Ideas

U N: Town Meeting? Or Tragedy?

U N: Town Meeting? Or Tragedy?

No tradition or practice is more cherished in American life than is the town meeting. It goes to the grass roots of American democracy and dates from the earliest days of the Pilgrims and the Puritans in New England. It is the finest flowering of direct democracy ever to appear in the long course of human history; and even though its institution and implications are not always observed or understood, its principles and prerogatives are jealously guarded by every true American.

No higher claim can be made for the United Nations Organization than that it is the “town meeting of the world.” The question is, therefore, the accuracy of that claim.

The town meeting arose in New England out of the necessity and privilege of self-government. It was the general assembly of all qualified voters in the town or township in which regulations and ordinances were established, taxes levied, appropriation voted and an executive committee of select men chosen to administer the will of the people. It was the privilege of every qualified citizen to speak, to vote and to be a candidate for office. The town meeting was a free assembly of free men for the welfare of all.

The observant de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America declared: “The native of New England is attached to his township because it is independent and free: his co-operation in its affairs insures his attachment to its interest; the well-being it affords him secures his affection; and its welfare is the aim of his ambition and of his future exertions: he takes a part in every occurrence in the place; he practices the art of government in the small sphere within his reach; he accustoms himself to those forms which can alone insure the steady progress of liberty; he imbibes their spirit; he acquires a taste for order, comprehends the union or the balance of powers, and collects clear practical notions on the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.”

Outstanding among the basic elements of the town meeting are a half dozen or more factors indispensable to its effectiveness and continuance. There was of necessity a deep-seated sense of political responsibility on the part of the citizens; and in turn by their select men in the performance of their appointed duties. There was a pride in freedom and self-government, coupled with a public spirit and devotion to democracy and the public welfare.

Of course there was disagreement as to details of policy and practice; but from open debate it was evident that the best interest of the town as a whole was the concern of all. It was the duty of the moderator to see that the proceedings were conducted properly and with propriety, with courtesy and consideration for others. The debate was often spirited, even piquant, and spiced with humor; but personalities were decreased that principle might be increased.

The town meeting was the voice for all the people, voters and nonvoters alike. There was the common concept that freedom could exist only within the framework of law, and that the voice of the majority decided a given difference of opinion.

Of necessity there was honor, honesty and integrity; for any deviation from these on the part of some could be exposed by others to whom the facts were familiar. After differences had been discussed in detail the moderator called for a decision by the voters; and this was followed by action.

The town meeting represented a spontaneous, dynamic, living political reality for the citizens of that community. Should it become static or stilted, and begin to lack public interest and support, it might fall into the hands of avaricious and unprincipled men.

Underlying all of these considerations was the moral basis of the town meeting: a respect for law and for the rights of others, a sense of political responsibility and personal rectitude, all of which in turn were established upon a reverence for almighty God. In matters political, Daniel Webster is often better able to define terms than is Noah Webster; and we recall the former’s earnest and eloquent statement on The First Settlement of New England: “Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.”

Does the experience of the past eleven years affirm the right of the United Nations Organization to be considered “the town meeting of the world”? It does not seem that the record bears out that claim.

On some occasions and by some nations, especially the smaller ones, there has been a sense of political responsibility, but often the contrary has been the case. That the veto privilege in the Security Council has been flagrantly abused is apparent to every thoughtful observer of the United Nations. One recalls the apprehension of Trygve Lie when first Vyshinsky gave his first “Niet”: “This first, almost light-hearted use of the veto that I hoped would rarely be exercised by any of the great powers disturbed me as much as the violence of the debate on the Greek question. Although I did not then foresee the long succession of 50-odd Soviet vetoes cast during my term of office, the great majority for reasons no more substantial to Soviet interests and policy, here was another chilly forewarning of the ‘cold war’ to come—the clumsiness, the rigidity of position, the refusal to participate, even in nonessentials, in the give-and-take and the hammering out of acceptable compromises that are the very lifeblood of politics and diplomacy among the Western democracies.” (In the Cause of Peace, p. 34.)

Such irresponsibility has aroused the greatest dissatisfaction and disillusionment on the part of freedom-loving peoples the world over. As a result, can there be devotion to the UNO when it lacks the first principle of the town meeting?

Instead of discussion and debate to determine the best interests for humanity, these eleven years have seen the continued stubborn Soviet adherence to communist aims and objectives rather than any concern for the welfare of others. Again Trygve Lie: “It is therefore most unfortunate that the Soviet Union and its allies have already declared (1953) that they are unwilling to accept any changes. They have even objected to the collecting of documentary evidence and the presentation of a study of the Charter’s history. If that entirely negative position is maintained to the end, the world will have sad proof that the original adherence of these countries to the United Nations Organization was a matter of political expediency alone, without any continuing sense of responsibility to the needs of a growing world community.”

In the place of courtesy and common decency, evident in any town meeting, the debate in the UNO has been marked by vituperation and billingsgate as crude and coarse as could be found among the most debased elements of society. The frequent reference to “cannibals,” and “scum” and the abundance of similar Soviet cynicism are entirely unworthy of any organization, much less an alleged “town meeting of the world.”

Any town meeting is a proper place for honest debate and presentation of facts, but it is not a platform for propaganda. As early as 1947 Herbert Vere Evatt, Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, warned that there must be “exercise of restraint by all members in order to avoid mere propaganda statements, and the recognition of a duty to cooperate in the carrying out of decisions. This is essential to maintain the prestige of the United Nations as a deliberative body and to make its decisions effective” (The United Nations, p. 140). Even a cursory reading of the deliberations of the Security Council and the Assembly shows that the great bulk of Soviet statements are pure propaganda, without any relationship to principle or fact.

The customary communist use of the “Big Lie,” familiar to every student of foreign affairs, is nowhere more apparent than in the UNO. The experience of these eleven years has given illustrations without number, and apparently without limits as well, as to the immensity and absurdity of the “Lie”; but perhaps none is remembered more vividly than the germ warfare charges made by the Soviet delegation to counteract the evidence of atrocities committed by communist troops in Korea. The Big Lie, however, was less disturbing to thoughtful people than the unwillingness of twenty-two UN members to acquit the United States of the absurd charge of waging germ warfare, and the comment by the distinguished Indian president of the Assembly, who stated, “Very strange things happen in wartime, and sometimes the best people do them.”

In the place of honor, honesty and integrity that are intrinsic in the New England town meeting if it is to serve effectively the interests of the community, the proceedings of the UNO show frequently dishonesty, double-dealing and outright deceit. No organization can operate where suspicion of the integrity of its membership continues, and is justified.

The tragic indecision and consequent inactivity of the UNO, except on rare occasion, is in marked contrast to the decision and action of the typical New England town meeting. There have been crises when the majority of the UN members have risen to the challenge, as in Korea. But even there a leading world power was openly and avowedly on the side of the communist aggressors of North Korea, and the contribution of the UN to the common defense was by no means in proportion to the relative strength of its membership.

Among the most recent illustrations of UN indecisiveness was its inability to agree on a definition of aggression. Despite the fact that nearly twenty-four years earlier a committee of the League of Nations had begun discussions to the end of defining that term, and the responsibility had been carried on by a special committee of the UN, it was reported to the General Assembly on November 12, 1956, that: “In view of the obvious divergence of views, it was decided not to put any of the existing drafts to the vote.” Even in the glare of fires lighted in the Hungarian catastrophe of that very hour the UN did not have enough light and moral courage to define aggression!

In contrast to the forward-moving, dynamic development within the New England town meeting the course of UN action has been dominated by the stubborn, unyielding, strict-constructionist position of the Soviet Union. Even so optimistic a protagonist of the UN as Clark M. Eichelberger is compelled to state with sorrow: “The largest negative factor, of course, is the Soviet Union. The Soviet Government has been a strict constructionist; it has been the greatest defender of the text of the Charter, stripped of growth and development. It has declared illegal practically every step that has been taken to liberalize the United Nations.…”

Despite all these difficulties, which distinctly disbar the UNO from any possibility of being a “town meeting of the world,” the most disturbing is undoubtedly the lack of moral basis in that organization. Although a UN committee declared that “forced labor, employed for political coercion, or punishment for holding or expressing political views, plays a significant part in the national economy of the Soviet Union,” the UN Economic and Social Council would not identify the Soviet Union or any other country where slave labor exists.

The UN has been unwilling to hear evidence of communist atrocities involving at least thirty thousand war prisoners and civilians, including more than six thousand Americans (and the American delegation has not had the moral courage to press the issue). General Mark Clark’s report on the atrocities was never heard.

The list of moral cowardice and complicity grows longer with each session of the UN. Kashmir, Hungary and the long preliminary wrangle on Suez are but a few of the mountain peaks; no, rather, the pools of iniquity in the miasma of moral ineptitude and inaction.

Without a moral foundation of honesty, honor, integrity and willingness to work for the general welfare, the UN is building its tower of Babel on shifting sand stained with human blood. There is need to amend the Charter but even a greater need to mend the ways of the majority of its members. Courage is needed to replace the cunning of unprincipled men and cooperation rather than contemptuous criticism and vilification. There was wistfulness, and possibly wishful thinking, in President Eisenhower’s word to the United States Committee for United Nations Day (September 23, 1953) when he declared: “With all its defects, with all the failure that we can check up against it, it still represents man’s best organized hope to substitute the conference table for the battle field.”

Without moral courage, consistency and constancy, the best of hopes have no substance. Thus far the United Nations, instead of achieving the expected acclaim as “the town meeting of the world,” has been a tragedy in which the world, by the passion or limitations of its diplomats, is being brought to the brink of catastrophe.

Improving The Quality Of Religious Radio-TV

The discussion of religious radio-TV in recent years has mainly concerned the issue of fair assignment of network time to the respective Protestant constituencies. Debate over this issue gained heat when the National Council of Churches intensified its opposition to paid religious broadcasts, while seeking more sustaining or free time (some of it during priority hours) for the Council as the authoritative voice of American Protestantism. Now that this controversy has been aired, and the broadcasting industry has evidenced concern for a fair allotment of sustaining time, the problem will likely be worked out regionally and locally, rather than nationally. Religious forces in the community and the individual station managers will discuss the question of proportionate programming at the local level.

Spokesmen for the radio-TV industry have themselves emphasized that program interest is multiplied when there is a specific relationship to the particular community which the radio-TV station serves. As one station manager put it recently, the television station’s religious responsibility can best be met by the presentation of “local religious programs, conceived locally, produced locally, using local people and remaining in constant contact and consultation with representative bodies of the local spiritual community.”

This trend to local programming need not mark the absolute end of network schedules reflective of the major spiritual outlooks. But it does bring to the fore a problem fully as important as that of a fair distribution of time to the respective religious constituencies, the problem of effective radio-TV programming.

Evangelical broadcasts built around prominent personalities and dynamic preaching can undoubtedly maintain high network ratings. In the sphere of TV programming, however, evangelical effort has been mainly an independent, trial by error proceeding. The evangelicals have lacked the advantages of a national radio-TV commission with salaried leaders working cooperatively with the networks, and this has been their loss. Not that N.C.C. forces have come up with an infallible formula for successful TV presentations. Good programs of a religious nature are still at a premium, as program ratings will attest.

Evangelicals have neglected to give adequate corporate thought to the question, what is good religious programming? While the television industry has been growing to maturity, as one of the most influential mass media of the century, the evangelicals have not spent time in workshops and on basic research, as they ought, in order to use this new channel most effectively to the glory of God. A forward step in this direction has been made by National Religious Broadcasters, who are projecting a radio-TV clinic for the summer of 1958, in cooperation with a modern radio and television station in the Midwest.

The evangelical tradition has features that lend themselves uniquely to effective television programming. But there is a tendency to stop with vigorous preaching or striking musical combinations. The hierarchial churches have their symbolism and dress; the ritualistic churches, their rituals. Have evangelicals seriously inquired what moments in their services lend themselves most dramatically to television? Have they surveyed their resources for good religious programming, and interpreted them in high-level conference to the industry? Thanksgiving morning in the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, Easter Sunday in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena or a night in Madison Square Garden during the Billy Graham crusade—these are spectacles that hold a national interest. And there are many more.

The responsibility for good programming does not belong one-sidedly to the churches, however. Both in government and in the industry today there are highly placed officials who feel that the present prosperity can be utilized to encourage the networks to invest some resources in the effective implementation of religious programs. Once the question of free time allotments is equitably settled, and the various groups are invited within this framework to interpret to the networks their best program resources, the industry itself may well assign technical assistance to develop effective programming. If the churches can bring invisible spiritual and moral forces to the network, the industry can often suggest the best techniques for presenting them artfully. And the churches may well channel into the industry some of their youth with a vision for such vocational service, and may also well pray for the conversion of those who have professional talent but lack devotion to Christ. After all, a Gospel fitted for the television viewer is also superbly fit for the television crew.

Labor Racketeering And The American Worker

The revelations of corruption, vice and financial irresponsibility in one of the major unions have startled the nation and are bringing dismay to labor leaders in general and to the rank and file of honest and law abiding union members.

There was a time when labor as such was an underdog and when legislation was considered necessary to protect the legitimate rights of the working man. Gradually labor accumulated growing political power, and its leadership came to administer millions of dollars in funds.

Yet no controls such as those demanded of other responsible organizations were imposed on the unions. Because of this deference to labor, as in large measure responsible only to itself, the average member of a union soon found himself without an effective voice in controlling those at the top.

To his disappointment, and enlightenment, the American worker is learning that some labor leaders, who have carved their careers out of criticism of the way that big business allegedly exploits the workers, have degraded their own office and responsibility at the expense of the workers they profess to represent. Union members are learning a new truth: that organized labor too, and not management alone, holds within itself a potentiality for the irresponsible use of private power.

In recent years, union members have had to cope with the misuse of their own welfare funds by some union leaders. In the current Congressional expose of U.S. labor racketeering, which is scheduled to look beyond Portland to Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis and other cities, workers see some leaders already charged with entanglement, not simply in shady financial dealings, and the misuse of union funds for selfish gain, but in the seamy spheres of vice including gambling, prostitution and the alleged bribery of officials. In an hour when governmental leaders prize the virtues of democratic government, the nation has seen the sad spectacle, in the effort to get at the truth of union vice racketeering in Portland, of a mayor who flunked a lie detector test, and a district attorney who took refuge behind the Fifth Amendment.

The tempo of indignation is rising among reputable union leaders, who fear that the exposure of shaggy union leadership may reflect upon the unions as a whole. The fact is that the tolerance of such leadership, by leaders with a concern for integrity, has needlessly contributed to this shadow over the movement. And the sooner the unions are rid of labor racketeering, the better for the unions and for the nation. The thesis that big business was especially prone to the exploitation of the worker lay at the bottom of a good bit of pro-union legislation in recent decades. Today the time has come for legislation that will scrutinize union leadership with similar rigidity.

The tide of concern extends also to the rank and file of union membership. And it is high time union members evidence a concern for the preservation of the democratic process within the unions, and preserve the answerability of their leaders to their worker constituencies.

We agree with those in Congress who say that this investigation should not be used to destroy labor. But it is a sad day for the American worker, in his struggle against the fortunes of the Soviet worker, when he must reckon with a lack of democratic opportunities to choose representative leaders and to control his own funds. The time has come when the power accorded any group having a vital role in the nation’s life should carry with it a corresponding degree of public responsibility subject to the same checks and balances obtaining in business of any other kind.

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: The Gospel of Luke

The author of the Third Gospel was uniquely equipped to be the author of a book recording the history of the Great Physician in a reliable form. Although he was, according to his own declaration in Luke 1:1–4, no eyewitness of the gospel history, he had excellent opportunities to acquire all the authoritative information necessary for his two books, the Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles.

Authorship

The earliest Christian traditions unanimously declare that the author of Luke and Acts is “the beloved physician” of whom mention is made by the apostle Paul in Colossians 4:14, Philemon 24 and 2 Timothy 4:11. From these statements it is clear that Luke was with him while he was in captivity in Rome. This fits in excellently with the data of Acts. For according to Acts 16:10–17, 20:5–21:17 and 27:1–28:16 the author of Acts, after having accompanied Paul on several of his missionary journeys, stayed with him when he was taken to Rome as prisoner of the Roman Emperor.

According to Acts 1:1 the author of Acts is indeed also the author of the Gospel, for both are dedicated to a certain Theophilus and “the former treatise” to which he refers is manifestly the Third Gospel. The vocabulary, style and language of the Greek originals of Luke and Acts also conclusively prove that the tradition is correct in ascribing both books to the same author.

Knowing now that Luke was “the beloved physician” who accompanied Paul on long journeys (from Troas to Philippi, Acts, 16:10–17, about five years later from Philippi via Troas and Milete to Jerusalem, Acts 20:5–21:17, and finally from Caesaria to Rome, Acts 27:1–28:16) and who apparently stayed with him several years in Rome, we realize what excellent opportunities he had to obtain firsthand knowledge regarding the Gospel history.

Search For True Facts

Turning to the first four verses of the Third Gospel, we discover that Luke was well aware of his unique opportunity of discovering the true facts regarding Jesus Christ. And at the same time his statement in these first four verses, written in beautiful classic Greek, reveals the fact that Luke was deeply conscious of the tremendous responsibilities which rested upon him of being the author of such an important book.

He lived in times when to follow Jesus Christ was a matter of life and death. It thus was of the utmost importance that there should be absolute certainty regarding the facts on which his faith and that of his fellow-Christians were based. A man with his scientific outlook on life—one who witnessed so much of the “life and death” struggle between the early Christian Church and her Jewish and heathen opponents—he realized that only when the Christian faith is based on absolutely reliable facts will it be able to win its way in the world. He accordingly wrote to Theophilus, who was probably a well-educated and important person, that after he had from all available evidence “traced the course of all things accurately from the first,” he had decided to write a well-ordered account so that his reader “might know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed” (1:3–4).

During the past more than one hundred years, Luke’s statement in 1:1 that many had already written accounts of the Gospel history by the time he decided to write his more comprehensive and well-ordered narrative was mostly not taken seriously enough. The idea reigned that while the Apostles lived, the spoken word was regarded as practically the only source for knowledge regarding the Gospel history. The truth of Luke’s statement has, however, recently been accentuated by the discovery of the Dead Sea Rolls. These ancient writings have proved beyond doubt that among religious Jewish circles of about the time of the beginning of our Christian era it was customary to have, apart from oral traditions, extensive written reports of what religious leaders said, did and experienced.

In this as well as in many other respects, modern investigations have revealed the remarkable historical trustworthiness of the writings of Luke. In fact there is, apart from other Bible authors, no other historian of antiquity who has been proved to be so remarkably reliable as the Greek physician, Luke, the author of our Third Gospel and Acts.

It is, indeed, the unique characteristic of our Christian faith that it is based not on speculations of theories but on definite historical facts. For spiritually we cannot live on uncertainties or half-truths. All other faiths and philosophic systems are the result of human speculations, and are only a manifestation of the vain struggle of those who try to find along their own roads the way to spiritual rest. In the Gospel of Luke, however, we have the historical account of how the living God in his redeeming grace through Jesus Christ entered into the life of mankind, seeking to save those that are lost.

A close study of the contents of the Third Gospel emphasizes the fact that Luke indeed had access to a very wide range of reliable written as well as oral sources of information. He definitely made extensive use of the Gospel of Mark which he knew to be a trustworthy account. He knew Mark personally (cf. Col. 4:10 and 14, and Philemon 24), and they most naturally would have discussed matters regarding the Gospel history.

Paul himself also would have had a very wide and accurate knowledge of the main facts regarding him in whose service he sacrificed everything—even his own life. Through his intimate contact with Paul, Luke would thus have learned much regarding the Gospel history. At Jerusalem, Caesarea and elsewhere Luke, with his enquiring type of nature and Hellenistic training and culture, most certainly would have made the best use of the unique opportunities to gather as much information as possible also from the original Apostles and other eyewitnesses of the life, death and triumph of him whom he had learned to adore and serve as the Savior of the world.

Comprehensive History

The result of all of this is that by the time Luke wrote the Gospel, he completely mastered his material. We note this in the fact that his Gospel gives the most extensive and comprehensive account of the history of Jesus—starting from the announcement of the birth of His forerunner (John the Baptist) and running right through to the resurrection and ascension. And in Acts, the sequel to his first “treatise,” he gives supplementary details regarding the forty days between the resurrection and ascension of Jesus and then relates the history of how the glorified, triumphant Savior through the Holy Spirit built his Church and used the Apostles and especially Paul to proclaim the glad tidings throughout so great a part of the Roman Empire.

Luke realized that there existed, especially among educated people of the time, an urgent desire for firmly established truth in the field of religion. The different philosophic schools of thought were contradicting each other, rested on mere speculative grounds and left unsatisfied the deepest spiritual needs of people. At the same time the popular pagan religions, with their gross immorality and superstitions, filled the serious minded and educated people with repugnance. Religious men like Luke and Theophilus thus yearned for reliable knowledge regarding things eternal and spiritual. So, Luke addresses himself to the many seekers after firmly established truth; and for all of us he has written his beautiful Gospel in such a way that we are also able “to know the glad tidings with full certainty.”

Aim Of Author

Although Luke had access to the best firsthand sources of information he did not write an ordinary detailed biography of our Lord. He had a definite purpose in mind and made use only of the information which served his purpose. This aim was to proclaim as clearly and as forcibly as possible (in the limited space available in a parchment roll) Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient and almighty Savior of the world. From the very start the light is focused on him. The history of John the Baptist and all other characters that appear in the Gospel narrative is related only because it points to the glorious fact that Jesus Christ is indeed the Son of God who came to the world to save those who are lost.

Luke wrote his Gospel not merely to relate a beautiful story or to satisfy curiosity. His Gospel is a mighty and unequivocal proclamation of the glad tidings that God has indeed fulfilled his promises and has sent his only begotten Son to live, work, die and triumph as the divine Savior. As in no other Gospel we see how Jesus progressively revealed himself as Son of God and almighty Savior of all who take refuge to him. We see him exercising divine authority over nature, over the world of invisible spirits, over the human body and over the spirit of man. We see him even calling the dead back to life and using divine prerogative to forgive sins. We hear God the Father affirming that he is indeed his beloved Son who must be obeyed. And thus right through the Gospel we see Christ living and acting as the One who is indeed human and who entered into the deepest suffering on our behalf, but who is at the same time truly the Son of God and who is thus able to save not only Jews, but also Samaritans, pagans, publicans, sinners and outcasts as well as respectable people, the poor as well as the rich and women as well as men. Luke clearly shows that the redeeming work of Christ is of universal, all-embracing significance. Even the murderer on the cross was given the assurance of eternal salvation when he turned with repentance and faith to the dying Savior.

When this fact is clearly grasped—that Luke wrote his Gospel primarily to proclaim Christ as the one who entered human history to save them that are lost—it becomes apparent why Luke on the one hand left out many details which we would have liked him to mention and why on the other hand he has so much material not found in the other three Gospels. This truth also banishes the idea spread by so many negative critics that the Gospels contradict each other. Far from really contradicting each other, an unprejudiced study of Luke compared with the other Gospels reveals that each Gospel writer deliberately chose to relate certain details and to leave out others because they never intended to write ordinary biographies. On the contrary each, from a certain angle, proclaims the glad tidings of God’s salvation in and through his Son. Accordingly the four Gospels supplement each other and in a manifestly divine manner give, when taken together, a perfect and well-balanced picture of Jesus as our all-sufficient Lord and Savior.

Partial Bibliography

The following are some of the more important commentaries on the Gospel of Luke: J. M. Creed, The Gospel According to St. Luke (Macmillan, 1942); B. S. Eaton, The Gospel According to St. Luke (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1926); A. J. Grieve, St. Luke in Peake’s Commentary (revised ed., Nelson, 1936); F. Godet, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke (T. & T. Clark, 1879); Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, St. Luke in Critical and Explanatory Commentary on the Bible (Eerdmans, 1935); W. Manson, The Gospel of Luke (in The Moffatt New Testament Commentary, 1930); A. Plummer, Gospel According to St. Luke (5th ed., I.C.C., T. & T. Clark, 1922). J. NORVAL GELDENHUYS

(For a detailed discussion of points raised in the above, and for bibliographical details regarding an intensive study of the Third Gospel, readers are referred to: Commentary to the Gospel of Luke by J. Norval Geldenhuys, 3rd edition, 1956, Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids and Marshall, Morgan and Scott, Ltd., London. F. F. Bruce writes of this commentary, “I have much pleasure in commending this work to Bible students who appreciate a commentary which calls for time and thought, and not least to those who, like the author himself, are actively engaged in the ministry of the Word.”

The Lost Chord of Evangelism

Christianity in the World Today

Dr. Billy Graham, in an address prepared for delivery April 3 at the 15th annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Buffalo, New York, illustrates a major point on “the lost sincere compassion for sinners” with these words:

“Where are the tears for the lost? Where is our concern for men that are confused, frustrated, lost, sinful and destined for hell? At the moment, our New York campaign has been challenged by some extremists on two points.

“First, as to its sponsorship, I would like to make myself quite clear. I intend to go anywhere, sponsored by anybody, to preach the Gospel of Christ, if there are no strings attached to my message. I am sponsored by civic clubs, universities, ministerial associations and councils of churches all over the world. I intend to continue. Not one person in New York has even suggested or hinted as to what my message should be. It will be precisely the same message that I have preached all over the world. The centrality of my message will be Christ and Him crucified.

“Second, we have been challenged on what happens to the converts when the crusade is over. Apparently these brethren who make these statements have no faith in the Holy Spirit. The work of regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit. The work of follow up is the work of the Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit that convicted them of sin and regenerated them is able to follow them. No group of ministers in any large city anywhere in the world agree on what constitutes a sound church. We do all we can in follow up, but ultimately they’re in the hands of the Holy Spirit. He is more than able. We have overwhelming evidence of how miraculously the Holy Spirit has led thousands who have come forward in the meetings to surrender their hearts to Christ.”

Other key points of Dr. Graham’s address, entitled “The Lost Chord of Evangelism,” are as follows:

“The lost sensibility to the majesty of God.

“We handle holy things too glibly and professionally. We need to sense the majesty and holiness of God, as did Isaiah, Moses and Daniel. If we could get a glimpse of God today we would fall on our faces, as did Peter, James and John at the transfiguration and as Paul did on the Damascus Road.

“The lost sense of God’s presence.

“Samson ‘wist not’ that the Lord had departed from him. Many of us have lost the sense of God’s presence and anointing. We no longer minister in the powers of the Holy Spirit. Our message has lost that certain something that is necessary for spiritual power.

“The lost sensitivity to personal ethics.

“The Christian should be the most ethical person in our society. His income tax returns should be the most honest. The Christian minister should lean over backwards in his honesty, truthfulness and personal decorum. In the complexities of the present-day world, it is easy to get careless.

“The lost simplicity of our love one to another.

“The one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy, but love. There is far more emphasis on love and unity among God’s people in the New Testament than there is on orthodoxy, as important as it is.

“The lost significance of the scope of the Church.

“We evangelicals sometimes set ourselves up as judges of another man’s relationship to God. We often think that a person is not a Christian unless he pronounces our shibboleths and cliches exactly the way we do. I have found born again Christians in the strangest places, under the oddest circumstances, who do not know our particular evangelical language. But their spirit witnesses to my spirit that they are truly sons of God. There is a great swing all over the world, within the Church, toward a more conservative theological position. The old terms, fundamentalism and liberalism, are now passe. The situation has radically changed, since the days of Machen, Riley and other defenders of the faith a generation ago.

“The lost separation from the world.

“There is danger among evangelicals of compromising with the mode of the day. The lines of separation from the world are no longer drawn. Our attitudes are becoming infected with the spirit of the times. We are in danger of surrendering to false standards. While we must not be legalistic, we must be separated from the world. Worldliness is not a few designated things, such as dancing, movies and drinking, but is a spirit that is invading our homes and our lives today through many other mediums. We need to issue a new call for separation, not only from the world, but unto God.”

The NAE, representing over 40 denominations and associations, announced plans for a united prayer effort on the evening of April 3 in behalf of Dr. Graham’s New York crusade. Cards displayed at the convention, state by state, carried the pledges of scores of churches to unite their midweek prayer services with the concentrated effort. The prayer session at Buffalo is to last through midnight.

“Demonstrating Oneness in Christ” was the tide of another major convention address, prepared for delivery by Dr. Paul P. Petticord, president of Western Evangelical Seminary, Portland, Oregon, and president of NAE.

Highlights are as follows:

“Evangelicals demonstrate oneness in Christ.

“In this our day we have on the one hand the martyrs who cannot compromise the evangelical Christian doctrine and on the other those who liberalize Christian truth by rationalizing themselves into a philosophical position that says, ‘I must retain my existence, regardless,’ or ‘I am better alive than dead.’

This sounds logical but it does not come from the lips of evangelical Christians … Since when are we so valuable to this modern generation that the entire Christian philosophy should be reversed from ‘He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it’ to ‘I shall gain my life through expediency’?

“Evangelicals lift a voice against this type of thinking which depends upon temporal values and social recognition rather than the security of the cross. They are very much aware that this type of philosophy had crept into the church, especially among the ministry, until one might say that one of the chief motives of the modern minister is ‘to get along.’ I call this ‘the sin of expediency.’ Rather than to insist upon a minister being called to deliver God’s message in judgment as well as love, mercy and peace, many ministers feel it is more important to preach only the ethical idealisms and to leave out the most important part of the Gospel, the plan of redemption. Kindred to this position is the attitude that a minister must not make negative statements concerning the basic sinful nature of man. To this, evangelicals must say that one must discern the evils of the day and follow the instruction of the Scriptures to call men to repentance and to warn them of the results of sin and the judgment of God.

“Evangelicals demonstrate oneness in organizational cooperation.

“To be a crusading movement means that evangelicals must have not only a spirit of discernment but also a vision of what God would have his children do in facing the evils of the day. Now this necessitates a struggle against certain forces that would oppose the message of evangelical Christianity. It is because of this opposition that evangelicals are sometimes labeled as divisive, intolerant conservatives. I think any student of the Scripture is convinced that Christ had many who opposed him because he discerned the evils of his day and was willing to lift his voice against sin and unbelief in a positive presentment of himself as the only Saviour who could free men from sin. The evangelical testimony has this same type of witness. It is not belligerent, caustic, arrogant or pretentious, but it is an expression of deepest sincerity.

“Evangelicals demonstrate ecumenicity.

“Wherever the unification of peoples has been imposed under terms of force or regimentation, culturally, politically, socially, educationally, morally or religiously, great new rifts soon open where least expected, dividing along natural ‘fault’ lines. The infinite variety of differences in man seems to challenge conformity. Yet the ideal of achieving the proper relationship of the many into a unified endeavor continues to challenge men everywhere. However, there is a Divine plan. We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.…

“In the doctrinal Lordship of Christ is the only true ecumenicity. It means first, a spiritual Kingdom or society, uniting ‘in one Spirit,’ every ‘born again’ person everywhere. But it means also a living expression of ‘love to God’ which is ‘loving others as oneself.’ A Christian is vitally concerned about and interested in the spiritual and social well-being of his fellow man. It is ever his passionate desire to make available to all people the blessing he himself enjoys in Christ. Wherever men have become Christians, the darkness and oppression of sin and greed have been lifted.

“Evangelical oneness, which is Christ’s kingdom, is a morally transformed body of individuals, each one of whom has experienced, in himself, the life of Christ. Evangelicals unite their strength to live out the principles of Christ, its Lord, in the midst of daily life. This is the demonstration of evangelical ecumenicity.

“Evangelicals demonstrate oneness in purpose.

“The evangelical Christian gives more than mental assent to truth and he is one who refuses to ameliorate or compromise by administrative or ecclesiastical manifestation the clear witness concerning salvation in Christ.… The chief purpose of the evangelical is to spread the message of redemption from sin through Christ. Because of this fact, convinced evangelicals are bound to go into all the world and preach the Gospel.”

Dr. Petticord said evangelical Christianity, as a crusading movement, should have an outreach for the immediate future in a united purpose of successful witness in the following seven fields of service ministry:

(1) A ministry of encouraging evangelical fellowship, (2) encouraging social and material benefits for mankind, (3) expressing a united evangelical voice before government, (4) encouraging evangelical broadcasters, (5) encouraging evangelical home missions expansion, (6) calling evangelicals to manifest the oneness of Pentecost and (7) calling all evangelicals to prayer.

“He added:

“Evangelical Christianity does not depend upon worldly political power or organization to survive one kind of culture or another. Roman and Grecian culture died and Christianity was virile. Barbarism overran Europe and still evangelical Christianity survived. It is through the power of prayer that men are able to survive and perpetuate their faith.

“It is an ‘other worldly’ allegiance depending upon a King of a spiritual kingdom that is the culture in which virile Christianity grows. So if the Lord tarries and if the old world order succumbs and a new order arises, evangelical Christianity, though under other banners, will survive.

“The power of Christianity has never depended upon numerical superiority nor does the evangelical Christianity today. Through the power of prayer, its influence is multiplied like the loaves and the fishes in the hands of Christ and the multitudes are fed.

“To this end, the National Association of Evangelicals calls evangelicals everywhere to prayer, imploring men and women to set aside everything else to do that which is most important. This is to intercede before God, understanding that it is ‘by my spirit saith the Lord’ that the Kingdom of God may come in the hearts of men, and that evangelical Christianity will become increasingly virile through importune prayer, and that our differences will be minimized in the reaffirmation of the great objectives of our common faith.

“Evangelicals are today demonstrating a greater oneness in Christ than ever before. May God grant that the witness will be clear, unequivocal and certain so that all men may know by the Holy Spirit that Christ is the way, the truth and the life and that no man can come unto the Father but by him.…”

Short, Short Story

Ohio state senators were on the floor discussing the addition of a prayer and meditation room at the Capitol in Columbus.

“More people are praying today than ever before,” said Senator Lowell Fess, who introduced the measure.

“How are you going to keep the lobbyists out of the prayer room?” asked Senator Arthur Blake.

“They will need it more than we will,” replied Senator Fess.

Intercreedal Program

The National Council of Churches has invited Roman Catholics and Jews to join in producing a weekly, nationwide television program to promote spiritual values without reference to specific religious beliefs.

The invitation was extended by the Board of Managers of the National Council of Churches’ Broadcasting and Film Commission at its annual meeting in New York City. The board acted on a proposal made by the Rev. S. Franklin Mack, the commission’s executive director.

According to the officials, the program will be aimed chiefly at the “unchurched and the indifferent.”

The three groups now share in turn a weekly half-hour program on the National Broadcasting Company. At present, the Sunday program is called “Frontiers of Faith” by the Protestants and Jews and “The Catholic Hour” by the Catholics.

A 1957 budget of $1,170,930 was adopted by the Board of Managers.

Rose Bowl Service

Dr. Norman C. Hunt, one of Great Britain’s outstanding educational and religious leaders, will address the ninth annual Easter Sunrise service on April 21 in the Rose Bowl at Pasadena, California.

Dr. Hunt, professor of the Department of Industry and Commerce at the University of Edinburgh, has written publications on personnel management and industrial relations that are highly regarded by business leaders. He spent three months in the United States at the invitation of the American government to survey facilitites for university education pertaining to business.

He is president-elect of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Great Britain, serves on the Scottish councils of a number of missionary societies and has been active in the Christian Endeavor movement.

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, will interpret the significance of the service to the Bowl and radio audience.

Scheduled to begin at 6 a.m., the hour-long service will include musical numbers by the Pacific Bible College Choir, the Congress Hall Band of the Salvation Army and the Westmont College male quartet. Hundreds of other volunteer workers will be engaged in various duties to make possible the service.

Missionary Privileges

H. R. Bill 872, which would permit missionaries to make purchases at armed services commissaries outside the United States, is almost certain to get an adverse report from the Defense Department.

Spokesmen for the Defense Department have indicated that such legislation would run into serious difficulties in a number of countries because of duty-exemption agreements with post exchanges. The officials pointed out, however, that present regulations make it possible for area commanders to extend the privileges to missionaries wherever possible.

Questions also have arisen as to whether such legislation could place the government in the position of assuming expenses which otherwise would be the responsibility of the churches or mission boards. In this case, the bill would clash with the principle of church and state separation.

Meanwhile, missionaries in a number of countries face tremendous financial difficulties because of official exchange rates. The Bolivian government recently, with U. S. support, established one official exchange. There had been two official rates, plus a free market. While one rate was as high as 13,000 bolivianos to the dollar, certain exports were traded as low as 190 bolivianos to the dollar. Under the new rate the American dollar brings about 7,500 bolivianos.

One mission reported that the buying of some essential items had to be stopped because “it is altogether impossible to pay the fantastic prices.”

‘Religion’ Ruling

The House Judiciary Committee has reversed itself and restored the word “religion” to the list of discriminations which a proposed Federal Civil Rights Commission would he empowered to investigate.

Earlier, the committee had dropped “religion” in an effort to make the bill less controversial. A bi-partisian group of Congressmen indicated, however, they would fight for an amendment to have it restored on the floor unless the committee reconsidered its decision.

Representative Lester Holtzman (D-N. Y.), a spokesman for the group, said the United States was settled “primarily as a refuge for the Pilgrim Fathers who suffered as a result of their religious beliefs and set out to find a new homeland where they could worship as they pleased.”

He said America “should not give mere lip service” to its ideal of religious freedom but “take concrete action in ensuring the protection of the exercise of these inalienable rights.”

34-Year-Old Broadcast Terminated

The 104-year-old First Methodist Church of Los Angeles, California, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to order a public hearing on the action of Radio Station KFAC in terminating a religious program that has been broadcasting every Sunday morning for 34 years.

A number of churches have received broadcast termination notices since the Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches adopted an advisory policy against the sale of time for religious programs, but practically all such churches were members of denominations not affiliated with the NCC. The denomination of First Methodist in L.A. is affiliated with the Council.

Asked to comment on the incident, the Rev. S. Franklin Mack, executive director of the NCC Broadcast and Film Commission, said, “we are not involved in the matter.”

The “Mother Church of Southern California Methodism” pioneered in broadcasting its Sunday morning service to shut-ins in 1923, when radio was in its infancy.

In a formal complaint to the FCC, Dr. J. Richard Sneed, minister of the church, said the Los Angeles Broadcasting Company, proprietors of the station, had informed him that “the First Methodist Church services on Sunday morning are completely incompatible with our program format.”

“We are gradually eliminating all religious programs and replacing them with musical programs,” the station said in advising the church that it would no longer be permitted to purchase time between 11 and 12 o’clock on Sunday morning and that no other time would be made available.

The church said it had been paying the regular commercial rate.

Dr. Sneed, in his petition to the FCC, declared:

“If your honorable Commission does not take immediate steps to investigate and review this entire problem, the broadcast of church services and other religious programs will be sacrificed completely to unadulterated commercialism.”

The church pointed out that prior to 1951 it had for 28 years purchased time for the broadcast of both its morning and evening services over KFAC. In 1951 the station asked the church to discontinue broadcast of its evening services and “at that time represented and warranted that KFAC would not disturb the continued broadcast of morning services.”

The church also informed the FCC that KFAC, in its application for regular three-year renewal of license in 1956, represented to the Commission that 1.9 per cent of its broadcast time was being devoted to religious services, whereas the station now proposes to eliminate all such broadcasts.

“America,” the church asserted, “is basically a religious-minded country,” and it is in the public interest that “all religious denominations” be permitted a fair amount of broadcast time.

The church asked that the FCC order a public hearing in the Los Angeles area to determine if the station meets its obligations as a broadcast licensee.

The bill, which the House Judiciary Committee is preparing, would set up a bi-partisian commission to investigate all cases in which there is discrimination because of “race, color, religion or national origin.”

Protest Withdrawn

The Action Committee for freedom of Religious Expression has withdrawn its request to the Federal Communications Commission for a public hearing on Chicago television station WGN-TV’s application for a license to operate a new and more powerful transmitter.

The committee, formed to protest the cancellation by WGN-TV of a premiere telecast last December of the film “Martin Luther,” said the petition to the FCC was withdrawn in view of a scheduled showing of the movie by Station WBKB in Chicago.

“It now appears that the film will be telecast … April 23 at 10 p.m.,” the committee said. “The immediate goal of the Action Committee, which was to make this important film available to the people of Chicago, therefore, will have been achieved.”

The committee, which includes representatives of the National Council of Churches, major Lutheran bodies in the United States, and other Protestant groups, called the scheduled April 23 showing of the film “a substantial contribution to the cause of freedom … the threat to the freedom of religious expression represented by the action of WGN-TV in yielding to sectarian censorship demands has been repudiated by the broadcasting industry.”

Dr. Charles J. Anderson, midwest executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals, dissented from the committee’s decision to withdraw its petition.

He said:

“The issue is whether a medium of public information may submit freely to sectarian censorshop without censure from the public agency to which is entrusted the responsibility to see that it operates in the public interest.”

The Action Committee’s statement to the FCC noted that “any dereliction upon the part of WGN-TV cannot be cured by the deed of WBKB.”

Dr. John W. Harms, chairman of the committee, said his group will continue on a permanent basis to exercise “vigilance” against “sectarian censorship.”

Vatican Relations

“I don’t know!”

Vice President Richard M. Nixon made this reply when asked if he anticipated the eventual resumption of relations between the United States and the Vatican.

‘Therapy’ Appeal

The liquor industry, in a new bit of strategy, is planning to advertise liquor as a therapy for old people, claiming that it keeps them “spry and alert.”

“Liquor executives are scheming this new approach, believing it will boost consumption among adults over 40 enormously,” said Sen. Thomas C. Desmond, chairman of New York State’s committee on the problems of the aging.

None of the ads, presumably, will be placed in The Bowery, a New York area filled with “spry and alert” men of distinction who grew old long before their time.

The question was put to him after he had been received in private audience by Pope Pius XII.

“Personally,” said Mr. Nixon, “I can only hope for the continuation of the same good personal relations so far existing between the United States and the Holy See.” He said the topic was not discussed during his talk with the Pope.

Presidents Roosevelt and Truman maintained a personal envoy to Pope Pius, but the relationship ended when the envoy, Myron C. Taylor, resigned in January, 1950. President Truman’s nomination of General Mark Clark in 1952 to be U. S. Ambassador to the Vatican aroused so much opposition that General Clark asked his name be withdrawn.

Mr. Nixon, who is a Quaker, was received by the Pope after arriving in Rome from Libya, one of the nations in his African tour. The Vice President spent 25 minutes with the Pope, discussing problems of Africa, Asia and the “cold war.”

He also said he also had talked to the Pope about Palestine and the Holy Places but declined to reveal what was said. He remarked that “the Pope is very well informed and, at the same time, very concerned about the general situation in the Middle East.”

The Vice President delivered a personal message to Pope Pius from President Eisenhower.

Mrs. Nixon, a Methodist, joined her husband a few minutes before the Pope received the rest of the Vice Presidential party and newsmen in his library.

Church Merger

With 41 of 66 presbyteries on record, the vote of United Presbyterians at press time was 717 to 481 in favor of merger with the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A.

The voting is expected to be completed well before the General Assembly meeting in June.

In the vote of presbyteries, 29 favored the merger with 12 opposed, but the official count will be votes cast by the minister and one elder of each church. The issue will be decided by a simple majority.

A number of ministers opposed to the merger are not instructing church members for or against in the matter. There have been cases of elders voting for merger and ministers voting against it.

The General Assembly may study the results closely if the minority vote is large enough for possible disruptive pressure.

The Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., vote for merger was overwhelming.

The Men Speak

A proposal to ordain women as ruling elders and deacons in the Presbyterian Church, U. S. (Southern), approved by the denomination’s 1956 General Assembly, has been rejected by the presbyteries.

Dr. E. C. Scott, the church’s stated clerk, reported that 43 of the 85 presbyteries had voted against the proposal and 40 in favor, with no word from two presbyteries.

Approval by a majority of the presbyteries with subsequent favorable action by the General Assembly is required.

Delegates to the General Assembly, which met last June, voted 234 to 226 in favor of the proposal.

Code For Parents

A six-point code for parents of teenagers has been adopted by parents who are members of six churches in Manhasset, New York.

Titled “Principles for Parents,” it pledges them to chaperon parties held in their homes, not to serve alcoholic beverages to anyone else’s children and to discourage youngsters from going to homes where such beverages will be served.

The code also calls on parents to prevent party crashing, to make sure they know where their children are going and when they will return, to insist that their children respect the rights and property of others and the community and to bar unlawful driving after dark on junior drivers’ permits.

‘Discrimination’

An Eastern Orthodox clergyman has charged that New York City’s Committee on Slum Clearance is guilty of discrimination in excluding his church from plans for a $228,000,000 redevelopment of the Lincoln Square area.

The committee has denied the charge made by the Rev. Gregory R. P. Adair, pastor of the Cathedral of Our Saviour. Mr. Adair told a protest meeting held at his church that he intended to “call the bluff” of the committee.

The protest meeting was arranged by Americans United, a branch of Protestants and Other American United for Separation of Church and State.

Americans United is opposing the proposed resale by the city of properties within the area to St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church and to Fordham University, a Catholic school.

A taxpayers’ suit to bar the city from proceeding with the Lincoln Square Redevelopment Project was dismissed as “premature” by the State Supreme Court in February on the grounds that the Board of Estimate had not yet given final authorization for the plans.

Plaintiffs had maintained that the planned sale of 300,000 square feet of cleared slum land to Fordham University at $5 a square foot and the erection of a Catholic church and school on the property struck at Church-State separation.

Mr. Adair said provision had been made in the area for the Catholic institutions, which he asserted will benefit from markdowns subsidized by public funds, but that his request to be included had been rejected by the committee.

William S. Lebwohl, slum clearance director, said that Mr. Adair’s request came too late. He also went on record as saying that when the area is put up for resale, after the city acquires it, Mr. Adair’s church can bid for one of the plots against proposed sponsors, who have been negotiating construction details with the committee for more than a year.

Said Mr. Adair:

“I believe Mr. Moses [Robert Moses, chairman of the committee] will find some technicality for disqualifying us if we bid against St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church, Fordham University or any of the other sponsors he has virtually selected.”

The Presbyterian Church of the Good Shepherd, also in the project area, is to remain undisturbed. St. Cyprian’s Protestant Episcopal Church is slated for demolition and is not included in the redevelopment plan.

Off To Adventure

Sunday School and television have united in a planned curriculum for the first time.

The first national religious TV series produced expressly for children had its premiere on New York Station WPIX-TV in March.

Sponsored by the National Council of Churches, the series, called “Off to Adventure,” will tie in with the 1957 Protestant Sunday School theme—“the Indian American.”

The quarter-hour film programs show work done for Indian Americans by American Baptists, the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., the United Church of Canada, the Protestant Episcopal Church and the American Bible Society.

An estimated 200 stations are expected to carry the program by June. The New York premiere, on Sunday, March 17, was telecast at noon. Other telecast times around the nation will be decided by sponsoring church groups.

Tax Exemptions

Sixteen bills proposing income tax exemptions for tuition payments to private and parochial schools are pending in Congress.

The newest, introduced by Rep. Paul Fino (R-N. Y.) would provide tax exemption for the full tuition payment. Others would give full or partial exemption for college tuition only. One would classify all tuition payments to private elementary and secondary schools as charitable contributions.

The House Ways and Means Committee, to which all the measures have been referred, is expected to appoint a subcommittee to study the problem.

Religious Mail Rates

Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield has asked Congress for an increase in second and third class postage rates, but he urged that the present subsidized rates for mail of religious and non-profit organizations be left unchanged.

The rate for religious and non-profit periodicals entered as second class matter is one and one-half cent a pound. Other periodicals now pay two and one-half cents a pound. The Postmaster General asked for a zone rate schedule on second class that will raise these rates 60 per cent over a four-year period.

Religious and non-profit groups now mail circulars, bulletins and other bulk mail at one cent each. Other postal users pay one and one-half cents for mailings larger than 200 pieces and two cents on other third class matter.

This would be raised to two cents and two and one-half cents, respectively, under the proposed legislation.

Europe News: April 01, 1957

State Church Exit

The traditional State Church is on its way out in Europe, according to the president of the Baptist Union of Sweden.

Dr. Gunnar Westin, former dean of the theological faculty at Uppsala University, made the statement recently on a visit to Washington, D. C.

“A strong doctrine of Church and State separation is developing throughout Europe,” he said.

Dr. Westin, a member of the Baptist World Alliance executive committee, came to the United States last fall for a four-month lecture engagement at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. He also has lectured at other theological schools and will conclude the visit with lectures at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, the first week in April.

The Baptist leader said the State Church system which developed in Europe immediately following the Reformation was based on the theory that “government is responsible for the souls of its people.” It also grew out of the doctrine that church unity is essential to political unity, he said.

The Lutheran Church is the State Church of Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.

Study In Contrast

The United States has delivered $700,000,000 worth of equipment to the new German army, including 1,100 tanks and 1,000 military planes.

The Pocket Testament League is sending 50,000 copies of the Gospel of John.

‘Pact With Devil’

Communist newspapers in Germany’s East Zone accused Berlin’s Bishop Otto Dibelius of “entering into a pact with the devil” when he recently co-signed with the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as agreement providing for establishment of chaplaincy services for the new West German Army.

The pact will go into effect after approval by the synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany and the Bundestag, lower house of the West German Parliament.

Bishop Dibelius is chairman of the EKD Council. Roman Catholic chaplaincy for the new army has already been established under a Vatican-West German concordat.

The Soviet Zone press denounced the arrangement as an “un-Christian misuse of the Church” and “provocation of peace-loving forces within and outside the church.” It said that Christianity must not be “misused as a moral cement for a NATO army” and warned East German members of the EKD Synod that they could not “in good conscience” approve the treaty.

Ruling In Italy

Italy’s new Constitutional Court has ruled that public religious gatherings may be held without previous notice to the police.

The decision marked a victory for evangelical groups who had long sought to have the police regulation set aside.

In its ruling the court declared unconstitutional an article of the 1931 Public Security Law specifying that the police must be notified three days in advance of any religious assembly outside a recognized house of worship.

Some Italian and Protestant missionaries have run into trouble in recent years over interpretations of the law.

Africa News: April 01, 1957

Doors Open Wider

Christian denominational mission leaders, once fearful of the path the new state of Ghana will take, now feel that self-government may mean wider open doors—with the stigma of “foreign imperialism” removed.

Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah said his country will continue to welcome missionaries. “We owe a lot to missionaries,” he stated.

The Prime Minister said his people were becoming Western in their outlook and had no intention of joining the Afro-Asian bloc of leftist countries.

In the flush of their first taste of political freedom, the jubilant people of Africa’s newest nation did not forget to thank God and the missionaries who brought the message. At the official Independence Week mass church service in the capital city, Accra, the Rev. Christian G. Baeta, chairman of the Christian Council of Ghana, told thousands of worshippers:

“Ghana’s independence enables her to do battle for God. We would dedicate ourselves and our new nation, all that we are and have, to the service of Almighty God, the giver of all. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.”

Dr. Baeta, who is senior lecturer in theology at the School of Divinity, University of Ghana, paid tribute to the work of missionaries:

“Particularly would we remember with humble thanksgiving that noble army of missionaries of the Gospel who, in selfless devotion, penetrated the deepest recesses of our land and of the lives of its people, bringing in the light of God, the light by which we now live.”

In an interview with the African Challenge (140,000 circulation), Dr. Baeta stressed the need for Christian instruction in the young nation:

“The ordinary religious instruction given is very primitive. We teach people basic Bible stories, but little instruction is given on how to carry Christianity into practical life. Nobody else will give moral instruction so vital to a young nation. It remains for Christians to do this through literature.”

—W.H.F.

Threat By Church

The Capetown Presbyterian Church of South Africa intimated recently that it will resort to civil disobedience if proposed legislation is enacted giving the government control over church services attended by both Europeans and Africans.

In a statement read from pulpits in all churches of the denomination at Capetown, the presbytery declared that to bow to government control of multi-racial worship services would be to “disregard our Lord’s own words—‘my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.’ ”

The statement added:

“In the event, therefore, of the bill becoming law, it would be our solemn duty, while not unmindful of our obligations towards and respect of civil power, to take our stand on the words of Calvin: ‘We are subject to men who rule over us but subject only in the Lord. If they command anything against him, let us not pay least regard to it nor be moved by all the dignity they possess as magistrates—dignity to which no injury is done when it is subordinated to the special and truly supreme power of God.”

The proposed new law is incorporated in a section of the Native Laws Amendment Bill. It will require permission from the Minister of Native Affairs, Dr. H. F. Verwoerd, for multi-racial services in churches or other institutions established since 1938. The bill also has been opposed by the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist and Baptist churches and other religious groups.

Middle East News: April 01, 1957

Massive Radio Effort

Plans for the construction in the Near East of a 100,000-watt radio transmitter to beam programs to the Arabic-speaking world have been approved by the Near East Committee of the National Council of Churches.

To be built at a cost of $250,000, the station will be supported by cooperative Protestant foreign mission boards. With the exception of the Vatican radio, which equals the new station’s planned power, this reportedly will be the largest and most powerful venture in radio by any religious group.

The radio will be as powerful as the 100,000-watt Voice of America transmitters in the area. Like these, it will be short-wave, which carries much farther than medium and long-wave signals. Most home radios in Africa and the East—405,000 were licensed last year in Egypt alone—are equipped to receive short wave.

Exact location of the transmitter has not been determined.

Radio jamming by Russia, recently intensified in the area, will be a problem, but church engineers are optimistic after studying transmitting conditions in the Middle East.

The station’s programs will be educational and cultural as well as religious.

Dr. W. Burton Martin, executive secretary of the NCC’s RAVEMCCO (Radio, Audio-Visual Education, Mass Communications Committee), said programming will call for an eight-hour day, seven-day-a-week schedule. Included will be a family breakfast program, and programs for industrial workers, farmers and homemakers.

Bible study and daily devotions will be features in the schedule, but music, drama and light entertainment will have significant roles.

“Its influence will be invaluable in bringing the Christian message to new millions, while operating in the public interest,” said Dr. Martin.

Some American observers said they were not enthusiastic about the church putting on public service programs. Others expressed hope that evangelical voices, long familiar to world audiences as bearers of the Gospel, will not he bypassed.

Far East News: April 01, 1957

Philippine Outlook

Religious issues may play a big role in the November election of a president in the Philippine Republic, a country officially dedicated to the Order of the Sacred Heart a few months before the airplane crash in which President Ramon Magsaysay was killed.

Presidential aspirant Claro M. Recto is opposed by Catholics and backed by Protestant leaders.

The former Vice President, Carlos P. Garcia, who assumed duties of the high office shortly after the crash, is a graduate of Silliman University, a Presbyterian institution in Manila. He is a Catholic, however, as was his predecessor.

Secretary of Education Hernandez, strongly Catholic, also perished in the crash, which took 24 lives. Undersecretary of Education Martin Aguilar Jr., a logical choice for the vacant position, is a Protestant, and church observers are intensely interested in seeing who will get the key post.

President Magsaysay was a popular figure among both Catholics and Protestants. Nearly a half-million persons swarmed around Malacanan Palace when the body of the 49-year-old chief executive was brought from the Cebu Island mountainside.

“His fight against communism as one of democracy’s staunchest champions …,” said Philippine Ambassador to the United States, Carlos P. Romulo.

‘The Only Weapon’

Thirty missionaries, representing 24 different mission groups, agreed on the following statement of faith before issuing invitations to all missionaries in Japan for the 1959 Protestant Centennial Conference:

“We believe in the Bible as the fully inspired, infallible Word of God, the only rule of faith and practice.”

Words Of Warning

Christians in China who are permitted to communicate with the West are members of “show case” churches maintained by communists for propaganda purposes, Ambassador Hollington K. Tong of Nationalist China said recently.

The ambassador, speaking at a dinner commemorating the 155th anniversary of First Baptist Church in Washington, D. C., said most Christian groups in China continue to feel severe persecution.

Despite such reports, however, according to Japan Harvest, a 13-man Protestant Japanese delegation is making plans to visit Red China in April and May. The Rev. J. Asano, Japan Biblical Seminary professor and pastor of The Mitake Kyodan Church, will be the delegation leader.

The delegation will be in Red China for communism’s biggest holiday, the May Day Celebration.

Worth Quoting

“This is the day of the larger church, handsome buildings, plush furniture and costly appointments. I’m not against these things. I love them. I break the Tenth Commandment every time I go into one of those spacious ministers’ studies in our new churches. Then I have to remember how easy it is to insulate yourself from your neighbor, especially if he is on the poorer side of town. If we forget him and his work, we are judging ourselves and our ministry by the price tag.”—Rev. Homer R. Lane, Toronto, Canada.

“It is not a struggle merely of economic theories or forms of government or military power. The issue is the true nature of man. Either man is the creature whom the Psalmist describe as ‘a little lower than the angels’ crowned with glory and honor, holding ‘dominion over the works’ of his Creator; or man is a soulless animated machine to be enslaved, used and consumed by the state for its own glorification.…”—President Eisenhower.

Digest …

Zondervan Publishing House takes over book publishing business of Sword of the Lord Foundation April 1.… Over 50% of Milwaukee TV viewers watch premiere of “Martin Luther.”

$140,000 fund raised to restore historic Calvin Auditorium in Geneva, Switzerland.… Two leading Christian schools in Seoul, Korea—Chosun University and Severence Union Medical College—merge as Yonsei University. First president, Dr. L. George Paik.

Books

Book Briefs: April 1, 1957

Liberal Leader

The Living of These Days, by Harry Emerson Fosdick. Harper and Brothers, New York. $4.00.

Harry Emerson Fosdick’s friends have prevailed on him to write his autobiography, and he has done so under the title, The Living of These Days. It is part of a prayer, taken from his hymn, God of Grace and God of Glory: “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, For the living of these days.” The title is apt, for not only was Fosdick strongly influenced by the events of the last seven or eight decades, he also exerted a considerable influence on that period of human history. To this reviewer, who is not a great many years younger than Fosdick, the reading of this biography seemed like a review of the history of his generation.

No one who has heard or read Fosdick needs to be told that his style is superb. This does not indicate one that is flowery and certainly not one that is wordy. Fosdick’s style excels in precision, simplicity, directness, forcefulness and ruggedness. His humor is as wholesome as it is natural. One of the most pleasing features of this volume is the author’s humility. To cite but one of numerous instances, concerning his teaching of homiletics at Union Seminary, he says, “I hope that I helped the students, but I am unable to express how much they helped me” (p. 119). Another laudable characteristic of the book is its candor.

Harry Emerson Fosdick received his formal education at Colgate University and Union Theological Seminary of New York. He has been pastor of the First Baptist Church of Montclair, New Jersey, and the First Presbyterian and Riverside churches of New York City. He has served Union Seminary as part-time professor of homiletics and practical theology. He has preached and lectured in several lands and has written some twenty-six books.

The aforesaid salient facts derive most of their significance from his theological pilgrimage. He informs his readers that he began as a fundamentalist. However, as a young man he found fundamentalism incompatible with intellectual honesty. His problem was how to retain Christianity without committing intellectual suicide. Theological liberalism, or modernism, proved to be the answer. He accepted many of the conclusions of the so-called higher biblical criticism and rejected the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture. He felt that the doctrines of historic Christianity were but the temporary, and hence changeable, framework for abiding truth. That formula he applied to certain explicit teachings of the Bible as well as to teachings deduced by the church from the Bible. He denied such supernatural events as the virgin birth of Jesus and his bodily resurrection. He deprecated the orthodox formulations of such dogmas as the Trinity, the deity of Christ and the satisfaction of divine penal justice by Christ’s death on the cross. He came to base his theology, not on the Bible as the infallibly inspired Word of God, but, after the manner of Schleiermacher and Ritschl, on religious experience. He taught his students to base their preaching on the Bible as the record of the religious experience of certain saints of antiquity rather than the authoritative Word of God. Withal he fell under the spell of the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch. The fundamentalist-modernist controversy in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. of the nineteen-twenties centered about his teaching. When a general assembly asked him to subscribe to the system of doctrine contained in the confessions of that denomination and to its principles of church government, he declined in the interest of honesty to do so. He wanted the membership of his churches to be inclusive, not only in the sense of embracing all races and strata of society, but also in the sense of “a liberal fellowship ready for an adventure into unrestricted interdenominationalism” (p. 183). To be sure, after the Second World War he saw, with others, that modernism was in need of several adjustments. For instance, it had been too optimistic about human nature and hence about the future of the human race, it had stressed the divine immanence out of due proportion to the divine transcendence and it had accommodated itself too much to the prevailing culture instead of challenging that culture. But Fosdick did not cease to be a modernist. Even the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, particularly in its early expressions, was not nearly liberal enough for him. Now that Brunner has mellowed in his attitude toward liberalism, Fosdick is hoping for a synthesis of liberalism and neo-orthodoxy.

What struck the reviewer perhaps more than anything else in his perusal of this autobiography was the author’s slighting of orthodox scholarship. He denounces fundamentalism scathingly for its “obscurantism,” and in so doing he takes to task especially William Jennings Bryan. Now Bryan, sincere Christian layman that he no doubt was, did not rate as a theologian. That there are fundamentalists who cling tenaciously to foolish notions is beyond dispute. For instance, the notions that the human authors of the Bible were mere robots, that each and every statement in the Bible must be interpreted literally and that man was created in the physical image of God do indeed fall under the head of obscurantism. But pray, what orthodox theologian of any note holds to such nonsense? This reviewer cannot suppress the question whether Fosdick has ever made a serious study of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, of such protestant confessions, to name but two, as those of Augsburg and Westminster and of the works of contemporaries as B. B. Warfield and Herman Bavinck. And why does he completely ignore the man who proved to be not only the most militant but also the most scholarly defender of orthodoxy in that Presbyterian conflict in which Fosdick himself was so deeply involved—J. G. Machen? Here seems to be a most serious lacuna in Fosdick’s education. Or is it possible that he would brush aside as unscientific the noblest literary products of orthodoxy? But that would be so preposterous as to be well-nigh unbelievable, for their authors excelled in erudition and it may be said without in the least belittling Fosdick that in point of theological scholarship he does not deserve to stoop down and unloose the latchet of the shoes of any one of them. To refer again to Machen, even the most extreme liberals being his judges, he was a scholar to be reckoned with. In A Preface to Morals Walter Lippmann stated that Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism was more convincing than the reasoning of his modernist opponents, and H. L. Mencken in his characteristic way eulogized Machen shortly after his death in 1937 by saying that he was to Bryan what the Matterhorn is to a wart.

This reviewer intends no insinuation that this biography is wholly devoid of good ideas. We must all assent to the improvements Fosdick advocates on the older liberalism. But even here Fosdick does not give historic orthodoxy the credit due it for those ideas. A few examples follow. Says Fosdick: “Static orthodoxies are a menace to the Christian cause” (p. 230). But orthodoxy has always said that. One of its tenets is the progressive guidance of the church by the Holy Spirit into the truth. Therefore it ever seeks to bring forth new things as well as old out of the treasure of the Word of God. Such a conservative church as the Christian Reformed has in recent decades drawn up a tentative formulation of the doctrine of common grace, and the Presbyterian Church in 1788 amended its Westminster Confession of Faith to eliminate Erastianism. Baptist Roger Williams, no doubt, deserves some credit for that change. Fosdick insists that the preacher must deal with social problems. While it is true, on the one hand, that orthodoxy rejects the modernist brand of social gospel and, on the other, that dispensationalists would preach an exclusively individualistic gospel, many conservatives have long insisted that the social implications of the Gospel must be stressed in the pulpit. Professor Louis Berkhof of Calvin Seminary did that in a lecture on The Church and Social Problems, delivered in 1913. The undersigned did likewise in an article, The Christian Pulpit and Social Problems, published in the Westminster Theological Journal. Fosdick declares: “Faith and reason are not antithetical opposites” (p. 258). But what orthodox theologian of any stature ever thought they were? Paraphrasing a saying of George A. Buttrick to the effect that “there is only one thing worse than a devil and that is an educated devil,” Fosdick comments: “That emphasis is a newcomer in America” (p. 271). But this reviewer had it impressed on his soul by the advocates of Christian day schools when he was yet a mere boy. Fosdick has come to the conclusion: “Neo-orthodoxy is right in stressing the necessity and primacy of God’s self-revelation, if we are to know him” (p. 256). But why credit neo-orthodoxy with a truth which has been obvious to orthodoxy for ages? Fosdick agrees thoroughly with Brunner “that man’s wickedness is a dreadful, desperate fact, and that man, left to his own unaided devices in a materialistic universe empty of the saving grace of God, is doomed” (p. 252). But that is the very essence of historic orthodoxy—provided, of course, the term “grace of God” be taken in the Augustinian sense, not the Pelagian. In short, in later years Fosdick has moved in the direction of orthodoxy, yet he keeps insisting that he is a modernist. No doubt, basically he still is.

As good a way as any of stating the point at issue between Fosdick’s modernism and historic orthodoxy is this: the latter acknowledges God’s infallible Word as the test of truth; the latter makes experience the norm. Of course, it does not follow that Fosdick casts the Bible overboard; according to him it is itself the record, albeit a fallible one, of the religious experience of great saints of old. But in seeking solutions for such problems as that of God and immortality Fosdick does not rely on any authoritative statements of Scripture but turns to human experience. For that reason he cannot but flounder about, much as a vessel without rudder or compass. Small wonder that his attitude toward war has changed so radically. Nor is it altogether strange that in spite of his high regard for Jesus of Nazareth he rejects his teaching of hell. If truths are divorced from their formulations, they become vague indeed. Besides, many truths simply cannot be experienced. At best theology of experience will lead to probabilities, never to certainties. Fosdick himself so much as grants that and even more when he writes: “Concerning every human experience theories of explanation and interpretation are essential, but however confidently they may be held, their probable insufficiency must be assumed and their displacement by more adequate ways of thinking positively hoped for” (p. 230).

Is modernism Christianity? Fosdick is sure that it is Christianity at its best and he defines it thus: “For me the essence of Christianity is incarnate in the personality of the Master, and it means basic faith in God, in the divinity revealed in Christ, in personality’s sacredness and possibilities, and in the fundamental principles of life’s conduct which Jesus of Nazareth exhibited” (p. 269). But that definition is quite inadequate. For one thing, it makes the incarnate Son of God a Christian, which he certainly was not. A Christian is a sinner saved by grace; a sinner who, conscious of his need of salvation and realizing that he cannot save himself, abandons himself to the Christ crucified; and a sinner who loves the Lord who bought him with his blood and lovingly serves that Lord. Such is the Christian, and Christianity is first of all God’s solution for the problem of sin—its guilt and penalty as well as its power and pollution.

In his early work, The Theology of Crisis, Brunner vigorously denounced modernism as “a religion which has nothing in common with Christianity except a few words” (p. 261). But Brunner was not then and is not now an exponent of the historic Christian faith. In 1924, the very year in which Fosdick delivered at Yale the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching under the title The Modern Use of the Bible, Machen wrote his Christianity and Liberalism. The point of that book was that Modernism is not Christianity. Five years later Lippmann observed that Machen had not been refuted. That still holds true today. This reviewer thinks his argument irrefutable.

Christianity is based squarely on the Bible as the Word of the living God. Modernism is based on religious experience. Christianity is history, doctrine and life—all three; and they stand and fall together. In that history such supernatural events as Jesus’ virgin birth and bodily resurrection loom large. Modernism denies them. But the apostle Paul said, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). At the heart of Christian doctrine lies the Pauline teaching that, being justified by Christ’s blood, believers will be saved from wrath through him (Romans 5:9). Modernism preaches another gospel. In his sermon Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Fosdick spoke with disgust of those who believe “that the blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death, placates an alien Deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner” (quoted in Christianity and Liberalism, p. 120). The Christian ethic is rooted in Christian doctrine, notably in the doctrine of the atonement. Paul has enjoined Christians to glorify God in their body and their spirit because they are “bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20). That price was the precious blood of Christ. The ethic of modernism disdains blood-theology. Inspired Paul being the judge, modernism is not Christianity.

R. B. KUIPER

Full Commitment

Christian: Commit Yourself: By Paul S. Rees. Revell, $2.00.

Paul Rees is pastor of the First Covenant Church of Minneapolis. The influence of his Christian ministry, however, has extended far beyond the confines of his own parish; it has been felt throughout the entire nation. His books on stewardship, evangelism and the Holy Spirit have blessed many lives.

The 10 messages in this volume are all directed toward securing from the listeners a full commitment to Christ and his cause. Decisions at depth constitute the major thrust of each soul-probing sermon. Thus, the paramount aim of this preacher is to recapture the dedication, devotion and discipline that gave such irrepressible fervor and undaunted daring to the early Christian movement. Following the announcement of each subject, Dr. Rees stipulates the kind of commitment he seeks from the particular message. For example, in the sermon on “The Supreme Surrender” he begins by summarizing the commitment he desires: “I will seek to know and do the will of God in every area of my life.” After announcing the subject “The Badge of Royalty” the commitment sought is “I will accept responsibilities for service in my church.”

Dr. Rees quotes General Omar Bradley as saying, “The most completely committed person I have met is a convinced Communist.” Recognizing the challenging truth in a statement of this kind, Dr. Rees has dedicated himself to the holy task of activating and mobilizing Christian people to a more drastic and ardent commitment to Christ and his cause in this world.

The Christian minister will find here new illustrations and perhaps new insights expressed in new ways. The new Christian who reads this book will be able to learn more about the nature of the deeper Christian life and the clarification of many of his own embryonic thoughts.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Render To Caesar

The State in the New Testament, by Oscar Cullman. Scribners, New York. $2.50.

That the New Testament has something to say about the State will come as a surprise to many people. Secularists have assumed that politics have nothing to do with piety; sectarians have imagined that piety may be divorced from politics. But the New Testament has much to teach us on this subject. We are indebted to Cullman for his careful exposition of the Christian view of the State.

In the various chapters of this book the author discusses, “Jesus and the Resistance Movement of the Zealots,” “Jesus’ Condemnation by the Roman State,” “Paul and the State,” “The State in the Johannine Apocalypse.” There is also an excursus dealing with “the powers that be” mentioned in Romans 13, viewing the State as the effective agent of invisible (angelic) powers.

According to Cullman, the attitude of the New Testament to the State is one of “neither denial nor affirmation.”

The State is to be accepted rather than denied since it has been ordered of God for our own good. The State is intended of God to be his servant in the administration of justice, and that is why Jesus refused to go along with the Zealots who renounced the State unreservedly and sought to overthrow it.

Nevertheless, the State is not final. There are some things that are not Caesar’s. The totalitarian claims of the State must be resisted. For this reason Jesus refused to agree with the Sadducees whose religious indifference gave the Romans unlimited submission.

Some have regarded the question of the political world order within the framework of the sovereign Lordship of Christ (cf. “The Declaration of Faith Concerning Church and Nation” approved by the Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1955).

Cullman’s emphasis is on the eschatological. In the New Testament witness concerning the State he finds a unity rooted in the tension between present and future. Ordered of God for the present, the State must be recognized by the Christian citizen. Yet in the end, it will pass away. The State is not a final institution with divine authority; therefore the disciple of the Lord will ever be ready to warn and resist when the State transgresses its limits. Only the Christ of the cross, the coming King, is Lord of all.

We have seen the State threaten the Church by political tyranny (Communism), and ecclesiastical forces seek to dominate the State by pretensions to power (Romanism). It has also been disturbing to note the indifference of many professing Christians to political problems and the attitude of the worldling that Christianity is irrelevant to the situations of our time. Most welcome, therefore, is this volume by Cullman. While one may not always agree with the author, no one can fail to profit from his serious and stimulating exposition of the New Testament on the subject of the State.

MARIO D. GANGI

Able Commentary

I and II Thessalouians, by William Hendriksen. Baker, Grand Rapids, 1955. $4.50.

This able commentary, one of a series called New Testament Commentary (upon which the author is at present engaged), covers in a semi-popular fashion Paul’s two letters to the church at Thessalonica.

Dr. Hendriksen is fully abreast with modern scholarship in the realm of New Testament literature and exegesis. However, there is no parade of learning in these pages. The difficult problems of interpretation are usually relegated to footnotes (which do not average one a page). A selected bibliography lists the major works on these epistles, and a more extended bibliography adequately covers the larger literature on this subject.

The book is definitely evangelical and conservative in viewpoint, The Pauline authorship is defended with adequate scholarship. All the arguments against Paul’s authorship are fairly stated and persuasively answered. No one can accuse our author of obscurantism.

One of the most valuable features of this commentary is found in the extended prior to Christ’s parousia. Although there is no precise treatment of the various eschatological views as such, the author’s interpretation naturally leads to a millennial conclusion. This is what we would expect from the author of More Than Conquerors.

In general the reviewer agrees with the theological and eschatological views presented in this excellent commentary. The flaws are few and hard to find. We found a Greek preposition misspelled and incorrectly accented (p. 21). On the same page another Greek preposition is incorrectly accented. A participle appears without accent (p. 48). The Greek word parousia is accented incorrectly (p. 76). A smooth breathing is omitted (p. 135). A present participle is called an aorist participle (p. 142). A Greek infinitive is incorrectly accented (p. 168). The English word “personal” is misspelled (p. 137). “Of repent” should be “to repent” (p. 185). “So that” is always spelled as one word except in two places (pp. 68, 103).

Conservative scholarship cannot be entirely satisfied with the republication of learned and evangelical works that were produced by orthodox scholars of the nineteenth century or earlier. It is good to see an increasing number of conservative books on biblical and theological subjects appearing in our day. We feel confident that Dr. Hendriksen’s contribution to this swelling list of evangelical literature will do much to restore confidence in the orthodox position concerning the New Testament literature. A more useful commentary on Paul’s letters to the church at Thessalonica could hardly be found.

WICK BROOMALL

Reliable Introduction

Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls, by F. F. Bruce. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1956. $2.50.

This is just the book to give to the layman who wishes a trustworthy introduction to the now famous Dead Sea Scrolls. The interest which these scrolls has aroused in the public mind is nothing short of remarkable. It is probably no exaggeration to say that they are the most significant archeological discovery of the last thirty years. Inasmuch as this is so, many of the books (and the number of such books is rapidly growing) which discuss the scrolls may tend to overemphasize their importance for the study of the beginnings of Christianity. It cannot be denied that much that has been written on the subject borders on the nonsensical.

If there is any one word which can characterize the present work it is the word “sane.” Professor Bruce gives a remarkably clear and valuable survey of the whole field, and in all his discussion seeks to abide by the facts. He goes as far as the facts allow and no farther. He makes it clear that he is acquainted with the various interpretations of disputed points which have been advanced, but he himself is not interested in pressing them. He is fair in his discussions, and seeks to withhold judgment when judgment must be withheld. For this reason primarily that his work is dependable.

The book is written in a pleasing style, and is well adapted to the layman who is not acquainted with the various technical questions which a proper study of the scrolls involves. One who reads through this work carefully will have a good understanding of the principal points in debate in connection with the scrolls, and he will be prepared for further study. To produce such a book is no easy task, and it is this reviewer’s opinion that the author has done his job in a first-rate fashion.

The principal point at which we are constrained to disagree with the author is in his evaluation of the importance of the Isaiah manuscript with respect to the question of the origin of the prophecy. Professor Bruce thinks that this newly discovered manuscript proves nothing that was not already known. For our part we believe that the manuscript is of unique significance. It makes clear that the book of Isaiah existed in its present form as early as the second century before Christ. Thus it stands as a monumental NO to the views of Bernhard Duhm, the influential German scholar who held that the prophecy did not receive its present form until the first century B.C. This is not a minor point, but one of tremendous importance. For, if there is a first and a second Isaiah, as the overwhelming majority of modern biblical critics affirm, then the witness of the New Testament to the authorship of the prophecy is clearly in error. The Dead Sea manuscript supports the New Testament, and it also renders more difficult attempts to explain the origin of the book of Isaiah on any view other than that of the Bible itself, namely, that Isaiah was himself the author of the entire prophecy.

If the reader wishes a clearly written, accurate, informative introduction to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, this is the book to obtain.

EDWARD J. YOUNG.

Theology

Review of Current Religious Thought: April 01, 1957

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

The question of the relationship between the Church and the State remains a perennial problem for the Christian. Four hundred years ago at the time of the Reformation the principle in England was that of one State, one Church, so that every Englishman was regarded as a member both of the State and of the Church. One thing that history has taught us is that everybody cannot be forced into the same ecclesiastical mould and that between fellow-Christians there must be room for conscientious differences of judgment and practice where forms of worship are concerned. Failure to recognize this on the part of the authorities in England led to the hazardous sailing of the Pilgrim Fathers for the New World in the search of that freedom. Subsequently, as toleration gained ground, the Free Churches came into being—free, that is, or independent of official connection with the State-while the Church of England continues to this day to maintain its historic bonds with this Protestant realm of England.

The Rev. Edward Rogers, a Methodist minister, writing in the January issue of The London Quarterly and Holborn Review on the subject of “Christians and the Modern State,” speaks of industrialization, urbanization, centralization and secularization as the four distinctive features of the modern State, and asserts that the Christian, “simply because he is a Christian, confronts the State in two inseparably related ways,” as one who, “whatever the social or political order, … must seek to live by faith and love. The political order,” he says, “may be corrupt or cruel, the economic order unjust and the moral code of society debased. Nevertheless, he will be generous and just, truthful and honest, kind and forbearing.”

We are reminded that political liberty is “a rare and precious thing, hardly won and easily lost” and that it “demands and depends upon men and women of integrity and charity, ready to acknowledge that they are their brother’s keepers.” It is, in fact, the believing Christian who is “the preserver of sound values in a society that would otherwise decay.” Mr. Rogers points to loneliness and a slackening of the social ties that strengthen life as resulting from living in the modern State. These deficiencies, it is true, are made good by church life, which offers “fellowship and shared responsibilities.” Saying this, however, he makes the following very salutary comment on what has come to be known as the social gospel: “What went wrong with the ‘social gospel’ in the generation immediately past was that it put ‘social’ first, and a diluted gospel second. Men and women of noble intention strove to implement the Sermon on the Mount while pushing into the background the Cross and the Resurrection—and found that their fine phrases and benevolent exhortations splashed ineffectively on the rocks of sin.”

Who will not agree with his conclusion that the doctrine of the sovereignty of God is “a doctrine desperately needed to check the blasphemous and destructive doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of the State”; for the State “is the servant of God, not the master of men?”

The dualistic doctrine that the care of the State extends only to the body and the care of the Church only to the soul is described as “entirely unchristian” in an article on “Church and State” in the January–March number of The Church Quarterly Review by C. H. Glasson, who, appropriately enough, is a lay member of the Church of England and also a civil servant. He affirms that the Church “will continue to assert that it is different in kind from other voluntary organizations,” and that it “will not even consent to reserve its gospel for its members, as Freemasons do the oddities they indulge in.”

Regarding the function of the Church of England as the “established” church of the realm, Mr. Glasson is of the opinion that its disestablishment would weaken both itself and also the Free Churches. He imagines that there are few Christians who would be glad to see the sovereign profess no religion or the proceedings of Parliament open without a prayer—with the exception of the Roman Church, which, he pointedly observes, is “the one nonconformist body which might have cause for satisfaction.”

In a consideration of the politics of the Church of Rome. He draws our attention to the fact that in the Roman Missal there are prayers whose design is the undoing of the work of the Reformation; that in it the English are spoken of as having been “the dowry of the blessed virgin Mary and subjects of Peter,” and that among the Bidding Prayers for Good Friday there is the distinctly political note, under the heading “For the Emperor,” explaining that this prayer is “omitted, the Holy Roman Empire being vacant.”

Mr. Glasson warns—that the Roman Church is far from having abandoned its political objectives. “In this country [England],” he says, “it plays the role of a minority, biding its time. If it were as strong in England as our Church now is, the State would be forced to define more or less regularly its relationship to it. The State would, ultimately, have not merely to define relationships with its own subjects in their church but with a foreign power.” And that, he adds, is “from the national point of view, the most significant difference between the Roman Church and our own.” Past history shows that English Roman Catholics have been relieved of their duty of loyalty under papal direction. But we are rightly admonished that these are political issues which by no means belong only to the dead past. Evidence of this is provided by citing the well known Roman Catholic writer and apologist Jacques Maritain, who “can still defend the old thesis of the Elizabethan Jesuits that excommunication of a Prince by Rome relieves the subject of all duty of obedience, and that a Pope is indeed a temporal sovereign because if he were not he could not avoid being a subject.”

The political aims and ambitions of the Roman Catholic Church are no less total and arrogant than are those of Communism. The Church-State connection in England is designed to ensure, amongst other things, a Protestant succession to the throne and security from a relapse into a state of subjection to the absolute tyranny of a foreign potentate claiming unrestricted authority over the souls and bodies of men. These ends are thoroughly desirable, but it must always be remembered that the only effective safeguard against the domination of darkness, whether civil or ecclesiastical or both, is the promotion of that vital evangelical religion whereby men’s hearts and minds are enlightened and liberated by obedience to the Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever.

This review of live spiritual and moral issues debated in the secular and religious press of the day is prepared successively for CHRISTIANITY TODAY by four evangelical scholars: Professor William Mueller of the United States, Professor G. C. Berkouwer of the Netherlands, Professor John H. Gerstner of the United States and Rev. Phillip Hughes of England.

Cover Story

Christianity and the Sense of Tragedy

W. Stanford Reid

The feeling that life is fundamentally tragic seems to be common to the human race. The tendency toward death, frustration and what Carlyle has called “the inane” seems for most men to be the dominant theme of earthly existence. True, in times of expansion, of economic and social improvement, men have usually become optimistic, declaring this to be the best possible world and that every day in every way we are getting better and better. But let there be ever so slight a “recession” and the immediate change of tone in the chorus of optimism becomes very noticeable. The sense of tragedy very soon reasserts its rule over the human heart and mind.

That this is so is seen early in the history of civilization and culture. To the Greeks, for instance, the highest type of dramatic art, that which most truly portrayed life, was tragedy. Aristotle held that such representation performed a catharsis in those who witnessed it, enabling them to project themselves into the situation depicted in the drama. By so doing, they would be able to evaluate and overcome the catastrophic in their own lives. Here, as in much Eastern thinking, the black tragedy of man’s existence is taken for granted.

The Forms Of Tragedy

To the Greek dramatist, whether Sophocles, Euripedes or another, tragedy had one of three principal forms. The hero might find himself in conflict with society and its conventions, the result being virtual outlawry and death. Such an end, however, was not so tragic as that of the man who dared to fight with the gods. If he attempted this, his end was foreordained, for the gods would crush him with the weight of their roaring thunderbolts. In an even worse plight was the man in conflict with himself. There lay the deepest depth of tragedy, for such a one was not only the victim but also his own prosecutor and judge.

Thus, in Greek thought, anyone worthy of the name of man was obliged to enter into one form of conflict or other. As an individual he had to face the demands of society, religion or even his own human nature. One answer he could offer to these demands was submission, but by giving this answer he really ceased to be an individual and a man. This was slavery. On the other hand, he could go his own independent way, a way leading inevitably to a conflict ending only in defeat. But having fought a good fight, he would go down with his flag flying. Here was the gloriously tragic moment of life.

Such an approach to life assumes, of course, a whole philosophy or world-and-life view. It holds that life is fundamentally void, for man is destined to defeat and consequently to hopelessness. The hero is one who does not really overcome but who faces life defiantly and, by maintaining his own individual integrity, transmutes defeat into true victory. This is the tragedy which underlies all of life, for it reveals the ultimate vanity of all human endeavor.

It is upon this tradition that the great Western dramatists have built. This theme lies at the heart of Milton’s Samson Agonistes, which the author prefaced with a discussion of Aristotle and his views of the tragic. Corneille and Racine both followed the same pattern. Only Shakespeare at first appears to be different, but he too in King Lear, Macbeth or Othello, while perhaps more psychologically profound, follows the same well-worn path. Whether it be man’s fatuous love, his pride or his lust, they all lead to a destruction which he can only resist, daring the gods to strike him down with their searing darts of lightning.

Bleakness In Modern Life

Nor has our thinking changed much in our own day and age. We, who would seem to have good reason for optimism, particularly if we live in the Western Hemisphere, might well be excused for a certain buoyancy of outlook. Yet, on every hand, tragic bleakness seems to dominate. Robert Louis Stevenson commented more than once on this fact, and the parade of great novelists and writers only bears him out too well. Dreiser, Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, Proust, Dylan Thomas and many others continually point up the fact that life is essentially calamitous. Going even further, historian-philosophers, such as Spengler and Toynbee, declare that civilizations, like the individual, can end only in tragic death.

One may, of course, object that this attitude is a product of extreme intellectualism. It is the fate of the university professor, rather than of the man in the street. Yet is this true? Is it not true that it is part and parcel, not merely of Western, but of human thought? How often have we heard it prophesied in the past few years that there will be a third world war, and that this war will bring about the end of all things! Man seems to accept it as axiomatic that he will eventually bring himself to destruction, perhaps because of his very efforts to survive. In a hostile universe he can look forward to nothing but ultimate disaster. Despite all that he does, the universe will ultimately run down, bringing man’s hard-won achievements in art, science, religion and war to nothing. There is the ultimate tragedy.

And what practical effect does this have upon men? They see no value to life. They make money, they amass power, they build up a reputation. But where does it all lead? There is nothing beyond, for death ends all, and frustration is the common lot of man. Out of this situation come inner tensions, which in turn lead to social conflicts. The individual in his drive, in his search for something beyond his own puny efforts, to make life mean something finds himself opposed by others with the same tensions and acquisitive desires. The result is war in the economic, political or international sphere, and this in turn destroys man and his glory, civilization, and their cultures, nations and their achievements. Man agrees that

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Await alike the inevitable hour,

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Mirror Of Man’s Need

The Christian church in human society and the individual Christian as a member of society both have seriously to face this common interpretation of life. A mere glib “God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world” sort of attitude does not solve the problem, nor overcome the difficulty. Does Christianity, therefore, have any real answer to, any effective argument against, the usual “philosophy of tragedy?” Or, does it simply admit that life is vanity of vanities about which man can do absolutely nothing?

In considering this matter, the Christian must of course realize that this belief in ultimate tragedy is a revelation of man’s need. As man becomes more self-conscious, so he becomes more “tragedy-conscious.” His sense of uncertainty and insecurity grows stronger as he more clearly sees his own smallness against the background of the universe. At times he has felt that he could govern all things by his reason, but before long, further knowledge has made him realize that he was dealing with something far beyond his power to control. Thus it has indeed been true that “he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Eccles. 1:18).

To the Christian this is not unexpected. After all, when man frankly and bluntly refuses to acknowledge God as sovereign, he cannot expect anything else. A limited god, or no god at all, leaves the universe as the plaything of chance and the sport of conflicting currents of forces. In the circumstances, all that man can do is fight back at his environment, in the hope that some day in the future he may see victory—or oblivion. Man’s sin is thus at the root of his tragic sense.

Its Roots Are Deep

One may well ask then if Christianity sees no tragedy in life. Is Christianity a religion of facile optimism that goes its way without considering or caring for the emptiness which obviously lies so close to the surface of all human endeavor and activity? No, Christianity realizes that there is indeed a tragic side to life, but it believes that its roots lie deeper than most men realize.

The Christian bases his understanding of tragedy upon his belief in the doctrine fundamental to all Christian thought—God’s sovereignty. Because God is sovereign, he is the Creator, Sustainer and Ruler of all that is (John 1:3–5; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16, 17). Indeed, he is more: the Redeemer of his people, sovereignly saving them by his grace (John 1:12 f.; 3:3, 6, 7, 16; Rom. 8:28 ff.; Eph. 1, 2). God is absolute in all things.

Yet although God’s sovereign goodness is so bountifully manifest in creation and providence, man continues in rebellion. Although God continually displays his kindness to man in providing what he needs in this life, man shows neither gratitude nor thanksgiving. He prefers to declare that all these things are attained by his own hard work, or even by chance. Completely egocentric, he ignores God, refusing the submission that he should offer (Rom. 1:19–20).

Nevertheless, the sovereign God continues by his providence to sustain and govern the rebel, not only providing him with those things which he needs, but even restraining the ravages of sin in his mind and body. Although man laughs in his face, God still keeps him in this life, for the rebel is utterly dependent, though he acknowledge it not, upon him.

As if this evidence of God’s goodness were not enough, he has entered into history speaking to men through the mouths of prophets and apostles, and calling upon them to return to him. Most important of all he entered into man’s world as man, in the person of Jesus Christ. And in the Incarnation, which led to his death on Calvary’s cross, he substituted himself for man, that he alone might bear the penalty of man’s continual and obstinate rebellion. Here was the supreme manifestation of divine sovereign grace.

The Rebellious Creature

Yet in spite of God’s infinite grace, in spite of all his calls to return, man pays little or no attention. Faced with the offer of the Gospel, he turns his back upon it, and we hear the tragic cry of the Savior: “How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not” (Matt. 23:37). Here is one aspect of the Christian sense of tragedy: the tragedy of the rebellious creature.

But there is another side to it, for Christ adds the words: “Behold your house is left unto you desolate.” The tragedy of life consists not only in man’s turning away from the call of the sovereign God but also in the fact that God in his just and righteous wrath may, and does, turn away from his rebellious creatures. This is tragedy indeed—the tragedy of Hell, far greater, deeper and more enduring than anything man can imagine: eternal death.

The Initiative Of Grace

Yet no Christian would ever admit that tragedy is the final word. For the Christian, tragedy is never the end, since God’s grace is as ultimate as his justice. Even though the Christian once rebelled and fought against God, in his infinite mercy and loving kindness God has laid hold upon him. He has sweetly wooed him back to himself, and hope has blotted out the feeling of vanity and emptiness.

The Christian, however, must continually emphasize that this has not happened because of his own willingness or desire to turn to God, but because God in Christ and through the Holy Spirit has taken the initiative.

Born again from above, “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13), God’s people turn to him in faith and obedience, knowing that they have been saved from black tragedy, by the sovereign grace of God alone.

Swallowed Up In Hope

The Christian cannot and does not seek to escape from the sense of tragedy in the world. But his view of tragedy is not the result of a sense of insecurity forced upon him by a world of chance. He sees tragedy in man’s continual rejection of the sovereign God of grace; but at the same time he also sees tragedy swallowed up in hope. Christ has died; yea, he has risen again and he offers salvation freely to all. Tragedy is not ultimate, for Christ lives and reigns as the Redeemer and Intercessor for all who come unto him by faith.

How does the Christian view affect one’s attitude toward life? For one thing, the Christian realizes that God has called him in this life to serve him. The Apostle Paul never tired of stressing this point when dealing with the individual members of the early Church, because it gave to even the humblest Christian a sense of vocation. God had summoned the Christian to service; therefore the Christian, even though a slave, was God’s freedman.

And out of this sense of calling comes a further result. The Christian’s work, feeble, sinful and ineffectual though it might be, if it is done honestly, faithfully and conscientiously, will redound to the glory of the sovereign God. Thus, even the humblest ditch digger can glorify God in his work. Moreover, this is not just for a day, or a year, but for all eternity, for “their works do follow them.” This destroys frustration, emptiness, tragedy. We are working for the eternal glory of the King of Kings.

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58).

END

Components

Dust … and clay …

and the voice of God.

Here is the Creator’s handiwork;

Here is dust … and clay.

The highest of all organisms,

yet of the earth.

The most complex of God’s creations:

Insignificant.

What good can come of dust …

and clay?

Dust of itself is nothing;

Clay—little more.

What then remains?

The voice of God.

DONALD CLAIR REAM

W. Stanford Reid teaches in Canada in the city of his birth, at McGill University, Montreal, where he is Associate Professor of History and Warden of Men’s Residences. He holds the Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is author of The Church of Scotland in Lower Canada, Economic History of Great Britain and Problems in Western Intellectual History since 1500.

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