The Bible and Modern Man

Our world today seems far removed from the world of the Bible. What have we, with our nuclear weapons, space satellites, television, and mechanized way of life, in common with an age of chariots and horsemen, and herdsmen, nomads, and primitive tillers of the soil? Has not modern man with his modern civilization and his modern science reduced the Bible to a religious curiosity, virtually prehistoric and definitely prescientific, and therefore outmoded and irrelevant? To ask such questions is legitimate and even necessary; but all too frequently the issue is prejudged by the ignorance or antipathy of those who ask them. To criticize and condemn from a position of ignorance or hostility is not to give the Bible a chance.

The Bible, is indeed, an ancient book, or collection of books, written in times outwardly very different from our own. But this consideration is peripheral. What is central to a proper understanding of the Bible and its message is the recognition that inwardly, at the vital core of his being, man has not altered over the centuries. His deepest needs today are the same as they have ever been. And it is precisely to man as man that the message of the Bible is addressed—and modern man is still man. He cannot cease to be what he is by constitution. Whatever the circumstances of its writing, the Bible in its scope is not limited to times and places long past: it embraces the whole sweep of the history of humanity, in its most radical sense, from beginning to end, from creation to judgment. In its pages man is set in the light of eternity. Is that not revelant to us today?

The Bible proclaims the sovereignty of Almighty God over all the affairs of mankind, as Creator, Sustainer, Judge, and Redeemer. Is not that relevant? It reminds man of the fundamental fact that he is a creature, not self-sufficient, as he would like to imagine himself, but dependent on God and owing him his gratitude and worship. It may come as a surprise to its critics to know that the Bible in fact sees man as essentially scientific man, endowed with capacities that make him unique in the created order, and formed to subdue the world and have dominion over it. The modern man of science is, however, no surprise to the Bible.

But at the same time, and with unerring penetration, the Bible sees man as fallen man—frustrated at the very heart of his being because of his alienation from God through the mutiny of sin. The Bible is a veritable mirror of man, the supreme and original textbook of depth-psychology, which reveals man to himself as he really is in his inmost essence.

Yet further—and this is its central message to us—the Bible tells how God has acted in Christ so that men may be reconciled to God and to each other. In penetrating to the root of every man’s deepest and most desperate need, it also points to the remedy, the way out of the dilemma. In Christ he rediscovers his true manhood. If one thing is obvious, it is that, despite all the wonderful advances of knowledge and science, our contemporary world is in need of reintegration and reconciliation.

Instead of scorning the message of the Bible, let the skeptic consider whether the scientific American airman, who had been on a mission of mass destruction, found this Book irrelevant when, beaten, starving, and in solitary confinement in enemy hands (a situation symbolical, one might suggest, of the anguish which is characteristic of the spiritual plight of modern man), the reading of it made him wise to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, and replaced the hatred and bitterness of his heart with overflowing love, joy, and peace. Is there no relevance to the contemporary problems of our world in the fact that this man has now returned to the Japanese whom he formerly hated with the Bible’s message of reconciliation through Christ?

It may be asked: How does the state of our world today harmonize with the biblical doctrine of the sovereignty of God? Are not the strifes and tensions between nations and the increase of violence and crime a contradiction of the divine sovereignty? If God is sovereign, why does he not intervene and prevent these things from happening? The biblical answer to this is that God has intervened, adequately and effectively, by the sending of his Son into the world to save sinners. Fullness of peace and reconciliation is to be found in Christ by all who will turn to him. The Bible sees the prevalence of hatred and conflict in the world in terms not of God’s impotence but of the folly of man’s rejection of God’s grace in Christ Jesus.

And the biblical answer, further, is that God will intervene yet again, at the end of this age, but this time in final judgment, not mercy, when Christ returns in majesty to overthrow every enemy and to bring in the new heavens and the new earth in which righteousness and peace are established forever. Evil is not invincible. The God of the Bible is not powerless.

A vivid picture of our world condition is in fact given in the Bible, in the words of Christ, who foretold that “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be great earthquakes and famines and pestilences and terrors … and upon earth distress of nations, men’s hearts failing them for fear and for expectation of the things that are coming on the world.” Once again, we see that the Bible is not taken by surprise. The present racial and international hatreds, the savage new nationalisms, the pitiable plight of whole communities, and over all the grim and fearful threat of annihilating nuclear warfare, the evidence is daily before us and affords further proof that the Bible is startlingly relevant to our contemporary situation. And Christ added that when these things begin to come to pass, then his followers are to look up, because their redemption is at hand. Every man will then face Christ, either as Savior or as Judge.

ANOTHER ERA UNDERWAY IN THE AMERICAN VENTURE

The American dream and destiny this week seem hazier than for decades. Whether Senator John F. Kennedy’s election to the United States presidency will signal a further decline, or an upgrading, of democratic processes is the moot question now pondered at home and abroad. During these next years the prime issue may be not mere co-existence, but survival. In assuming the weighty burdens of leadership, the President-elect needs the good will of all citizens, a place in the prayers of God’s people, and firm support for every policy that promotes the best interest of the land.

Concerned with principle rather than party and personality, CHRISTIANITY TODAY focused interest on such pre-campaign issues as gigantic-versus-limited government, the moral issue of inflation and spending, the extension of Federal determination into state affairs, as well as Church-State relationships. In these realms the distinction between major parties has steadily diminished. Both Senator Kennedy and Vice-President Nixon made some hard-to-keep promises (complained one member of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s Board: “Both candidates are promising almost everything but freedom!”). Mr. Kennedy’s skillful campaign gripped public imagination in the popularity race, alongside Mr. Nixon’s failure to sustain a prophetic voice. Both candidates often contended simply as pragmatic politicians.

Inevitably a religious magazine fixes an eye on spiritual aspects of the political campaign, which this year held special interest through Senator Kennedy’s Roman Catholicism. Senator Kennedy, in fact, did not personally reflect historic Catholic traditions any more consistently than Vice-President Nixon mirrored the Protestant outlook. The real significance of the religious development in American life is found not in a growing emergence of a Catholic bloc or party, nor even in a shift of the American political mood into the post-Protestant era, or into an era of pluralistic religious balances. The deeper fact is the widening public judgment that all religion is irrelevant to political attitudes and acts. The American mentality rapidly is losing any distinction of true versus false religion, and is dismissing this contrast as based on unbrotherliness and intolerance. Religion is demeaned to merely a secondary or supplementary support in American life. Curiously it was American Jesuits, not Protestant leaders, who pressed the Fair Campaign Practices Committee specifically to affirm that religion should inform a man’s conscience in the arena of political decision.

Senator Kennedy’s showing from one point of view marked a Roman Catholic breakthrough, from another a Catholic compromise. On the religious issue he courageously declared himself on the side of American rather than Vatican traditions. There were Kennedy’s statements that Church-State separation is ideal (Roman Catholicism has viewed separation as tolerable until a Catholic majority can implement the state as the temporal arm of the Roman church); his opposition to Federal aid to parochial schools (some Jesuits call such a policy unjust); his opposition to an envoy to the Vatican; his professed obligation to the Constitution rather than to the Pope in political affairs. Those who had “future doubts” (“the first Kennedy might be a very good president,” said a distinguished Protestant theologian in Europe, “but the third or fourth might be Innocent III”) detected a rising Catholic lay disgust over the persecution-mentality of Catholicism in Spain, Colombia, and so on. Whether this election-year idealism will blossom into post-election realism supportive of religious freedom remains to be seen.

Yet the Catholic bloc vote entered as decisively into Kennedy’s election as the labor bloc and the Negro vote. All the more remarkable is Mr. Nixon’s high percentage of the total vote, Mr. Kennedy’s margin of victory apparently averaging down to about two votes a precinct. Such bloc pressures, directive of the American outlook, remain a danger signal. What of future big city candidates where political bosses can “deliver” such a vote?

Evangelical Protestant forces passed one test but failed two. The National Association of Evangelicals, Southern Baptists, and other groups still alert to church history warned consistently against Roman Catholicism’s notorious incursion into political arenas for sectarian benefit. They remembered, moreover, that the Reformation not only promoted biblical faith, but challenged Rome’s theology of the state as well as of sin and salvation. Evangelicals had to contend with a hostile press, unable any longer to reach independent judgments on such issues, and largely following the cue of the National Conference of Christians and Jews and of Catholic propagandists in assailing such discussions as bigotry. The press was lured into a shrewd campaign to label all criticism of Roman Catholicism as bigotry. National attention focused negatively on the Bible belt, while the Roman hierarchy did not discourage bloc voting. Even the Fair Campaign Practices Committee tilted to a bias in a nation-wide telecast; its representative properly deplored bigotry, but quite improperly ignored the Committee’s position that a candidate’s religion is properly discussable where it impinges on politics. Meanwhile, spokesmen eager for an ecumenical tolerance-image helped attach the bigotry-image to N.A.E. Others stressed Protestantism’s need of perpetual Reformation more than the timeless significance of Luther’s break with Rome. Discussion of the political issue on the religious side (sectarian exploitation of state benefits) was repressed by ballooning the religious issue with the ill wind of bigotry. In this propaganda shift, Rome lost its historic persecution-image and assigned evangelical Protestantism a bigotry-image.

Not a few Protestants sided in depth with Kennedy’s program of enlarging Federal welfare benefits but promoted his cause under the public umbrella of tolerance, while others supported Kennedy in view of Catholicism’s official antipathy to communism and sympathy with free enterprise.

Evangelical long range losses were striking in two respects, political responsibility and missionary obligation. Evangelicals still react more to secular initiative than to any evangelical political overview consistent with both separation of Church and State and the believer’s social responsibility. Equally unfortunate for evangelical witness is the shadow over Protestant-Catholic relationships, even if widened first by Rome’s grasp for partisan benefits. Whereas Protestant inclusivists usually hold an open-end view of ecumenical cooperation with Rome, and cultivate the tolerance-image, evangelical purveyors of the Gospel often address Roman Catholics only obliquely. Statistically, evangelical strength almost rivals that of Catholics in the United States. But the Roman church has planted Catholic Information Centers in the main cities of America, while evangelicals shape newspaper ads corrective of Knights of Columbus propaganda. Whether the evangelical movement learns to address Roman Catholics aggressively in the dimension of compassion as well as of criticism remains to be seen.

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For a limited time CHRISTIANITY TODAY is offering an unusual bonus to all its readers. Every new, renewal or gift subscription will not only entitle the reader to 24 issues of the magazine but also to an important book of vital current interest.

A choice of titles is offered: 1. The complete New Testament volume of The Biblical Expositor with its scholarly and illuminating insights into both the written Word and the background against which the individual books were written, or 2. Christian Personal Ethics, a text dealing with both the moral revelation of Christianity and the ethical alternatives of speculative philosophy—an invaluable tool for ministers. CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s Dr. Carl F. H. Henry served as consulting editor for the first volume, and is author of the second. Either book with the subscription represents a $11.95 value for $5.

The decision of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s Board of Directors to offer this book bonus to subscribers is a further step of generosity by dedicated evangelical men who have so signally aided the advance of Christianity in our day. Readers who wish to share their blessings with friends at the Christmas season should find this offer an appropriate opportunity for this purpose as well as for widening the evangelical ministry and witness of the magazine.

LITURGICAL REFORM AND STRONG CHURCHMANSHIP

Liturgical Reform is an expression which means diferent things to different people. To some it means the reintroduction into Christian worship of the ritual and vestments of sacerdotalism. To some it is merely a matter of aesthetics, dictated by a liking for that which is ornate, colorful, and spectacular. In some Roman Catholic circles in Europe it implies a process not of elaboration but rather of simplification whereby, for example, a movable table is substituted for a static altar, the sacrament is administered in the evening when most can attend, and services are conducted in the vernacular, instead of in Latin, with the result that the congregation can understand what is being said and done and can join with some intelligence in the Church’s worship. To others, again, Liturgical Reform is an expression without meaning, for the simple reason that their churches, however admirable in other respects, are in the unfortunate position of having virtually no liturgy to reform. The minister is all (a kind of obverse of the Roman priest), while the people are, except for the singing of a couple of hymns, inactive, though we hope not unintelligent, spectators.

To many Evangelical churches are in this last group. This means that in a most important aspect their worship is impoverished. It is not properly congregational. Nor is it in this respect Reformed, for the Reformers of the sixteenth century were certainly conscious of the necessity for liturgical worship—for worship, that is, in which the people actively participate and which is not monopolized, though it is led, by the minister. For this reason the Church of England has always regarded its Book of Common Prayer (and in particular the services of Morning and Evening Prayer and Holy Communion) as one of the most precious heritages of the Reformation. Strong churchmanship follows from liturgical worship that is controlled by the Scriptures. And that does not mean ritualism! Non-liturgical worship is weak worship. It is passive instead of active. Let us therefore strengthen the things which remain.

THE BLESSINGS OF FAITH INCLUDE ITS POWER IN LIFE

One great thrill of evangelical Christianity is that it works. Centuries come and go; races spring up and disperse; cathedrals are erected and pulled down; governments pass laws and repeal them; liturgies are written and forgotten, but Jesus Christ brings the same results yesterday, today, and forever.

When a nonevangelical minister gets discouraged he is in serious trouble. He must battle his way out of a human situation with human resources. When a truly Christian pastor becomes downhearted, however, he knows at least that there is nothing whatever wrong with his product or his message. He studies Scripture and concludes at last that God is testing him for a purpose. As he looks into his own heart, God shows him the way out.

We who are on the Lord’s side must never forget that however small a minority we sometimes may be in our community, we stand in the true apostolic succession. The scarlet thread comes our way and goes on. Christianity draws its strength and staying-power from the inner citadels of prayer. When workers are needed, it provides them. It looks beyond its borders and reflects the original compassion of Christ. It produces fruit in young lives dedicated to Christ.

When a church membership is made up of truly twice-born Christians, the minister does not have to “enrich the mixture” to get his airship off the ground. His church does not strain and fag to eke out some superimposed quota. She simply radiates the love of the Saviour and lets the Spirit do the work.

Sound easy? It is easy! In fact, wonderful!

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