Book Briefs: June 9, 1958

“Testament Of Faith”

A Testament of Faith, by G. Bromley Oxnam, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1958. 176 pp., $3.00.

The importance of this confession of faith is due primarily not to the depth or uniqueness of its contents (there is no reason for believing that any of these paragraphs or pages will be quoted in significant Christian literature during the years to come), but to the pre-eminent position which the author of this book has held in ecclesiastical circles during the last 20 years. Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam is now 67 years of age, and has been an ordained minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church for 42 years. Probably no other one ecclesiastic in America has held as many important positions within his own denomination, and in ecumenical movements, as Bishop Oxnam. Twenty years ago he began serving a five-year term as chairman of the Division of Educational Institutions for the Board of Education of the Methodist Episcopal Church; from 1940 to 1948, in the same great denomination, he was chairman of the Committee on Public Information; while for eight years, 1944–1957, he was president of its Division of Foreign Missions. How strange that such a large denomination should allow one man to simultaneously take the chairmanships of so many vital committees. For many years, he was also chairman of the Methodist Committee on Chaplains. Bishop Oxnam, at the present time, is on the Board of Trustees of at least seven educational institutions and is the president of the Board of Trustees of Westminster Theological Seminary. He was a professor in the University of Southern California and in the Boston University School of Theology for 10 years, and president of DePauw University for eight years. He has been a bishop in the Methodist church since 1936 and is today the president of the Council of Bishops. In addition to the highest possible offices in his own denomination, he was president of the Federal Council of Churches from 1944 to 1946, and president of the World Council of Churches, 1948–1954. What this man believes, and has believed, and taught, and preached, and insisted upon in his chairmanships of these strategic committees and organizations, is a very important matter.

On the very first page of the introduction, the Bishop warns us that we must expect many negations of basic Christian truths, as we peruse his testament of faith, when he tells us “there is much in the differing formulations of the faith that I cannot in honesty reconcile with what I believe to be the character of God and the mind of Christ.” More than once as he proceeds from chapter to chapter, he speaks slightingly of creeds, and yet, the titles of all of his chapters are hardly anything else but phrases from the Apostle’s Creed: “I Believe in God,” “I Believe in Jesus Christ,” “I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins,” etc., though the title of the last chapter is not in any Apostolic Creed, “I Believe in Man.” In his chapter on the Church, he admits that “theological discussion is difficult for the average layman and average minister to understand, but understand it we must” (p. 128). And yet, again and again, he insists that he is no theologian. “I have met many theologians and have listened to their lectures with respectful attention. I have labored through their heavy volumes. I must admit regretfully that I still see through a glass darkly. Their discussions in ecumenical conferences confuse me. I know I must be at fault. These are learned men. I am sure that theology involves technical jargon just as physics, biology, and chemistry do. Theologians deal with ultimate questions” (p. 4). Soon after this he frankly states “I am not a theologian. That will soon be evident.” What a paradox for a man, once to have been a professor of practical theology, the president of the board of trustees of a theological seminary, a lecturer on “preaching” and many other religious subjects in various universities, a bishop in the Methodist church, and not to be a theologian!

His repudiation of many biblical teachings seems to have begun at an early age in the heart and mind of one who was destined to become such an influence in ecclesiastical circles in this country. He was brought up in a devout home, but he says that even then as a boy, to him, “saying prayers was more like telling beads … I doubted … in our home the Scriptures were the inspired Word of God and the Old Testament stories were a record of what God had actually done. It is hard for a boy to understand how God could be a God of love and still slay little children.” (If the Bishop is referring to the event recorded in 2 Kings 2, he has failed to note that it does not say these children were slain.) Even when studying systematic theology as a seminary student, he says of the attributes of God, that he had to admit them but “they did not add up to the Being I needed and who I believed must exist.”

In his first paragraph, “I Believe in God,” he returns to the quotation which has brought justified strong criticism upon him, when he favorably quotes another author, that the God of the Old Testament is “a dirty bully,” and he defends this. He refuses to believe “that God as revealed in Jesus could tell us that it was better that a millstone were hanged about a man’s neck than to offend little children … that such a God would have slain the innocent first-born of the Egyptians.”

Here we have the basic flaw in Oxnam’s theology. He rejects anything in the Word of God which does not fit in with his now completed theological system. He picks and chooses. Thus he tells us that he can understand the Beatitudes of Jesus, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the story of the Prodigal Son, but he does not choose to refer to the words of the same Christ, “This is my blood which is shed for the remission of sins.” He does not dare to quote Christ’s words, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” He quotes over and over and over again that glorious conclusion to the eighth chapter of Romans, that nothing can separate us from the love of God. And then he states that “God for us cannot be thought of as an angry, awful, avenging being.” Here he forgets to tell us, in fact he knows this but does not want to admit, that this same epistle of Paul to the Romans that gives him this great passage on God’s love for his own, refers to the wrath of God more often than to the love of God. If Paul is right in his statement concerning God’s love to us, on what grounds can we insist that Paul is woefully wrong when he writes about the wrath of God?

Like many other religious writers who have repudiated the great essentials of the Christian faith, the Bishop gives extended notice to our Lord’s famous words, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” But as is invariably the case, he does not inform us that this is only the concluding clause in a sentence which expresses a truth that he would repudiate. This is the entire sentence. “If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

In the chapter, “I Believe in Life Everlasting,” he does not even mention the fact that Christ rose from the dead or that there is such a thing as resurrection for Christians, though this is the blessed hope in the New Testament. Though he does not choose to refer to one line of the New Testament on the resurrection, he opens his chapter with four lines from Omar Khayyam. Once he quotes from the glorious 15th chapter of I Corinthians and who would ever guess what the single sentence was? “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

It is, however, in his chapter on Jesus Christ that we are confronted with the most tragic aspects of this tragic book. Regarding the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, and making the Bible say what it does not say, he affirms: “It is offensive to me to assume that there is something sinful in the love act that results in procreation. The doctrine assumes that Jesus was conceived without sin and this means without a human father. I refuse to believe that there is sin in the form of conception that God Himself has ordained for humanity.” He speaks of “the idea of virgin birth so prevalent in centuries gone by” (p. 34).

The most shocking words of all are in his statements regarding our Lord’s holy death. No comment is necessary on these words. “I have never been able to carry the idea of justice to the place where someone else can vicariously pay for what I have done in order to clean the slate” (p. 38). “They argue that God sent His own Son who died upon the cross and in so doing, satisfies God’s sense of legislative justice. It simply does not make sense to me. It is rather an offense. It offends my moral sense” (p. 41). “Must God have a sacrifice, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, as the Book says? No, no, I cannot think of it this way” (p. 42). And what is the Bishop going to do with his sins, and he acknowledges he is a sinner. He tells us, “I cannot see forgiveness as predicated upon the act of someone else. It is my sin. I must atone” (p. 144).

The Bishop says on the first page of his book, “I have often wondered what Jesus would think and do if He were to sit in some church councils or ecumenical assemblies in which the major churches of the world meet to consider such questions as faith and order, life and work.” Much later in the book, he makes a similar statement, “I wonder what Jesus would think of a theological debate in which His nature was under discussion.” Well, we don’t have to surmise in a matter like this. Jesus never asked anyone what they thought of the story of the Prodigal Son, but he did ask “Whom do ye say that I am?” and when the answer came, “Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God,” he confirmed the confession and attributed its inspiration to God himself. This story-telling, love-revealing, gracious Saviour also said, “He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” Some day the Bishop will know, before the judgment seat of Christ, what Christ thinks of “theological discussions.”

What can be done when one, with all these ecclesiastical offices in his hands, plus the headship of a College of Bishops for 8½ million people, boldly denies what the Word of God declares, and what the Church of Christ has always claimed to be truth and what his own church, since the days of Wesley, has reaffirmed as truth in her doctrinal standards? Are there not enough born-again Methodists in America with courage enough to stand up in Methodist conferences, and boldly repudiate these false doctrines? What has happened to the voice of true Bible-believing bishops in the Methodist church in an hour like this? Are they saying nothing to the head of the College of Bishops? In all the Methodist theological seminaries in this country, are there not some theologians left who will print, over their names, with all the influence their chairs give them, a strong reaffirmation of those Christian truths by which alone men are born again and given the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, God’s Son?

WILBUR M. SMITH

Optimism To Pessimism

After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith, by Judith N. Shklar, Princeton Univ., 1957. $5.00.

This is a stimulating but rather depressing book. The scholarship which has gone into its composition is extensive and the critical approach is extremely valuable, since many ideas, basic to modern political thinking, are shown in their true historical light. For the Christian who wishes to gain some understanding of current political ideologies it is a very useful guide. But at the same time it shows quite clearly that the West has gradually seen a decline of political faith from eighteenth century rationalistic optimism to twentieth century existentialist pessimism. And what is worse, it offers nothing in its place.

Dr. Shklar, presently a teacher in political science at Harvard, traces three main lines of the decline of political faith. The larger portion of the book is devoted to the fate of romantic optimism which she shows has gradually moved away from a faith in man’s emotions to direct society, through a belief in the incompatibility of the individual and his social environment, to existentialist despair and anguish. This is, to the reviewer, the most interesting part of the work.

From romanticism she next turns to Christianity whose principle representatives she seems to feel are Maritain, Knox, Dawson, T. S. Eliot and Brunner. Pointing out that Christianity has always been critical of society, the author believes that modern Christians have adopted a fatalistic attitude by holding to the view that political action results primarily from religious belief, and since the West has lost its Christianity it has lost ipso facto all political hope. It therefore has no counter-offer to make to romanticism.

Finally she closes by showing that radicalism has also lost its political dreams by becoming scientific and as a result suspicious of all romantics and rationalists. The result has been the radicals’ political disintegration.

While one must confess that there is much to be said for this work, in that it points up the ultimate conclusion of eighteenth century Rationalism, one cannot but feel that it has two important lacunae. The first is that much of the Enlightenment’s political thinking was not original, but was taken from the Reformation without its Christian foundation. The second is that the author has completely ignored the political views of evangelical Christians. She has apparently never heard, for instance, of Abraham Kuiper, Herman Dooyeweerd and others of the Dutch school of thought. Thus she fails to realize that while the Christian never can be optimistic about sinful human beings in themselves, he does have faith in the grace of God, who from outside history can bring about political changes through a revolution in the hearts of men.

This book is a challenge in this crucial hour for Christians to think and write in political terms in order that men may see that the truly Christian view is not fatalistic, but one which calls for responsible political action.

W. STANFORD REID

Objective Of Church

The Witnessing Community, by Suzanne de Dietrich, Westminster, Philadelphia, 1958, 180 pp., $3.75.

Miss Suzanne de Dietrich, a prominent French “lay theologian,” correctly affirms that the supreme task of the Church is to reconcile the world to God. Believing that we live under the same tensions as God’s people of old in that we are ever tempted to either “withdraw from” or “conform to” the world, she traces the history of mankind from Genesis through Israel and the Apostles in order to show the relevancy of the biblical record for the attainment of this objective of the Church.

Interestingly and well-written, profound yet easy to read, much of this book will commend itself to evangelicals as being pertinent to a “witnessing community.” However, despite a constant use of Scripture to document her position, this is not a sound book from the standpoint of biblical Christianity. Considering the Bible a mixture of “saga and history,” a combination of the “human” and the “divine,” for her the Scriptures become, rather than are, the Word of God. Her Christological views, although usually couched in orthodox nomenclature, are often hazy and we search in vain for any adequate conception of sin and the need of repentance.

Miss de Dietrich is active in ecumenical circles but her book at least raises doubts as to whether the unity she desires would be a unity in the Christ of Paul and the Apostles.

CHARLES H. CRAIG

Roman Catholic View

Communism and Christianity, by Martin D’Arcy. Devin Adair, 1957. 242 pp. $4.00.

Philosophers, economists, political scientists and theologians of past centuries and today “strut their stuff” on the pages of Communism and Christianity, as the author, an Oxford-trained philosopher and Oxford professor, calls upon them to support his Roman Catholic view of the war between the opposing ideologies. The book does not bear an official imprimatur, nor is there effort on the part of the writer to present his findings as the Catholic position.

Written with charming diction and sturdy logic, the book is as intriguing as it is informative. One of its chief values, particularly to those readers who have not studied the works of all the philosophers, is the author’s succinct but accurate “boil downs” of the principal theses of the great thinkers of the world, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant, Hegel and Fauerbach, with Britain’s Prof. J. Macmurray tossed in for good measure. Also quoted are Ricardo and Adam Smith; Protestant writers, Paul Tillich and Dwight J. Bradley, the more secular Aldous Huxley and Whittaker Chambers—these and others.

As an example of the writer’s skill in “pointing up” a position or philosophy, he declares that “Rousseau’s ultimate is the sovereign people.” Only six words, but a world of meaning.

If the book attracts even a modicum of readers it will stir considerable controversy. Many libertarians will reject the author’s conclusion that communists are motivated by the same humanitarian desires which lead Christians to undertake charitable projects. The author’s position in this regard is made plain in many passages, as for example:

“What Christianity and Communism have to offer are then as different as heaven from earth, and it would appear that they must meet in a head-on collision; and yet they are both concerned with the welfare of man and can look as if they were brothers. The reason for this likeness may lie in the subconscious ideals which inspire the finest communist supporters.”

In still another respect the book falls short. It presents a middle-of-the-road philosophy. The author will settle for a mixed society, as is clear from these quoted lines: “The state should act on the long range ideal of redistributing property so that the individual is capable of enjoying it and using it to the general interest. In a sense quite different from that of the classless society of Marx the interference of the state should diminish the more the members of it grow in wisdom and in fellowship.” The sentiments in this quotation do not sound too much unlike Marxian writings.

VERNE P. KAUB

Orthodox Acceptance

The Life of the Lord Jesus Christ, by J. P. Lange, Zondervan, 1958. Two volumes, 1048 pp., $3.95 per vol.

This is another Zondervan reprint by an author who needs no introduction. It is in four volumes but only the first two are reviewed here. Part of volume 1 deals with the literary sources about the life of Christ and related critical questions. The rest, and all of volume 2, exhibit Christ’s life from birth to his last week on earth. This masterful section is a combination of commentary, harmony, chronology, devotion, critical and homiletical material. This is an excellent set for minister, student and seminary library.

KENNETH MCCOWAN

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