tongue is essential for this purpose (as also for edification). And the congregation should be able to join not only in singing but in prayer as well, through responses or common prayers. It must not rely on that which is read or said by the minister any more than it does on that which is sung by a choir.

A third is that the liturgical treasures of the past should as far as possible be exploited in the living situation of the present. The old forms were necessarily burst by the new content, but this did not mean that the old content could not be put into the new forms. As far as possible Cranmer adopted all suitable existing materials. He was not an iconoclast (except, of course, in a more literal sense). He wanted a worship that had wealth and dignity and tradition. He tried to keep the balance between conservatism and reform. And if he pleased neither the extremists nor the reactionaries, he did at least create a new thing which has commended itself to generations of worshippers and enriched the liturgical life of more than the Anglican communion.

Administrative Weakness

The administrative side of Cranmer’s work was the least successful, for he was continually hampered by rulers whom he could not control, and thwarted by the lack of any consistent support from ecclesiastical colleagues. Many of the practical measures of reform carried out under Henry were not of Cranmer’s devising or execution. Others which he might have desired were incapable of realization.

Negatively, we learn from Cranmer the danger inherent in every Erastian or semi-Erastian system. A theoretical case can be made out for the royal headship which Cranmer espoused in conscience as well as practice, but it presumes a “most religious and gracious king” who will not use the Church and its affairs merely as an instrument of domestic or foreign policy.

But positively, there are better things to say, for Cranmer had vision even where he had no capacity. In the redeployment of monastic and chantry endowments, for example, he saw the need for a great increase in the number of preaching and teaching bishops and pressed for the provision of schools and hospitals. The injunctions, especially in the early years of Edward VI, lay great emphasis on the question of an educated as well as a godly ministry, resulting, of course, in an instructed and therefore more genuinely Christian people.

A favorite project of Cranmer was the drastic revision of canon law. The persistent obstruction of civil rulers prevented its practical realization. But the project reflects a typically Reformation concern for discipline. And the proposals include an important provision for the restoration of synods. Cranmer himself never had the force or authority to implement his suggestions. In the rough and tumble of administration and relationships with civil powers it may well be that there is a place for characters very different from cranmer.

But Cranmer did at least show a wide range of vision, and if he had been given the opportunity he might easily have carried through a far-reaching program of reform. In the circumstances and setting of the time, it may indeed be doubted whether any churchman, however forceful, could have done very much more. Even the masterful Wolsey broke on the rock of Tudor despotism.

This brings us directly to a final consideration of the character of Cranmer. For in the last analysis, it is by the life that a man is known. And Cranmer as a man has been the center of almost persistent controversy and misunderstanding. He has been pitied as a weakling and vilified as a sycophant. He has even been accused of hypocrisy and deliberate cruelty. And there are facts or episodes which can, of course, be adduced to support any or all of these interpretations.

Perhaps the real element of truth underlying them is that Cranmer was undoubtedly thrust willy-nilly into a position which he did not desire and for which he had, humanly speaking, no particular aptitude. Cranmer was almost a born scholar. He loved his quiet, studious life at Cambridge. He had no taste or ability for great matters of state and government. He was humble by nature and modest in taste and ambition. He had not the nature either to ride rough-shod over opponents or to stride gladly and militantly to martyrdom. He was one of the little things of the world, a despised earthen vessel, destined by God to carry a great treasure.

Cranmer was not by any means perfect, and in his high office the weak strains in his constitution were frequently exposed. But if he had the weaknesses of his virtues, they were solid virtues all the same—and genuinely Christian virtues.

Void Of Selfish Ambition

For one thing, he had no selfish ambitions. He did not covet wealth or glory or power. He did not abuse his position, even in the scramble for monastic riches.

Again, he was wholly honest and candid, if humble, in relation to himself. When attacked by his enemies, he was quite prepared to be examined and did not try to bluster his way through.

Above all, he was openhanded and friendly, especially to those who attacked or offended him. “Do my Lord of Canterbury an ill turn, and he will be your friend forever,” was a saying well supported by the facts.

It was perhaps because Henry saw in Thomas Cranmer a man without guile and without animosity—the very opposite of himself, but a genuine exemplification of Christian virtues—that he came to feel for him not merely admiration that he was so great a scholar, or gratitude that he solved his matrimonial problems, but affection that he was so loyal a subject, and above all so good a man. In Cranmer—elevated against his will—we catch a glimpse of the self-abasement which the world—even the world of historical judgment—can still scorn, but which is still the way of the Son of God, the way of the cross, and therefore the way of the Christian.

Architect Of Anglican Reform

And God did indeed use this weak thing of the world to confound the high and the mighty. At the deepest level, even in time, the contribution made by Cranmer in his lowliness and weakness was greater and more far-reaching than that of Henry in his power, or Wolsey in his statecraft, or Gardiner in his guile, or Northumberland in his forceful rapacity. For it was this man who proved to be the true architect of Anglican reform as it was finally carried through after the Marian reaction. His main work was in terms of spiritual realities—a Bible, a Prayer Book and a doctrinal confession. And in spite of their apparent insignificance, these are the most potent and abiding realities, in history as also in eternity. In other words, the life and character and work of Cranmer—for all their admitted deficiencies—are a challenge to our perception of the true proportion of contesting realities, the mode of the divine operation and the nature of our apostolic and Christian calling.

G. W. Bromiley, Ph.D., D.Litt., is rector of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Edinburgh and former Vice-Principal, Tyndale Hall, Bristol. He is also author of Thomas Cranmer: Theologian.

Bible Book of the Month: The Gospel of John

In 1936, C. H. Dodd, a leading New Testament scholar of Great Britain, said concerning John, “I am disposed to think that the understanding of this Gospel is not only one of the outstanding tasks of our time, but the crucial test of our success or failure in solving the problem of the New Testament as a whole.”

What is the problem of the Fourth Gospel? It is a multiple problem involving authorship, relation to the Synoptic Gospels, the religious milieu upon which it draws for its ideas, and its historical character.

The amount of literary labor expended on John is immense. A glance at the book shelves in the present writer’s study reveals more volumes on John than on the other three Gospels combined. Our British friends have been particularly active in this field over the years.

Authorship

A practically unbroken line of testimony from the ancient Church assigns the Gospel to John the son of Zebedee. If it be objected that the first clear-cut witness is Irenaeus in the latter part of the second century, which is rather late, one may reply (1) that the period before Irenaeus is one of comparative silence on the literary side, (2) that the lack of positive testimony to John’s authorship in this early period may well be due to the use of the Gospel by the heretical Gnostics, (3) that the testimony of Irenaeus gains in weight when it is recognized that only one person linked him to John, namely, the saintly Polycarp.

The counterclaim that John died at an early age, though supposedly derived from Papias, who lived a half-century before Irenaeus, actually comes from sources several centuries later. If this was really put forward by Papias, one would expect the early Church fathers to have taken some note of it. Since the inspiration for such an opinion, no matter what its source, is the saying of Jesus to the sons of Zebedee about drinking His cup, the report may safely be dismissed as having arisen out of a need to fulfill Jesus’ prediction.

Some moderns have been attracted to the notion that John the Elder, a rather shadowy figure who is supposed to have lived at Ephesus, may be the real author. When this viewpoint takes the form that the afore-mentioned John was scarcely more than an amanuensis, little objection need be raised. But to assume that another John who stood outside the apostolic circle is responsible for the Gospel creates needless difficulty. Would the Church be inclined to receive into its canon of Scripture an account so different from the tradition embodied in the Synoptics, which were already in use and which rested upon apostolic authority? The only circumstance which would suffice to clear this hurdle is the indisputable apostolicity of the book.

The Johannine authorship has had and continues to have scholarly support over the last half-century despite many voices clamoring against it. Such men as Ethelbert Stauffer of Erlangen, A. C. Headlam, Scott Holland, J. Armitage Robinson, and H. P. V. Nunn affirm the traditional position.

Relation To Synoptic Gospels

Ninety per cent of the material in the Fourth Gospel is unique, having no counterpart in the others. Lacking is any account of the birth of Jesus, His baptism and temptation, the transfiguration, the parabolic teaching, and the Eucharistic sayings of our Lord. A few miracles (signs) chosen out of many serve as the foil for a series of discourses in which some of the many aspects of Christ’s person are given prominence. Peculiar to John is the long discourse in the Upper Room.

This Gospel contains a framework of history that is wanting in the Synoptics. From it we obtain the perspective of a ministry considerably longer than the single year accounted for by the other Evangelists. In particular, John opens to us the Judean ministry. To Scott Holland belongs the credit of showing not only that the Synoptics presuppose such a ministry—others have pointed out that the friends at Bethany, the owner of the colt, the good man of the house at Jerusalem, as well as the “how often” in Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem demand His presence there on previous occasions—but of showing that the Synoptics are really unintelligible without the Judean ministry reported by John. The withdrawal to Galilee and the conduct of the mission there, noted in the Synoptics (Matt. 4:12), have their explanation in the opposition stirred up against Jesus by reason of His early activity in Judea.

Though the Synoptics sketch the determined ascent to Jerusalem at the climax of the ministry and treat the issue as predetermined, since the city has had its time of visitation and has not perceived it, only the activity of the Lord in the holy city prior to this time, as told by John, explains the situation. One could wish that every Christian had the opportunity to read the tremendous passages by Scott Holland on this subject.

Relation To Contemporary Thought

On the question of John’s relation to the world of religious and philosophical thought of his time, the safest verdict is that he was not unacquainted with what his contemporaries were thinking and saying, and that he used their conceptions as steppingstones to lead them to a heightened appreciation of Christ. Such may well be the import of his introduction of the Son of God as the Logos in the prologue and the rather frequent recurrence of the word know. The Hermetic literature of Egypt abounds in this emphasis as well as in allusions to light and life. The uniqueness of John lies in the presentation of Jesus Christ as the indispensable means of knowing God the Father and as the One in Whom men must trust if they would know.

C. H. Dodd has been so impressed with the Hellenic background of the Fourth Gospel that he concludes the book must have been written to make converts to Christianity among intelligent Hellenes. But this flies in the face of the declared purpose of the writing—that the readers may continue to believe (the literal force of the verb in 20:31). At various points in the Gospel, John emphasizes the increased demand for faith that Jesus placed upon His followers. Corresponding to this, we are permitted to observe from time to time the heightened response of the Twelve to this demand. The book was written for believers, and for those familiar with the Synoptic tradition, but written in such a way as to present the claims of Christ to the unbeliever.

Historical Character

The tradition, in part old, in large part put forward here for the first time, at least in written form, is presented by John not merely as a recital of events but even more as an interpretation of the person of our Lord. The strong insistence on the Word made flesh (1:14) constitutes a protest against the Docetizing tendency already at work in the first century.

Sometimes it has been asserted that this Gospel has a mystical approach to Jesus, but this is misleading, for mysticism is careless of historical considerations. In its extreme form it calls for identification with the deity. John, like the rest of the writers of the New Testament, preserves the distinction between God and the creature despite the wonder of the new life in Christ.

The Gospel’s Value

The book has immeasurable value both for the preacher and the teacher of the Word. Evangelistic texts dot its chapters by scores and hundreds. No Christian teacher can ignore the Gospel, especially the incomparable Upper Room discourse.

It may be said of this book more truly than of any other in the New Testament that it may be studied on more than one level. Even the most elementary approach yields great blessing. On the other hand, the theologian cannot exhaust the truths suggested here.

John may be approached from various standpoints, such as the discourses, where the writer, much like Paul in Galatians 2, starts with a definite historical situation and glides into theological reflection based upon it. Or one may make a study of the signs, or of the I Am’s, or of the ruling concepts that are mediated through the recurring key words: light, life, truth, glory, know, believe. Again, one may trace the Tabernacle structure through the book, using 1:14 as the starting point. Fine sermonic material may be gleaned from a study of the individuals found here, many of whom are scarcely more than names in the Synoptics. In John they become characters. We see them develop under the tutelage of Christ.

Tools For Exposition

Of the older works, Godet and Bishop Westcott have an abiding usefulness. Among the newer volumes, William Temple’s Readings in St. John’s Gospel (1945) is not detailed but suggestive. In 1940 appeared E. C. Hoskyn’s commentary, treating John mainly from the standpoint of its theological implications. No one should miss consulting this work. One of the latest is by C. K. Barrett (1955). It is more valuable for its long introduction than for its comments.

Among American writers mention should be made of M. C. Tenney’s John, the Gospel of Belief (1948), R. C. H. Lenski’s The Interpretation of St. John’s Gospel (1931) and William Hendriksen’s two volumes (1953).

Two works that are not really commentaries are nevertheless pertinent because of their attempt to unfold the thought of the Gospel. C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (1953), explores John in terms of contemporary religious and philosophical thought in the Hellenic world. Rumor has it that Dr. Dodd is planning to continue his studies in a second volume. W. H. Rigg, The Fourth Gospel and Its Message for Today (1952), is less concerned with the extrabiblical approach. He seeks to expound the great themes of the Gospel in terms of the message itself.

Students of the Upper Room discourse will find T. D. Bernard’s The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ (1892) richly rewarding. For a treatment of our Lord’s prayer in chapter 17, nothing surpasses Marcus Rainsford’s Our Lord Prays for His Own, since 1950 once more available. Another valuable commentary, but not so readily obtainable, is John Brown’s “Exposition of John XVII” (1850) which Spurgeon described as “deep, full, and overflowing.”

Though it is not a commentary, W. F. Albright’s contribution to The Background of the New Testament and Its Eschatology (1956) is valuable for its support of the historical trustworthiness of the book from the standpoint of archeology.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Reflections on a Poll of the Protestant Clergy in America.

Protestant ministers of all denominations throughout the United States responded with candor and directness to CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S inquiry: “What change for the better in American affairs do you desire for your candidate if elected?” More than 2,000 clergymen, participating in this representative sampling of personal conviction, mirrored their long-range concern for a brighter America.

Their answers hold a significant interest not simply for the victors at the polls, but for the large and influential Christian community in American life.

In its pre-election news section (Oct. 29 issue), CHRISTIANITY TODAY reported that its random sampling of ministers from all states indicated favor for President Eisenhower over Governor Stevenson by eight-to-one. These percentages were more than confirmed by many hundreds of additional replies received after press time. Yet the manses, parsonages and rectories of America left no doubt that, whichever party would be triumphant at the polls, the national scene calls urgently for specific improvements during the next four years.

The wide disparity between the eight-to-one ministerial vote and the public vote generally sounds a warning against regarding ministerial conviction as an automatic index to the public mind. Less disparity exists between the Protestant clergy and Protestant church members, doubtless, than between the clergy and the citizenry as a whole. Yet the clergy are often motivated more intensely (dare we say, always more highly?) and their statistics provide a specialized index of opinion.

Ministers expressed deep conviction that the future of America depends more upon the application of spiritual concepts in national and international life and less upon a specific political party or candidate. The pulpit popularity of President Eisenhower in his re-election campaign sprang from his identification with an attitude of faith in God and in objective moral norms more than sheer party considerations, although policy issues bore conspicuous weight.

Facing The Right Way

Ministerial anxiety for the enhancement of national life is not confined simply to one party or shade of political conviction. It included, however, an underlying confidence in the direction given to political life by the Eisenhower administration. This accounts, no doubt, for the relative absence of any radical indictment of prevailing American outlook. Almost one in eighteen of the ministers who voted for Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956 in effect wrote: “No change; he is doing O.K.” Endorsement of policy ran considerably higher among pro-Eisenhower clergy who had no vote in 1952. Better than one in three in this category urged simply that he “keep up the good work.”

Although no sense of panic prevails about the temper of national life, the ministerial hope for the future nonetheless incorporated the hope of dramatic change. Appreciative of the fact that America in the last four years had been put somewhat more conspicuously “under God” than in recent decades, they shared no illusion that “God’s in the White House (or hovers very near),” as a writer in The Manchester Guardian recently opined. The significant proposals came from clergy of Republican and Democratic vision alike, as well as from those identified with neither party. They came from ministers who supported the same candidate both in 1952 and 1956 as insistently as from switch-voters.

Foreign Policy A Concern

CHRISTIANITY TODAY returns were tabulated as pro-Eisenhower, pro-Stevenson, and Others (Undecided), with special alertness to switch-voting. In almost every block of clergy votes, an improved foreign policy during the next four years was marked the greatest imperative. Ministers who switched from Stevenson in 1952 to Eisenhower in 1956 provided the lone exception, for they assigned greater urgency to the pursuit of an aggressive and realistic program of racial desegregation.

Dissatisfactions over foreign policy ran deeper than agreement on a satisfactory alternative. Many recommendations were vague and general, favoring a program more vigorous, stable and progressive. The goal of “continuing maturity” and of “less sporadic moves” in foreign policy was vigorously pressed.

Specific suggestions for implementing a program of strong world leadership were not lacking, however, and ministers sought to outline elements of “a more decidedly Christian foreign policy.”

Clergymen voting for Stevenson both in 1952 and 1956 suggested that a realistic grasp of international affairs would involve less reliance on military measures and more active support of international cooperation.

Clergymen twice supporting Eisenhower also worked their creative concern for continued progress and integrity in world affairs into specific suggestions for the easing of international tension. Only occasionally was there a protest against “many blunders” and a demand for “changes in the State Department,” for example, “get rid of Dulles.” Most expressions reflected a more moderate pursuit of “wise and planned foreign policy.”

Specific recommendations divided almost equally along four lines: world peace, the United Nations, foreign aid, and long-term moral perspective.

International Morality

An aggressive spiritual-moral international policy was a recurring plea. Ministers asked for “foreign relations from idealistic principles and not from opportunistic motivation,” for “world security built on a trusting spiritual level, and less on military spending,” for “more consistent emphasis on spiritual values,” for “continued stress on moral and spiritual uplift.” “Russia is ahead of us in propaganda,” wrote one minister, adding a plea for good will. Virtually all who touched the subject asked for a tougher policy with Russia: “less bending before Russian bluff,” “a firmer stand toward Russia … whose pledged word cannot be trusted. Oh, for a Teddy Roosevelt!”; “more drastic stand against Russia and the Communist party,” “no dealings with Russia, no recognition of Red China,” “firmer policy with regard to Red Countries, and passage of the Bricker amendment.” On the positive side were suggestions like: “stand up more firmly for freedom all over the world,” “help the colonial states obtain independence.”

The subject of future relations to the United Nations was as frequently raised. Some clergymen, without any reference to the U.N., urged greater appreciation of world responsibility: “internationally-minded government,” “improved relations with Far East and India as well as Near East,” “more interest in under-dog nations,” “less nationalism, more world vision.” But nationalistic emphasis was not lacking. Comment on U.N. participation was sharply divided, with a seven to five edge for those favoring greater activity. Opposition to U.N. participation was often strongly worded: “take U.S. out of the U.N. and U.N. out of the U.S.”

Pursuit Of Peace

Yet Protestant ministers reflected the need for greater determination in the pursuit of world peace. Only one minister, however, went so far as to urge “peace at any cost.” But others stressed the need for “creative world-peace pursuits.” One in five of the ministers who stipulated world peace as the major concern of the future called for a lessening of preparation for war: “cut spending for war efforts,” “less emphasis on bombs and materials of war,” “more effort on international disarmament.” On the positive side, ministers urged a stronger peace program “by a firmer stand on equity,” “work diligently for international friendships,” “work in the interests of world peace through the U.N.”

Foreign Aid

The controversial subject of foreign aid drew wide suggestion of future overhauling. The conviction that foreign aid should be reduced outweighed that emphasis that it be increased three and one-half to one. For increased spending came such sentiment as: “more Point IV aid to backward foreign peoples,” “more liberal policy of aid to needy peoples or nations,” “use of U.S. power, food, natural resources for world-wide peaceful progress,” “more foreign aid—in the form of raising their standard of living.” On the negative side, ministers urged curtailment, but only one called for “cancellation of foreign aid.” The prevailing tenor was for “foreign aid—but less,” “re-evaluation of our foreign give-away,” “a gradual weaning from federal giveaway.” Suggested principles of limitation were: “stop aid to Yugoslavia,” “support freedom and justice only in foreign policy,” “foreign aid reduced and the money used to improve America,” “quit trying to buy friendship from other nations,” “less military, more economical and technical assistance.”

Changes From Eisenhower

Foreign policy aside, the main areas of hoped for improvement revealed in CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S poll, by those who had supported the Eisenhower candidacy twice, were ranged in the following order of priority: readjustment of the economic outlook (10%); intensification of the spiritual-moral emphasis (10%); decentralization of government, with stress on state rights (7½%); implementing of desegration (3½%); anti-liquor legislation (2%); more vigorous policy of church-state separation (1¼%); more vigorous anti-communist program (1¼%); federal aid to schools (1%). The only conspicuous counter-trend was in the priority assigned by almost 4% to “care for the little man,” mostly in the interest of the farmer. The antisocialist sentiment (3%), included in the figures for decentralization of government, was frequently linked to a plea for curbing labor unions. The top priority was given foreign policy by just under 11% of the clergy twice supporting Eisenhower.

The issues just indicated accounted for half of the returns in this category. They do not reflect, however, vigorous pleas (although in lesser number) for curtailing military spending, special interest legislation, and for increasing old age benefits, strengthening social security laws, improved solution of the Palestine refugee problems, and scores of other problems assigned first importance by individual clergymen.

The Undecided Vote

The “undecided” vote included almost twice as many ministers who had voted for Eisenhower in 1952 as for Stevenson, and as many who had not voted in 1952. Some reflected dissatisfaction with both major parties and candidates. “We need a new party, or a candidate who will dare to commit himself to constitutional government,” wrote a New York City pastor. One Indiana minister wrote that he would vote for “nobody,” and another, “either the third party or none at all.” A Florida minister said he is still looking for a candidate “who will balance well all interests in American life—labor, financial interests, segregation.” The bulk of the disappointment over President Eisenhower’s first term concerned the failure to reverse the trend to socialism, and the failure to curtail the huge foreign aid program and to reduce taxes at home. The plea for a stronger anti-communist foreign policy, for an end of creeping socialism (“get government out of business”), for drastic reduction of expenditures and taxes, represented more than half the replies in this category. The defection from Governor Stevenson reflected greater confidence in the current Republican foreign policy, despite criticisms, than with the Democratic alternative. A number of “undecided” ministers called for a firmer stand on church-state separation, asking, for example, for “a positive stand on freedom of religion wherever American money and troops are sent abroad” and for a cessation of federal aid “to any church-sponsored institutions at home and abroad.” Undecided ministers voting for the first time showed, proportionately, the greatest concern over the liquor traffic in America, coupled with a marked determination to vote the Prohibition ticket. Ministers in at least five states called insistently for outlawing the liquor traffic.

Risks In A Lobby

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S poll of Protestant ministers dramatizes the risk of attempting to express “the position” of a denomination—either the views of its clergy or of the church members—on political and economic issues.

Among Protestant clergymen, remarkable diversity of conviction prevails on the direction in which spiritual priorities are to be applied, and hence on social issues of the day. Protestant ministers do not receive socio-economic directives from a church hierarchy, which imposes upon them an official ecclesiastical “party line.” The turmoil of conflicting Protestant opinion on far-reaching social issues may provide little comfort for those who feel that the church should vote and act with one mind on the political scene. But the unanimity which the church should have is the proclamation of the Gospel of personal salvation, which in turn shapes a new social order by shaping new men. The fact of conflict in assessing politico-social options is not wholly disastrous, although in some respects it grows out of a departure from the principles of biblical social ethics—as when Christianity is identified, as it has been by liberal thinkers, with pacifism, Communism, or some other “ism.” For biblical principles applied even to secondary options will have a way of inspiriting them and lessening their lameness.

But the stark fact of disagreement on leading social issues is a reminder that official church agencies only at great risk constitute themselves pressure lobbies for specific politico-economic objectives. Seldom do they actually have a mandate from the ministers of their churches, let alone the laity, to absolutize such objectives in the name of their denominational constituencies. In doing so, they run the peril of violating democratic rights within their churches, in the presumed course of contributing stability to democracy in the nation.

Protestantism obviously lacks an authoritative view on social issues in a generation plagued by social ills. The division on social strategy runs as deep today as the theological cleavage in Protestantism, although the two factions do not correspond absolutely. More liberal churchmen, whose theology has not undergone a full conservative revision, today acknowledge the fallacy of socialism, and appear ready to combine the theological left with the economic right. In the welter of confusion, it is understandable that men with a concern for the Protestant witness to a culture near chaos should promote the idea of unity in social reconstruction. But to compensate for a disunity which grows out of a basic departure from biblical norms by a unity which is manmade is to jump out of confusion into caprice.

The Present Imperative

The great need today, as American Protestantism recoils from the invasion of its theology and social ethics by speculative evolutionary principles during the century of Liberalism, is to find its way back to the centrality of the Gospel, and to the recognition that hope for a new society is best mediated to any nation through the spiritual regeneration of its masses. In the long run, it is the decision made at this level which will answer the question of where America goes from here.

Ideas

The Perils of Independency

The contemporary American church scene discloses significant spiritual trends. Tendencies originating obscurely in the past have now assumed forms quite obvious to the students of religious life.

American Christianity is dynamic, not static. It exists in a shifting historical situation, not in a vacuum. The visible church cannot fully escape this fact of historical change as the climate of the day. From day to day, reactions to it may appear quite imperceptible; in the span of a generation they will become quite apparent, and may even be cataclysmic.

The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth centurn represented a break with both the doctrines and the hierarchy of Romanism. Justification by faith alone was not the only cardinal theological tenet of the Reformers. Intrinsic in the movement of reform was a desire to break with the suzerainty of Rome. Against the papal claim of ultimate authority in the Church and thus in the pope of Rome, the Reformers re-elevated to authority the written Word of God as the sole regulator and restrainer of conscience.

Protestant churches became independent and autonomous bodies, although often within the framework of national states. Yet in many instances independency, or existence outside these bodies, was not tolerated. The nonconformists in England were viciously persecuted. In Lutheran countries, Baptists and others eked out an uncomfortable survival. Even in early America, often pictured as the land of religious freedom, the same situation prevailed. In New England, for example, dissenters from the Puritan hope were exposed to the wrath of persecutors. Roger Williams, Henry Dunster and Ann Hutchinson shared in it personally.

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More recently, certain trends in the United States have brought into sharp focus at least two virtually contradictory forces operating in community religious life. These forces are diametrically opposed, representing ultimates or extremes. Beyond them, it is impossible to move much to the right or to the left. These forces have not reached their limits in either case, but are headed in the direction of ultimates. But these two movements do not hold the field alone, for between these antitheses, other groups stand uncomfortably exposed to the pressures of history, keenly conscious that the immoderate forces of extremity bode ill for Protestantism.

The two clashing movements of which we speak are Independency and Organic Church Union, embodied in agencies familiar to all. Their conflicting tendencies are visible in the big cities and the tiny hamlets of the nation. The Independents could be illustrated by many diverse groupings, but the extreme right wing is the American Council of Christian Churches, which finds its larger orientation in the International Council of Christian Churches. Organic Church Union could be represented in its most intense form by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., which is integrated within the framework of the World Council of Churches.

Each has its own tensions and perils. Independency tends to be intolerant, Church Unionism to be tolerant. The former moves in the direction of exclusivism, the latter toward inclusivism. One holds a low view of the Church in its visible and historical aspects, and the other a high view. The one glorifies separateness, while the other reaches out toward ecclesiasticism. Independency remains highly creedal in minute detail, while Church Unionism becomes vague and ill-defined in theological basis. One can easily become Pharisaic, the other Sadducean.

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Some may object to any implication that Church Unionism is well-nigh creedless, pointing to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Anglicanism, the Westminster Confession of Presbyterianism and the Canons of the Synod of Dort of the Reformed churches. But Church Unionism relegates creeds to a peripheral position. With the statement that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, the forces of Organic Union halt, and even this affirmation they leave to whatever interpretation a particular group within the Council may wish to put upon it.

By contrast, Independency has become more and more creedal. And, with its dissociation from organized Christianity, this movement has frequently incorporated secondary doctrines into its creeds with an absoluteness that is incredible. A particular brand of millennialism or an insistence on a dispensational pretribulation rapture of the Church is a case in point. Not long ago Western Baptist Theological Seminary in Portland, Oregon, was divided and its faculty scattered over just such concerns. Its creedal statement, which could not be changed legally, was interpreted to require a pretribulation rapture, so that the creedal statement itself was supplemented by the interpretation, and institutional rupture was the result.

Between Independency and Church Unionism stand the middle parties. Many of them have found a mutual ground in the National Association of Evangelicals. Consciously or unconsciously this group is opposed in temper to both the American Council and the National Council. But its position is not so easily defined, since the lines are not so sharply drawn. It subscribes to some concepts of each of the extremist groups, but opposes others, finding its rationale in a mediating view, or perhaps better described as a perspective above the extremes. Extreme positions are easier to perceive and less difficult to defend to the popular mind. Whether they are truer is a matter for debate.

We do not purpose on this occasion to discuss the problems of Organic Church Union, but to speak rather of the perils of Independency. What we say should not, therefore, be construed as a blanket condemnation of Independency. We merely point out dangers inherent in Independency in the movement of contemporary Church history, and indicate some factors with which its adherents must reckon.

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One major truth about the foundations of Independency must first be stated. This movement is grounded in a desire to defend the orthodox faith by exalting the Word of God and glorifying the Christ of the Scriptures. Whatever disagreements and errors exist within the extremes of the movement, those who honor fidelity to doctrine cannot but endorse the concern for theological soundness. Such a high goal, however, gives its adherents no automatic guarantee against a blundering course, nor does it, by itself, safeguard the movement of Independency from shipwreck. Indeed, failure to avoid the pitfalls peculiar to Independency can bring about the deterioration and destruction of the movement in a single generation. Independency is as answerable to the verdict of history and as susceptible to the judgments of God as any other movement.

Independency tends to produce a divisive spirit. It refuses to cooperate even with those with whom it is in essential theological agreement. Its concept of separation forbids fellowship with men sound in the faith but associated with objectionable movements. It indicts others for allegiances they have held for years, and often promotes a divisiveness that is disruptive.

Independency usually begins, as we have noted, as a movement against heresy or apostasy. Where this is true it cannot be accurately labeled as divisive. No one can justly inveigh against that form of Independency which comes out of apostasy and holds to a positive doctrinal witness.

But in many instances the apostasy condemned by Independency is not as clearly discernible as is assumed. The movement sometimes arrogates to itself judgment belonging to God. Even though concern for doctrine is necessary, a spirit of divisiveness may be stimulated so that a good end is subordinated and the danger of an evil one looms large. The form of separation with which a movement originates often tends to deteriorate, and internal divisiveness may even raise doubts over the justification of the original separation. Recent history eloquently confirms this danger, and indeed supplies new evidence that the danger stage has passed into ugly historical fact.

Years ago the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. witnessed a movement of separation marked by the formation of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Led by men like J. Gresham Machen, this movement resulted in the formation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. While this denomination was committed to carry out Presbyterian principles of government, the independent spirit within the new group occasioned further fragmentation as evidenced by the establishment of the Bible Presbyterian Church and Faith Theological Seminary. More recently, further division has taken place, caused by a clash of personalities rather than differences of doctrine. Faith Theological Seminary has been rent asunder and a new college and seminary, Covenant, has been formed in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Two educational institutions have been involved in recent schisms. Highland College of Los Angeles, a strict separationist institution, lost its president and members of the faculty to the new Covenant College, after an internal upheaval among men of like faith. A similar situation exists at Shelton College. Originally located in New York City under the name of the National Bible Institute, it was wooed into the framework of the American Council of Christian Churches. Then its properties were disposed of, a new location in New Jersey found, and the name changed to Shelton College. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., who was among the early separationists from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and who had separated from the Westminster-Machen forces, was now caught in the toils of a new schism. Deposed from the presidency of Shelton College, deprived of his chair at Faith Theological Seminary, he joined in the establishment of Covenant College in St. Louis.

The charge of apostasy or modernism has occasioned none of these divisions since the original departure from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The divisive spirit that led to new splits was in no sense related to the heart of theological orthodoxy. Independency, clearly, is involved not only in tension with theological infidelity outside, but with the divisive temper inside.

The divisiveness of Independency becomes so highly exclusive that it excludes true believers from its fellowship. Herein lies one of the great misfortunes of extremism on the right. Because Independency by definition is dogmatic and because extreme dogmatism is often conducive to a condemnatory spirit, the unity of the Spirit is easily quenched. True believers are separated one from another. Afraid for the safety and purity of its movement, Independency erects thicker and higher hedges for self-protection. As it moves in the direction of Phariseeism, man-made appendages to the Gospel become all-important, constituting a test for fellowship. Not one’s belief in Christ as God and Savior but whether one sits in the right millennial pew, and properly dots every “i” and crosses every “t” according to the approved subsidiary requirements, is determinative. Ultimately, this chokes orthodoxy in the maze of the peripheral; it majors in minors, departing from the heart of the true faith while protesting that it alone possesses the “real” truth.

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Another peril of Independency lies in its refusal to communicate with those with whom it is in disagreement. This results often in shocking rudeness and incivility. It refuses to reckon with the possibility that other camps may hold sincere and earnest seekers after truth. Independency sometimes labors under the suspicion that whoever is unaffiliated with it, if not a rascal, is at least an eccelesiastical enemy. Whether this suspicion arises from a deep-seated inferiority or from the misunderstanding of “compromise” is hard to judge. But woe betide the orthodox brother caught in conversation with the “opposition.” The scourge of the brethren, or a high-level brain washing, is his ministerial prospect. The ideal of separation from “the apostasy” is stretched to exclude traffic with the persons who converse with those infected with the disease.

Independency is tempted easily to use a vocabulary of stigma and reproach. It draws a razor-thin dividing line and everyone is judged by its cut. Deviationism leads swiftly to vicious name calling. Two words common to the vocabulary of Independency are “compromise” and “modernist.” Whoever does not conform closely to the “line” is likely to be accused either of compromise or of Modernism. Differences over minor points of eschatology have resulted in charges of latent Modernism, or of compromise of the historic faith, leveled against some of the most competent defenders of the evangelical position. It is true enough that Modernism has its own vocabulary, and can use it for sharp ends, but this does not excuse Independency for the same vice. “Scapegoating” in its ecclesiastical form has done much to harm the reputation of men true to the Word of God, and to destroy the confidence in them of other true believers, especially among weaker brethren anxious to believe any charge uttered by the tribal council.

But the most serious deficiency of Independency is its departure from the New Testament theology of the Church. If any teaching is clear in the New Testament, it is the teaching of the unity of the true body of Christ. A transcendental outlook detaches Independency from the present historical scene in relation to the heavenly and otherworldly side of life. This detachment produces more and more fragmentation, and encourages militant opposition to efforts looking toward an undivided Church. While concentrating on the heavenly body, or the invisible Church, Independency often loses sight of the empirical Church in history, and fails to realize its own continuity with this historical phenomenon. “Not of this world” is unfortunately and erroneously taken to be the virtual equivalent of “not in this world.” But Christianity teaches an ambivalence the Church cannot escape: it is both “not of this world” and “in this world” at the same time.

If Independency is not to disintegrate in riot, it must reconstruct its theology of the Church in the light of biblical teaching. The solution of its related problems does not lie in easy acquiescence to a completely separationist and divisive philosophy. There is a biblically defined unity of the body, even in diversity. The witness of believers can never be wholly transcendental. The Church has empirical as well as transcendental aspects, and neither can be overlooked without impairing the biblical view.

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Perhaps among the very grave problems of Independency is the lurking assumption that true Independency implies individualism. What frequently has been characterized as identification with Independency is individualism of an unrestrained and frightening sort. This individualism stresses the autonomy of the human spirit while professing to be shackled to divine revelation and repudiating dependency upon other human beings in this relationship to God. True biblical Independency is essentially a group enterprise, banding together men of like mind and spirit for the preservation of what they believe to be true. Only where two or three are gathered together with Christ in their midst is there a true church. Refusing subjection to superior ecclesiastical powers and authorities. Independency has in it the seeds of individualism. When Independency allows these seeds to germinate, the fruit ripens into the man who becomes a law unto himself, even though he may attempt to validate his proclamations and deeds on the assumption that they are performed for the glory of Christ. The biblical Christian knows nothing of such individualism. No man is a law unto himself; each is to be subject to the brethren, and no one person can make himself the arbiter and judge of others.

Independency run riot produces individualism in the end, as depicted in the Old Testament where we are told that in some areas every man did what was right in his own eyes. Independency may be the spawning ground of spirits not truly in the tradition of Independency, but in the tradition of individualism. The end of individualism is a “church” in which each man is his own ministry and congregation, ruler and subject, making and judging his own laws. In such an assembly there is little regard for Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, or for fellow believers who make up the visible body of Christ on earth.

One dare not charge that all who are identified with Independency have succumbed to these tensions and dangers. Nor can it be fairly alleged that the whole movement has succumbed to them. But the dangers have been actualized sufficiently to indicate the historical direction if the movement continues on its present path. Undoubtedly many adherents within the camp of Independency are not victims of the defects we have outlined, and their catholicity of spirit and irenic pursuit of the truth are exemplary. They embrace the doctrine of Christ in the spirit of Christ. While subject to the temptations and tensions common to Independency, they have not yielded to them. They are the hope of their movement, and the guidance they give or fail to give may be the decisive factor that will avert or lead to a complete disintegration.

Independency will collapse if it surrenders to its peculiar temptations. Contrariwise, it can help to purify the Christian Church. To purify without destroying, and without being destroyed, is its critical challenge in the movement of Church history.

[Editor’s note: See also the next issue’s follow-up editorial, “The Perils of Ecumenicity.”]

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Is The Church Too Silent About Personal Morality?

In writing the Colossian Christians, Paul indicts sins found on every hand today: “Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, uncontrolled passion, evil desire, and the lust for other people’s goods.…”

Americans are now faced with immorality paraded in attractive guise by almost every media of entertainment. That the Church seldom speaks out against this evil is a strange phenomenon.

Why this silence? The Bible says that because of these very things the holy anger of God falls on those who refuse to obey. By this token God’s judgment hangs over America at this very minute.

Any reference to puritanism will bring either a sneer or the raised eyebrows of a people sated by twentieth century sophistication. But unless there is a Spirit-led return to those moral standards so plainly stated in the Bible, and from which we have departed so far, how can God’s holy wrath be deferred?

This is a matter of the first magnitude. National survival and individual souls are at stake. Parents are confronted with decisions which will gravely affect their children. Never has a generation of young people had access to licentiousness, in its deadly effects, as in the case of teen-agers today.

Certainly there has never been a greater need for the Church to assert herself for holy living.

Raise in a church council a question on Christian race relations, and an almost unanimous response is assured. Raise the question of moral conduct, and often there is little effective reaction.

One does not have to choose one course of righteousness at the expense of another. It is the obligation of the Church to show concern in many areas of life. But at the present time individual Christians and the Christian Church are far too silent about the immoral concepts that are gaining ascendency in the thinking and living of the multitudes.

For the sake of all concerned let the Church speak up.

Majoring On The Minor In Contemporary Preaching

There is an amazing deficiency in much of contemporary preaching, a lack of the one thing which lies at the heart of the Gospel message. The average sermon is so concerned with telling men how to live that there is little or no room for the question of prior importance: how to die.

The jailor at Philippi was enmeshed in Roman colonialism at one of its seamiest outposts. Suddenly he was confronted with a crisis involving two men who knew the answer to life’s most important question. His eager inquiry: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” brought a direct answer: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”

There is no more superlative text today. Nor is there any other adequate answer. Strange that there is such a resounding silence where the message needs to be shouted from every pulpit in the land.

The oxygen tent or the crash site with uniformed police escort should not be the place where men first hear that their eternal destinies depend on faith in Christ as Savior.

Our Lord sent out seventy preachers with divinely given powers and on their return they were inclined to brag about their accomplishments. Jesus put things in their right perspective when He said: “… in this rejoice not, but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”

Because no man is prepared to live as he should until he is prepared to die it should seem logical that in the preaching of the Gospel first things should be put first.

International Crisis On The Sandy Wastes Of Sinai

The battle on the sandy wastes of Sinai dramatizes the breakdown of international political morality.

Western objectives, on the whole, are acceptable enough: unimpeded flow of international traffic through the Suez, containment of the provocative and defiant opportunism of Nasser, and an end to the strife and economic boycott which embroil the Middle East.

The existence of the nation Israel stems back to the travail of the past two decades when one-half of Jewry was exterminated by totalitarian states. Yet Israel herself has been ruthless and aggressive, as the tragic camps of 900,000 displaced Arabs attest.

The Anglo-French-Israel initiative stands condemned by a majority action of the United Nations, wherein the United States displayed vigorous leadership.

But both the Anglo-French and American positions leave something to be desired.

Of the two positions, that of the United States carries with it the major force of world opinion, including not only United Nations support, but that of Soviet Russia (for whatever reason). It appeals to persuasion, and refuses to resort to force to expedite the right, in the hope of finding peaceful solution and avoiding the unnecessary risk of devastating world war. The Anglo-French approach reflects the power-politics of the past. Russia has used the United Nations to frustrate her opponents, while aggressively subjugating lesser powers; in such a climate of politics the use of force, as a police action to guard the larger interest, may at times seem justifiable. Timely intervention in Egypt, it was thought, would forestall the provocative solidification of the Arab League around the dictatorial Nasser as its leader, the threat of attack against Israel which might flare into total war, and the strangling of Britain and western Europe by the use of Suez as an economic weapon.

President Eisenhower’s criticism of British and French initiative as “taken in error” and as irreconcilable with “the principles and purposes of the United Nations to which we have all subscribed” was forthright and courageous. It marked blunt admission of another serious rift in the eleven-year-old United Nations, plagued now not only by the frustrating veto of the Soviet orbit, but by the action of two Free World powers that hitherto have sought earnestly to maintain its integrity. It involved further a sharp moral criticism of allies, interrupting the unanimity of the North Atlantic Treaty powers. Both the rift among friendly partners in the western network of alliances, and the widened cleft in the United Nations, called for frank acknowledgment, despite an election campaign during which the President’s public leadership of the Free World’s international policy was doubtless dealt a blow. Yet the President’s role as a moral leader was enhanced by his prompt and principled action.

An air of unrealism, however, clings to the President’s announced policy. That the United States will not intervene in the present hostilities is doubtless reassuring to all who dread the perils of war in an atomic age. But recent American pronouncements suggest at times the notion that war must always be avoided as the worst of all evils. This not only confers an advantage on aggressor nations, but virtually establishes the policy that only in the face of direct attack is anything worth fighting for. Alongside this mood exists an excessive trust in the power of colossal human organization, in the United Nations as the potent resolver of all major world disputes. President Eisenhower’s swift appeal to the United Nations has merit, and the speedy action of the Security Council in part at least answers the British complaint over that organization’s impotence in the face of aggression. But it ignores two corrosive facts. The moral power of the United Nations is compromised already by its inclusion of the foes as well as the friends of justice; Soviet enthusiasm is given United Nations’ action only when it best serves the interests of Russia herself, something usually inimicable to the rest of the world. Moreover, the moral power of the United Nations is now further weakened by the Anglo-French declaration of its inefficiency in international relations.

The irony in Sinai is the neglect of the God of Sinai. Our modern statesmen no longer quote the Living God and his commands. They walk where Moses walked but, instead of seeing the bush of God aflame, they toy with the flame throwers of another world conflagration. They debate expediency and world opinion, but do not bend before the Law of God. They turn eyes to the wilderness of Sinai only to give man-made programs precedence over the guiding hand of the God of Sinai.

Eutychus and His Kin: November 12, 1956

OLD GRAD

At our homecoming grid classic I was attracted to an Old Grad type who was blocking my view of the field. Several contacts were made during the game, mostly by his elbows, but I established rapport—after the winning touchdown—when he embraced me and then helped find my glasses under the stands.

When that old boy pulled off jersey 66 in ’26 he lost not only his glory but his identity. Homecoming was the annual climax of his quest for community.

The pathetic Old Grad is a rare bird, but the species is plentiful in different plumage. There is the lodge member variant; in business men’s clubs the cultic backslap is the mark of the order. The most ominous mutation has the widest distribution; the Old Grad Patriot. At a political rally he cheers the American Way of Life with the Old Grad’s compulsive zeal. Secretly he yearns for a Big Game (with survivors, of course, to celebrate V-R day).

The Old Grad is an idolater. He seeks the meaning of life in communities which are only means in life. Loyalty to a group or a nation, made supreme, becomes a curse. Modern nationalism from the French Revolution to Hitler and Stalin has been a pseudo-religion feeding like a heavy-bellied vulture on the corpse of the Christian faith.

We dare not offer the American eagle that diet. To insist in the name of democracy that a man’s religious creed makes no difference if he is a “good American” is to make Americanism the sole creed that is religious. Christ’s disciple is a loyal citizen for conscience sake, but he has one Master to Whom alone he renders that which is God’s. Over all his loyalties is the cross he took up when he denied the world to follow Him. The citizen of heaven is not an “Old Grad” but a new creature!

EUTYCHUS

PEACE IN OUR DAY

Most men and women want peace, first because war hurts them and secondly because it hurts other people. Few—if we are honest—hate war because it hurts God! And so we desire and maybe pray for peace.

Now I never pray for peace, not because I want war, for I hate war as much as anybody else, and have had my fill in two world conflagrations. But I don’t pray for peace: I pray for righteousness, for the simple reason that if individuals and nations were righteous, peace would inevitably follow.

The Bible is so clear on the point. “The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever” (Isaiah 32:17). In Romans 14:17 and 2 Timothy 2:22 the order is righteousness, peace; and note how peace comes second in James 3:17, “The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable.” And so the Christian motto is “Righteousness at any cost” and not “Peace at any price.”

LT. GEN. SIR ARTHUR SMITH

Pres., World Evangelical Fellowship

London, England

AUTHORITY OF BIBLE

Some day—25 years from now—you will write what we liberals have been preaching for years … Jesus Christ is the word of God to man … You conservatives still distrust the Holy Spirit and want “word” authority in place if the Pope. The early church had no “Bible” in the sense you speak … The basic authority of Bible truth is found in experience …

VERNON T. SMITH

First Presbyterian Church

Holt, Mich.

• Evangelical theology asserts, on the authority of the biblical witness, that Jesus Christ is the Word of God to man. And it notes that Jesus provided, in his regard for the Old Testament, a precedent for the view that there exists an authoritative canon of revealed truth.—ED.

STUDY OF MATTHEW

In the outline of Matthew’s Gospel (CT, Book of the Month, Oct. 15) the writer states: “Resurrection and Ascension, chapter 28.” Matthew does not mention the ascension of Christ. It is a studied point … that he leaves the Christ with us.… In the beginning of his Gospel he writes, “Immanuel, … God with us,” 1:23; in the middle, he records Christ’s words, “there am I in the midst of them,” 18:20; at the end, he records “I am with you always,” 28:20.… The error detracts from the meaning of the endings of the Gospels—Matthew with the Resurrection, Mark the Ascension, Luke with the promise of the Spirit’s coming, John with a word of the coming again of Christ.

DR. ARTHUR PETRIE

Seattle Bible Training School

Seattle, Wash.

EBB AND FLOW

First issue good, but anemic—not militant enough.…

LEROY VICTOR CLEVELAND

Henniker, N. H.

It’s nice, it is even crickett and I’ll be doggone if it’s not religion—not this modernistic kind but this plain old Jesus died up for us. Hold up you’ han. Make money for de lawd.

CENTURY LOVER

New Orleans, La.

I had no idea that something so vital would ever be coming onto the American scene … Much encouragement, and my subscription.

HERBERT A. SCHULZE

Immanuel Ev. Luth. Church

Bristol, Conn.

Theological Liberalism has no appeal for me but neither has condemnatory Fundamentalism … Your effort to lead ministers to true Bible preaching ought to bear rich fruit.

F. J. MONSCHKE

Alhambra, Calif.

Right now I don’t see how you can remain true to your announced outlook and aims without a major conversion of your announced staff. The first issue reads much like a “must.” But I am still a “Thomas” for the time being.

H. LOUIS PATRICK

Westminster Presbyterian Church

St. Louis, Mo.

It is what a young pastor needs to keep up with the trend of thought and to receive inspiration.

BOB MARSH

Spring Hill Ave. Baptist Church

Mobile, Ala.

Are Evangelicals Literalists?

Literalist and evangelical are considered in some circles to be synonymous terms. Deep concern has been expressed that the growing strength of the evangelical movement may initiate a “return to literalism.” Reinhold Niebuhr, for instance, has warned of the tendency toward literalistic orthodoxy encouraged by Barth and of the danger of simplifying the Gospel in either literalistic or individualistic terms as typified by Billy Graham. A recent book baldly states, “Protestantism’s ugliest feature has been its frequent relapse into literalism, usually caused by making a fetish of biblical authority.”

The Use of Terms

Are evangelicals literalists? The question cannot be answered with a categorical yes or no because of the different ways in which the two terms are understood by their users. To some, “evangelical” conjures up the picture of an unlettered extremist who takes every word of the Bible literally. Without deprecating such an individual—for a naive faith is not the greatest of evils—the historical definition of “evangelical” brings to view a different conception. The term “literalist” is often applied to those who interpret all the words of the Bible literally. But those who hold steadfastly to the doctrines of the Scriptures are on that account often called literalists.

Historically, the term “evangelical” designates one who holds to the absolute supremacy of the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice, and to justification by free grace through faith. Webster’s New International Dictionary defines “evangelical” as “designating that party among the Protestants which holds that the essence of the Gospel consists mainly in its doctrines of man’s sinful condition and the need of salvation, the revelation of God’s grace in Christ, the necessity of spiritual renovation and participation in the experience of redemption through faith.” In accord with this definition the evangelical follows in the succession of Augustine, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, Whitefield, Spurgeon, Hodge, Moody, Kuyper, Warfield, Machen and men of like caliber. Not the aberrant but the normal evangelical should supply the meaning of the term.

If literalist designates one who follows the literal sense of construction evidently meant to be figurative, the evangelical emphatically denies the applicability of this term to him. However, if literalist designates one who retains the literal sense of Scriptural teaching concerning the virgin birth, the deity of our Lord, the bodily resurrection, and who holds to such doctrines as the vicarious atonement, justification by faith and plenary inspiration, then the evangelical acknowledges the appropriateness of the term, even if it is employed beyond its dictionary sense.

Principles of Interpretation

No serious student of the Word maintains that all Scripture is literal or that all is figurative. The evangelical is cognizant of the fact that the Bible employs metaphor, metonomy, simile, synecdoche, personification, hyperbole, irony and other figures of speech. Anthropomorphic descriptions of God are not understood literally. What evangelical is unaware that God is spirit?

The evangelical is not so naive as to interpret every passage of the Bible in a literal sense. His exegesis is guided by hermeneutical principles. He has sufficient literary sense not to confuse James, Cephas and John with literal pillars when they are styled pillars of the Church. Nor does he look for a literal door or lamb when Christ is so titled. A literal beast with seven heads, a literal lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, and a literal scarlet woman are not envisaged as he reads the Book of Revelation. Only a naive critic would believe otherwise of the evangelical.

The conservative scholar avails himself of the grammatico-historical method of exegesis. The knowledge of grammar and of the facts of history helps determine his exposition. In this he is not awed by the external authority of the Church, nor moved by his own feelings, nor enslaved by any prevailing philosophical system, nor subject to contemporary higher critical presuppositions. Higher criticism is applied without the subjectivity that has brought it into such ill repute. The evangelical restrains his imagination in dealing with the problems of age, authorship and sources. By the use of painstaking scholarship he seeks to obtain from Scriptures and history the exact meaning the writers intended to convey.

Spirit Against Exegesis?

Some modern scholars, on the other hand, find no satisfaction in this simple exegesis. The evident meaning of a verse often seems distasteful to a twentieth-century mind. He, therefore, takes the “spirit” of the verse or interprets it with the “mind of Christ.” This methodology can change white to black and “infer” meanings the very opposite of those intended by the writer. The modern scholar’s “omniscience” enables him to determine that the writers of Scripture would do a volte-face if they lived in this enlightened generation.

How often “the spirit” has been invoked to kill the “letter.” For instance, it is claimed that the scriptural teaching of the bodily resurrection of Jesus must not be taken literally. The letter killeth, we are told. The spiritual resurrection of Jesus must have been intended. But the vocabulary of New Testament writers included the word “spirit,” and they would have employed it if that had been their intent. The letter on occasion may kill, but in the twentieth century the critical spirit more often is the murderer.

The envisioned “spirit and mind of Christ” are frequently summoned by the modern scholars to harmonize the Bible with twentieth-century denials of supernatural intervention. The wider context supplied by the growth of human knowledge must be considered, they insist, rather than the context furnished by the Scriptures. For instance, to express the uniqueness of the Son of God, Matthew and Luke related the story of the virgin birth. Modern theory does not recognize the possibility of supernatural conception. Only a literalist, it is claimed, takes the account of the virgin birth seriously.

The historicity of Adam furnishes another illustration. Jesus in the Gospels and Paul in the Epistles regard Adam as a literal man living in history. So does the evangelical. Those who claim the modern mind of Christ, however, state rather dogmatically that Adam belongs to fable and folklore. The Interpreters Bible asserts:

Obviously the book begins in that misty region of tradition and transmitted myth in which imagination precedes knowledge. Few will suppose that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden belong to factual history. Cain and Abel and Lamech and Nimrod and Methuselah and Noah—these also come down to us as legends rather than as persons identifiable in the literal history of a particular time” [Vol. 1, p. 460],

This view is in direct opposition to that taken by writers of the Gospel and the Epistles. Thus the twentieth century contradicts the first century.

Bultmann’s Demythologizing

A recent example of compressing the New Testament into the modern mold is Bultmann’s program of “demythologizing.” Contemporary culture and science form the solid existential mold into which biblical revelation must be poured. The miracles become extraneous as does all that is judged mythical. The inflexible mold excludes among other teachings the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, the vicarious atonement and justification by faith. The final product of the mold is a pitiful human figure poorly adorned with existential wisdom and bearing the inscription: created by Bultmann.

Literal and Figurative

We do not seek to exculpate individuals who take every word of the Bible literally; yet we would take issue with those who affirm that Protestantism’s ugliest feature has been its frequent relapse into literalism. To say the least, the literalism that has ignored the figurative has not robbed Christ of His deity nor the Church of her vital redemptive message.

What is forgotten is that one cannot wave away truth because it is expressed in figurative language. Figures of speech often express truth and reality more vividly than prosaic language. Truth stands out more boldly, for it is the nature of pictorial language to proclaim strong, clear impressions of the reality defined. Figurative coloring aids in the appreciation and understanding of truth.

Christ utilized the metaphor to express truths of his kingdom. The radical change of nature demanded of those who would enter into the kingdom was expressed by the metaphor of the new birth. If the evangelical is called literalist because he holds fast to the necessity of being born again, then lie bears that yoke gladly, for it is light and easy. The metaphor of the strait gate was used by Jesus. If the evangelical is termed literalist because he insists that the wide “liberal” gate will not gain entrance into the kingdom, he accepts that designation as part of the price of walking the narrow path. Jesus employed the vivid metaphor of plucking out the eye to escape perdition. If the evangelical by urging separation from lustful enticements is called a literalist, he bears that title with patience and long-suffering.

Truth in Metaphor

One of the beautiful metaphors describing Christ is that of the Lamb. The evangelical accepts the biblical content of the term. Through knowledge of Old Testament revelation he learns the significance of John the Baptist’s cry, “Behold the lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” The apostle Peter sharpens the content of the metaphor in writing that we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of the lamb without blemish and without spot. The evangelical recognizes both the figure of speech and the truth expressed by it. He does not take the lamb literally, but he does take literally the truth portrayed by it.

The rewards and punishments of the other world are described by the sacred writers in vivid terms and phrases usually employed to signify what physically affects us in this present life. The rewards mentioned in the second and third chapters of Revelation are these: fruit of the tree of life, crown of life, white stone, white garment, pillar in the temple. These are figures of speech signifying spiritual realities. Punishments are portrayed by such vivid terms as Gehenna of fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth, fire unquenchable, chains of darkness, lake of fire burning with brimstone. Figures of speech? Yes, but portraying fearful and awful punishment. Acknowledging them to be figurative does not do away with the reality. If these are but the figures, how terrible is the reality!

Spirit and Scripture

The evangelical considers the Bible to be authoritative in faith and practice. He continues the formal principle of the Reformation. This position has been clearly and adequately stated in the creeds of historic churches. With the Reformers he accepts the authority of the Scriptures. He does not invoke an authority of the Spirit that contradicts the Scriptures. The Westminster Confession of Faith well states of the Bible that “our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts” (Chap. 1, Sec. 5).

Because the Scriptures are authoritative the evangelical labors to obtain the precise meaning that the sacred writers intend to convey. He acknowledges his dependence upon the Holy Spirit but not in the sense of certain Pietists who disregarded rules of grammar and the common meaning and usage of words because of inner light claimed to be received of the Holy Spirit. The same principles, the same grammatical process, and the exercise of common sense and reason are applied to the Scriptures that are applied to the interpretation of other books.

Are evangelicals literalists? If the historical and dictionary sense of literalist is meant, the answer must be an emphatic no. If the loose sense is accepted that a literalist is one who accepts the teachings of the Bible as authoritative, then the answer is an emphatic yes.

J. Marcellus Kik is associate editor of Christianity Today.

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